The Warmth of Alien Suns

Chapters

Invasion
Violation
Second Interview: Missionaries In a Foreign Field
Expedition
Third Interview: The Tongues of Men and Angels
Fourth Interview: Federal Question
Abjection
Destruction
Interview: Who Will Go For Us?
Interview: An Epistle to the Canterlonians
Interview: Leopold's Ghost
Purgation
Absolution
Conclusion
Incursion
First Interview: Sailors on a Becalmed Sea

Invasion

Author's Note

“Step by step they were led to things which dispose to vice, the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet. All this in their ignorance they called civilisation, when it was but a part of their servitude.”
― Tacitus, The Agricola and The Germania

Invasion

The alien sun slips down in the sky as late afternoon becomes evening. It is the sixth day.

The Pioneer grimaces at the artful work of her hands. She’s set four types of traps: the Apache leg trap, the drowning snare, small game snares, and two extra proximity alarms bolted to blue barked trees. If anything dares show itself in the hunting grounds of the raging judge in Eden’s noontime, they will not be breathing long. One way or another.

She is good at what she does. Her knife cuts and her hands tie and her eyes scan. A decade and a half of survival with no help and every disadvantage has honed her into a sharp little point. At least, as much as she has let it do so, so it has done.

She cannot help but sigh. It isn’t that she is overly sentimental about the process. Humans are more important than beasts to her, and there is no comparison. She would kill even the kindest beast to save the life of even the most surly human without hesitation. This Pioneer has not had the luxury and leisure which so often devalues humanity. Yet she had not given herself over to the darkness of an age that reveled in blood and iron. She had never kicked a dog in her life. Scraps that were not necessary for her own life she spared with smiling. It was more expensive to be kind in her brave new world, but it was not yet impossible. Her father had never read her a single word of the bible her mother had left behind, which had burned in the blacksite facility, but she remembered reading once about two naked newlyweds and how they were friends with every beast that flew or crawled or walked.

She feels the shaking in her head before she hears the proximity alarms shrill warning. She freezes, dropping the vines tied in a small noose as her hand went for the gun in its cracked leather holster. She did not draw it forth, not yet. But it aches to be used now.

She concentrates on the noise and thought: Cut sound. Report.

And in her sight there was suddenly floating a blue dialogue box. The implant that the blacksite had grafted to her very bones takes over and she sees the source of the alarm.

Something is nosing around the caslte. Her Castle, she corrects, grinding her teeth together.

But she doesn’t move. Not yet.

What could it be? That is the question, isn’t it? This is not her world, and wherever she may go and whatever she might tell herself, anywhere her proverbial flag is set is an invasion on virginal soil. She is the Pioneer--she is the Invader. It is her castle, but it is most rightly the castle of those who were born within the same universe as those stones and the strange, cracked art which baffles her. She has precious little to judge the inhabitants of this land. The only clues are scarcity and war.

A scavenger, perhaps. A scout of the army that had destroyed that place? Or animals. Some small game, maybe, but maybe not. Maybe something awful. She sees a creature in her mind’s eye that is all teeth and eyes and grabbing, flailing flagella. It knows nothing but hunger. No wonder the forest is empty--it has eaten everything there.

Her heart riots in her chest. She breaks out into a cold sweat.

And then the Pioneer roars in frustration at her own heart and pulls her father’s gun. It shines in the dying light and she sprints back for “home”.

Log 6, addendum

Goddammit! God-fucking-dammit!

Everything is just… fucking… everywhere.

I had to tear the earpiece off so I could just… cuss at nothing by myself for a few minutes. I’m not any less angry now, I’m just not as much in a shooty mood.

My camp is trashed. The Mule has been opened and dug through. The tent is knocked over, my little firepit in the courtyard has been bothered. They uprooted one of my proximity alarms even! And…

Shit. They found my day-rations. Three of them are crushed, just ground into the dust. I’m going to starve to death. Two days and nothing in my snares, three days of food gone just like that… I’m going to die. I’m gonna… I…

I’m sorry. I didn’t handle that well.

I need to focus on what’s in front of me. One thing at a time. First, log. Second, pick up everything. Third, hydrate and rest. Fourth… fourth, I don’t know. I’ll figure that out.

What have I been up to since last time? I set up two dozen traps. Some are fancier than others, with some jerryrigged vine ropes. Most of them are more like hole traps, those Apache sorts. All of them covered as best I could and disguised well… but marked so I’ll recognize where they are. If I break something out there I’m done for, no buts.

God, I’m trying to be calm, but I need to know what did this. I don’t think it is a who… I’m pretty sure. It’s just too random feeling and nothing was stolen. One of my first thoughts was that the Feds had gotten the gate working. Imagine the heart attack that caused! But they would have this place staked out. I’d have been shot before I even saw the damage.

I feel violated.

I can’t even be optimistic about my traps.

Log 7

I’m not alone.

I went out this morning to check the traps. Found nothing, came back, ate, went back out again. Worried over them. Dug a few more pit traps closer to home. Checked again. I wasted a lot of energy but I’m gettin’ really damn anxious about finding something. I managed to forage as I went and picked up enough of those waterfruits to fill my backpack up all the way, so that helped. Half a dozen of those were my not so filling dinner.

While I was picking them off one of the weird blue trees, I kicked something in the bush that gave a little metallic ping. I stopped, looked down, and then saw it. A used shell. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands. Cold, hard, no longer angry. It was a big casing too. Whoever shot this was not playing around.

I found like two dozen. After awhile I just stopped counting. Someone went full-auto rock and roll on… something. It was like Amarillo all over again. I felt like I was little and momma...

I found the damage as I kept going. A lot of shots went wide, or they went right through because they tore up one of the trees. How the hell did I not hear all this? There’s blood in the grass just… just tons of it. God, what happened? It smelled like a slaughterhouse.

I’m not alone… and I need to move some of my traps. Nothing is going to be in that area now. Whoever the hell followed me, and I know they did because those were .45 auto, they’ve chased half the forest away murdering something.

I’m furious. I’m gonna starve because some stupid bastard went on a fuckin’ lark. And you know what? I’ve got a good idea who or what. The Federal troops must have gotten enough out of the labs to get here. God, what if there’s a whole squad? One would be bad enough, but more? I don’t know what’s worse, a whole bunch of those fascist assholes stomping around or one quiet one in the shadows.

I need to do this now. I can’t waste time. I’ll head out… I can come in late.

ADDENDUM:

Night is falling. I feel like I’m being watched.

God I hate this so much. I’ve left the pits alone but I dismantled a few of the small game snares and I’ll repurpose everything. None of them had anything because of course they didn’t. Someone’s on my territory now. God help anything that gets in my way. My nerves are shot and I know it.

I’ve got the earpiece in and I’m recording this log just so I hear something beside the occasional night noise. It’s like that night when I was a courier, waiting to get jumped in the woods by those creeps on the Oklahoma line… It’s the same feeling I had when I saw that weird animal, the horse goat thing. My skin crawls. Hell, I take that back, I feel like I want to crawl right out of it. Every little shadow is waiting to kill you. The air just presses down. My breath is catching. What is this? I…

You know what? I think there’s something out there. You know what else? It’s the fuckin’ sabbath but I know it ain’t god. Or maybe it is. Maybe it just waited and waited and let me walk all over the place all alone and now I’ve done enough and it’s bored with me because we found out where it lived.

I’ve stopped moving. I know something is out there. I feel it. Someone. It’s gotta be whoever shot all those fuckin’ bullets. Judge is out.

Alright! Alright, come out. Right now. I know you’re there. Is that you, you Federal sonsabitches? I saw all those shells you left behind! Your mommas never teach you to clean up after yourselves? Wonder if you even knew her!

I feel your eyes on me. I’m not afraid of you. Let’s talk.

Nothing. Of course there’s nothing. Feds don’t suffer loudmouths gladly, so it ain’t...

No! Something. Right there, come out now!

It’s gone.

I feel like an idiot but I just felt so terrified. It was that stupid creature from a few days ago, the one I first saw. Remember? It reminded me of a horse... It had the same cloak and everything. I probably scared the crap out of the poor thing, but it scared the crap out of me. I yelled at it and got a glimpse of it in the semi-dark as it ran. I know it was the same--saw it’s head this time. Same weird tag bangle things. It’s got like… a mane, I guess? It’s mamamalian. Looked like a mohawk on its head?

What a world.

Log 8

Noontime. Ate my ration for the day. Stared at the ones that were left.

Whatever is watching me continues to watch. I feel its eyes on me constantly wherever I go in the castle. As soon as I leave the grounds, it gets worse. I tried checking my traps this morning but after five minutes into the woods I just came back here because…

I can’t describe it. What the hell is wrong with this place? Or is it me? Am I sick? Is this something that that weird horse thing does? Dammit. Dammit! It can’t. That’s insane I can’t even see it, I’m just… I’m just under a lot of pressure.

God, it makes my skin crawl. It’s just so wrong. The woods are still beautiful and they look the same but now I look at them and I just want to fuckin’ hurl. It’s so twisted. It’s wrong. Wrong is the only word I can think of now.

The sun is wrong! The sky is wrong! This stupid castle is wrong. Everything is so wrong here. It looks the same but I can’t help but feel like it’s all horrible. It’s like a kid’s drawing of the world… the water is blue but water ain’t really that blue, and the trees are never that green and that brown and.. This whole world suddenly seems like it was created for children. Too big and rounded and perfect. Where’s the people? Where are the towns and the roads? The sky is too clear.

I know this sounds crazy but I can’t help how I feel. Suddenly I’m jumping at every shadow. I holed up in between the two thrones because going outside scared the crap out of me. I keep expecting the proximity alert and then I’ll hear some godawful noise and then something huge will sorta slouch into the great hall and it’ll be impervious to bullets. It’ll be all teeth and eyes ‘cause isn’t that how aliens are in all the movies and pictures and old world things? And then they chase you down and two bites and you’re done. Or they’re big, tall, muscular things that toy with you and then trap you like I’m gonna trap some stupid critter and then gut you while you scream. Or they just shoot you with lasers from the sky or they suck you up into some big, shining ship and they do stuff to you while you’re still alive. It’s stupid but what if it isn’t wrong? Gates to other worlds was stupid but here I am, and I’m stupid for being here, so why not? Why the hell not?

Maybe I haven’t seen anyone because this place just ate them. Maybe they made some kind of freak experiment and it killed them all? What if I find a dead world outside of the forest and all that’s left is the hunter?

Some kind of super alien disease. Bioweapons. Plagues.

Wrath of God. Maybe that’s who’s out there watching, not that weird horse thing from last night. Or maybe that thing’s got God’s beady little eyes and I’m bein’ weighed already. That’ll be great! Hey, guys, guess what? Y’all found the portal to purgatory! Congratulations! Hell’s this way and it’s a view to die for! Step right through!

I have no expectations because how much do you really expect to get from a few days of probes? Nothing, that’s what. Nothin’ friggin’ useful. Oh, sure, it’s nice now, but what if I wake up tomorrow and I find out that sometimes this nice world rains fucking razer sharp hail? Or that every few months it just decides to freeze over for awhile or...

This is an alien world. If my own damn world wants to kill me, how much more will one that I’m completely foreign to?

Two hours since I paused my log. The feeling left a few minutes ago.

Now that it’s gone, I’m having trouble understanding the first half of this. I keep replayin’ it and all I get is more confused. I mean, I don’t doubt I was nervous. I remember feeling nervous. I just can’t understand why.

This place is beautiful. It is! I haven’t said that much since the beginning, but it’s pretty great. So quiet and peaceful. So it can’t just be the castle and such. It’s gotta be what happened last night getting on my nerves.

I’ve decided that the best thing to do is to check my traps as soon as I’m off this recording and just try to forget about this morning. Honest to god, listening to it was humiliating, but it don’t sit right to just erase it. I said that stuff. It stays. This is the only story there’ll be.

For now, while I’m coming down from all the fuss of earlier… I’ve decided that I need to start talking more and narrating less. It’ll be good for me, I think.

Future plans! Havin’ plans is good, even if you probably can’t get around to them. Daddy was pretty clear on that when I was younger and he was, you know, sober. And alive. Gotta have goals. So I’ll set some.

First, I need to secure me some food. That one is obvious.

Secondly, I need to really, really fortify this camp somehow. I mean, hell, it’s already in a castle but I think I may try some non-lethal traps here and there if I can find something to make them with. Poximity alert is a godsend miracle, but it won’t cut it. I’m reacting. Even with a warning, I’m still one step behind. I figure a good tripline or snare or something can stop an intruder long enough that I’ll have the upper hand for sure. I might can figure out what trashed the place, too, while I’m at it.

Thirdly, I want to find whoever it is that built the castle. I mean, in general, not specific. I get the feeling that whoever built this place either lives forever or they’re long dead. Maybe their kids’ kids are around somewhere. I’ll have to leave the forest to do that, which might take awhile. It’s kinda big.

Speaking of the forest, I figure I should describe it for whoever comes along, when y’all come along.

It’s huge. Remember that first. Massive. There are actually a few paths, but I’ve not used them much. I want to meet the people who live here but… not yet. I want to be ready for that, and if they use those paths I’d rather not be caught out in the open before I’m ready. Scare them and I might end up with a face full of lead. But it’s not just my safety I’m worried about. I’m painfully aware of the chances that I might be the only human they ever meet and… I mean, even if it means nothing, I want to be friends. The only human that ever comes here, and if I can be their friend maybe that would be worth it. Hell, I’ve always tried to be neighborly when I had neighbors to be it with. Which, okay, wasn’t often on account of all the drifting and the shooting but… I tried. And it’s nice.

But yeah, the forest. Sorry. Big. Got that part down! The terrain is tough here. It’s not the worst I’ve been in, because honestly these days? I was in Nebraska once, in the sandhills. It sucked before but the way the world is going, its hell now. I-35 wasn’t much better, least the parts I rode on horseback. The trees here are all twisted and old, and the briars get thick. I got a bunch of holes in my shirt now from them, which is annoying but only a little.

The weirdest thing is the lack of animals. I’ve seen some birds out there, and heard a bunch I haven’t seen. I thought I heard something yesterday, but I didn’t mention it because I never saw anything and my traps were empty, which left me feelin’ low, as you can guess. Also, I was a bit… preoccupied.

I miss them, really. I always liked animals. My favorites? That’s a tie between Miss Yule’s dogs in Shreveport when I was a girl and the horses at the Courier service. The dogs barked a lot but I was a young girl and they were always willin’ to play with me. The horses because… I don’t know. Maybe it’s the look in their eyes, you know? Horses have these big watery eyes, cows too, like they know and feel a lot more than they let on just standin’ around. It doesn’t hurt that those horses saved my ass a couple of times on the road. I always felt safer when a longer or urgent route meant I could check one out from the paddock. My favorite was a brown mare named Sapphire. I stopped over in one of the shanty towns in the outskirts of Vicksburg once just to rest my aching ass from riding all day and that little horse was the only reason I got out of that place alive. Survivalists, Federals, Commonwealth police… those I all sort of get, but I’ll never understand the junkies. The ones all strung out on the newest shit. They know that stuff is cut with fillers that just make it worse and they really honestly don’t care. They scare me. Scared Sapphire too, which is probably why she was so quick even after a long day.

I’ve been thinking about my traps. I hope that animal from a few days ago and yesterday doesn’t get caught in one. I want to live, but I also don’t want to hurt it. If I have to… God, I hope whatever I catch is edible. I don’t want to have it on my conscious if the lab module says it isn’t. The water is clean--I mean, everything’s cleaner and safer than the water in the rivers back home, cause nothing can friggin’ live in that stuff anymore--and some of the fruit is safe… It’s just not enough to keep me going. The module doesn’t lie.

But enough of that. It seemed like a smart critter. It’ll be fine. And I’m going to be fine too. I’ll be back in a few hours. Wish me luck.

The Pioneer walks in the cool afternoon in the shade of the thick canopy of the forest. In the cool of the day, on her feet, it is easier to again feel that this is a good world. It’s a little easier to feel safe again.

The feeling of being watched does not return. The traps are empty, and it dampens her spirits, but she tries to keep herself positive.

It never occurs to her to fish, but she cannot be judged too harshly there. Given time and desperation, it would make itself known. Her father had fished when he had been a boy, but even the waters were going bad.

Why? Industry, at first, and sabotage later. Even before the schism and the civil war, there had been rumbling rumors of conflict and then open warfare the world over. Everything teetered at the edge of some sort of finality, and then veered off at the last moment… only to land on hard ground. Wars were won abroad and lost abroad, won and lost at home. Fanatics tend to win in the short run, but they have a bad habit of holding the other side of the stick of dynamite still when it’s long since time to have thrown. A long way to say that nobody who knew anything about surviving in the wastelands south of the Ohio valley fished anymore, and few dared look at the new breeds of old foes and food too closely.

Mostly, she thought of steak. She’d been in a steakhouse once when her father was alive, when he had a job in Shreveport. He was a factory worker. The Republic was newer and optimistic in those days, and putting people to work. They would save whatever they could. They were going to rebuild America, so the people said. And they believed it to, those cowboy hat wearing moneybags from North Dallas. They thought it was all a done deal already, soon as they started. The Feds were gonna lose, everyone knew that. Commonwealth had the hearts and minds of what was left of America and soon more states would join them.

It went south, of course. Literally, though no one laughed. Concordat cut short the hopes of a unified front. The Feds lost a lot of territory, sure, but nothing they really cared about anymore, and in the end there was no second front until years later. Troops and material no longer employed in keeping an unruly population under control moved west. The Mississippi churned with blood. The front stalled. The bombing campaign of Shreveport began.

Things fell apart. They tend to do that.

The Pioneer stops and examines an old tree and is rewarded by a sight that briefly chases away her dark thoughts of starvation. It is a beetle, slowly making its way along. She makes a soft cooing sound, more happy to see anything alive at all then specifically this creature. She doesn’t like bugs particularly, but any company is good company.

Eventually, it flies away and she watches it as best she can with a smile roughly the size of Texas. She’d know, she’s been all over it on foot and horseback and a few times even on lo-speeder.

It wasn’t like the world she had left behind didn’t have things like trees and beetles and streams. It did. It had these things in abundance, even if most of the streams she knew weren’t safe to bathe in anymore without boiling the water and perhaps an act of God just in case. But in a new frame, it was easier to really see these things.

She had always liked trees and forests, but it had been harder to enjoy them before, and now at last she felt she could. It was paradoxical and stupid and she couldn’t really explain it. Maybe it was the onrushing potentiality of death that made it easier to slow her walk. Maybe it was the beauty of the slowly setting sun that pierced the gnarled branches like a defiant fencer. Maybe it was the fact that at long last, she was on her own with no master.

Or maybe it was just because she liked the woods. Who knew?

The Pioneer stops briefly by another stream and fills both canteens.

The forest around her is quiet. Deathly quiet? Perhaps, but not for her. She still enjoys the stillness of her undisturbed walk.

The problems don’t go away for long. As she straightens and stretches, they come back with a vengeance. She has only a few days of guaranteed food. With water, she can extend her survival a few more crucial days, but she’ll be too weak to do go far before long. If she even makes it that long--whoever fired all those shells and fought with whatever bled all over the grass was out there, and they could easily find her given time. They might already have.

And the locals. The horse thing too, and the nagging possibility that it had caused her sudden descent into paranoia somehow.

The Pioneer was ignorant of many things, but surprisingly knowledgeable in the strangest areas. Books had been her companions many times in the bombed out and rundown towns of a beleaguered southwest. She had raided dozens of libraries and pilfered the bookstands of a hundred abandoned pharmacies. She had read everything from the the Gospels to inane self-help. By flickering lightbulbs she’d bought with a day’s wages in a rented upper room she had read a copy of The Brothers Karamazov with perhaps four dozen pages missing, another dozen marked up in cyrillic, and all of it smelling repulsively of sweat and cloying decay. She had read the meaner forms of science fiction in the lobby of the Courier office in between pauses to spit foul liquid into a cup from her dip (she’d given it up when it was too expensive to maintain). So the idea of mind control was quite present in her mind. She did not discount it.

The labcoats and the scowling soldiers of the blacksite facility had not left her completely in the dark. The labcoats stressed the possible dangers. The soldiers had been clear on how they, personally, would handle those dangers. They rarely agreed about much, but the core things they were in perfect unity about: a new world is a dangerous world.

Really, it was nothing new. Mankind had been finding new worlds since he knew he had a world at all. Britain was a new frontier for Rome. China found a brand new empire in the west, a little China in their own mind. Sailing Polynesians found islands everywhere they went. White-skinned Englishman found a virgin land in America, more in their minds than in reality. Spaniards found gold and slaves. On and on and on. New worlds. A new sun. New constellations.

Be cautious, they had finally agreed. Keep your eyes open. Watch and learn. Don’t shoot first, but don’t hesitate too long. Be friendly if you can.

It’s best to start there, at least, even if most of us know it rarely stays there.

A new land is a promise. An opportunity. It’s adventure, with spoils for the great heart and the steady sword hand. All of this runs through the back of the Pioneer’s mind, though it was not how she would have said it. Never how she would have, yet it persists… the drumbeat that summoned a hundred empires.

Imagine what’s beyond the horizon.

Imagine if it was yours. All of this unspoiled peace. The new sites, the new smells, the new good earth. All of it, yours. You could start over. And if it went bad? You could keep starting over.

The Pioneer hums to herself, her mind going off in strange new directions. It is in this thoughtful and strange mood that she waltzes into camp and discovers the stranger sitting on one of the great and ancient thrones, clad in a long coat and looking over some notes on a thin pad. He looks up. He smiles, even as she pulls her gun with lightning speed and points the riotous instrument of judgement at him.

She opens her mouth.

“Who the everliving hell are you?”

Violation

Author's Note

It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured.

(Tacitus

Violation

Log 9

I don’t trust words.

Just thought I would start there, because elsewise I’m not sure I’ll be making any sense. Thinking out loud is one thing, and talkin’ to someone who ain’t even there is another. The hard part is that I don’t know you, if “you” is ever going to exist, so I don’t have a bit of shared experience that I can use to talk to you. Like, if I knew you were from the Republic, I could talk about stuff that would make sense to someone on the old Texas-Lousiana line. If I was gonna explain somethin’ to you, I could… I dunno, I could explain it using examples you’d know. Famous people. Cities and towns we both know. Stretches of highway and irradiated streams. Or if you were up north in the Commonwealth… well, truth be told, we wouldn’t have that much in common. Things in Colorado are a hell of a lot better than in Texas! But at least we could both hate the fuckin’ black shirts together, and really, that’s all you need to be friends. Humans… we’re great at hating each other.

Which brings me to another thing: humans. I’ve started thinking about people as “humans” now because… well, because being on another planet will do that to you. Imagine you have like a picture, right? Framed on a wall? Now, you can’t see what is just to the right and left of those frames. But imagine if you started taking the frames apart and moving them and everywhere you moved ‘em the painting just continued. That’s what it’s like. I used to live inside of that little painting and now they moved the frame and I don’t know what any of the rest of this is. Now people are humans, or at least my people are. Because I don’t think anyone I meet here will be human, and then people will mean humans and others and honestly anyone who thinks they know how to handle that is a liar. You can set your watch on that. I would. If I had one.

All this thinking to say that I’m not the only human anymore on this world.

Brief synopsis: last night, I came back to camp and found an intruder. I pulled my gun. We talked.

He’s from the Concordat, sounds like Old South, on the coast. Which makes him slightly better than a Federal and slightly worse than the folks who live in those shantytowns in New Vicksburg. In NV, they’re honest--you know what parts of town ain’t safe for a woman who ain’t packing. In the Carolinas? Hell no, they’re liars. I can shoot a raider or run from him, I can bail when junkies get to looking funny. But a liar you can’t outrun.

What to make of him? There’s the problem. That’s the question.

On one hand, he coulda ambushed me straight up. If he’s good enough to sneak past the prox alarms… Damn, honestly? Coulda just waited up in that old crumblin’ tower and shot me as I waltzed back in, none the wiser. Pow. Headshot. No more exploring. He’s got the perfect gun for it, and readin’ between the lines, I bet he has the chops to do it from half a mile off and I wouldn’t even know until I was dead.

He was polite enough. Sometimes a little too oily for me, sometimes a little too… I don’t know. I was gonna say “smiley” but I happen to smile a hell of a lot. There’s nothing wrong with that. Where I come from, you learn to enjoy things while you can.

Of course, he was polite and nice enough… when I had the Judge on him. It’s not enough. You can’t judge a man by the smile he wears when an angry woman has a gun in his face, or else you’d get the whole lot of them wrong. He could have been trying to get me to calm down. Actually, he was definitely doing that… and I can’t blame him. It’s useless. Of course I needed to calm down. Whether he’s for real or not, he would have done that.

Then there’s the food.

That beautiful old whitebread mother brought me some day-rations. My mouth watered just thinking about them, and I hate the things. Food. Nourishment. I think I cried once.

I checked--fifteen days. Fifteen. Days. I can last… I can last almost a month now and that’s without hunting or gathering anything, so… God, I might make it.

I have to test these. Shit. That fuckin’ Dixie blueblood would be the sort to avoid a nasty firefight and all the blood by just poisoning the blankets and giving them to the damn savage.

Finally, the radio. He gave me an old as balls radio from before my dad was a kid. No clue how he found the thing. It’s got actual honest to god pre-collapse alkaline batteries in it. New, too. Maybe they still have those in the Concordat, how the hell should I know. I don’t go there much. Courier’s ain’t welcome and neither are drifters without money. Not that I’m broke, by the way.

Side note. If you find this, I buried a fuckton of money in the King Edward Hotel in Jackson, Mississippi. It’s a pre-collapse hotel, run down and awful and in the middle of a damn ghetto, but hey! Money, right? Enough to buy a whole settlement if you’re smart. A ton of Federal credit chips under a bunch of names and a lot of old greenbacks. Souvenirs, I guess. I don’t have a use for it anymore. Been adding to it for years. I figured, when I started, that one day I would have enough to move to Dallas or Houston and buy a house and live there where bombs don’t fall on you and no one shoots you and the police don’t watch you like a hawk on account of your little Courier’s badge. But somewhere along the way I just… I don’t know. I was working out of NV at the time doin’ the whole Courier thing and it was a one day journey every time I had a big stack to add to the pile.

Wow. Hadn’t thought about that in awhile. Sorry for all the rambling.

Okay, said I would talk and said I would be honest. I did say that, right? God, I’m not gonna go check. But I will be: I’m not sure about the traps.

I mean, yeah, I’m sure they have to stay. In my head, I know that. But… I’ve hunted. I’ve killed before--man and beast. Five men that I’m sure about and another six or seven I’m not. I’ve been hunting over a decade, so I’m not gonna even start trying to figure that part out, but you get it. I know how to do it, I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again if I have to. My dad used to say, ‘fore he left, that you never hesitate once the finger is on the trigger. You hesitate every second before that point. You don’t ever jump into a firefight and you sure as hell don’t kill anything bigger than a fly if you don’t have to absolutely do it. But when the finger is on the trigger. Well.

He chuckled and told me that when he did that, when I did that, then the jury returned the verdict.

I have to hunt. I’ve got to know if it’s possible to eat the local animals and I need a reliable food source that has the essential stuff I need to keep going after the day-rations give out.

I’m also not gonna quit looking for other kinds of plants. The waterfruit suck, but they’re better than nothing. I bring in a few each day. A couple have been really promising, and I’ll keep looking for them, but they’ve all been in short supply. I’m hoping to change that when I go out today.

I’m just… I’m not looking forward to the moment, you know? I never do, but this is the one time I can’t say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to hurt you but that’s the savage law” and then gut the thing in peace. I’ll know as I put it out of its misery that I have food at my camp which is probably not poisoned, maybe, and that I’m not actually desperate yet and that just right rankles me. It feels greedy.

In the badlands, you hunt what you need and only what you need. Lots of reasons for that. Most are practical--the water is bad, the forests are bad, the air is bad, and so the population of things which you can eat and live off of is pretty thin compared to how it used to be, and so if we shoot too much… yeah. Bullets are expensive if you waste them, and .308 is the most expensive shell in the badlands. Why? Because everyone needs it and we gobble it all up faster than they can make more and push it out here. Most of the hunting rifles people are using these days? .308 is what makes them spit.

Damn. Speaking of, my rifle is probably fuckin’ trashed now at the facility. I loved that rifle. It had nice little patterns on the stock and everything. Also I carved my name into it with my knife for the hell of it when I was a little toasty and it looked super great. I’m actually pretty sad I lost it. I’ve had that thing for years.

Before I go out for the day, I’m going to check the perimeter again. Even if nothing bad came of it, I want to be sure everything is working. I need to be sure I’m not going to come back to the blackshirts hiding in the shadows this afternoon. In the meantime, I’ll eat my day-ration and then I’ll put the new ones in the module and we’ll see what there is to see. Maybe this Malthus guy is full of shit. Part of me hopes so. The rest of me wants him to be an okay guy. It would be nice to have someone to talk to, even if just on a radio that only has a mile radius.

The Pioneer checks her alarms with a studied care, and while she does this she is herself studied.

The lonely shaman hides in the dense bush. She has coated herself in specially mixed poultice and worked her alchemy on an old cloak that could easily be parted with. And she would part with it, for it felt unsettling to wear. Most alchemy was like conducting a universe eager to sing, but some things were not. Careful research in the scrolls and codexes she had brought with her from the deserts and from the jungled highlands beyond them had led her to believe that only an old and perhaps slightly dubious art would be of use in her investigation. It was not quite star-touched, and not quite as bad as the old blood sorceries, but it was unpleasant. The designs she had scrawled with mud and a variety of other unsavory things had dried immediately, locking the matrix in place…

And so now she watched, confidant that the strange bipedal creature could not see her.

This strange creature, this all but hairless thing, unnerved her. Not as badly as she apparently unnerved it, of course. Zecora was a kind zebra, if not the most social, and she had been ashamed when her presence’s effect had been clear.

She had not intended to scare the stranger, only to observe a new neighbor. When she had approached, it had pulled a strange tool that she had sensed danger in and barked in an angry, guttural tongue.

So she had withdrawn, respecting its obvious wishes.

But she was concerned for her new neighbor. It was obviously not of the Everfree, for it did not understand the forest at all. It had tried to eat things which were tricks of wild magic, illusions that offered no sustenance, all while ignoring every single plant and root that Zecora knew would sustain even such a giant with ease. As the days passed, she grew perplexed, and then frustrated.

Before her long wandering had brought her to Ponyville’s fabled forest, Zecora had been a teacher and a shrine maiden, offering from her mind and her shrine’s library the collected lore of a thousand years and more. Her greatest joy had been in passing on that knowledge. And when she had left? In gaining new lore and new knowledge.

This creature was going to starve at this rate. How was it surviving? Whatever food it must have brought must be all but expired now, for she had seen no evidence of it. She was all but ashamed to call herself a teacher.

Sighing, she turned back. The creature seemed agitated today, so she did not come out to meet it. She would return to her home and put together a basket of such things as the giant might eat and leave it with some note of offering. Surely it read the common tongue, and if not, the writing would at least give it some sense of the offering of a gift. She would leave it in the night, as the creature slept, and then retreat. Perhaps when it was not so hungry, she would try to talk to it. Perhaps she could find some enchantment in the old books for speaking in tongues.

So it was that her mind was full of such thoughts as she walked the old not-paths only she knew, and so it was that she was not fully vigilant.

So it was that she did not notice the marking on the tree and the pit concealed with skill on the path. For Zecora was indeed skilled in woodcraft, but she was only mortal. Painfully, lethally mortal. Her hoof slips through what she thinks blindly is merely earth. The weight is moved. The noose tightens around her hoof and pulls with terrifying force.

Zecora falls, her head hitting the ground hard. As she is dragged, it hits the rock used as a counterweight and her world goes dark.

The Pioneer pauses.

The creature is not dead yet. It is insensate, and she is grateful for that. The first human to feel the warmth of an alien sun both enjoys the feeling of the ancient bowie knife and hates the weight. It is useful. A knife is the epitome of humanity, she thinks acidly. Utility and lethality, there it is, all sharp and cutting. What can’t you do with a knife? Well, lots of things, but its a valid question. You can saw a rope away or beat back the wild growth. You can fight off a wolf in the dark.

You can skin what you’ve caught.

She sighed. It was the creature she had first met in this new world, and it was so much like a horse that at first she was sure that she would cut it down and spare its life. She kept thinking about the mare who had carried her faithfully, whom she had brought apples whenever she could find them. The faithful horses that had borne her for miles of deserted highway, through three dozen miserable towns, and past the hungry dens of every monster which man could aspire to become, with ease and alacrity.

Like one of those African horses, the zebras, the Pioneer thinks to herself, turning the bowie knife over and over in her hands.

She puts the knife back and pulls the Judge from its home. Does it shine in the foreign sunlight? No. It is dull and ready. As if it knows.

She checks the rounds inside. .454 Casull, the last argument of kings. She swallows and looks about her.

Another of her father’s old sayings: you don’t hesitate when your finger is on the trigger you don’t hesitate. Hesitate every single moment before that. But when the time comes…

When the time comes, shoot. She takes a breath. Her hand shakes. Why is this so different?

The creature is filthy, striped, and covered in that same covering as before. It looks like an absurd little pancho. She knows that if shoots it the pain will be instant. If she cuts the throat, it will not be. She cannot imagine its flailing and its opening eyes, so large, so panicked. If she watches it squirm, then she will not be able to eat it, and if she cannot eat it… then the creature, her fellow creature, dies in vain.

And she thinks about Sapphire, the mare who carried her so faithfully. Her hand feels cold on the gun. Yes, the little brown mare who bore her out of the junkie-infested hell, whom she had snuck sugarcubes when she had been able to afford it. She remembered giving her a nice rubdown after returning from a long ride out to deliver some mail and a package.

Unbidden, another memory, clear and warm: sleeping on the side of the highway that now only rarely saw cars, her head resting on the bloated pack filled with packages. A wide-brimmed hat rested on her head, shielding her eyes from the sun. She dozed, not quite awake but not quite asleep.

Suddenly, the hat is removed. The glaring sun shines onto her now exposed face. She stiffens and groans, and then peers up to find her four legged friend gnawing lazily on her hat. She laughs, tugging the old thing back. “Hey, that’s not food!” she says playfully.

She almost drops her gun, but she is too disciplined by the world she has grown up in to do that.

Do not hesitate when the finger is on the trigger. Hesitate every moment before. The paradox, she had always known, was there in plain sight: to be ready to slay in a moment but not to. Vigilance without cruelty, death with mercy, bloodshed without revelry. She swallows, and then realizes that her eyes are watering. She rauns a hand over them only for more nascent tears to form. Nausea comes over her in waves.

The little alien horse just hung there by its hoof, swinging slightly in the wind. She holsters her gun and walks around it, seeing no obvious wound.

The Pioneer swallows again. In her spirit there is a war between two voices. The first says that the little horse would provide a lot of much-needed protein. She still hasn’t found a source of food that can keep her alive more than a few days and she has no guarentee that this new world will ever have flora she can truly eat and process.

But she isn’t starving. She has no need for this. And she can’t. She can’t let go of the warm sun on her face and the laughter. It’s too awful to eat the first thing she ever met in this world. What if it had been trying to find her, thinking that she was the only thinking thing around? Like a lost dog being drawn to the only human it can find?

She breathes hard and shuts her eyes.

And feels, for a moment, like something less than human. It obviously wasn’t sentient. It couldn’t feel or think or talk like she could, but that didn’t mean she could kill it just because she wanted. And she did want to, honestly. She likes meat. She misses it. The need for something that her body can really digest effectively is rather pressing, and no one would blame her. Not a single human soul.

She grinds her teeth. Was that all that mattered? Pushing the envelope? Was that what being a pioneer was, eating and killing strange new things just because she could? If that were so, she wanted no part in it. She had been a Courier before, bringing medicine and food and mail. She would not become a butcher.

She tore the knife from her belt again.

It’s just an animal, a voice--her own voice--said.

It’s just an animal.

It’s just an animal and you’ve killed many before to survive. It would be the same. You can’t let sentimentality hurt your chances. Those day-rations could still be poisoned.

Fuck it, she says, and she slashes with the old knife. Fuck!

The horse does not fall to the ground because she is beneath it, keep its lolling head from hitting the ground. Gingerly, carefully, she lays it out beneath the frayed rope that hangs.

She curses again and steps back, startled to find that she is shaking. She keeps thinking about Sapphire and hunting with her father. Image after image, beating at her indignant hunter’s prerogative. Hunting with him had never made her feel this way. Not ever. Because you didn’t shoot does, did you? Because you had restraint. Because you were human.

She runs, leaving a dazed but not longer unconscious Zecora behind.

LOG 10

I caught the animal I met on… the second day? Third day? I don’t know. But it got caught in one of my snares by its hoof.

I let it go.

Because I’m stupid. Sentimental and stupid. It’s just an animal. And, yeah, I’ll be the first to say that doesn’t mean you can just use it how you want to just for fun, but I have an actual reason: I only have so much food to rely on and…

I just couldn’t do it. It looks like a horse. It is a horse. A little alien horse and it was just too much. I cut it down and bailed. God, I’m so angry at myself. I’m not sure if I regret it or not. I don’t know. I just… I feel so confused about everything.

I didn’t sleep well last night. I had a dream that I shot Sapphire in the eye and then ate her right on the side of the road and I woke up and it’s a miracle I didn’t hurl all over my tent. I felt like I had the shakes. What the hell? I didn’t feel like I did when I was being watched but I still felt… unnerved. Think that’s the word. Unnerved.

And now here I am, lying in my tent right around sunrise, talking to no one. Because I’m stupid.

Watch the next one be a friggin’ bunny. I need to go on a walk.

Addendum

This is an audio log, so you can’t see it, but I’m holding a basket.

That’s strange, you might say, why do you have a basket? Also, where did you get it from? And if you’re smart, you might ask what’s in it.

I don’t know why I have one, I don’t know where it came from, and it’s full of fruit. I’ve been testing it all morning. Okay, roots too. Those were weird. I tested them too. It all… it all is good. It’s all edible. Unlike the waterfruit, which I proceeded to dump out into the woods in triumph, this stuff will actually give me what my body needs. I’ve seen some of it out and about, and honestly some of this stuff looked really off to me, but it even tastes okay.

My first thought as I read that little report the lab spits out was: what if I had gotten this after I killed that little alien horse, when I knew that all of this stuff was safe?

I feel like an ass. On multiple levels. I don’t even know. But I’m also overjoyed. Also terrified.

Because there was a scroll at the bottom of the basket, and I don’t recognize any of the writing on it. I need to call Malthus up and make double sure that he didn’t do this. I know he didn’t, I just… I just think that this is exactly what it looks like. A gift.

From an alien.

Because I made first contact while I was asleep.

Holy shit.

God, there’s just no way. Days of wandering and I just… get a friggin’ fruitbasket? What the hell? Oh, hey, welcome to the neighborhood Earthling. Maybe some of the others will drop by in a bit and I’ll get some old world fruitcake. I can go next door and ask to borrow some sugar! Maybe even casually chat about the weather with the locals!

I sound crazy. I’m listening to myself and I know I do. But how do you react to this? Is there even a way? The Doc talked to me pretty extensively about the idea of first contact, but neither of us thought it would happen. They hadn’t seen anything with probes that suggested aliens. Just critters and plants and grass. Just that, nothing else. It was all hypotheticals, the kind of thing you talk about but you don’t really think hard on because it ain’t exactly gonna happen.

And here it is. Happening. Because an alien gave me a fruitbasket.

I’m not complaining, just… what the hell?

Second Interview: Missionaries In a Foreign Field

SM: Malthus, you got your ears on?

CM: You know, if you were older, I would suspect that was an intentional reference. But yes, I do in fact have ‘my ears’ on. I’m glad you chose to talk, Miss Marshall.

SM: Yeah, well. Look, I’m gonna shoot straight with you right now. Like straighter than an arrow. Think you can handle that?

CM: I suppose. And I will try to do so as well. You sound… perturbed. Something the matter?

SM: You don’t sound like a military man.

CM: I only served briefly, actually. I was a rebellious young man trying to get out from under the shadow of a rich father and I thought that roughing it with the common man overseas would be the best way both to get back at him and to improve myself. I was wrong on the second count, and unfortunately right on the first. I hurt a good man with my foolishness and got nothing but sorrow for all of my trouble. Is that what was on your mind?

SM: No.

CM: Ah.

SM: Did you leave me supplies last night? Or were you around here at all, really?

CM: No? I did not. I spent the night before sleeping recovering my strength. The Gate left me a little worn, to be honest. Did… Have you had a visit from our uninvited guest?

SM: No, I ain’t seen him because I definitely would have called you. I… okay, give me a second here.

Two minutes of silence.

SM: Okay. I’m going to tell you something, and you are going to help me figure out how to deal with it because this is big and you’re as a part of it as I am.

CM: You’re beginning to worry me.

SM: Good! Good, be worried! Because I’m both excited and scared as hell. I’m confused as a cat that just stepped out of a dryer! I’m laughing and freaking out and… Jesus. When I left my camp this morning, I found a basket. It’s woven from like… wood, I guess? I don’t know. Basket stuff. Whatever the hell you weave baskets out of, I didn’t care because it was full of food. And I tested everything and it was good. The waterfruit I was eating? It’s worthless. This stuff? I could live off of it. Fruits and roots, berries… all kinds of stuff. A whole forest of different kinds, and there was a scroll at the bottom with weird writing.

CM: I…

SM: Okay, rich guy, use that college education you got where the lights come on and you can drink out of the tap! I know you can. Two and two together. Because then you’ll know why I’m really friggin’ perturbed.

Five minutes of silence.

CM: My god.

SM: First contact.

CM: My god! And you saw no one?

SM: No. Didn’t set off my alarms either.

CM: I managed to get around your perimeter more or less by luck. I noticed one of them and then the rest were easier to find. I just followed about what I would have done, but…

SM: It placed the basket just out of range.

CM: So it knows about your perimeter, or it didn’t want to intrude.

SM: It’s a gift, right? I mean, that’s a good thing.

CM: It certainly seems that way, yes.

SM: Holy shit, man. Just…

CM: Yes, I thought the same.

SM: I don’t know where to start. First contact with actual honest to god, slap your momma if you’re lying friggin’ aliens? Or with the fact that the aliens have at least three of us here and one of us is a psychotic fascist with a penchant for extreme violence and the other two are well armed? Or maybe the really, really good chance that they don’t have anywhere near our level of technology? Hell, they might be building castles still.

CM: We so often imagined our neighbors as vastly beyond us that we forget the opposite may indeed be true. You’re right. The relative primitive state of the basket may be anything, but it would seem to suggest a low level of technology. It could also be cultural. Or even a ruse to see if our intentions change. Anything.

SM: We need to get serious about this. I’ve wasted way too much damn time. We need to meet. And this time, on our own terms. None of this hiding and cloak and dagger. We need to see them.

CM: Agreed.

SM: Because I don’t think I want to go back and explain that I know there are aliens, but no I never saw one.

CM: It also happens to be an official part of your mission, and mine as well. What do you propose?

SM: We branch out. We both have basecamps that are secure. Do you know how to get back?

CM: Yes, I have a private band beacon.

SM: Nice. I had one too but I didn’t grab it. I bet you have an automapper too, you rich son of a bitch. Neither here or there. We go in seperate directions without stopping for a whole day, and then we turn around and go home after lunch on the second day. I’ll keep a log to catalogue things, you can map. We go in two different directions. Cardinal compass directions. Assuming the sun rises and falls like it does on Earth…

CM: A suggestion. We should not be too far apart. I worry about our mutual friend.

SM: Yeah, I get it. I was thinking about that too. We can’t let that guy corner us with the other one too far away. He shot something big a few days ago and I didn’t hear the shots, which makes me think that he or they or whatever has a silencer to boot. No going north and south. I’ll go… south. You go eastt. We keep in touch periodically until we fall out of range.

CM: When we fall out of range, we adjust and try to get back into range, I assume.

SM: Yeah. If the other doesn’t answer within a few hours, we go back and we try one more time the next day and then I’ll assume he got you, old man.

CM: So sure that it will be me. I agree. Any confrontation must happen away from indigenous life. We do not need them deciding that we’ve come to destroy, and we certainly don’t need them picking the wrong side.

SM: Got it. Got it… Jesus, what a day.

CM: I can only imagine.

Expedition

Author's Note

"And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes."

(C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet)

Expedition

Log 11

Today is the day that the Concordat and I start really exploring.

We worked out a plan to keep kind of in touch to avoid one of us getting stranded with the blackshirt breathing down our necks. We’re both looking for signs of habitation. I want to find the person who left me food.

Speakin’ of, I’m bringing the basket with me. I figure I ought to return the thing.

This log is going to be a little different. I’m probably gonna be rambling to myself a bit, but I’ll also try to keep a running commentary going if I can find anything worth commenting on.

I’m bringing along all of the new day-rations just in case another animal starts rooting around in my stuff while I’m gone. And by animal I mean the animal kind and the human kind that wears all black and thinks the best way to greet you in the morning is an assault rifle in your mouth. Bringing the Judge and all of my ammunition. Lab module is folded up in my backpack. Both canteens are full and on the hip that doesn’t have my big iron. What else? Basket. Heh, I could wear it like a hat! Damn I miss my hat. Burned in the facility, of course. Fuckers. Um. I have the scroll in my backpack, too. Kind of like a reciept, I guess, just so I can show it if I run into someone who didn’t leave me this gift.

I’m eager. Also terrified, but mostly eager. I’m fixing to head out and find… I don’t know what I’ll find. But I think it might be something great. I mean, how bad can it be, when sorta-first contact was a fruit basket and a little handwritten note?

What do you talk to aliens about?

I suddenly realized I don’t know. I’m just sitting here, filling up the canteen when it occurs to me that I don’t know what in the sam hell I’d even discuss with an alien. The weather?

I mean, we have no shared experience beyond being alive. Breathing, I guess. If they breathe? Would they have to? I don’t know! I’m not a biologist! I deliver the mail and I shoot things sometimes and I do oddjobs. I don’t know if you can have things that don’t breathe.

For probably the hundredth time, I find myself wondering why they picked me.

I asked about that, actually. Why me? A few reasons, and all of them a little weird. Doc came to the Republic while he was hiding out in Baja. Just dropped this whole thing in their lap with a secret comminque with just enough data to prove he wasn’t bullshitting. They sent someone to talk to him, and that guy came back crazy about the idea because it worked. It actually worked. The son of a bitch could do it.

Why’d he come to the Republic? The Republic is the weakest of the factions with the cleanest history as far as atrocity goes. They’ve made mistakes, big ones, but most of their failures are honest failures and not, you know, bombing civilian populations into ash. More like, failing to keep the roads safe and failing to keep people fed. The poorest, the weakest, and arguably the most good. Arguably is the word I wanna stress there, for the record. I’m not big on the Republic, but I’ll take them over the rest in an instant.

He wanted someone who wouldn’t steal his tech, boot him out on his ass, and then use it to rule the world. And I get that. The Republic doesn’t have the resources or the manpower for conquering, and that’s exactly what he wanted out of them.

As for me? That was the next step--the first one through couldn’t be affiliated with the Republic. They balked at that… until the probes showed a world with clean air and clean water and possibly resources just waiting to be exploited. They were willing to do what he said after that. Because a clean world was a world you could grow food in, and that would mean keepin’ the wolves from the door. They were desperate. You can’t eat money or bullets.

I had no ties that were lasting or binding. No affiliatin’ with governments. I could handle myself, though I’ve done a piss poor job of it so far. And because the Doc liked me.

But I think he made a mistake. We didn’t think there would be, you know, aliens. Not really. If we had thought that, they woulda scrubbed me goin’ right away and sent someone with a bigger brain and a bigger vocabulary and maybe one of those scientists to poke at things.

What comes after you meet a new species?

Like, okay, you say hello and you do the whole “I come in peace” thing but then what?

Seeing as how I have encountered absolutely nothing in the last hour and a half, I can’t help but think about what I’m going to do if I do find something.

When I was a kid, I really liked the old scifi novels I found in the old bookstores in Shreveport. They had all kinds of ideas what the future would be like. Sometimes we went to space and we were all alone, and I thought that was sad. Sometimes, they built their space ships and they found friends… and sometimes the first thing we met out there tried to kill us. Actually, they usually ended up trying to kill us.

I never got why so many of them involved aliens coming to Earth and blowing us up. I mean, the Earth I looked around and saw wasn’t worth traveling so far just to drop a few bombs on and leave.

But more than that, why would we fight? I never understood. If you’re not gonna be friends that’s one thing, I can get that. You don’t see eye to everyone. But not liking someone doesn’t mean you shoot them. It’s a waste, for one thing, and for another that’s how raiders act. You just give each other a wide berth, and ain’t space big?

What do you talk to aliens about? That’s the question again. It sounds like a dumb question, but I think it might be an important one. Is there anything to talk about? For that matter… shit, how do I even say hello?

Three wanderers roam the dark wood, and one watches over them.

The Pioneer is stealthy, by human standards, but she cannot compete with a shaman of the Zebrahara. Zecora has been able to vanish in plain sight since she was very young. Before she was initiated in the sacred mysteries, before she had touched the staff or known a male, she had learned to track across sand and mountain alike. Her tribe held this in high regard, and her new pony friends were mostly ignorant of it.

It had been awhile. She was rusty, but the creeping of humans she found child’s play. They were a bit taller than her normal marks had been and in very unfamiliar ground.

She was pleased to see that the human had brought her basket along with it. It seemed much better today. It talked to itself in a voice that seemed cheerful, and a few times it hummed what sounded like a song as it stopped to take a drink from its strange metal canteens.

The Pioneer smiles, and Zecora does not marvel at the similarity in this expression. She has no idea that the human that lumbers through her forest is anything but native to her world. She has knowledge of the stars but not of the possibility of other realities beyond her own, her prime existence.

Far to the east, the Cartographer Malthus comes across a thinning of the trees and is the first human to see beyond the Everfree. He crests a hill and looks over the farms at the edge of Ponyville. His jaw drops and his arms go slack. Only by sliding to the ground and fumbling for his binoculars does he buy time and composure. All around him, the dread that the Pioneer felt when watched swirls up and bombards his heart and mind. But he fights it. He tries to keep it at bay, and watches the ponies at their work.

Their idyllic and rustic tasks fills him with a nostalgia for elder days, far beyond his own years, back towards a very different time. A time that he remembers through the opinions of men who profited greatly from the times, it should be said.

He ponders. Much like his namesake Christopher did, he ponders a happy people from a distance and dreams of empire.

And lastly marches the blackshirt, the man of New York, his submachine gun gripped tightly in his hands. He goes unseen even as he follows the Pioneer’s exploration, even by Zecora with the eagle eyes. She can’t be blamed--she can account for the natural. She cannot account for the artificial.

The Federal walks silently in the tight confines of an ablative field. Light bends around him. Sound does not leave past the field. In the right light, one could see him, but in the field, in an unfamiliar forest? Absolutely not.

He assumes Zecora is an animal. He remembers the others he has shot and smiles faintly. He will kill her if she keeps following the Pioneer, perhaps after his discussion.

And so, three beings walk towards a small home in the dagerous woods which are silent wherever they go. What ponies and zebras do not feel about these interlopers, the animals of the Everfree do feel, and they are afraid.

Log 11, continued

One thing I’ve noticed about this place is that no matter how similar it is, I can’t escape that this place is not home. The trees look like our trees… mostly. It’s like everything here is 70% the exact same as Earth and then right before the end it just sort of peels off to the left and then gets lost. You’ll find two or three normal trees and then one that’s all crazy angles. Or a bunch of normal flowers and then… these. For the catalogue, it’s a blue flower that seems to glow faintly. It’s impossible huge for the size of the stalk, but… it’s pretty. I think I’m going to save a few. I’ve got one going in the module now, and I’ve stopped to let it work.

Checked in with Malthus about twenty minutes ago. He thinks he’s getting close to the edge. Told him I feel like I’m just getting deeper. He hasn’t seen anything animal-wise beyond birds, so that’s strange. We wondered if that was just the weirdness of us being aliens here or if that was an indicator of a serious difference between worlds. Not sure what to think. I’m not a scientist, you know?

Any moment now he’ll be out of the forest. I wonder what he’ll see? Will there be a village out there? Roads? Towns?

I still keep trying to imagine what they’ll look like. He’ll probably find them first, but I can still imagine, right? I’m goin’ to regardless so whatever.

But enough of that. I’ve found a path.

It’s obviously manmade, or alienmade. I see signs of maintenance here, where someone’s cut away the brush and kept it back. It ain’t seen heavy traffic, I don’t think. But there are marks here and there where I know something has walked. Not footprints so much as divots, maybe some animals mostly. Or maybe just an alien with weird feet.

I’m going to follow it. Before, I wasn’t ready to meet anyone on the road, but now I am. I want to meet them. I’m ready--or, well, no. I ain’t really ready at all but I wanna be, and I can try to be, and that’s just gonna have to be enough.

The Inflitrator, the Conqueror who is not seen, watches and licks his dry lips.

He sees through cameras, of course, for no light reaches him directly.The field is all but skintight, but right above the field there is a plurality of cameras, and like the Pioneer he has augments and implants. So in a way he has never seen her with his own eyes and he wonders if there will be a difference between this sight and the other.

It will have to happen perfectly. The situation is volatile, and surprisingly, the Infiltrator knows himself well. He knows that volatile situations are both his favorite sort and also where he loses himself. He is a violent man, let that be clear. He chose the SMG not because he needed the firepower but because he enjoys how bodies dance as he rips them asunder in a hail of bullets. Before he dipped his hands in blood for god and country he did it for credit chips in New York and before he did that he roughed up kids in the worst parts of the city who were too close to the Family’s territory in the Bronx for free.

If she fires she will miss--he knows this very well, and if she does not miss it will not matter. She has clothes and he has armor. Her bullets might punch through but they might not. His will definitely pierce her.

But he does not want her to fire. He would enjoy it if she did. But it would be a waste.

He needs her to listen.

He also needs her to handle a situation for him.

The Infiltrator grinds his teeth. He is not patient. He has never been patient. His masters are the patient ones, the ones who invested in the blackshirts when they were all but illegal, universally hated, decried as racists and fascists and hatemongers. They were the ones who built empires over cigars and bourbon. Frank Costello is the one who shoots and punches and sets buildings aflame when the money doesn’t flow like it should.

His work with the Federal Special Operations Division is not much different than working for the Family, honestly.

He needs her first reaction to not be putting a bullet through his head. Does she hate him because of who he works for? Absolutely! Doesn’t matter. He hates lots of people. In fact, if the Infiltrator is honest, he hates most of them. But he knows when to make a deal and when not to take the shot. He thinks she does to.

So the Inflitrator plans to take the initiative. He pulls his gun up and then counts to five. On five he will drop the stealth field through his implants and then call out to her.

On four, she stops and says aloud--I’ll be damned.

He pauses.

She just… stares. Curious, and a bit apprehensive, he moves up.

Before them both now is a strange sight. Were either of them younger, they would have thought of a once famous movie, but both are children of a far more broken world. As it is, they see a hovel built into a tree, decorated with paint and strange patterns.

The Infiltrator is surprised and forgets that he has lost track of the animal that had been trailing the Pioneer.

He knew that something was here of course--he has seen the castle ruins.

But now he begins to put the pieces together. They’re behind us, he thinks. He knows now: he’ll not find any technology even remotely close to what he’s used to. Hell, he won’t find anything close to what his father knew. These people are savages.

He grins like a madman for he is one, in his own way. He pictures zulus being mowed down by British machineguns.

Think of the possibilities. Only now is his mind clear. Think what only a few dozen could do!

And so he backs up and watches from afar as the Pioneer approaches.

The Pioneer swallows. Her knees are weak and each step feels like it may yet be her last.

The feeling from the long surveilance is back again, though it is not so bad as before. She feels watched, weighed, judged, weak. So weak. So small. Everything smells and feels and looks wrong again where it had not before. Her right hand itches for the Judge but she will not touch it. She draws a deep breath… lets it go. Another. Again. Again.

Stay calm, she whispers to herself. Just don’t lose it.

It has occured to her that this might be some sort of intentional attack. She’s read enough old science fiction by candle light in enough half-destroyed motels to think of psionic aliens. Perhaps this instant unease, this unnerving fear, is her body’s natural defense to an alien trying to assume control?

It makes more sense than she is comfortable with. The hut, the castle… all traps. Luring her in with harmless things that wouldn’t frighten but would in fact entice her. Ruins are fascinating. Perhaps it knew this. If they could read her mind… if they rooted around in it, they could have known she had always wanted to be an archaeologist as a little girl, like the man in the poster at the old Shreveport cinema. Her father had laughed and said he would explain why sometime, but he forgot because Shreveport burned. It could have seen that and with its vast resoirvoirs of power made her see these things like a dream.

No, no illusions. Malthus had seen them too.

Of course…

No. She took a few more steps.

It could have built them, if it had technology powerful enough, the little voice insisted. This is a trap. If you go in there…

She would knock first, of course, said another voice with an absurd surety.

The Pioneer crossed into the clearing and was only fifteen yards from the door when it opened and the strange creature from the night before exited. Her cloak was gone now. She was naked--Zecora did not see a need to hide now that the strange giant had found its way to her home (as she had of course hoped it might) but her pleasantries went out the window. The poor idiot had frolicked in poison joke. She had run ahead soon after that, oblivious to the one who watched her, and prepared the cure. After the incident with Twilight and her friends, Zecora had made the cure into a poultice that took immediate effect.

She expects some puzzlement from the creature, but sees that it is simply blinking in utter confusion. She speaks to it in the common tongue, knowing that many of the higher animals and all of the Speaking Tribes know the common tongue.

She has no idea why the giant loses its footing and sinks to its knees, babbling in its guttaral gibberish. Surprise she would understand, for it seemed to be alone and she was a Zebra, after all, and an alien in these lands. But it does not see surprise so much as horror, and this stops her short.

She wracks her mind for any reason her very visage might inspire the feelings she sees. All of the myths, all of the old legends and the lore of the twelve tribes and the scattered fragments of the lost brothers… the creature is babbling again, its voice tight with panic. She speaks to it again, trying to soothe it. She apologizes for startling it, knowing that it had no reason to be truly startled, and it only seems to grow more terrified. It scoots away and hugs its long arms around itself, talking faster and faster. It’s words seem… angry? But not at Zecora, who it will not look at directly for more than a second or two.

Zecora swallows.

Now she, too, is lost. She wished to help the giant, for it obviously had no idea where it had found itself… yet now she was overcome with dread. Why would such a thing fear her? It was not right. No beast or pony had ever reacted to her this way once it knew what she was and had spoken to her--yes, the ponies of Ponyville had feared the hooded mare who came down for market, but when they had spoken to her, Zecora had found friends. It had been a misunderstanding.

She was used to this reaction from misunderstanding, not from revelation.

She tries again. Stranger, please, I do not wish you any harm… I see you have brought me back my basket, she notes, and smiles her best smile.

The creature bursts into tears.

She blinks at it. She had once thought that Apple Bloom was hard to keep track of, but this stranger…

She groans. Obviously, it didn’t know the common tongue. It would assume she was angry or thought it assumed her a thief! Perhaps that was it. But the eyes… they did not seem like that of a falsely accused. They looked like a pony who had stared into Tartarus and found it staring back.

She waved and the Stranger stared at her. It seemed to be difficult to do. Zecora pantomimed sitting, and then sat and then pointed to the Stranger than to the ground. Stay. Sit.

She pointed to herself, and then to the house. I will go inside. Then she pointed to herself and then tried her best to pantomime coming back out of the house with her hoof playing the Zebra’s part. Then, she gave up, and walked back inside calmly. She does not see the shaking, terrified human who has realized her own near-sin sit and wait for a judgement that will not come.

As soon as she was out of sight and free from propriety’s hold, she rifles through everything for the scroll she had set aside.

She examines the markings again and winces. Yes, it was a difficult matrix for sure. It would take her awhile to draw it properly, but… she didn’t have that long. She needed to calm this poor creature down. If it could speak, she must tell it of the flower it had touched and also that it must be more careful in these woods.

So she rushed the job, finding a spare blank talisman she had carved the night before for just this purpose. The best laid plans of mice and Zebras, indeed, she would have thought had it been a proverb she knew, and she rushed the job.

A few minutes later she returned with the talisman on a necklace string in her mouth. The human shivered, still looking shellshocked (she did not know this word but the Pioneer did) and Zecora walked towards her. The Stranger scooted back. Sighing, Zecora laid the little amulet in the dirt and walked back towards her house. She sat by the door and gestured at the talisman, and then to the Stranger. Rise, take and wear it.

The Pioneer felt like she was dying.

As soon as the alien--oh GOD this was it she had… she had almost--put the wooden necklace talisman down she had felt it radiating a cold heat all over her body. She felt sick. Was this what standing in a nuclear plant in the old world was like as it melted down? Her body was coming apart at the seams. She tried to look at her hands but the migraine that was beginning distracted her.

Yet no blood spewed forth and nothing seemed to change on the outside.

Her fear was almost maddening and she knew it was irrational. The creature--the alien horse the ALIEN OH CHRIST SHE HAD ALMOST EATEN IT--watched her and even though she knew intellectually it was not acting in a threatening manner she still saw it through a sinister lens.

What the hell was this? Was it doing this? Was it not meaning to do this?

She looked at the gift in the dirt and tried to swallow and coughed instead.

Fuck.

She crawled forwards, trying not to look at the horse zebra alien whatever the fuck it was and she grabbed the thing in her hand.

It was FREEZING.

She yelped, jumped back, and rubbed her hand. She looked up. The Zebra seemed confused. It tilted its head.

The Pioneer tried again, not wanting to make the alien mad. You know, she told herself, the one you almost murdered and turned into fuckin’ jerky you sick fuck. She reached out and touched the talisman. It was so cold, but it did not hurt her hand beyond the unpleasant sensation. She brought it back and held it to her chest and the cold spread everywhere, and she feared… but saw that her flesh did not seem to be hurt. She slipped it on. If this was how it wished to render judgement maybe she deserved it when you started eating people they shot you in front of everyone and everyone saw you get the shakes and maybe--

Third Interview: The Tongues of Men and Angels

Author's Note

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

1 Corinthians 13:1 (KJV)

Third Interview: The Tongues of Men and Angels

Zecora waits until the human has put on the necklace, and then begins again.

“Do you understand me now? Or will confusion still haunt your brow?”

The Stranger shoots up with a jolt, trips over itself, and then falls flat. It curses--the curse did not translate well, which puzzles Zecora.

“Holy shit how do you know English.”

“Pardon me, if I could not explain, for my words, I fear, did not reach your brain.” Zecora chuckles, hoping to relieve some of the tension she does not understand with a joke. The creature does not laugh. Zecora sighs. “Before you now I lay my burden down, that I might speak unchained again.”

It blinks at her.

“I was set under a strong gaesa to speak in the poetic forms of my people. I confess that it was far more difficult to do in common, where the rhyming of words produced a very different effect, but I manage. I have unburdened myself so that I might speak to you, for I fear this may be an emergency. You understand, yes?”

“Y-yeah. Oh god.”

“I do not know of which you speak, for I know only my own,” says Zecora. “Pray, tell me your name.”

“Marshall. Samantha Marshall. Earth.”

“Marshall Samantha Marshall Earth?” Zecora blinks.

“Oh. No! No, I, uh... “ She bites her lip and shen shakes her head. “No, my name is Samantha Marshall. I’m from Earth. What is yours?” she asks, tenatively.

“Zecora. I was born in the mountains south of the Zebrahara, where the jungle is dense and the dancing lively,” she says with a big smile.

And yet for all of her warmth the “Samantha” does not seem to lose her fear.

“Are you alright? You have walked, I fear, in poison joke--its effects will be no joke, whatever its name.”

“What? I’m… are you doing something to my mind? What is this thing?” Samantha tugs lightly at the talisman.

“It is merely an enchantment,” Zecora says, puzzled. “Though I suppose you have not seen Zebraharan alchemy before, I am surprised that you would not recognize magic.”

“Magic? I think you’re translators busted.”

Zecora blinks. “Pardon?”

“Magic? I mean, I don’t know what its trying to say, but that... “ Samantha shutters. “That’s not a thing. That’s real, I mean. It’s not a thing that’s real.”

“You… you say you are of… where, again?”

“Earth. Look, I’m sorry about my snare, for the love of God, if you’re doing something to my head please stop!”

Zecora took a step back. “I am doing nothing, stranger. I mean you no harm at all. I wished only to communicate with you and thank you for returning my basket. Your… snare?” The cogs turned in her mind, and Zecora blinked. “Ah! So that explains my accident in the woods. It happened so fast, I feared I had fallen ill.”

“I’m sorry. I was…” And here she paused, and some horrible emotion passed over her face which made Zecora blanch in sympathy. “I was irresponsible. It’s for catching small game. I didn’t know you were here.”

“I have heard of such things in Griffonia, though they do not prefer them. It is of no consequence, Samantha,” Zecora says and waves her hoof, feeling the strangeness of the name on her tongue. How curious. “Why do you think I touch your mind? That is a dark sort of magic. I do not dabble in these things, for they are evil.”

“I… I feel like I’m being watched,” Samantha says, breathing hard. “Please… don’t look right at me.”

“You seem unwell.” Zecora does as she is bid, but now the shaman is replaced by the shrine maiden, and she begins to summon up all of her old healing arts. Aversion to sight? Innate fear of magic? Could this be some sort of curse? She knew precious little of Equestrian curses but of Zebra spells she knew perhaps a bit too much.

“I feel like I’m dying.”

Now this kicks Zecora into another gear. She advances. “What is your kind called, Samantha?” she asks. “I fear that the Everfree has done something to you. I knew this would happen. Please, hold still. Do not fear me. I was a healer in my homeland.”

Samantha made to move, but Zecora did not act as if she noticed. She slips back into her old mannerism surprisingly easy. The human is still.

“I’m from Earth,” she says again. “Human.”

“Human,” Zecora says softly as she looks the creature before her over carefully.

“And where is this Earth? Besides everywhere, of course,” Zecora says with a slight smile. “For we are all on Earth, child.”

The creature pales. “What? No, but… but the Gate…”

“Hm?” Zecora is only half-paying attention. She is looking all over for signs of malevolent magic. No signs of bites or stings or rashes--the usual signs of the Everfree’s careless malice.

“I can’t be on Earth! I just left Earth,” the Samantha says again. “I can’t… I… oh god, it’s the same name. Calm down, Sam. Calm the fuck down. Breathe. Translator. Right. Obviously, it tanslates… the word. Right.”

“You do seem to be under great stress. Tell me, child, what is this Gate?”

“I’m… I’m not from here.”

“Hm, so that is obvious, yes,” Zecora says and steps back. “You do not seem to have been attacked by the Everfree, and yet… you shy from magic, do not believe in something so obvious… Where is this Earth? On some continent I have not walked?”

“It’s…” The human works her mouth. The longer she hesitates, the more concerned Zecora comes. Amnesia, perhaps? That would explain a lot.

Samantha points up.

Zecora blinks.

“So your people live like the pegasi, in the clouds?” she prompts.

Samantha shakes her head, and then drops her hand. She sighs.

“No, that’s not right… not even what I was saying. It… Friggin’... Imagine the whole like everything. The universe.”

“The four corners of creation,” Zecora says patiently.

“Now imagine there were lots of them.”

Zecora begins to laugh but then she sees the look of frightened certainty in the human’s eyes.

And she too is a little frightened. “I do not think I understand,” she lies shakily, “but you are obviously unwell. I have a tea blend which will calm your frayed nerves, child, and then we will talk at length. Will you come?”

Samantha shivered. “Y-yeah. Yeah, okay. You’re not doing this on purpose?”

“No.”

“Okay. And you brought me the basket?”

“Yes. Did you not read my… ah, of course. Do you have it?”

Sam nods and after digging in her pack she pulls out the scroll. Zecora reads:

Dearest Stranger:

Greetings,

Please, accept this gift in the spirit that it was offered in. I have noticed you quite by chance, and by chance discovered that you have not been doing well in your attempts to forage. You are new to the Everfree, and I fear you do not know the dangers here. If you would see me again, there is a path to my dwelling south of here, and I will aid you in seeking out the nearest town. If this is not acceptable, I urge you at least to be careful, for the Everfree is dangerous.

Zecora looks up. “That is what is says.”

Sam looks down. “I caught you. In my snare.”

Zecora tilts her head. “Yes. Of course, if you did not know I lived here it is of no matter!”

The human shivers, but nods. She follows the zebra inside.

And somewhere, on the path, the blackshirt waits to speak to the Pioneer as she returns home.

Fourth Interview: Federal Question

Author's Note

God delights in the odd number.

(Virgil)

Fourth Interview: Federal Question

SM: Who the hell--

FC: Pull that gun out and you die. Move your hand. Move it!

SM: The hell? You! You’re the fuckin’ blackshirt!

FC: Well that’s a bit rude, isn’t it?

SM: Fuck, you’re exactly as I pictured you. Butcher with a smile.

FC: Yeah, yeah. I get it. You hate me, et cetra. Let’s move on.

SM: The hell do you want?

FC: Just a little talk? How you like that?

SM: I’d rather dip my face in bleach, so take that as you will, fascist.

FC: You are a real treat, sweetheart. But I’m not here to banter with you. I’m here to tell you what you’re going to do, and then you’re gonna do it, see? Easy. Simple. And you get to walk. Hell, maybe if you do a good enough job I might can get a word in Earthside. Special Division pays good. We got a few Couriers with us.

SM: If they started working with you then they were never really Couriers.

FC: Cute. I know about the geezer.

SM: Not that old.

FC: Will you… shut the fuck up already?

The sound of a gun being cocked.

FC: Jesus! People just won’t stop talking! Shut up, got it? Good. I know about him. I know you’ve talked to him, and I know he’s probably given you some way to talk to him. I also know you haven’t used it. Know how I know that? Now you can talk.

SM: No, I don’t.

FC: Yeah, well, that’s why you’re a Courier, bitch. I’ve been monitoring everything. He hasn’t sent a single damn signal, and I’ve tracked down two of his beacons. Didn’t touch ‘em, of course, because I’m not stupid. Unlike the one who showed up in no armor with a handgun. Nice thinking, there. And no, you don’t get to answer, so shut your mouth. Lemme continue: the Federal Union knows all about you, Samantha Marshall. Can I call you Sam? I’m gonna call you Sam, it’s a good name. Good job on that one, if it’s your real name, which I bet it isn’t. Where’s the country fried asshole?

SM: No idea.

FC: I swear to god, just try and lie to me. Just do it. I’ll make you dance.

SM: I’m not lying. He picked a direction, I picked a direction. I don’t know where his camp is--I didn’t want to know.

FC: That’s just fuckin’ bullshit.

SM: You’re the one with the gun, so I ain’t in any position to lie. Do you think I would? I don’t owe that guy anything. He annoys me and he makes me nervous. I just wanted him to leave, so I didn’t tail him.

FC: Fine. But he gave you something.

SM: Yeah, a transmitter. Don’t know how it works.

FC: Yeah, well, doesn’t matter. I’m going to be watching. Always. I’ve got a Mark IX Stealth Suit going, you hear that? All the time. You’ll never see me. You’re gonna do something for me.

SM: All ears.

FC: Good, good. See, I knew you’d be up for it. I read what we got out of the prisoners from the facility, and I knew you were a good type of bitch--the kind who can kick ass if she wants but knows when to lie down and take it. I like that. You’re smart. I’ll let you in on a secret: I like the Couriers. Think they’re full of shit, but individual ones? Always grab the recruits for the Division who rode with those sadsacks. They’ve got brains and they’ve got reflexes and they know when to go in full-auto and when to keep their fuckin’ mouths shut and stay still. And I like that about them. Smart. You? I figured you would find the winning side, and now that we got it clear that that side is me, I’m gonna let you walk out of this.

SM: That’s it? You just wanted to intimidate me? I don’t believe it. What do you want?

FC: Did I sound like I was finished.

SM: Jesus, can you put the gun down?

FC: Maybe you aren’t as smart as I thought. Just listen, okay? Good. I know about all those traps you’ve been settin’. Saw you let the alien go--don’t know why the hell you did it, guess its a little too creepy to eat, huh? Don’t care. Look, I know you can make those things and probably some really nasty ones. I know how backwoods badlands fucks like you operate.

SM: Let me guess. You want me to call him to the castle and get him to walk over like, what, a spike pit or something?

FC: Hey, if you wanna finish him off yourself, I won’t stop you. I might wanna take a few pictures…

SM: Jesus.

FC: It’s a joke, stupid. I don’t care how you do it, I just want you to do it. Once he’s dead, we’ll talk. Right now, you’re officially an enemy combatant and there’s nowhere to run. Even if you get back, the Union’s gonna hunt you down even if you go all the way out to California. You could go to what’s left of China or go live in a tent in the middle of fucking nowhere Siberia and we’d find you. Might even let you think you were safe awhile, just for the hell of it, and then BAM.

He laughs.

FC: Deader than disco.

SM: I hear you.

FC: Great! Glad we had this talk. You can even say you ran into me and barely escaped! Tell him anything you want! You tell him I told you to kill him and I’ll mow you down and shoot your dead body full of holes and then do things to it. We crystal? Solid?

SM: I hear you.

FC: What a girl. Awesome. Now, you touch that gun and I shoot you! Just remember that, got it? Yeah, I see you thinking in that little head of yours. I’m faster. Trust me. Augments in every limb. I’ve got a reinforced skeleton and the stealth suit has some pretty great armor, so unless you’re at point blank, you aren’t getting through. And you’ll get a shot only if I let you. I move faster. Period. I’m gonna go ghost, and you’re gonna be still.

SM: Just go, will you? I’ll do it. Just… I’ll do it.

FC: Aw, all those moral compunctions. Cry me a river and build a bridge over it, Garfunkel. Remember, I’m watching. Give it a day or three. Don’t forget.

Abjection

Author's Note

To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

(Tacitus, Agricola XXX)

Abjection

Log 12

I have come in peace.

I’m shaking as I record this for more than one reason. I’ll start with the good parts, then go on to the bad, and then go on to the horrible. How’s that? Good.

First, I’ve met the alien and she is…

She’s the animal. The horse alien thing that I saw when I first got here and was just stumbling around like an idiot. She watched me after that and saw that I was hopeless finding food. She’s the one that got caught in my snare. You know, the one I almost ate? God, I almost ate Zecora. That’s her name. She has a name and it’s a she and her name is Zecora and…

Just give me a second.

I almost threw up when she started talking and it was obvious they were words and not just weird noises. Like, with inflections and everything. It all made sense and I just… I think I went crazy for a second. I almost ate somebody. I came so close. If I hadn’t thought about Sapphire and those dumb Courier station horses and… It was a whim. That’s the word. Like, I just felt bad so I cut her down. God, what if I had grown a pair and just done it?

I almost murdered her. She brought me a goddamn fruitbasket and had me in for actual, literal friggin’ tea and I almost murdered her with the Judge and turned her into jerkey.

I hope I don’t start shaking again. I don’t think she realizes just how close she came.

I can’t tell her.

I can’t keep talkin’ about that. I’ll lose it. Focus! Focus.

Zecora is a zebra--that’s the word the translator gave me and I guess it works. Okay, backing up. I have to explain that whole thing first. Gotta get the story straight because I’ve got to get home with this stuff now.

I found her house in the woods after following a path. She came out and started talking and I put the pieces together and lost it. I also felt like I was being watched again. Yeah, total repeat of that one really bad night.She went back inside after motioning for me to sit and then came back with a little trinket. I put it on…

And suddenly she’s speaking English.

She claims it’s magic, that this is Earth, and she’s a zebra. The forest is called the Everfree. The waterfruit actually are already called waterfruit. She left the basket and the note.

I don’t even know where to start.

I just felt like I was falling apart. Like the whole time, I felt like I did in the forest that time…

Basically, I need to know if Malthus feels this. If he saw any of them today, I have to know. If it’s just me, then it’s just me. I tried calling him but he’s out of range. Figures. It’ll have to wait.

In the meantime, Zecora let me sleep in her hut. I still feel nervous as hell, but it’s starting to get easier. She made me tea and now everything doesn’t feel quite as awful and wrong. Just weird and different, and that’s okay.

She even made me dinner.

An alien made me dinner. Let that sink in.

I told her what she wanted to know best as I could, but the translator is pretty rough. She apologized and told me that it was a makeshift so she could warn me about some plant I picked up--remember those pretty flowers? Seems they’re poisonous. The translator broke down when she was trying to explain because she said they play “tricks” on you, or else she was using a euphemism. She gave me an antidote and I guess it worked because I’m fine. She did notice that I hadn’t broken out or showed any symptoms, though, even though I had a ton of exposure, more than she’d seen anyone willingly have.

She thinks I caught something in the forest but she can’t figure out what because apparently I’m reacting to… magic. Yeah. I called bullshit on that, but I think it’s a translation error because she got all confused on me when I said that it wasn’t real.

Look, I ain’t arguing with a talking zebra that magic isn’t real.

And on that point, the other news.

I met the blackshirt today.

When I left Zecora’s, he decloaked in the middle of the road, pointing a nasty lookin’ SMG at me. I tried to hit the dirt or pull the Judge on him or anything, but he was all ready for me. Just sat there with these crazy eyes grinnin’. Foul mouthed psychotic bastard. He looked like what you expect a butcher to look like.

He wants me to lure Malthus into a trap and kill him myself. Why? How the hell should I know? Is he just bored? You know, honestly, I wonder. That was not a man I wanna meet in a dark alley. Or ever again, god’s honest truth, because he scared me. Real bad. Those eyes just ain’t right. I think he’ll get a laugh out of me betraying Malthus.

Which I’m not doin’. Sorry, I just… I got paranoid. I feel like he could be listening in at any moment now, even when I’m safe inside Zecora’s hut.

Said he’d be watching. I believe him.

I’ve gotta talk to Malthus anyway. I hope he’s as smart as he seems because I can’t tell him about this directly. If that punk is listening he’ll shoot me full of holes before I can warn the man. I may not think of us as friends but I ain’t gonna murder him.

LOG 13

I’m making this log on the road. Zecora is fiddling with my translator thing so I have a moment to speak english and not be heard.

No sign of the Federal and no word from Malthus. It’s just Zecora and me, for now. Of course, I know he’s probably out there, that Federal bastard. Watching me. I haven’t mentioned him to Zecora yet because I’m not sure how to--I mean, hell, how do I explain to an alien that there’s a human out there that is willin’ to drop us both in a heartbeat just because he feels like it? Just… on a whim? What would she think of me?

I always noticed when I read those old scifi books how we always tended to think of aliens as all being the same. It never made sense to me, ‘cause people ain’t the same. I mean, they’re similar enough. Sometimes a little too similar, but humans differ from the norm all the time until you start wondering if there is a norm beside breathing and eating.

Zecora and I have talked about Earth and… earth. Here and there, ‘cause they both have the same name. At least, so says the translator. I told her about being a Courier and she told me about the village nearby. The Translator says… I’m not making this up. Ponyville. It’s like naming a city Human Town. That’s just friggin’ stupid.

She tells me that her research suggests that it is a shorter version of the original name. And keep up here, if I live through this long enough for another person to listen! Zebras aren’t the main species here. Ponies are. Yeah, ponies. That’s the word the translator gave me.

Apparently, some can fly and some can use this “magic” which right now is either some kind of mind powers like telepathy or its some sort of tech that’s beyond what the Feds can do. I’m not sure which scares me more.

I tried not to go into much detail when I told her all ‘bout home. I mentioned that I was a Courier. My job was to bring medicine and mail and food and whatever else. It was dangerous, but I was glad to do it. She asked if I often ran into monsters on the road and I wanted to say yes--I don’t think of those sickos as humans, do I? But I was honest. No. Only other people, and it was dangerous sometimes.

She seemed to understand. As far as I can tell, Zecora is (was?) some kind of priest or magician or something. She just up and left one day after taking an oath or four and has been wandering for years.

So, in a way, like me.

Her little hut in the Everfree has only been here a year or two. She told me that she’s decided to stay here a little longer after making some friends in town and finding way more to study in the woods than she’d thought she would. Apparently the forest is way bigger than I thought--I’m in the southeast corner of it. North of the castle, you start getting into more rocky terrain and then eventually a small range of mountains.

There are other species on this world. They aren’t alone like we are. Ponies and zebras… minotaurs and griffons, things out of myth. And I’m fixing to put an idea before you that I don’t want anyone to discount right away: we’ve been here before, or they’ve visited us. I’m not talkin’ ancient aliens teaching anybody how to make pyramids and stuff. I’m… I think it was an accident, or maybe at some point… some point you didn’t need a Gate and a fusion reactor. Maybe the walls were like paper.

I don’t know. Ignore me.

Addendum

I’ve included everything I learned from Zecora in a separate file named after her and dated for today.

I’ve… well. We found a brave new world, alright, doc. We found it. It’s full of talking horses who claim to be magical and who say they can fly. I believe them. It’s ridiculous and I believe them. I don’t trust words, I’ve said it before and God help me, I’ll say it again. But I believe what she says because even though she gives me the creeps and I don’t know why...

She’s a person, just like me, and I believe her.

They have princesses. The castle is over a thousand years old. The princesses have been alive maybe five times that long, and this used to be their home before some kind of civil war. Pegasi control the weather. Unicorns have telekinesis. Earth ponies are boring and normal and I think if she’s not exaggerating that they could kick through a tank.

I’m kind of shell-shocked.

This world is either… if Zecora is telling me the truth, and I think she is, we’ve stumbled into a fairytale with automatic weapons and hands covered in blood. It’s like… it’s like Eden. The garden. I mean, yeah, not the same, but it works--and we’re the snake, aren’t we? Waiting to get them alone and whisper from the trees. Take the gun. Take the money. Take this and that, all of our pretty toys and don’t worry, we just want all of it.

We just want to bomb you into glass. Fucking Federal! He’s here and we have to deal with him. Because I’ve seen what they do. I was there when it started. I was in Amarillo when they murdered everyone.

I’ve talked to Malthus.

Here’s the short version of it, ‘cause I’m fixin’ to be on the move: he got out of the woods and found farms. Farms! With ponies. We talked about them.

Here is what I was able to get from him: he watched for hours and observed three or four farms. They have wheat fields, or what look like wheat fields. Corn, or what looks like it. Apple orchards. Vegetable patches. Ponies tend everything. He thought they were wild at first, just wandering but they were just too organized and once you watch an animal watering a plant with a little can it’s hard to not acknowledge that maybe somethin’ is up. Just maybe.

His description didn’t match mine on a few things that are important enough to make it into this log. First off, none of them looked like Zecora and second off, they don’t come in normal colors. You know, black and browns and spots and such. Nah, it’s all earthy colors save for a few but none of ‘em are colored like earth horses. Damn, I wish Doc was here. He could have explained all of this to me. Or, I wish I had some way to talk to him…

Which reminds me. I might can get that worked out if Malthus isn’t cut off like he says he isn’t.

Most of them look kind of like normal horses, minus the size, irregular structure--they’re fat, ponies are fat, I told him but he ignored me--and the whole color thing. But a few of them… well. Zecora had mentioned ponies living in the clouds. At one point the translator gave me “pegasi” and “unicorns” as translations and I was really frustrated with the damn thing.

Until Malthus tells me that yeah, he saw those. Flying. Doing magic. As in, lifting things that were sometimes pretty heavy with just… looking at them. Their horns light up and the object lights up, corresponding colors because of COURSE and then it just works. It just does. We couldn’t get any farther than that. I would say something--maybe it worked like those psychic powers in the old scifi novels and vids, but he shit that down. He suggested some kind of repulsor but then I reminded him that he had just told me how they were using actual horse drawn plows. Pony plows. Kind of the same thing. Weirder, actually.

As far as talking about the obvious thing we need to talk about, I wasn’t sure how to. I don’t know if he’s here and if he is and I say the wrong thing, he’ll probably just shoot me and Zecora, if she’s with me. I’m actually pretty worried he’ll shoot her anyway. If he were, you know, a normal person, he wouldn’t. If he were rational, he wouldn’t, because I’m pretty sure Zecora’s my alien friend now and if he murders her he has to know I’ll be after his blood. I mean, he doesn’t care about that, but it’s a headache. He knows I don’t stand a chance. Or he thinks that. We’ll see.

I’ve been thinking about how to deal with him and I have some ideas.

And here I am, seriously considering murder in paradise. I can’t escape that, good reasons or not, I am actually very seriously intending to kill a man who no doubt deserves it before he can do the same to me in what is as far as I can tell, a peaceful world. Maybe I’m wrong. I probably am. We romanticize new places, don’t we?

But even if it’s seen its share of war and murder, I’ll still be the first human here, and the first human here will be a murderer. Or a killer, at least. Justified, but still a killer.

Kind of ominous, isn’t it?

Log 14

Chrono says 5:15 AM.

I can’t sleep. I keep waking up after the same goddamn nightmare. I keep seeing her over and over. She’s caught in that trap and then she’s… and then I just walk up and I shoot her and I feel like that really did happen. It actually happened somewhere else. She never talked to me or told me any stories about her friends with their stupid names that sound like something a kid made up or made me tea and… and…

Have you ever felt less than human? Seriously. Have you ever felt like an object, a disgusting thing that normal, clean people would run from at the drop of a hat? That is how I feel like right now, shivering before the sun’s up in my little tent, just waiting for something. I don’t know what I’m waiting for. Maybe just the other shoe to drop.

I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I didn’t know. Is that good enough? Is that a good enough excuse for almost actually eating someone? Sorry, I didn’t know you were a person, no hard feelings? She doesn’t seem to get how close she came. Because, I guess, she doesn’t know what it’s like to live on a world where the only things that look like her are just animals. Beautiful animals, strong and noble animals, yeah, but they don’t think like we do. They don’t speak in ways we understand. We’re all alone, but no species has ever been alone on this planet.

I’m starting to wonder what’s going to happen when they send more of us here. We’ve never encountered other species, but to these people its all old hat and done with, been there, seen it. Ponies alone have like… four types? Or something. It’s early and my head hurts. And it’s all going to be big and confusing and I just can’t see the way out.

Why be so down on it? Because I forgot the most important part of what Malthus said last night because I was tired and this morning I can’t think of anything else: he felt the same fear whenever he got anywhere near the farms.

They do it passively. It’s just part of what and who they are.

One person can be reasonable. A whole herd of people with guns, all of them feelin’ the same animal fear? Unable to look an alien in the eye? That’s a setup for a massacre.

And after the first massacre it’s all just paperwork, isn’t it?

Malthus is coming here today. I called him down. Told him to bring his equipment, too, anything for scanning or searching or whatever. On one hand, maybe we can see if my translator is really giving off some sort of field. On the other…

On the other, I’ve made a decision. In hindsight, it wasn’t really much of a decision to make so much as it was something I just had to come to peace with. We have to kill the Fed. He’s pushed us to it--if I don’t call Malthus down today, he’ll just shoot from the towers or the woods. Today is my last chance to “cooperate”. Probably.

Well, you know what, fuck that guy.

But it’s about more than that. I’ve been thinking all morning about how close we are to bringing more people here. Because, even if it doesn’t feel like it right now with just three of us in these woods, we are very close. All it takes is a single report back home and someone will be dropping out of the Gate.

Who we send back matters.

And if that Fed bastard goes back and tells his friends that the planets ripe for the taking, filled with peaceful little talking horses, and is probably loaded with minerals? Because anything that’s harder to get on earth that we find here is going to be untouched. Yeah, it’s a bitch to move things, but it ain’t impossible and depending on what they want, it might still be easier…

But no, the real thing I’m scared about? Beyond them coming in force?

What if the way I felt around Zecora could be engineered? What if those sons of bitches could capture some poor little pony and cut them up ‘till they found how it was all done and then they could do it themselves? The Feds breaking whole companies of soldiers before they even get there. Keeping everyone cowering as they march through the streets. You can’t run, you can’t fight back, you can’t do anything if they don’t want you to, or else you get a full blast of crazy panic. And yeah, I got used to being with Zecora, but if they can reproduce the effect… who’s to say they couldn’t make it impossible to get used to?

God, I have to stop thinking about the maybe’s and the might-happens. I’ll go stir-crazy. I have an immediate danger to deal with.

Zecora taps on the door to the Golden Oaks library. Spike answers the door, and they exchange pleasantries until Twilight can come up from the labratory below. She seems a little tired, but happy.

Zecora is let in and Spike prepares tea. She ponders how best to begin.

What do you know of magic, Twilight Sparkle? That is how she’ll begin.

And of course, Twilight Sparkle chuckles and says that she knows quite a lot! Though she is weaker in some areas. Zebraharan alchemy and sympathetic magic being some of those areas. She of course would like to study both some day, perhaps in Zebrahara itself. Zecora finds it hard not to blabber on about the arts she loves dearly. She has a mission. Carefully, as she always does things, Zecora weaves a message in the off-kilter verse that her beautiful words become in a very different common tongue:

Have you heard of creatures that not only do not know of magic, or think it is an illusion… but perhaps even are afraid of it? Not just because they don’t understand, but before they even know it is being cast? Say that it is innate and inborn.

And this gives Twilight pause. She scrunches up her nose, looking somewhere between disgust and bewilderment. Afraid? Why would anything alive fear magic? Life is magic. Magic is life. The two concepts are almost, if not completely, synonymous. Now ignorance of magic is more believable. Fear of it? Well… And Twilight loses the train of thought there.

It troubles her more than she lets on to Zecora.

It is a hard thing to be told, even as a hypothetical (and she assumed this was such a thing) that one’s favorite thing, the music that gave one’s soul pupose was terrifying. Because to Twilight Sparkle, magic has never been frightening. Certain spells have been. She has seen Celestia’s ancient sword but once and her massive armor only once, and these things were imbued with magic, and yet she feared only the artifacts and not the art that produced them. It was like telling a cellist that her beautiful music tormented the very souls of her listeners, or telling a painter when he has completed his life’s greatest painting that all along his images of beauty and grace have given only nightmares and horror.

She sips at her tea and tries not to keep thinking along those lines.

Why? She asks.

And Zecora tells her.

Log 14, cont’d

Malthus said he was busy, but he should be on his way here now. We’re gonna have our little meetin’ in the late afternoon, it looks like. Is that better? Or is it worse?

Here’s somethin’ to get my mind off the obvious: hiding. Is it better to be in the dark? Because the things that help your enemy hide often can help you stay all unseen. It’s kinda like how a kid thinks: If I can’t see you, you can’t see me. But I do have one good reason to think about it: I’m not alone. One on one, I don’t stand a chance against this guy. The Judge is powerful enough that I only need a shot or two from close up, but I’ll get lucky to have one with his rate of fire. It’s the problem of using a revolver. You don’t waste ammo, even when you really, really friggin’ want to.

My Concordat friend, however, has that rifle. That thing can punch through light armor--I know it can. I have seen exactly what guns that hit even harder than it can do to armor, and I’ve seen what they can do to flesh.

If I can just get that blackshirt bastard turned around in the darkness, than maybe the countryfried sniper can blast the shit out of him. If that scope is new, it’ll have thermal.

If. If. If. It’ll all be cat and mouse and ambush no matter what.

Twilight insists they take Fluttershy along. She confesses that her studies have not left her comfortable with the knowledge she possesses regarding the stranger sorts of animal life in the world. Even if it is intelligent and not merely one of Fluttershy’s typical sort of creature, it is still a living thing with needs and preferences, and Fluttershy’s skills with animals may come in handy for avoiding anything that might unduly worry the stranger named Samantha.

On the way to her house on the edge of the forest, Twilight asks many questions. Where is the creature from? What is it like? It doesn’t know common? It didn’t seem familiar with ponies?

The mystery deepens. To be in the heartlands of Equestria and not be familiar with ponies is… strange, at best. Not knowing common she could understand. It was unusual but not ridiculously so. Goats often didn’t seem to know any. Some minotaurs never learned. There were regions of Equestria that still spoke their ancient languages…

That it hunted came as only a small surprise. Twilight found the idea of carnivorism distasteful, but she was not an innocent in such matters. Spike ate gems, but one day meat would complement that and as his caretaker she had prepared herself with a bulwark of love against her own abjection. Pegasi ate fish, if very rarely, and she knew Rainbow had. Minotaurs and Griffins ate meat. It wasn’t as if this creature was eating sapient life! Nothing did that. It was unthinkable. Yet still it made her uneasy to think on.

Abjection. She realized that was the word she had been searching for earlier, when Zecora had been describing Samantha’s reaction to magic and to Zecora in general. Abjection, noun, a low or downcast state, degradation, a humbling or rejection. Often used to describe the innate repulsion of most sapient creatures to blood and waste, their own and that of their kinsponies.

Magic being lumped with blood and bodily fluids as things that caused involuntary dismay did not sit well with Twilight Sparkle.

But it did give her a starting point. Perhaps Samantha’s species had been so long isolated and so long ignorant of their own magical energy… no, it wouldn’t account for the strength of the reaction. It was physical more than it was mental, she decided. She spoke aloud to Zecora, who tried to follow the lines of reasoning.

Perhaps a curse of some sort? Zecora puts forth her own theory.

But Twilight rejects it out of hoof with a grimace. No. Curses are stupid, she doesn’t say, but instead she points out that it would take an amniotic spell to pass through the bloodlines and that was the only way to explain the facts through a curse. Amniotic magic is not unehard of, of course, she mutters to herself on the edge of Ponyville. It’s just… uncommon.

Zecora is not sure how to explain Samantha’s answer regarding her origins. Twilight tries to press her on it.

She said to imagine the four corners of creation, and then to imagine there were many. That is how Zecora relates it.

Twilight stops up short. Becuase she has heard a description not so dissimilar before. She tries to laugh it off. No, that can’t be. She was… she was joking.

Zecora tilts her head. No, she was deadly earnest.

Twilight swallows.

Log 14, cont’d

Dammit, he’s late.

C’mon, Old Man. I don’t have all day. You’re burning daylight. The longer you take, the less time we have to deal with the psycho in the bushes. Not that I know how we’re gonna do it! Dammit.

Just…

Here we are and it’s all the same.

Five in the woods. The silent smiling Blackshirt. The cautious Cartographer, weighing his observations. Three ponies, headed for the castle in the Everfree. Twilight Sparkle, troubled. Zecora, determined. Fluttershy, worried.

The Federal is not watching the castle at all, though he has moved the proximity alerts meant to go around his camp to mark off the Pioneer’s territory. He will know when she has visitors. Oh, he’ll know.

But for now, he has another business. He readies his gun, considering.

He doesn’t intend to shoot anything just yet, of course. But his hand might yet be forced. The creature before him is erratic. It is terrified and wounded. The creature sprinting through the woods beneath his eyes can feel its own death in the air.

Frank Costello of New York, son of the hells of the Family’s Bronx, smiles. This is truly a good world.

The pony sobs. His name is Perique, and he was walking the border of his little farm on the edge of the Everfree when he found where somepony--something, more like--had broken his fence. Frustrated, he investigated.

He wishes now that he had not.

He has bullet wounds in his right front leg, just grazing hits. A shot that went right through his shoulder. Bruises from falling and from the first tripwire that the human set. Frank Costello of the Family learns, after all. His intellect is not a part of him so much as it is a tool to be used from time to time, and he is adaptable. He has herded this pony so far, and now he is simply waiting for the end with giddy anticipation. He licks his lips. His face feels flushed. So close. Just run, little pony, just run.

I need you to die screaming, if you don’t mind. I really need this, he says.

Perique the blackish earth pony hits the second tripwire and goes sprawling.

The ground gives way, and so he falls into the pit prepared for him, filled with sharp ends. He does not die. He sobs in the hole as the Conquistador climbs down and approaches.

The plan continues. Now he just needs to process the bait. There's a party that this poor little pony needs to be around for, after all.

Destruction

Author's Note

From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

(Apostle's Creed)

Destruction

Samantha fidgeted on the ancient throne, not knowing that she looked for all the world like some savage queen. Her gun twirled in her hand idly, beside a leg lazily slung over the armrest.

How in apprehension like a God, indeed.

Fitting that it was shooting on her mind, eating away at her thoughts. Her hands itched with the remembered feeling of the handgun roaring. She remembered the smell of smokeless powder and of burning. Her mind was crisscrossed with the burning streets of towns she remembered from a youth spent running from such things.

Malthus was late, but not so seriously late that she had truly begun to worry. He was a bit older and she hadn’t indicated that this meeting of minds was urgent. She had needed discretion.

The prox alarms fired. She smiled softly. There he was. She waited, still idly twirling her gun, unloaded for now, and she’d show him if asked. She needed to talk now, and shoot later.

And so it was that instead of the old man with darkening skin, she was greeted by a trio of four-legged visitors peeking into the throne room; two ponies and one zebra. She froze, mouth open in wonder. A unicorn. An honest to God unicorn. A winged pony. Pegasus!

Whatever foolish utterance would have left her mouth, it was cut short by the realization that her translating talisman was not around her neck. She cursed softly, and tried not to search too quickly. She didn’t want to frighten them off.

Yet, they were about to step into something far bigger than they knew. Horror seized her. This was the worst time. She was about to have a council of war and here these three were coming to say hello and shoot the breeze with the strange new neighbor. Dammit. She had to distract them or send them packing. Some lie that would work…

Except she felt a sudden chill and lost her balance. She fell to the ground, filled with a dread she did not understand. She searched, knowing the feeling, and found a much better constructed talisman floating--actually floating--towards her. The unicorn--a strange purple creature with what colud only be called a sheepish smile--seemed to indicate it.

Trembling, Samantha touched the talisman. Her arm felt frozen off, but she grasped it and slipped it on.

The dread did not leave, but she was acclimating bit by bit. She felt like she could breathe again.

“H-hey,” she managed. Talking was hard.

“Hello! Oh, good, it worked!” the unicorn said in a bright, cheerful voice. “My name is Twilight Sparkle. This is Fluttershy, and you already know Zecora!”

Sam blinked at them. There wasn’t much else she could do. Words swam around in her head, trying to connect each to each and simply failed to do so.

The one who had spoken, Twilight Sparkle, continued smiling. Her eyes darted from Sam to Zecora, as if she were trying to will Zecora to help her.

“This… this might be a…” Sam shivered. “This might be a bad time.”

Twilight tilted her head to the side. “What do you mean?”

Sam continued shivering as the magic worked. “Bad.. Something bad is about to happen. My friend and I…. have to fight a monster.”

It wasn’t a lie, she reasoned. The Blackshirt was a monster. She had spoken to him and looked into his soulless, hungry eyes. He was without heart. He was without forethought beyond mere plotting. What did he see behind him but remembered perversities?

She did not think of it like this. She simply knew that Costello was a monster.

“A m-monster?” The pegasus, bright yellow in an afront to Terrestrial nature, backed up. Her head swiveled furiously, as if expecting the monster to emerge.

Sam bit her lip. This was not what she had expected--it was the worst possible thing that could happen right now. She had to make them leave before Malthus arrived. Or before they saw--

“What sort of monster have you seen? To face you such, few are keen,” Zecora said. She narrowed her eyes. “The creatures here have run and hide, they tremble when you range wide.”

“It’s…” Sam looked down at Zecora and wilted. “It’s hard to explain.”

Her radio crackled to life.

“Marshall? Miss Marshall, I believe we may have a problem.”

Wild-eyed, Sam dug through her kit to retrieve the old radio. It kept hissing as she slammed the button down. “What? What’s going on? You’re late.”

“I have a native here,” Malthus said, his voice sounding strange and tinny. “I came across him. I thought maybe he’d fallen into one of your traps.”

Sam froze. Her heart beat wildly in her chest, and she wanted to look at her visitors. She wanted to see their reactions. Could they understand him? Could they…

“Is it… are they alright?” Sam asked and then grit her teeth in frustration.

“No. It wasn’t one of your traps, I think. Or, if it was, it was a moment of surprising violence from you. There is a lot of blood.” A pause. “I am not sure it would be wise to carry it with me.”

“Why the hell not? I have bandages. It would be safer here.”

“It would attract predators to me, I think. I would rather not take on that risk.”

Sam bit back a curse. “Really showing your true colors, old man. Is that how the Concordat works? You know, I have three natives here with me, and I would be glad to tell them.”

A longer silence. “I am on my way with the injured one.”

She put the radio away and turned to the ponies. They looked at her with confusion. It was Zecora who spoke first.

“You call us natives, which implies travelling. I think your origin needs unravelling. What did you speak of, through the strange device? We heard two voices, but saw two eyes.”

“It’s a radio,” Sam said, searching for an explanation that would make sense. “It… I can communicate with others through it.”

“It works like a scrying stone, then,” said Twilight, and her smile returned. “Oh, but I don’t… oh that’s fascinating. I don’t feel any magic from it, so you must have done it some other way. How does it work?”

Sam blinked. “I… I really don’t know.” Her shivering returned.

Twilight Sparkle finally noticed. “Are you alright? You seem… well, pale. Or something. Maybe that’s normal. Is that normal? Fluttershy, is--”

“It’s you,” Sam said. “Or this… this thing,” she held the talisman up. “The first time I met Zecora it was overwhelming.”

Twilight Sparkle took a step forward. She had been far away before, but with each step, Sam felt the crushing cold weight even heavier. She whined softly, and then Twilight stopped her advanced with a troubled expression.

“It’s almost an allergy,” she muttered to herself. “Don’t move, please. May I scan you with my magic? I’ll be quick, I promise. It should be safe, even if it’s uncomfortable. I think you might be very sick, miss…” Twilight blinked. “I forgot your name,” she said, almost absently.

“Sam,” Samantha said, teeth chattering. “Can you hurry?”

Twilight’s horn began to glow, and then Sam felt like her body had simply ceased to exist. She tried to scream but couldn’t. It only lasted seconds, but those seconds were a nightmare of cold and growing darkness. Could she die like this? Had it been a trick? Of course it had. They had been doing this on purpose all along--

And then suddenly she was warm again. The cold was mostly gone at once, replaced by only the faintest unease. The talisman resting in the valley of her chest was only a slightly cool presence. She stared down at the unicorn in front of her.

“What did you do?” she asked, no longer forcing herself to speak. “I feel… I feel better. Warmer.”

Twilight nodded. “I’m not sure how long this will work. Basically, I’ve put a shield around you. Every creature has magic, Sam. Some have a better control over that magic than others. Your species has some of the worst control mechanisms I’ve ever seen.” She paused, and then her ears flattened against her head. “Sorry, that was probably rude.”

Sam, despite herself, cracked a little smile. “It’s fine.”

“Just the passive thaumic energy in the air was enough to send you into what we call arcane shock. What you’ve been experiencing is what unicorns experience when they draw too much magic and then hurt themselves. I think just by being here, we’ve been making it worse. I’m so sorry, Sam. We never meant to hurt you! I only hope I can find a more permanent solution.”

“But what did you do?”

“I’m not sure how to explain it, because it would take knowing about anima magic, and…” Fluttershy nudged her with a hoof. “Well, I can try. Imagine your spirit is… kind of like a hole. Magic is like water. Water rolls downhill, right? Well, that’s what’s been happening to you. You attract passive magic from everything around you and it gets to be too much if you encounter anything more magical than standard fauna and flora. So, I erected walls around your spirit, so that a lot of that water, er, magic, doesn’t get through and flood you. That’s a terrible picture. Really gotta work on those, Twilight…” She looked away, muttering.

“You didn’t… you didn’t change anything though, right?”

Twilight snapped back. “No! No no no no of course not. That would be evil. That would be a sin against the very spirit of magic! I would never directly touch somepony else’s soul.” She shivered. “That’s just…”

“Okay. I believe you,” Sam said softly. “I’m sorry, but all three of you have come at a bad time, and I think I need your help. There’s a pony on the way with my… friend. My friend found him wounded in the forest and he’s carrying him here. I don’t know anything about ponies, but we have bandages…” She faltered. “I’m really sorry, but I need your help. I don’t know how bad he is.”

Zecora strode forward. “Say no more, Sam of Earth. This healer now will prove her worth.” She turned to her companions. “Twilight, before you now I lay my burden down. Fetch me water. Fluttershy, retrieve the supplies our friend has and bring them to me. Samantha, show her your store and then you must help me find a cleaner place than this.”

They worked fast. Sam brought out her bedroll, honestly not caring that it would be ruined at this point. Twilight cast spells to sterilize the side room they had set up for the injured pony, and Fluttershy had returned with bandages. Twilight brought water in Sam’s canteens.

The proximity alarm went off in her brain, and Sam jumped, startling her new companions.

“Someone’s here,” she said, and she bolted for the central chamber. The others called for her, but she didn’t answer. She needed to make sure it was Malthus and not the Federal deciding he was tired of waiting. Her hand rested on the pistol at her hip.

She realized it was unloaded. She cursed. Before she could do anything about it, Malthus entered the great hall with a dark gray, almost black pony on his shoulder.

“You’d better have a place to put this one!” Malthus shouted as he sprinted through the hall. She led him down the side hall, to where Twilight and the others waited.

The pony that Malthus laid down on her bedroll was a nightmare with flesh. He bled profusely--red blood, she noticed with a growing nausea--and was obviously somewhere between waking and sleep from blood loss. His movements were weak, slow, pathetic. Like a dying insect beneath a boot, he moved more from expectation than from purpose. Sam saw that his legs were ruined, and saw that the hindlegs didn’t move at all. She knew suddenly that whatever had tracked this pony down had broken his back.

Fluttershy gasped and backpedaled, gibbering. Twilight looked away and seemed ready to vomit. Zecora? Zecora stood steely-eyed and ready, calling for water as soon as the injured pony was laid down. She began to work. With the rise and fall of her musical voice, Fluttershy found herself calming and working with her in tandem.

Twilight and the two humans were ejected from the room. Sam slid the talisman off for a moment and glared at Malthus.

“What the hell, man? Were you really gonna leave him?” she asked.

Malthus glared back, shifting his weight so that his hand touched the butt of his rifle as it hung low on the sling. “I do not ask you to approve, miss. I’ll be, how did you say it? Straight with you. Something big is in those woods, something I would rather not meet. I’ve seen its tracks all over the place, a lot of ‘em close to this castle. That poor thing is bleeding profusely, and if it’s the thing that our mutual friend found…” He tapped his temple. “Think, huntress. Use those skills.”

Samantha swallowed. “I haven’t… Well, shit, no I wouldn’t. I’ve been caught up with Zecora. Of course I didn’t see it. You still can’t leave a man behind.”

Malthus raised an eyebrow at that. “Of course,” he said after a moment. “No, ah, man left behind.”

Samantha felt there was something beneath those words that she didn’t like, but Twilight tugged on her pant leg and she slipped her talisman back on. “Sorry, Twilight. I needed to ask my friend here something.”

Twilight seemed a little peeved, but all she did to vent it was give a little huff. “It’s fine. I’m sorry I got mad. I know that privacy is important.” The last bit was almost an inaudible grumble, but then she moved on with a clear, bright voice. “Right! We’ve done all we can do. May I ask your friend what happened or where he found this pony? Does he know his name?”

She shrugged and looked to the Concordat. “Do you know his name, she asks,” Samantha relayed. “Also, I think that I’ve still got the other talisman, so let’s find it for you.”

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable wearing untested and unknown alien technology,” Malthus said stiffly.

“God, Concordat is whiny,” Sam grumbled. “Do what you want. Also, she’s still got a question.”

“His name? I have no idea. Where I found him? Not far from here. Maybe a hundred yards past the tree line.” He paused. “Can it understand me?”

“She, and no.”

“I think it may have been caught in one of your more violent snares. Did you set many pit traps?”

Sam went cold. “I… what do you mean by that?”

Closing his eyes, Malthus stroked his temples. “Christ. Pitfalls. Spikes at the bottom? Things that people fall into?”

“I put old Apache-style traps around. They aren’t what you’re thinking of, I don’t think. I ain’t a spike trap kind of girl,” Sam said, adding the last bit with a lower voice that creaked. “Ain’t really my speed.”

“Because I have suspicions regarding its rather severe injuries. The Federal agent is out there, right? Unfortunate, but we need to keep it in mind. He has, by your account, already attacked the wildlife. Something big, it seemed like. He may have moved on to the smaller sort of native wildlife and thus been checking your traps when you are gone. Possible?”

Sam chewed on her lip and looked at Twilight. “Yes, he could have. But none of my traps would do that.”

“Sam?” Twilight looked up at her, uncertain. “What are you talking about?”

Samantha stared down at her. Then, she knelt next to the pony who came up to her waist so that they were almost face to face.

“Twilight, I’m going to assume that Zecora told you that humans eat meat, right?”

“She told us you did, yes… I’ve known griffons, though! So it’s not that bad,” she added, and Sam thought for a moment that she was trying to seem brave. She was reminded of herself, a younger Samantha, naturally dark, wiry hair in her face in tightest braids, trying to be brave in the aftermath of firebombing.

“I’m glad you don’t think any worse of me,” Sam said quietly. She looked at Malthus, who rolled his eyes and looked away. She suddenly didn’t care what he thought at all. “Twilight, I hunt with traps. Do you know how those might work?”

“I have an inkling, yes. I’ve never had a need to do such a thing myself, but Equestrian rangers learn to create simple snares when working with monsters on the borders. I’ve studied them before. I understand the concept. I could probably make one, if I had to.”

“Heh, bet you could. You seem like a smart one,” Sam said. “The monster I mentioned earlier is smart, Twilight. Malthus thinks that it might have used my traps to hurt that pony. I don’t know if he’s right or not. I… I don’t know what to say. I didn’t mean to.”

Twilight paled. “Are they that… bad?”

The gravity of the question was not lost on Samantha. She looked into the large, soulful, expressive eyes of this tiny alien and realized the questions beneath the surface one. It was a strange moment, really. In the next room, a pony’s life hung like a pendulum. In this room, two strangers in a strange land, at odds with one another despite their common foe. A single question, and two creatures looking into each others eyes and knowing that each was really asking a very different question.

What are you, really?

“Mine aren’t,” Sam answered. Only a few seconds had passed. “Mine have never done… that,” she added, gesturing towards the wounded Perique. “Mine were always meant to be clean. I didn’t torture anything. I didn’t hurt it beyond what I had to.”

Malthus huffed. “Well and good, and it is good miss, don’t give me that look. But it doesn’t matter what you did. What matters is how things are now. That madman is going to ruin our reputation on this world before we can even get an expedition mounted. Idiot.”

Sam thought about commenting. She wanted to. She wanted to ask if he was even worried about that poor pony. She wanted to snidely ask what his conquistadors needed with a good reputation--though she did not have enough history in her caw to ask such a thing in the most damning way. Had she, she might have asked the middle-aged cartographer if he had known how Columbus’ reputation in the Indies was stellar, until he came back with chains.

Instead, she spoke to Twilight. “I’m sorry, Twilight. I… I didn’t mean to hurt ponies.”

“It’s okay.” Twilight smiled at her weakly. “I believe you. And your friend brought him here, even though the smell might have attracted predators. The Everfree is dangerous, after all.”

“So he wasn’t bullshitting. What sort of things we talkin’?” Samantha asked, suddenly hyperaware of the open doorway.

“Well, cockatrices… manticores… timberwolves…” Twilight looked up and right, her voice taking on a new tone as if she was reciting from a lengthy book’s list. “Hydras, but probably not around here…”

“So myths and monsters,” Sam grumbled. She held out a hand. “I get it, Twilight. Er… Just Twilight is okay, right?”

“Of course!” Twilight smiled at her. She held out a hoof. “I guess technically we’ve not had a chance to meet for real.”

“Yeah…” Sam awkwardly grasped the hoof. Twilight looked puzzled, and then chuckled. “Just like Spike, with those strange fingers. It’s a hoofbump. We do it sort of like this.” She drew her leg back and tapped her front hooves together flat.

Sam turned to Malthus. “Shake my hand,” she said and thrust it forward. A confused Concordat stared at her until her glare compelled him. Once their hands were clasped, the Pioneer turned to Twilight with a grin. “We shake hands. Like that.”

Twilight was, as always, fascinated.

Perhaps they would have continued talking in this way, awkward and frenetic. Perhaps Twilight would have felt a little less nervous around the human who made traps and the human who did not smile, and perhaps the Cartographer would have acclimated to the cold ice in his gut that marked her presence. It was eating at him. The parts of his body that did not actively ache were numb and freezing. His mind was racing.

Twilight had restricted her magic. Consciously, she reigned in even her passive thaumic energy best she could.

The Pioneer might have eventually admitted what sort of creature it was that she called her enemy. Twilight might have understood her plight.

Many things might have happened that did not happen because at that moment something roared.

Twilight froze mid-word, staring up at Sam with a look of blind terror. It was a terror Sam shared and recognized--it was the look of a horse in a stable fire. She’d seen it before. She knew what came next.

She shook Twilight. “What is it?”

There wasn’t an immediate answer, just Twilight stuttering. She let out a frustrated growl and pulled up the Judge, loading it while crouched. Malthus already had his rifle up, and had it trained on the open doors.

“M-manticore! Oh, where’s Fluttershy? Fluttershy! FLUTTERSHY!”

Twilight bolted back towards the injured pony’s room. Samantha had loaded her revolver and had it up.

“Well,” Malthus said.

“Shut the fuck up,” Sam replied without much heat. “Go out with honor.”

“Honor is a bit unprofitable.”

“Fuck, I hate you rich sons of bitches. Money is all you think about,” she growled. “I’d give you three days in the badlands, the whole lot of you East Coasters, and when you died nobody’d mourn you.”

“Charming.”

Another roar. It was closer now. Twilight returned to two armed humans with their guns waiting. She tried to get Sam’s attention. “Sam! Sam, Fluttershy can deal with the Manticore!”

Fluttershy trembled. “I-It sounds so s-scared! Twilight, something is wrong!”

“The hell? If you’re trying to tell me she can fight, then I’m gonna call--”

Twilight shook her head and stomped her hoof. “No! Fluttershy calmed the manticore we ran into before!”

“Twilight! Twilight, something is very wron--” The rest of Fluttershy’s words were drowned out in another road, this one even closer. “It’s not right! I don’t know why it’s doing this. This isn’t how it hunts!”

Sam’s proximity alarms went wild in her head. She ground her teeth together.

“If she’s gonna do something, she’s got about three seconds.”

“Twilight, I don’t think I can--”

“You two need to get back!”

“Shut up and watch, Republic!”

Twilight growled in frustration. Her horn flared with lavender light and the doors glowed in tandem as she slammed them shut. The humans jumepd back, startled and confused. Fluttershy was hid under her own legs, her ears glued to her skull, her eyes squeezed shut.

“It’ll hold for a minute,” Twilight said, her voice tight. She swallowed. “My magic will keep those doors closed.”

“Christ a’mighty,” grumbled Sam, staring.

“What the hell just happened?” Malthus asked. He turned on Sam with wide eyes. “What happened? Did they do that? Did you?”

“She used her…” Sam worked her mouth in futility. “Magic,” she managed. “She calls it magic. I don’t know how it works. Magic is how the talisman translator thing works. Hell, it’s how they work. You know that weird feeling we get? It’s their magic or whatever the hell it is. They can’t help it. They just ooze the stuff.”

Malthus winced and took a step back. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Wonderful. Wonderful. What did it do?”

“She shut the doors. She, Concordat. Mind your manners, now,” she added, and there was something dangerous in her voice. “Push and I might have to mind ‘em for you.”

“This is stupid, Marshall. Stop talking to it and talk to me. How does this power work? Can they all do it? Does it differ by sub-species?”

“Ain’t sure,” Sam lied. She glared. “Look, let’s talk after that thing is dead or gone.”

“Fine. We’ll--”

Once again, an interruption. Something beat against the doors with savage strength. In a moment of surreality, Samantha imagined it wasn’t so much hunting as running, and they were the ones trapping it and not the other way around.

Malthus moved. He laid down between the two thrones, in front of the Pioneer’s camp, and set his gun level with the worn stone. He said nothing. He waited for the charge. What things did he see? Where did his mind go? She did not have time to ponder what he had seen in Mauritania or on the Mason Front, for the door began to buckle, inch by inch. She backed up. Twilight beside her retreated, muttering.

“Twilight, I don’t think this thing is gonna calm down,” Sam said. “Whatever your friend can do, I don’t think it’s gonna work this time. You got any of that fancy magic that can help?”

“Y-you sound like Applejack,” Twilight said, disoriented. “I don’t know much offensive magic… I never had a reason to know it before…”

“Now’s the time,” Sam said.

Another boom. Another.

Sam knew with a start that the Federal watched. The pieces fell into place.

Why take one when you can have them sit and wait in a nice little trap? It made sense, really. The impossibility of luring a creature without it destroying you itself was lost on her. She was too focused on what felt true in the moment. He had planned this. Wounded the pony, lied to her, drawn them together. She just hadn’t seen it, and now Zecora and her friends were going to pay the price.

Suddenly, Sam was furious. “Tell your friend to hide if she can’t fight! Go on! We’ll hold it off.”

Fluttershy fled.

The door burst into stray timber.

A manticore stood in the gap, but it was not like the manticore that Fluttershy had tamed. This manticore was not hurting and lost--oh, it hurt and it was lost, but where Fluttershy had calmed a troubled heart, there was nothing here to calm. This was all fury and terror. Sam did not see the dried blood over its wounds, but perhaps she didn’t need to see. She did not need to see the marks of its battles with the man in black.

Sam has hunted boars, scarred by battle and mutated by radiation and bio-waste. She has seen murder reflected in an inhuman eye as it came for her. The berserker mix of terror and wrath. She sees it again, a dozenfold.

The Federal is perhaps beyond, waiting in the trees. The Manticore is driven on, trapped now between gods whose magical fields drive it mad. It has long lost anything like reason or cleverness. It only wants out. It wants out forever.

Before it could work up a charge, Malthus fired. Once. Twice. It began to move. Three times. Four.

He fired with precision and with steely calm. The Conquistador shot wild and giddy. The Pioneer aimed with her heart. The Cartographer, the Concordat, shot only with his mind. He was a strategist and a planner. His plans had plans. Every shot landed where it was called for, and nowhere else.

The manticore advanced, yet it shuddered under the rifle fire. Yet, wounds that would have made it cry off before did little to deter it now.

Twilight screamed and her horn glowed beside Sam, who was backing up. Her mind froze. The rifle fired. Her own gun was pointed at the things face. She could… she could…

She could see the injured pony, blood weeping from his wounds. She could see the streets of Amarillo on fire. She could hear the report of rifles as they picked off the children in the street. Pacification.

Sam lost it.

She roared and her gun roared with her. .454 Casull is the last argument of kings, and so she drove it home and then ran to the side, all but scooping up a frantic Twilight. The unicorn finally finished whatever spell she was weaving, and Sam barely registered the hot beam of purple thaumic energy that lanced at the Manticore and burned its shoulder.

Yet it continued, unable to conceive of retreat in its frenzy. It did not understand guns even now. But it understood movement, and so it bounded after the Pioneer and the pony that she carried over her shoulder.

“Let me go! Let me down!”

Twilight was squirming, panicking. Sam was barely there. She swung the judge back and fired again at the creature, then took a sharp turn and let Twilight down as she went to ground. The chamber turned. The manticore stumbled as a screaming Twilight blasted its legs and then ran just as Malthus shot again, hitting it in the scruff of the neck.

Sam tried to regain her feet even as she fired again, but underestimated the blowback. She fell back to earth. Her head was full of burning cities and angry boars. She had to fire! She had to fire again! She did so. The Manticore roared, but it was less of a battle cry and something closer to a scream of pain. IT advanced, only for Malthus to place a bullet through it’s right front leg and send it sprawling. Another shot. It tried to rise but it couldn’t.

Sam was on her feet again. Malthus had stopped firing.

She approached, the Judge up. The Manticore groaned. She thought it sounded like weeping and her breath caught.

Twilight approached from the side. “It’s… It’s done,” she said. “I don’t think it can…”

Sam cocked the Judge a final time. “No,” she answered. “It can’t. I don’t know what’s wrong, Twilight, but it isn’t leaving here. It can’t. You should probably look away,” she added, softly.

Twilight stiffened. “Are you… but…”

“It’s sick, I think,” Sam croaked.

“But…”

“Please don’t watch,” Sam said, louder than she had intended. “Just… just turn around.” I don’t want you to see me finish it, she did not add.

Twilight shook slightly and turned. She walked away a bit, not wanting to be nearby. Sam was grateful that the anxious one, the one called Fluttershy, was not here to watch. Or Zecora. She could not even wish the Blackshirt there so she could finish him as well.

Samantha released the tortured manticore.

Interview: Who Will Go For Us?

Author's Note

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.

Friedrich Nietzche, Beyond Good and Evil

Interview: Who Will Go For Us?

Z: Our friend is stable, but my concern is now for you. From your face, I think this tragedy is nothing new.

S: I’ve… I’ve seen things, yeah.

Z: I thought as much, when first we met.

S: I didn’t have a choice. That thing was going… It was sick. It was going to kill us.

Z: This of all things I do not doubt. I assume the ponies would have preferred a rout?

S: I think Twilight would have wanted me to just scare it off. I think what’s her name… Fluttershy. I think Fluttershy wanted us to talk to it? Christ on a bike.

Z: Ponies are not a warrior race, though they can still take the field with grace. Guards they have, strong and brave, but in the face of death they tend to… cave.

S: I felt like a monster, Zecora. I’ve never felt like that before. I guess… back home, it’s not like we just kill each other all the time for fun. Killing someone back home is awful, but you understand it. It makes sense in context. Here? The first thing I do after meeting Twilight and Fluttershy is pump a monster full of lead. That wouldn’t have been so bad. But then it just… it was bleeding out. Malthus took out the legs. And she just… I had to help it die. I couldn’t leave it there to suffer.

Z: I do not condemn this thing you’ve done. Virtue shines most after we’ve won. You did what was right, a hunter of the Gods.

The sound of Samantha reloading the Judge.

S: Do your people war, Zecora?

Z: Often yes, in times before. And even now, some play at war.

S: In my world, the country I live in is destroyed. All the other ones are the same, or will be soon. Everything fell apart. We’ve been so busy shooting each other… The machines I use are not new, Zecora. They’re old. You told me you kept track of lore.

Z: Yes, lore, the knowledge of the times preceding.

S: Well, we’re losing ours. In bits and pieces. We’ve forgotten. I don’t even know what all we forgot. I’m gonna tell you something because I trust you. You can’t tell the others. Malthus knows.

Z: I swear upon my mother’s face, my father’s eyes.

S: There are three of us here. Three different sides. Malthus and I aren't enemies, but we aren’t really friends. But the other one? The other one is a monster, Zecora. He’s awful. I’ve met him only once. He hurt that pony. He is a monster… and he’s human. He’s both, because they ain’t mutually exclusive. Get it?

Z: I believe so.

S:Okay. Well, I’m fixin’ to deal with him, or end it, one way or another. He can’t keep doing this. He’ll hurt and kill until he gets his way. People like him always do. There are always people like him. They use words like acceptable losses and collateral, and it’s all just paperwork when the tenements go up or there’s lead in the water or hand raisin’ innocents get shot in the open. Just paperwork and reports. Processin’.

Z: Samantha, you are upset. I do not understand some of what you say, but… is your home so terrible as this? Is that why you left?

S: I’m an explorer. I left to explore. They sent me here to do that, and then… then I don’t know. I didn’t really think about what came after.

Z: Well, you certainly have much left to explore.

S: Yeah. Think I scared Twilight when I put that manticore down. Manticore. Fuckin’... man.

Z: It is certainly possible. Twilight Sparkle is a pony most wise, yet sees the world still with wide child’s eyes. Her lore is steadfast and her heart is strong, but there are things about which she is wrong.

S: I take it you aren’t bothered.

Z: Suffering should be circumscribed, yes. In the deserts, they say: What kindness lies at the edge of a blade, but the world’s ending and the thirst to sate? It is a hard word I struggle to relate, for no zebra there bemoans their fate. They know what it is to live and die, and seldom is the one who asks why.

S: Sounds a little like home. So she’s younger, right? Young adult, I guess. Hasn’t seen much violence in her life, probably. Yeah, I guess that would all be pretty shocking… Damn. Poor girl. That pony is stable, you said. What does stable mean?

Z: He will live another day, but a heavy price he has paid. He will never walk, I fear, nor hold the one he may hold dear. He speaks and sees, and talked a bit; he requires one of us to sit. It is a sad thing to relate.

S: Shit.

Z: Vulgarity hides a troubled heart. Of your explorations, I regret the start.

S: It’s not been going well, no. Um… sorry. For the cursing. Habit.

Z: I have heard much.

S: Heh. I bet you have.

Z: I am a collector of sorts, you see. Perhaps we’ll trade stories, you and me--there’s naught else to pass the time, and it will be a chance to, ah, break my rhyme.

S: Heh, nice one.

Z: I try. Before you I lay my burden down, that I might speak unchained. I am allowed this grace when I take on my holy mission. Tell me of your homeworld, Samantha.

S: So you connected the dots. I live on a planet called Earth. We have one moon, like you have. It’s a lot like here, actually. It used to be green and now it’s… a lot less green in some places. I was born in a town called Amarillo, and when it was destroyed my father took us to a town called Little Rock, and we were only there long enough to see what happened, and then from there to Shreveport. There were a few years there, and then it fell. After that, we wandered.

Z: To foreign armies and terrible foes? The lores of all races have such tales. You seemed to suggest something else before.

S: Civil War. It ain’t even two sides now but four or five, all squabbling, shifting alliances. Bad men get into high offices, worse men do their work for them, and monsters rule the street. Idiots try to make things better and they botch it. Nothing works--go one way or go another, either way we’ll slip down the hole. It’s like quicksand. It couldn’t last, Z. They fucked it up forever and ever, and everybody who talks like one day they’ll be sunshine and rainbows is sellin’ somethin’.

Z: A grim perspective, to be sure. Your people are scattered and the tribe is perhaps no more. What have you done since your childhood? Are you a hunter? Do you have a new tribe, or do you serve only yourself.

S: I was a courier.

Z: A messenger--another archetype. The lone messenger on the lonely roads.

S: Jus’ me and my horse.

Z: What is this horse?

S: You know, it just occurred to me how fuckin’ weird this is. A horse is an animal on Earth. We ride them. I like horses--when I was a courier I would get a bonus every now and a then and I’d spend a bit in town to find apples or somethin’ to feed them. They look… well, actually they look kind of like that pony Malthus brought in. No horns or wings or nothin’. And way, way bigger.

Z: Already you have been a boon. Anteans! True Anteans! By the Eternal Fires of Kilmasa this is surely a legend worth bearing. When at last I return home, your name shall live forever, truly. Samantha who has ridden on the backs of the Anteans!

S: Heh, giants, I guess?

Z: Yes, thought long dead. They were gentle but feared by ignorant ponies. What a cruel lot they were given.

S: I liked horses. I still do. I thought about them wh--well, I think about them sometimes. I wish I had one with me. It’d be rough going in these woods though. But I was a Courier. I carried letters from town to town, keeping connections alive. Personal stuff, business deals, lovers’ letters… everything and anything. I’ve carried medicine and food and weapons. I got a job to carry the ugliest dog once--fifty miles with this spoiled thing half-hanging out my backpack. Couriers aren’t trusted--people think we’re dirty or suspicious, just cause we’re never around for long. Some couriers? They’re shitsacks. But most of us were good. We just wanted to help, and we knew we were good enough to make it. When you’re tough, you should use that strength.

Z: So you are a warrior, then. And your race seems to be one of warriors, fallen perhaps on hard times. But you have no hope that your honor will be restored?

S: Warriors? Makes us sound like we had honor in the first place.

Z: You certainly seem to possess at least a modicum.

S: Uh… thanks. Thank you, I guess.

Z: Tell me more of this place. Tell me of your battles and let me judge your worth then.

S: My… oh. I’ve… I mean, I haven’t really been anything I would call a battle. Not as a combatant. The closest I’ve come is quick shootouts and massacres. When I was young, my hometown was destroyed. I… my momma died there. It was horrible. The weapons we build are terrifying. Hundreds can die in seconds. Thousands, even. Do you see this? This is a gun. Have I shown you this before? Nevermind. It’s complicated but it shoots metal bits using gunpowder. It’s like a tiny explosion that propels the bullet out.

Z: Hmmm. Like saltpeter mixture. I know of this! Inefficient, but I suspect that your alchemists have perfected it. It seems your people fight like mine once did, with alchemical fire. Then I can better imagine what you speak of… that is troubling.I am sorry for your loss, Samantha. My heart grieves with you.

S: Thank you.

Z: I will concede that you do not see yourself as a warrior, but would you protect your tribe from foes? I still suspect that within your chest beats a warrior’s proud heart. That you do not delight in slaughter and atrocity only confirms it.

S: I… I don’t know. I’m just me. I have a gun. I’ve fought some. Mostly I run--because there’s no point in fighting if winning is impossible. I tried to help who I could, and I couldn’t help a lot of folks. I just did what I could.

Z: Such is the way of all things.

S: I guess you wanna know about Earth, though, so as long as you don’t mind me not talkin’ about all the dyin’, I could do that. West Texas is… well, Texas in general is big. Everything there is big…

T: Hello? Samantha? Zecora?

Z: Hello, Twilight, my friend. Come and join us. How does Fluttershy fare?

T: Better, now that the other human is gone. Er… sorry. That probably sounded mean.

S: Nah, I ain’t exactly comfortable with him either, so I get it. I… I mean, is she…

T: Hm?

S: Nevermind. Is she okay, otherwise? She wasn’t near enough to get hurt, but she seemed pretty flighty and I was a little concerned that it would be too much for her.

T: She’s alright.

S: Good.

Z: Now, Twilight Sparkle, while you are still with us: I know you too are a collector of lore. This is a fine fount of it. I have learned much this day.

T: Heh, well, I am a scholar first and last. I’m not exactly… I mean…

Sighs.

T: Sorry. Samantha, I was actually wondering if I could ask you some questions.

S: Shoot. Uh… I mean, go for it. Or… argh. Yes, ask away.

T: Haha, I knew the second one. This talisman is better than the other one, it can understand most idiomatic expressions! Isn’t it fascinating?

S: It’s pretty damn great, if you ask me.

T: I do love it when ponies can appreciate well-done enchantments! Right, anyway… Well, first, what is that?

S: The Judge? Ah. Well, you seem like a smart pony, so I guess you’ll have questions I can’t answer about the finer points. See, this is a bullet? Or, well, it’s a casing. See, inside of here, they put powder. This thing, with the little punched hole in it? That was a tiny explosive--

T: A WHAT?

S: Whoa, whoa, hold your horses. Uh…

T: The translator mangled that one.

Z: Anteans! She has ridden the mighty Antean and communed with the lost giants.

T: A-Anteans are a myth, Zecora…

S: Don’t know about those. Horses are animals on Earth. They kinda look like you, but all browns and blacks and whites instead of purple, and with no horns or wings. They’re about… I mean, usually, like this tall. Or taller.

T: Oh… oh Celestia, so you mean…

Z: Do you see what I mean?

T: Oh goodness, I do. Please, go on. You were talking about explosions but then I want to hear about where you come from! This is a huge find!

S: Well, the hammer, this thing? Hits the little charge and that ignites the powder, and that forces this bit through the gun barrel faster than a fat pig for slop. Okay, yeah, that’s not gonna translate. Really fast. Fast enough to do a lot of damage, basically. This gun is actually pretty old, from the 2010’s.

T: Goodness. Brute force, but also elegant in a way. May I see it?

Pause.

S: Sure. Be… Please be careful. Let me unload it… here.

T: Thank you! Oh gosh, real new technology without any magic, it’s… ugh. It smells awful.

S: Yup. After awhile you get to like the smell. at least, I did.

T: I could never like that smell.

S: Just… don’t drop it. Sorry, that magic is kind of making me feel all cold and anxious agin--no, no it’s fine! Don’t worry. I need to get over it. Any other questions?

T: W-well… Sorry. About my magic. I mean… I’ll find out what’s wrong, I promise! There’s no magic where you’re from? Where are you from, anyway? Zecora’s explanation confused me a little…

S: Well, on Earth, magic is just a story. Made-up stories, fiction, myths, legends… they have magic sometimes. But it’s usually poorly defined or obviously based on real-life things and it’s not something anyone believes is real. I’m from Earth. And by that I mean… okay. It’s like… I’m not a scientist, so don’t ask me to explain how it works. I’m just a drifter and a Courier. Earth is in one universe and we are in another one. I think. Probably? At least, that’s what I understood.

T: So you… crossed the Veil?

S: The what?

T: Sweet Celestia… Thaumus’ shaggy beard.

S: Uh… pardon?

T: That shouldn’t be possible, Samantha. Ponies have been trying to pierce the Veil for over a thousand years. Nopony even tries anymore because we assumed it was impossible! The Veil’s magic is wild, raw, unfiltered. It’s like wrestling with fire itself. It almost burned Starswirl the Bearded’s horn right off when he tried to cross over!

S: Well, I stepped through a glowy circle gate. It sucked.

T: You have to tell me what it was like! No, notes! UGH the one time I forget something to write on… no! No, in my saddblebags. Perfect. Now explain.

Samantha chuckles.

S: Ain’t you a cute little student. Sorry, I envy you. I never really got much schoolin’. What did it feel like? It sucked, mostly. I couldn’t even remember my name for probably an hour. Walking was really hard… I really wasted the whole first day just trying to feel like I wasn’t dying. I got to see the sun rise, though. It was… It was pretty breathtaking. I wonder if how emotional I got durin’ all that was part of crossing over and being all confused.

T: No, I think it was just Celestia! I used to love watching her raise the sun.

S: What?

T: Celestia! Princess Celestia raises the sun every morning, and now that she’s back, Luna rules over the moon and the night.

S: You… holy shit you’re serious. Like, it's not just a metaphor or some shit.

T: You look a little… uh, ill at ease?

S: That’s impossible.

T: No, it’s very possible! I could explain how it works, mostly, but I’m not sure you have the thaumaturgical knowledge to really--

S: No no no no. No that’s just not possible. Even I know planets go around suns. Not the other way around.

T: Oh gosh, like with gravity? I mean, other systems do that, but that would be terrifying. The idea of falling forever around a huge star burning like that… Gosh.

S: Let’s… let’s move on to the next question before I lose my grip on reality, if you kindly would.

T: Right, well, I was wondering about your species in general….

F: Um… hello.

S: Oh, uh… hi.

Silence.

S: Um… I was wondering… I was wondering if you were alright. And about him, I guess. Is he…?

F: O-Oh, he’s fine! He’s doing well. I mean… considering.

S: Yeah.

F: But I think he won’t be safe to move for a little longer. Even with Zecora’s Zebra magic and Twilight’s spells, he’ll have to stay here another day at least. I mean… I hope it’s not a bother but we can’t move him safely just yet…

S: No, no it’s fine. It’s a big castle! I’d make room for the little guy if it weren’t. Mind if I sit against the wall?

F: Not at all.

S: Ah. It’s good to be off my feet…

Silence.

S: You’re a quiet sort, aren’t you?

F: Oh my goodness, I’m sorry. I’m just…

Unintelligable.

S: Didn’t quite catch that, but I can guess. It’s alright. Nothin’ wrong with bein’ a little shy. Or just quiet in general. It’s been a long day and a hard one. I just wanted to make sure you were alright. I know you didn’t get hurt… I mean, you didn’t right?

F: Unintelligable. No.

S: Good… good, I’m glad. But even when you don’t get shot at or mauled or any of that, you can still get hurt in here, right?

Sam taps her temple.

S: A lot of people forget that, but I know it can be hard.

F: I’m… scared. I think you were right, that it was sick. Manticores are fierce, but they don’t like loud noises. It should have run away when you made that huge boom! But it didn’t, and I don’t know why… unless it was afraid of something else, and something that can scare a manticore is… gosh.

S: Yeah, I feel the same way.

F: I… I sort of heard what you were saying to Zecora. About having to put it down.

S: Ah.

F: I…

Unintelligable.

S: Sorry, if I need to go, I--

F: No, it’s alright. I’m always… I’ve always been anxious. I can’t help it. I think you were right. That was the right thing to do.

S: You think so? With how you reacted I expected you to be appalled.

F: I don’t enjoy it… I love animals, even scary ones, and I would never want one to suffer. But Twilight doesn’t really understand them, so she didn’t understand… I mean, sometimes an animal can’t understand its own pain. It can’t stop hurting, and you just have to do something very hard and very sad, because it’ll never be better. When I know that one of my animal friends is very, very sick and that there isn’t anyway to cure them… Well.

S: I understand.

F: I know. Twilight wouldn’t, at first. She is a very smart pony! I don’t mean she isn’t! Eventually, I think she would understand. But sometimes she’s… she doesn’t really get life sometimes. But it’s okay. I love her and she always tries so hard, and it’s not like I expect every pony ever to understand.

S: Thank you. She seemed really upset and freaked out. I didn’t want her first impression of me, and of humans in general, to be that we were monsters.

F: I was a little worried at first… Perique talked about one of you.

S: That his name? Perique. I like it.

F: Y-yes, that’s it. He talked about… well, it was very bad.

S: I know. I know who he’s talking about. And you’re right. He’s right. That guy is a monster. He scares me. He doesn’t care who he hurts. I don’t want him to hurt any of you. It isn’t fair--it’s not right. He’s only here because of me, and because I came here. I have to keep him from doing this again. This poor pony…

F: Do you have to… um…

S: Yes.

F: Oh.

S: I don’t want to, but I do. I’m afraid that I’m just enjoying being angry… but I don’t want this to happen again. What if next time he finds some poor little town of you guys? He’s got body armor and a machine gun and stealth fields and he’s nuts. None of this is right. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I just was supposed to explore.

F: I’m scared of him. I think I might be scared of you, too. But I think you’re a good pony. Good person, I mean. Sorry…

S: It’s okay. And… thanks.

F: Be careful, Samantha. I mean the normal kind, but also…

Unintelligable.

S: Sorry, again?

F: Sometimes ponies change. Be careful, okay? And you should talk to Mr. Malthus, because he’s your friend.

Short pause.

S: Right. I will.

Interview: An Epistle to the Canterlonians

Dear Princess Celestia,

First, you’ll realize this immediately, but… I’ve enchanted this letter. It’s a double layered adaptation of Night Light’s Fourth variation. Do you like it? I thought it was rather efficient myself. Oh, I hope you like it.

Sorry, I’m a little scatterbrained today, princess. It’s been a very stressful and honestly dangerous few days, whether we knew it at the time or not. The things in this letter cover a wide range from the exciting to the terrifying. But, I think I can sum it all up in one sentence: I made a new friend, and her name is Samantha.

I wrote the name in Griffish, just so you can get the sound of it right. Equestrian ideaograms just really don’t handle those sounds well! I ended up having to use symbols that were ambiguous and you know me, so I just gave up on that and switched. Samantha is not a griffon, however. She’s something called a human.

Humans are bipedal creatures with hands and light fur most everywhere but their heads. They are mammalian and intelligent, and capable of craftsmanship and language. They must be considered one of the Speaking Races.

I have met three humans, but Zecora met the first one. She tells me that she found Samantha wandering in the woods and helped her find out what was and wasn’t safe to eat in the Everfree. After that, Samantha returned her gift and they began talking. That was when Zecora came to me with the story and a strange problem.

You see, the humans seem to be… well. I’m not sure how to describe it. It isn’t that they aren’t magical so much as they are abnormal in their reaction to magic outside of themselves. Simply being in the presence of Zecora seemed to have serious and potentially dangerous effects on her at first, though she has acclimated. Symptoms included paranoia, anxiety, fear of impending doom… as well as a feeling of being deathly cold and numb. I’m not sure I understand it, and I’ve tried to include notes worth reading but… well, you’ll see.

But this cover letter is more about my general thoughts! The other pages have diagrams, detailed notes, and some observations that trouble me, as well as some sketches I did. I figure that this is a pretty historic moment, and it would be best if I document as much as I can! There is also an account of a battle with a rabid manticore that I humbly suggest you read.

But part of the reason why I felt like I had to double enchant this letter is because of the humans themselves. There are three that we know of, and they claim to have become from beyond the Veil. Yes, that Veil. Oh, Princess, isn’t that amazing? Except that from her description, I think I’m glad that Star Swirl couldn’t cross over.

The first is Samantha. I think that, despite our short acquaintance, that I consider Samantha my friend. I think if she were a pony… she would be an Earth pony. Probably because she reminds me a lot of Applejack. She is always telling ponies to “give it to her straight” which means to tell the truth, and she’s very concerned with honesty. At first, I wasn’t sure about her--she comes from a very, very different world, princess, one full of violence and disharmony. Yet even so, despite her rougher exterior, I found that she was capable of great compassion as much as she is desperate violence. She does not revel in her capability to inflict harm, much to my relief. And she was very gentle with a nervous Fluttershy, and you can imagine how that made me want to like her all the more. I get the sense that she is very sad, Princess, and also lonely. I wish there were more humans here for her to be friends with that weren’t like… well, the others.

The second human reminds me of one of those old unicorn sages. His name is Malthus, and he is very different from Samantha. Where she is all about honesty and being direct, he is all about smiling and avoidance. He reminds me of the nobility in High Canterlot, weaseling their way into ever higher circles. That isn’t to say that he is bad, necessarily. Some of those nobles weren’t so bad. Some of them are wonderful ponies! But many aren’t. Malthus was once a guard of some sort, but now he is a mapmaker, or at least he says so. His tone suggests that something about this might be amusing, or otherwise untrue. In fact, much of what he says could be described this way. Samantha does not dislike him, but she does not trust him. I think that she has tried to be nice to Malthus and Malthus has tried to be nice back… perhaps his mannerisms make it hard? I could understand that. Sometimes you can offend someone without meaning to at all.

The last human is scary, Princess. He reminds me a little of the old pegasus barbarians I read about when I was a filly. He has a device of some sort that allows him to go unseen, and is undetectable (maybe, though I’m sure magic could do the job!). That human is a monster. Samantha is very afraid of him, and I think she worried that we would judge her by his example, but Fluttershy and I would never do that. Just because one pony is a jerk doesn’t mean all ponies are jerks. But the third human is from a very bad place or group beyond the Veil and he has come here chasing these two humans, and maybe to harm Equestria. He has a device of terrible power, allowing him to hurt or kill many ponies at long distances with little effort, and he could do so without being seen.

Oh, Princess… he crippled a poor farmer on the other side of the Everfree from Ponyville and used him as bait.

When we talked about it, Samantha’s eyes grew very hard. She said that she would deal with him, and I was a little afraid of her.

I’m not sure what to do, but I trust her. I think that she is a good person. If there are more like her beyond the Veil, then maybe we can be friends after all, even with these others. They could use some Harmony, that’s for sure.

Your Student,

Twilight Sparkle

P.S. The mayor will be sending a formal request for a company of Guardsponies today at some point. She is pretty shaken up about poor Perique. That's the pony who was hurt. He's staying with Sam now in the Everfree castle, and she's taking care of him.

Interview: Leopold's Ghost

Author's Note

To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe. Who paid the expenses of the noble enterprise I don’t know; but the uncle of our manager was leader of that lot.

(Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad)

Interview: Leopold's Ghost

S: And that’s all I know.

M: It’s certainly more than I did. Total light-bending stealth field…

S: Scary as hell.

M: Yes, well, it’s not all that it was cracked up to be. That model isn’t in use much these days. Why, you might ask? Because it was poorly thought out. If you bend all the light around you, you don’t see. Secondly, the cameras it relied on for sight were fragile. And, the weakness I’m most interested in: they were detectable if you knew what you were doing.

S: And do you?

M: Is Charleston a hole in the ground? No. It’s not because I do know. But I don’t have the equipment I had then. I’ll see what I can do. Call back in an hour, and stay out of the open.

S: What comes after?

M: Samantha? What?

S: Sorry. Shoulda said somethin’ before that. I mean, what comes after this? Do they come back? Do we come back? And who is coming back?

M: I can take a moment. You know I can’t see the future, or at least I do hope you know that. I can make guesses, and I think some of those guesses are all but certain things, but I can’t give you prophecies.

S: I have a feeling that your guesses might be closer to that then you think, but keep going.

M: Well, let’s examine what we have. We have a pristine world with, as far as I can tell, a low tech level and a primitive yet not savage native population. I’ve not been in much of a position to make meaningful surveys beyond the woods and the nearby farms, but I’m not sure I need to.

S: Why’s that?

M: Because it really is pristine. You know what the world’s like.

S: Food? Wood? Water?

M: Lebensraum.

S: What?

M: It’s German. Living room, basically. We survive by expanding. We need space to live in, materials to build with, food to eat and an environment that can be cultivated by settlers long enough for synthetic food production to begin in earnest. In short, this place is a second chance.

S: And you’d win the war.

M: The war would be irrelevant, but yes. We’d win the war. But we might save the world without all of the heartache and sorrow of rebuilding. The bans of austerity… all of it loosened because we have a new land to draw upon. I’m not sure what it would look like.

S: But you’ll guess.

M: Yes, I suppose. I’ve been thinking very hard on this. This forest… the farms… even the aliens, in their way. All of it reminds me of a different time. A purer time. Before the war, before the bombs, before the bioweapons. Before the Seattle Plague…. Before everything. We can have this. We must. It’s vital. Through trade, that is how we will prosper--we’ll uplift the primitive native life in return for access to their resources. In return, we provide them with some use out of the raw materials they obviously would only squander trying to advance even at a reasonable rate without hands. We benefit each other while moving mankind forward.

S: Ambitious. And you think we’ll get along just fine, then?

M: Well, one hopes. Eventually, yes. In the short-term, something will have to be done about the effect they have on us. It’s a bit troubling.

S: Yeah.

M: On that note, I suppose we could work out some arrangement with the locals. I confess I’m not quite as conversed in their local structures as you, but I’m sure they have some sort of rudimentary government. I’m sure with some flattery and a interesting trinkets worth sharing but not worth holding on to, you know… ancient generators, early teens’ tech even… we could get them to move away from where the tesseract is anchored.

S: Wait, hold up a bit. Like, relocating? Movin em out? Just… just like that?

M: Don’t be dramatic. It’s not a big deal. We pay them to move, fair value for the land, and at the same time jumpstart their society with technology beyond what they can achieve presently. There is really no downside here.

S: I… I mean, yeah, you’re payin for it I guess.

M: Exactly. The Federal may have dreams of conquest and slaughter but I’ve seen what war looks like, Samantha Marshall. I don’t want to go there again.

S: Right.

M: And I know you understand me. No, I prefer to deal with others on more equitable terms. Trade is the best weapon of the civilized world and of the parts of mankind worth saving. Trade, dignity, and pragmatism. I was actually the one that argued for this mission.

S: Pardon?

M: Yes. You see, the real question was always what came after. I’ve said it so many times that when I heard the words spill out of you I was taken aback for a moment, almost wondering if you had read my mind. What comes after indeed! That is the question we should have been asking all along!

S: Right. I can understand that. I mean… I mean, hell, who sends a bunch of hopped up fascist thugs out into a powder keg? And yet here we are, living in the afterwards. Amarillo.

M: Precisely. Man’s constant inability to foresee the obvious dangers of his actions. Which is why I have spent quite a bit of time trying to see the ends of our own--how this place and its discovery will effect our world.

S: Sayin that like it’s always an accident.

M: Pardon?

S: Maybe they wanted it to happen. Yeah, they don’t see the rest of it coming. Not the Commonwealth or the riots or any of that, but the violence? The death? They wanted it. I saw em. I saw em want it.

M: I… I remember. Watching.

S: Everybody thinks they did.

M: What is your point, though? Beyond just remembering that awful day, I mean.

S: You wanna be friends.

M: With… ah. Yes, of course. Fighting would be wasteful. We don’t know this land and they do--they are useful to us, and we can in turn be useful to them. Exchange of ideas if nothing else, of culture and of fresh perspectives. And afterward, perhaps of labor and goods as any other section of society. Mankind would have a friend in a new world, and perhaps such a stablizing force as a junior partner would keep him in one piece. More importantly, he would have a rich new potential marketplace that would drive his own recovery and assertion of himself upon creation.

S: Like some kind of little brother.

M: Ha. Yes, I like the image. A kid brother. That works.

S: We’ll just help them along, like. Get em up to speed, get em goin, get em workin.

M: Yes, more or less. Eventually, once they’ve been uplifted after some time, we can begin trading on equal terms. Of course, that'll take some time...

S: After we let em get that far.

M: Ah, skepticism. Understandable. It would be in our best interest to do so. But I do see your point. I suppose that it is not foolproof. There is always the possibility of unprincipled men jamming the machine of progress. It is the human way, really. But you must see that it would be counterproductive, and that those of us who make inroads early will be able to shape the policy of our race as it encounters new worlds.

S: Pioneers. Not just now but later, right? You an me an others, all of us first generation folks havin the opinions that matter and sayin the important things. We’re the… whats-her-names. The indian lady with those two explorers.

M: Ha! Sacajawea. Yes, even more so than perhaps you realize. Lewis and Clark were excellent at many things, but she was perhaps the only reason they really were able to “explore” at all. Or stay alive much farther past the Mississippi.

S: Yeah.

M: But yes, you’ve grasped it I believe. We will frame what others see. We must frame it. It is the only way to ensure that our dealings here will profit mankind. And they will, because honestly they must. This is our answer. It has to be. With this, we can restore the America of yesterday. We can expand it beyond the confines of our world.

S: . And how are you going to frame it?

M: This is a land of treasures. It is beautiful and unsullied. Perhaps dangerous, but calm and orderly exploitation is possible. And you?

S: I’ll tell Doc about ponies. He’ll love them. He’ll want to talk to Zecora.

M: Heh. Having met the man, I agree.

S: You’ve given me a lot to think about. You read my file, right? It say anything about me beyond just where I been?

M: The Doctor’s notes on your surprising amount of knowledge, for one raised by the wastelands.

S: I read a lot. I’ve been thinking of a book in particular. Maybe I’ll tell you about it when next I see you. Call when you’ve got that exploit on the suit, ‘kay?

M: Will do. And Samantha… do think about these things in advance. We must do our best to guide the future in what ways we can. I think your bond with the natives will be invaluable and I assure you that it will make you an important woman in the days ahead, once we’ve rid ourselves of the Federal presence.

S: Yeah. Yeah, I wonder if you might not be on to something. Out.

Purgation

Author's Note

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

( C. S. Lewis, "God in the Dock" (1948))

Purgation

High in the clouds, a chariot bears the end of all flesh. Her coming is felt as unease and dismissed by the fearful hindbrains of the interlopers as battle jitters. It is not. It is the human spirit knowing that it has been dormant too long--that it will be broken beneath what is coming next--that there is a reason why magic died on Terra. Man has written of himself--how in apprehension like a god--and yet this is the only thing that could have been meant. To mortal eyes, she shines like a thousand suns. She is the white hot center of the galaxy, her billowing mane the solar wind of the sun that shall never set and her eyes burn through your own and expose your every secret to the earth as if she had peeled back your skin by a mere command.

The universe has a cruel streak. It spins gods into the world, and then makes them nice matrons who enjoy tea and leisurely walks. Their mere presence could incite a city to madness, and all this one wishes is to have this dark business over with so that she might return to her gardens and a quiet life where paperwork is the greatest challenge.

Her student’s words were troubling. The butcher of the forest, for instance, was enough to chill the blood. Celestia is older than most ponies know or care to know, and she remembers the times when the world was savage as much as she remembers the ages of unbroken tranquility. She reads between the lines and sees the murderous eyes that no doubt peer out from the brush. Her guards are to be nothing more than a net or a fence, keeping the chaos inside. She will see to it herself.

LOG 14, Night

Tonight, it’s just me… Fluttershy, and Zecora. Twilight headed back. She and the other locals talked at length, and I tried not to eavesdrop. If they’d wanted me to hear, they’d have been louder and all. I don’t blame them at all--sometimes you just want a little privacy to think out loud and I understand that.

Talked to Malthus. I have… Concerns. That’s a good word. But I ain’t gonna talk about it now.

For now, I watch over this little pony. Shy and Zecora are sleepin’, and I got the watch in the darkest part of the night. Prox alarms reset, Judge ready. All is well.

Except the things that pretty obviously ain’t well and maybe never be well in any shape or form. Every now and a then, when I start feelin’ the night creeping up, I’ll stand up and walk the floor. Sometimes I’ll slip into his room to see if he’s doin’ alright.

He’s scared out of his mind of me.

Human. All too human--that’s what I was to him. I wasn’t a monster and he wasn’t blind. He knew what I was and what I had done and yet his eyes were blank with fear. And you know what?

I can’t stop thinking. I’ve been thinking all along but before I was starving or lonely or didn’t want to fill my log with stupid shit but now? Now I’m scared. Scared of what, you might ask? What isn’t there to be afraid of? You can take your pick--the murderer outside in the trees. The crazy Chris Columbus out there, with his trade and his empires. Tryin’ to rebuild dead America like it’s Lazarus to call out of the grave again, that’s what they’re up to here. And so was I. And so I am.

When I first fell out of that door in the air, I was incoherent and barely functional. Soon as I was either of those things, I had only one thought: this was the sun we were meant to see. That’s how everything was supposed to be like, right at the beginning of the whole damn mess. Beautiful and lush, green and vibrant. We were supposed to have a world worth living in and maybe this one is worth it.

When I was so, so young, we lived in Amarillo and we had a wonderful home. My mom had an affection for elaborate wallpapers and my father had the best comfy chair in the world and that’s all a child my age needed. And then we blew it up. In Shreveport, there were good things and books sometimes. And then they blew it up. Jackson, that city where the streets crack and flowers bloom--raided over and over. In Texas the water was poisoned and the people died. Across the sea they fight wars that erase cities in the blink of an eye. The world just keeps turning on like nothin’ is the matter and we keep murderin’ each other. Just stabbing away in the dark, end over end, hoping and praying we’ll make it--we’ll be on top--just one more time, just one more time. Grasping and reaching and…

What if you could go back to the moment the worst happened and just… nudge everything slightly to the side? I thought about it. When I was younger I imagined what it might be like to have control over time itself. I could go back to the moment the fifties from the Federal gunship tore my mother to crimson shreds. I could just… nudge her to the side. Maybe even push her a few feet closer to the door of the shelter.

It was like dad’s hooch. We both retreated into somethin’ because humans… we’re always running one way or another, either straight ahead to burn and take or backwards to hide. Cowards except when the knife work comes, that’s us. The idea that you could just… erase a really terrible thing before it happened was great. Stupid, but great.

But it’s more than just a little change. People will always find a way to fuck it all up, no matter what you do. Fix one hole and they’ll make three more.

Even if you could stop evil people from doin’ what they want, then what’s to stop you from doin’ what you want? It’s a weak argument, I know. “But I ain’t them,” is what I’d say, but if I’m honest… If I’m honest is it about types or degree? Am I so different, or am I the same but less? If I was really something new and different from people like the blackshirt, than why did I come here armed with a gun with size and power? I was meaning to bring a rifle alongside the judge, with enough ammunition to hold out for a day or so. I came not only anticipating that I would need those things but almost eager for their use.

How could I not be?

The feeling of the Judge roaring starts in your hand and travels down like electricity ‘till it gets in your heart and it just hums all up in you. You can feel it like a burn all the way to your toes. It’s good feeling. You hit something from two hundred yards that’s the size of an old world quarter and you just feel it in your gut, a pull, like a grin but for your whole body.

I don’t know if that’s bad. I just think maybe that in the end I may not be a different kind of thing than that bastard. I’m just not quite as bad. I know that for sure. Or, at least, when that poor little pony isn’t staring at me like I’m the devil himself… When I’m by myself I can think that and it feels solid like.

LOG 15

Today I’m twitchy. It’s not just nerves and it’s not just me--I made an offhand comment to Malthus and he echoed everything I was feeling. I’m not sure what it could mean, but I don’t like it.

Malthus came through for me a little before lunchtime. He tried explaining how it all worked, but a lot of it went over my head. The basic idea is that the stealth suits that truly bent light around them had some problems that nobody fixed ‘cause they weren’t worth the time or money. Some of it I get--if you can’t get light to your eyes, you can’t see, or somethin’ like that. But the worst problem wasn’t that part, because they worked out solutions with cameras and radar and all kinds of crazy sensors. The real reason that the suit was abandoned was because if you knew what to look for, you could pinpoint where it was even when it was running silent.

Malthus said he foiled some bombing on the coast because he knew what to look for, and I believe him. We don’t have the equipment that he did in the Concordat, but we do have his automapper, and we have some spare electronics from the Mule if he needs them.

In the end, he delivered. The automapper will pick up that bastard if he steps within a mile or so of it. Perfect.

Malthus even brought it by and showed me how it worked. Today we work out our plan.

Before that, Fluttershy and Zecora. Zecora seems to understand what we’re doing, and offered to help if we needed it. Fluttershy just looked after… what’s nis name.

Perique. I’m not sure I should be forgettin’ that name.

So she’s looking after Perique. I took Zecora up on her offer when she mentioned she could probably brew something up that would get our blackshirt to blunder into a trap. And while some people might mean “trap” as lying in wait with guns, I mean actual traps.

I have some ideas.

Malthus watches the screen, I sharpen a stake. Our native friends are quiet. Zecora is working on some potion or other, she said it would help.

We are all on edge, waiting for Malthus to find the tell-tale bleep. Every second without one is a blessing, really. If this thing had a visual component, I would show you what I’m working on, but I’ll just have to describe it--traps. I need time. Every second that murderer isn’t in range is a second I have to make another sharp stake.

I’ve planned out my traps as best I can, and for once I don’t care about mercy. I can’t. I can’t let him get out because after the first trap he’ll be too weary and it won’t work again. We won’t catch him any other way. Malthus thinks that we could lure him into the open, something about trial and error and me being a rabbit but…

But honestly I’m of two minds about that. I think Malthus might be decent. But I think he might also be clever, and cleverness always seems to get in the way of bein’ good. Sometimes. I don’t know. The point is that it would be awful easy to lose me along the way in that plan, wouldn’t it? Even if he didn’t mean to.

The other thing is that I think he may be bluffing so he still looks in control in front of me and Zecora and Fluttershy. He needs to seem all rational and calm but he’s as red-blooded and alive as me, and I’ll bet a greenback or nine he’s just as on edge. Hell, I know he is--asked him, didn’t I?

We talked a bit more. The conversation wandered, and neither of us cared. I knew I was radiating nervousness and I knew he was the same cause you could cut the air between us with a knife. What did we talk about? I asked him about the Army. He told me about Mauritania and the shitfest that was the desert. I told him about being a Courier. I told him Tolstoy sucked ass and he argued about that, and was also wrong about it. We talked about the future, if we survived. And by that, I mean he talked about colonies and porters and I was mostly quiet.

I asked him if he ever thought about how America was founded.

And you know, for a moment, he paused. I think he understood.

I just… I want him to understand. I want him to really, really understand what he’s saying.

I’m worried about what we’ll do to this world. I’m worried what it will do to us. The first few days, maybe I could have believed that this place would just wash us clean. We would realize what we had and maybe we’d all be good. Maybe before yesterday I could have believed we might come in peace. That some kind of damn door in the sky could be a good thing.

But I don’t believe that. Not anymore. In another world, in another time, with different folks… maybe. Maybe one day. Maybe before the world went to hell. But not now.

He’s got to see that. He has to see what kinds of hell we’ll dig up if we start tryin’ to put down roots in a land that ain’t ours, not as guests or neighbors but as… as a damn colony.

God, that’s what it is, isn’t it? We’ll just boot the Indians out and have ourselves a nice little Jamestown. Maybe the fuckin’ unicorns can magic us some alien turkeys and we can pass around the fuckin’ peace pipe.

Fuck! Hand slipped, cut a little bit out of my hand.

God, what is this feeling? It’s like… it’s like when I first met Zecora. I feel cold even though I know it’s a pretty warm day. Sucked on the wound like I have since I was little, noticed the taste of copper even though I stopped noticing it forever ago. It can’t just be nerves. Not nerves about the human out there, anyway. Someone is coming. Some pony or ponies or coming. I know they’re here. But what are they? Is is just how many of them, is that it? Is that why I feel…

Deep breaths. I’ll be fine. I’m going to be fine. I’ll ask Zecora if she can’t do any of that sealing stuff like Twilight Sparkle did so I can handle being in their presence. Maybe it just wore off and I’m suddenly feeling three natives all at once. That has to be it.

Just… I just have to hold on long enough to set something right. And then I’ll go home. Shut the door behind me. I can’t let them send more like him.

Celestia does not go armored. She spends most of the morning preparing, but not for combat. Rather, she spends her morning chaining the natural glory she exudes for the sake of her most favored student’s new friends. If a unicorn had sent one into cold sweat… if merely the passive magic of a Zebra shaman had left one shaking… Well. She would at least attempt not to send the poor thing into madness.

The troubling things in Twilight’s missive were beyond number. Some things were foreign, and others were known. The form of the creature in question she recognized. It was the world she did not know at all, and it was the world more than the creature that frightened her, what little was left to be frightened.

Mostly it steeled her will.

Poor, sweet Twilight knew so much, and yet the gaps in her knowledge were wide. There were vast oceans of darkness between the blazing suns of her lore, and in these gaps Celestia saw that which never occurred to Ponyville’s librarian. Twilight knew about danger and friendship and the power of the latter over the former, and of that Celestia was proud (it was a lesson she wished others had learned, before they sought alternatives) but of War Twilight knew nothing. Of War she was ignorant. Celestia was not ignorant. Celestia knew War.

For in this world she had invented it.

Do not misunderstand, as you see her before the edge of the woods, deep into that darkness peering. There is always, it seems, the temptation with beings of her like to be separated in two. Ponies see in Celestia one face, and then they think they see another in the pages of history or in the moments of their danger. Men look at the heavens and perceive a giving hand and they look beside them and see the divine fist. So it is with Celestia, who does not seem perturbed at all by the darkness of the wood or of by the nervous glances her guards give it and her, both alien in this moment.

Celestia the mother of all her kind. Celestia the God-Empress of Ponykind. The mistake was in thinking they were separate or even estranged at all, but she forgave and forgives now and will forgive distant future ponies this error.

“No pony is to be permitted in or out,” she says, needlessly. The guard beside her--Captain Ironshod, proud son of proud fathers, the second commander of the Celestial First of his line--knows his business. Yet there is a formality to these things, and Celestia has always been a respecter of certain rigid formalities.

“Yes, your Highness.”

“This includes Twilight Sparkle and her friends,” Celestia said softly, and then sighed. “If any pony tries to leave… detain them. Do not injure them. I wish to speak to any who emerge before I send them on their way unharmed.”

“I hear your will.”

“And Captain? Do keep them safe,” she added. The world outside of her narrowed war-grim vision began to fall away. “As a favor, if you will.”

“I would die rather than see any of this village be touched, Your Highness.”

“I know,” she said with finality, and then she trotted into the woods.

It did not do to go hunting on the wing, not in a place like this. Practically, magic or flying might alert her quarry to her pursuit. And there was just the principle of the thing. It didn’t do to hunt on such unequal terms. She could not shed her near-divinity or her nature, but she could walk. Even monsters deserved to die fighting. Maybe.

LOG 15, cont’d

I’m shaking.

It started a few minutes ago. I was covering another pit and I noticed my hand just felt… numb. I looked at it and I… is it colder? It has to be.

What is coming?

I have to focus. This is too important for me to break down now. I have to finish it. I have to finish him. I’ll keep this log up so I can talk myself sane.

Fuck! Thoughts… My mind is starting to feel sluggish. I need to remember the pattern .Where I was putting traps… Shit. At this rate I’ll fall into my own pits… hehe. Won’t that be ironic? Right? Perfect end right there, somethin’ outta books.

Borrowed… I borrowed Malthus’s long coat… maybe I can convince that bastard I kept my side of the… f-fuck. The deal.

My feet feel so heavy.

I can’t lose it now.

I can’t stop thinking about that poor little pony torn to shreds. I can’t stop thinking about his eyes when I went to visit him… he accused me but never said it but it was so obvious. I was Him, I was the Blackshirt. I did this. I led them here. I did this.

Can’t think straight.

Where does this pit go? Shit… I think I put the other one too far away from the path of least resistance. Gotta place ‘em where folk’ll walk or it don’t mean a thing…

Celestia does not hurry, but she does not dawdle.

Few can understand the deliberate pace of the long lived and long suffering. Where one pony would see nothing but aimless wandering, perhaps only Luna would see the careful and meticulous moving of the Inevitable Generalissimo.

You see, in the distant aching past Celestia had encountered violence and found it… chaotic. Petulent and childish. It was all noise and directionless running, wasteful and destructive (of course it was) but also unrefined. So she refined it. The old generals of that age had favored charges. Celestia favored high ground. They believed in the power of repeated volley of arrows and slings, and then later muskets before she destroyed the mechanical knowledge of the age of war. But Celestia believed in only one volley--if the pieces were all in the right positions, why waste shot or time or life? A single volley at the critical moment was worth hours of manuever. Where the Griffons used scouts and the Burro republics had favored spies, Celestia after decades found she needed both less and less. She set the board and invited them to play, and they did so--always so eagerly--and with dismay realized what had been evident all along.

They played into her hooves. And because she was gracious, because she was merciful, because she was loving, she did not make them suffer. Shock and awe were the best tools of war because they ended them. A single creature dies that its whole race might be spared the horror of slaughter. So it went.

So instead of barreling through the woods, Celestia moved with calm grace. She combed the forest meticulously. She felt constantly for the tell tale signs of life and found surprisingly little that stirred.

Hours went by, and she found no moving humans. She did, however, find their handiwork.

She found a few bodies left to rot, full of holes and covered in dried lifeblood. These did not faze her, though they saddened Celestia. Wasteful. Evil, perhaps. How callous. It had been the right decision, coming in person to nip this in the bud.

She found a shoddily constructed shelter in the woods, filled with garbage and marked by a hanging corpse--fen deer, if she wasn’t mistaken. Those were a holdover from before the Everfree’s devolution. Hunting did not bother her. She understood it. The decay of this creature’s basecamp was another story.

Celestia felt his aura everywhere and grimaced. It was not the worst she had felt, here or beyond. But it was certainly monstrous and acrid, tinged with madness. She found some of the murderous equipment and destroyed it without much thought.

Another sector of the woods cleared of the taint that walked on two legs. Now to go deeper, towards her old home, and all the reminders it had in store for her.

LOG 15

I think I’m done.

Every… every step I feel like someone is watching me and I don’t know if he’s there or if it’s something new. What do we really know about this place, after all? Fat lot of nothin’. God, god I can feel my sins crawling up my back.

I know it’s not just nerves now. It’s too intense, too fucked up to be that. This is exactly my reaction to Zecora and the others. It’s just so… so much more.

I had a thought. Twilight mentioned in passing… she mentioned some… some pony.

What was her name? Maybe this is her. The Queen pony or something. Her teacher? Princess? I can’t remember very well. And what I remember mostly is the past, stuff I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to see those things but I can’t stop seeing them.

Mom dying in the street. Over and over, every man I killed on the roads and in the rat’s alleys of Jackson and NEV and Memphis, over and over again. They all seem so unreal now, in this forest. Unreal cities. Unreal unreal unreal

Where am I?

What was I doing?

Hunting. I was hunting. I am hunting. Here is my bait, this coat. I’ll just… yes. Yes, that’ll work.

BLACKSHIRT! COME OUT FEDERAL! COME OUT AND TALK!

DID WHAT YOU WANTED!

GOT PROOF! BUT THERES SOMETHING YOU NEED TO KNOW!

COME OUT! COME OUT!

Absolution

Author's Note

The son of a hangman will play with ropes and dream of the day he will have a scaffold of his own to tend. But let him drink too deep of love and he will only stroke the hemp and cry that he is a man.

(Calvin Miller, The Song)

Absolution

I, Celestia, write this in my own power and seal it with my own personal seals. Beware, intruder, and know that this document is sealed and warded against eyes not my own. Any attempt to break the seals will alert me. Any attempt to otherwise divine the contents of the attached account will alert me. If you have taken this by force or chance, return it now and I will give you grace and mercy. Curiosity is not a sin, but intrusion is against the laws of Our realm.

So signed, in the first year of my Sister’s return,

Celestia Songbourne

This is an account of my foray into the Everfree Forest in response to my student’s encounter with several humans, the rest of which is also sealed but untouched by my personal magicks. I’ve made little effort to change or edit the manuscripts produced by my student, nor of the written out record of one human’s logs. I have preserved them all as an account to the darkness I found. I write this for myself, yes, but also for Twilight and others. It may be soon that we shall need to see this all in full again. And even if that day does not come… I believe that something of it should be preserved. Much has been said or done. Perhaps I too must give an account of myself, even if only to myself.

I first encountered the abominable lodgings of the loathsome murderer, whom the Huntress called “blackshirt” or “federal” or names too vulgar for my liking to reproduce. I do not, however, feel she was out of line in her description. The creature was vile.

I must say that humans have changed in many ways since last I walked among them and peered into their world. I begin to think that I saw humans in another plane, for these I hardly recognized. When last I left them they were refined savages feasting on olives and empire. It seems they grew in learning but not in wisdom in the meantime.

I purged his campsite. I purged every place touched by his foul aura with fire. Neccessary? No. But I did so.

And so I searched. These creatures are fast and wiley. I had forgotten that. It was surprisingly hard to find them--much more so than the Griffon warlords I have tracked down in the past. Always so loud, Griffons. Never good at dodging.

Perhaps I was out of practice. It has been ages since I last truly set out with a killing intention. I did not enjoy doing so then, and I do not enjoy it now. Even to write of it fills me with blackest disgust. Necessity is not license. It is not justification. It is only necessity.

Three humans. The murderer, the colonist, the huntress. Black, Grey, and… well.

I found the murderer first, an hour past noon. An hour and thirty-six minutes, to be precise, for the sun gives more than light. I had expected to have to run him down, and was surprised to find the grisly work done for me already.

In truth, I knew of his presence and some of his fate long before I laid eyes upon the corpse. Most talented unicorns can read the auras of their fellow beings--maybe not very well, but they can do it if they try. What most unicorns do not know is that this ability is far more nuanced and informative than merely seeing the unseen magical energies inherent in the bodies of ponies and their neighbors. Time and attention reveals smaller cues. The colors shift with the emotional state of their bearers, for instance. Pain radiates and contentment comes in small, happy waves. The strong emotions and sensations of living things sometime linger in the things they touch and the places they walk.

How many different lives I have been blessed or troubled with in this way! If Twilight is reading this, I confess that when you left my direct tutelage, I often visited your tower to feel again your excitement at some discovery or to revel in your happiness over some new assignment. I have felt the worry and the happiness of the palace servants, the pride of my guards. Even the dalliances of staff who would rather be anonymous I sometimes find lingering, though I never say anything of the matter.

But I also feel the heartaches and the agonies. The ancient battlefields were hell, but for me they were far worse. Only by a grim stoicism did I endure the borrowed agonies that pressed upon me.

So I felt the Murderer before I found him. I felt the decaying imprint of his diseased mind. It was fogged over with madness, filled with anger and lust. It had the ferocity of the Minotaur without the Minotaur’s ingenuity, and the fury of the Griffon without his honor. I cannot read minds, but often I do not need to. It is enough to feel a things strongest emotions to understand them.

What did I feel? Eagerness. A bit of frustration, but it was swallowed up in something dark and sordid I can only call a bloodlust. Experience and intuition began to paint a picture of his doings. Here he stopped, breathing in deeply perhaps, listening for the tell-tale shuffling of his quarry. What did he hunt? I had suspicions, but the traces left behind did not say before I burned them away.

Here, at a stream, he paused for a drink and then soiled the earth. Farther along, he trampled underneath his booted feet the rich blue of poison joke. They touch me but can do nothing to me--an alicorn is above most of the world’s poisons. I have sipped from wineglasses and tasted the cyanide within with senses beyond the ken of mortals and smiled over the rim at terrified wouldbe tyrannicides. Usually, such a display is enough to forestall any waste of sacred life.

And then… I found the body. Or rather, I found the pit which contained the body.

I shall describe it in detail, and beg the forgiveness of any I may choose to allow into this most careful of confidences.

His strange armor was obviously of no help. The pit itself was full of wooden spikes, and his fall had been facefirst into them. He was pierced in seven places: twice the stomach, the right shoulder, left arm below the elbow, one spike destroyed the right hand which had been put forward to break his fall, once in the right thigh and once in the left leg, slightly above the ankle. The pit stank of blood and the detritus of death, and in the warm air it would begin to decompose in earnest presently. The head was missing, and I did not think that it was taken by a spike for I found no sign of it.

The Huntress. I recognized her work before I ever saw her. Simply because I have never chosen to eat of flesh did not mean I was ignorant of the hunter’s trade. I understand how it is done, both in the wild and by the now civilized carnivores of our world. The pit trap was… brutal. Brutal is the best word. Brutality need not always be callous but this did not feel like swift and total violence in order to pursue sudden victory. This felt like revenge. The air tasted foul, and not because of the death that laid out below me.

Another point--there are many things that I am capable of that the average pony is completely unawares of, and I take great care that many of these abilities stay secret. My absolute command of time, for instance, is not so important a secret, and I confess some amusement when I can tell a pony down to the second how long something has taken. Others I keep closely guarded even from those little ponies I have taken quite sincerely into my intimate inner circle. I do not do this because I revel in secrecy. Rather, I wish to live as close to them as I can, and to share in as much of their happiness as I can without feeling their awe and reverence turn into fear and worse. To be admired is fine, but to be worshipped… I am not quite worthy of that.

One of those abilities I safeguard is this: a pony’s last moments can be reviewed under special circumstances. A few unicorns have managed the trick of it, but only through genius and perhaps some luck. For me it is simple and rather easy. The body was fresh, and its soul only recently absent. I touched the body with my magic and found the fading soulglow.

____________________

She faces him and he smiles in the manner of cats when they find their prey cornered and waiting for the release from all running.

“So… guess you did it. Figured you’d got swatted by that big thing,” he said slowly, still grinning. But he felt a mirth that did not seem to fit the sort of mirth I or this small Huntress could understand. It was mirth in the way that a candle is a housefire.

Does she tremble? I cannot tell for sure for I see and feel only what this beast sees and feels, and for him she trembles and he suppresses and urge to crow with delight. He thinks unspeakable things. Most of them violent. She is already dead, as far as he is concerned, but that is alright. He talks to the dead quite a bit. Mostly he mocks them.

“Fuck you,” she says, her voice shaking. And it is shaking, that is no distortion. She swallows. Afraid, yes, but not running.

I feel a weight upon this creature’s mind that at first I do not recognize. No, that is not true. I do recognize it, I simply do not understand why it is in this monster’s soulglow memory. I feel myself, distant but getting closer, like a thorn pressed into soft flesh. It will begin to torment him soon, as it pierces through the haze of his madness, but for now it only drives him to new lows. His blood is up. He is eager for what will happen next. He has won, after all.

Does she feel this too? She must.

“Got proof,” she says, and holds out a tattered and stained coat, cut through in a dozen places. Those stains… the soulglow howls that they are blood, but I know better. I know enough of the plants of the Everfree to recognize a certain Zebra’s handiwork. It would look perfect, to one uninitiated in the arts of cloak and dagger in this world.

“Guess so,” he slurs. There is not much personality for him to lose beneath the pouding of my presence upon the fragile walls of his mind. He is all appetite now. Hard, even, I realize with disgust. “Good job, bitch. I’m impressed.”

“Now what?”

“Throw me the coat,” he says, with surprisingly cleverness.

“So you can shoot me while I’m distracted? Come get it,” she says with a tight, frightened voice.

“Hey, hey, cool it. Already took off the stealth field, didn’t I? Gotta be enough for ya,” he says.

“Just come get it,” she says again.

He feels frustrated. She’s putting off his final victory lap and he has never, ever been denied or delayed without serious violence being played out on something. With a growl, he steps forward--

--and the ground gives way.

I felt his agony and his shock as he hit the spikes. His forehead grazes a spike but his head is preserved. He screams, and I wish I could also scream.

“BITCH! BITCH, I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU I’LL FUCK YOUR SKULL YOU--”

There is a horrible roar, and he stops screaming for a moment to whimper. He cannot see her, and so I do not see the source. But I can imagine--that terrible weapon she bears. That is it. The beast’s own firearm was lost in the fall. He tries to pry himself from the stakes.

“You’re dead,” she hisses. Her voice is thick and shaking.

Brutality comes most often from those blind with fear and those blind with rage. Yes, sometimes it is planned, but I find that it is the unthinking state of mind that is the most capable of destruction.

She does not seem to be either. If anything, she sounds like she will soon be sick.

“I’ll tear you apart and fuck what’s left!” He screams at her and she roars at him.

“You’re dead!” She repeated. “Poison on the spikes, but I won’t need it. You don’t get to play in this world anymore, you hear? Never again. You’re done! And soon your friends won’t be coming here anytime soon, got it? It’ll all be over! I’m gonna m-mount your head on a pike, do what they do to coyotes on fences. You know what they do coyotes on fences, f-fuckin’ city boy?”

He just screams.

_______________________

I left the memory with dismay and dread.

I search the area for a moment more. The head is gone, and the gun I find utterly smashed. This leaves me a bit more hopeful--only the Huntress could have done this. She has done me and my realm a grisly service, and when I approach the shattered weapon I feel the barest touch of her on it.

Fear bordering on panic. Nausea. Regret. Something so twisted up so as to be unnameable. Shame defeats them all.

A sad creature. Many who do what must be done have felt this shame. I resolved then to find her.

I found one other thing of note before I purged that place with fire. A small metallic device which activated upon physical touch. I have recorded the entirety of its message, and on top of it I will note that I felt mostly shame and fear.

“Oh god… oh god, okay. If you find this… shit, if you find this then you may still have time. You’re probably a bunch of fuckin’ Feds in your little murder squads but nobody deserves to go toe to toe with these monsters. No-fuckin-body. If you have recalls, use them. Please, for the love of god, use them. I found his body and… and I’m the last one left. Just go. Go! This place is a lost cause. The recon reports are a lie. We thought it was just a bunch of peasants and primitives but that’s the… fuck me if I know. Pets? The real natives are monsters. You look at them and its all eyes and mouths and light and they just fuck you up. You can’t think, you can’t move unless something distracts them, you can just run. They can burn you with their eyes from half a mile away without a bit of effort. They turned the Concordat guy to a crisp. Please, for the love of God, close the door and don’t let them through!”

That is it. It ends. All through, she is breathing heavily. All through, she is lying fiercely. Her fear is real. Her horror is real--I am sure it was recorded mere moments after she had removed the monster’s head. But even without my knowledge of this world, I would have known every word was a lie from millenia of experience. It is a carefully practiced lie… one that fell apart in her hands from the shock of killing another sapient creature, vile or not.

I admit that it caused me to pause there in that awful scene and consider what kind of creature this huntress was. Capable of such a brutal killing, and yet I felt such shame in her brief touches. Filled with such fury as she watched the “blackshirt” die, and yet her voice had shook. In some ways, it gave me hope that perhaps these humans had not fallen so far from the savage but potential-filled ones I had briefly espied.

Yet. Yet in those brief touches I felt the tiniest touch of the sickly sweet, cloying taste of madness. Of drums. Of me.

I continued.

The first death had not been a shock. The second, however, took me quite by surprise.

Once the remains of the monster had been cleared away, I proceeded towards my old home in the heart of the Everfree. I admit that I was not looking forward to seeing it again. It holds unpleasant memories for me, both of Luna’s banishment and my own multitude of failures afterwards. And before that, I suppose. Suffice it to say that the structure itself is a monument to failures.

That the huntress had made this ruin her new temporary home dismayed me more than I cared to admit. I wondered why at the time, as my grim war-focus began slowly to drain away. Was it that she had invaded what was, in some distant way, my home? Maybe, but I had abandoned it and so held no real claim to a ruin I would rather forget. I did not begrudge any creature without malice some simple shelter. Perhaps it was just… the similarity. Yes, I think I did notice the odd parallels forming. To turn on one’s own to save the many. True, it was not the same. She had not slain kin, and I had not slain at all, but perhaps we had both been hurt in the doing. She did not seem to me a true killer.

By the time I reached the Castle of the Two Sisters, I was more or less calm. The city of Everfree is mostly gone now, of course, but I do remember enough of it to have spared a few sighs as I walked over the ghosts of its streets. I wanted my first meeting with these strange new humans to be as close to perfect as I could make it. I did not fear them, but I respected their ferocity and their potential for it. If nothing else, I happen to enjoy meeting new ponies and I supposed that we might, with some delicate discussion and mutual awkwardness, establish some sort of friendship between those not cursed with madness and ourselves.

So imagine my shock when I began to feel the huntress again before I had even entered the keep. I felt shame, mostly. But something else. Horror is perhaps the best word. Certainty might also be appropriate. Horrible, horrible certainty. Something had changed between the first death and now. Or, well, I suppose then. And just as I had before, I felt myself thrumming in the background and felt a chill.

It is… It is very distressing, Twilight (if it becomes vital that you read this), to feel that you have had a negative effect on any creature, let alone one that you meant no harm to. One that in fact you are grateful towards for a ghastly but certainly necessary duty. I have inspired many things in ponies and other peoples of this world. Respect, awe, fear, even love here and there. But I cannot remember many times I have inspired madness. In what your professors no doubt dismissed as the age of myth I once cured a pony’s madness with kind words. Kind words and a bit of healing magic, at least. To have been the cause of the corruption I felt was disheartening.

No, I must be truthful.

For the first time in a rather long time, I was genuinely frightened.

I smelt blood when I entered the courtyard. That was not the first thing. The first thing that I smelled in my former home--where Luna and I enjoyed our lovely gardens--was the acrid stench of burned flesh. I did not gag, surprisingly, even if I have not smelt the like since the crusade against the Derecho Separatists a few decades after Luna’s fall. My smooth and easy walk became a canter, and that became something not quite a run. I must appear in command. The appearance of control is vital to the de-escalation of conflict.

Yet I found something that outmatched my calm demeanor. I found another pit right before the door of the Keep, but this time I found no body. Only the remains of blood, and here was a curious thing which turned the lump in my throat to ice: blood up the side of the pit, leading into the great hall. I followed it.

I felt the soulglow of the dead demanding my immediate attention, calling out for vengeance out of the earth, but I did not touch it yet. I stared in mute fascination at the scorchmarks on the ground. What had happened here? The death of the infiltrator I understood but… what was this? Who had done this?

By the scorch marks I found another of the small devices, and it set my teeth on edge. Proof, then.

But first, I touched the dead humans soulglow.

________________________________________

He walks with a deceptively easy gait, concealing the wounds of a dozen battlefields and a hunred dark black operations which haunt his dreams.

He is worried. When the huntress asked him to go back to the high tower, he had not questioned it. But when she had asked him shortly after leaving to go back and retrieve his auto-recall, he had been confused.

Why? He’d asked, and she’d had a reasonable enough answer: Because more are going to come and we need to make sure we’re ready if they have some sort of trace on his vitals. If the Federals were to open a window and find him dead… no, he’d understood that. So he had returned to his camp briefly and and quickly returned to find that the ponies had left.

That had been the first worrisome thing, but Samantha had assured him that she was responsible. Didn’t want them being human shields, she’d said, and he had nodded with a frown. Yes, but wasn’t this sending them into more danger? Ah, but it did not concern him overmuch.

He returned to his high tower.

When he saw the blip, he warned her. His hands were soaked with sweat and they trembled. He felt strange. Disconnected. Fearful of everything. What if he fired first? He might not even wait. OF course he wouldn’t wait. God, this had been so foolish! He was going to get someone killed without even profiting from the sacrifice. A waste of life. Idiot! Old, blind, fool!

But then she had reported that she’d seen him, and then radio silence. She returned. The blackshirt was dead. His coat had been torn, but Malthus did not care a thing for it. The Colonist grinned manically. They had done it! By god, they had done it. He had no idea how they had, but victory was victory.

“Stay in the high Tower,” she’d said. Keep an eye out, she’d continued.

The fear returned. Rumor of reinforcements. Hold the line, hold the line. Watch the trees for more of them. This he understood. He was back in Kiffa again, waiting for the goddamn moors to come crawling out of their holes again, swarming like ants down the dusty streets screaming and howling oh god they weren’t human they weren’t human he would send them back dying he would--

The huntress returned. She radioed him again and said that she was in the Great Hall.

Shaken by memory, the old man was glad to have company again.

He sprints down, almost slipping on the uncertain steps. It is unsettling to see the decay of my former castle through another’s unknowing eyes, one who cannot begin to understand or appreciate what he sees.

He bounds across the overgrown courtyard, feeling a desperate need to be in the presence of something human, something familiar. This world does not sit well with him. It is wrong. He has felt this way before but never so intensely. I know that it is the magic I have stirred up, yet my horror does not cease the turning of the wheels of his mind. This world must be remade. It must be reforged into the paradise that he needs. This world could be perfect. A new eden. A new heaven and a new earth, amen and hallelujah, made by man’s hands for man’s benefit. Now that the threat is gone the building could commence. The Concordat and Republic could have a full platoon moving into the castle soon. Why hadn’t he done it before? There was no time to waste. He would demand it! He would argue them down. This was where man was meant to find his new beginning!

She stands before the door, looking exhausted. He notices the blood seeping through her leg and comes up short. He asks if she is alright, and I realize that she is not long before he does. Perhaps some of that “fake” blood was real. Perhaps she fell. I do not know and am not sure I wish to know.

She is fine. She smiles a shaky, uneven smile. A smile that is not the smile I had imagined from Twilight’s brief description. It is a false smile. The hindbrain of the Colonist shrinks from it but he does not know why he feels the need to stop short. Everything is confused. They are both caught up in the madness of too much magic pressing upon a system that cannot handle an alien sun.

“Here’s your coat,” she says, and holds it out. “It got a bit torn. Bastard is dead.”

He does not cross. “Glad to hear it.”

She lowers the coat. “You look like hell,” she says quietly.

“It’s been… stressful,” Malthus says.

“It’s getting to you too? What is it?” The huntress whispers, with wide eyes.

“It feels heavy,” Malthus says in return.

“I think it might be the Princess,” his only human companion says and licks her lips. “Or God, maybe. He sees your sins, so they say.” She grins another sickly grin. “C’mon, take your coat and I’ll tell you about it and maybe that’ll put an end to some of the stress, alright?”

He does not move. “A thought occurred to me earlier, while you were away.”

“Yeah?”

“What book?”

She blinks. “Your pardon?”

“What book? You said you remembered a book, something… something about me. I meant to ask you earlier…”

She hesitates. He feels… nervous. On edge. He glances at the gun on her hip but it is safe for now. Why does he feel this way? She’s had ample chance to turn on him, and she has no reason. A disagreement, nothing more. He takes a step--

Her face twists into something that is not quite hatred. “Mistah Kurtz, he dead.”

He tries to answer in fury and shock, understanding it all in a flash, but then the ground gives way.

Malthus lies dying in the shallow pit. It destroyed his legs, and he knows her gun is on him.

“Why?” He asks. His throat is dry. “When?”

“When you went and got your recall,” she says, her voice tight. “When you went away. Because I know where it all leads. I’ve seen it all before.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Mistah Kurtz--”

“Do you honestly believe that tale and my own intentions coincided? Would you judge me a monster with so little consideration?” He coughed. It would not be the spikes themselves that killed but the blood, and that would be slow. She would keep him here. He could climb out, but then where would he go? He was trapped. “You’re an… God, you’re an idiot,” Malthus seethes.

“No, I’m just me and you’re just you, and that don’t matter none. You think I’ll long survive you?” She chuckles and it is not a sound of joy. “You think I don’t know what I’m doing? I’m fixin’ to be first and the last, Kurtz you colony-building fool. You think that it’ll come out alright? I’ve been thinking… I’ve been listening, you see? To the air. And it was right! You’ll bring the whole damn empire with you, and it’ll all be Amarillo forever, gunships mowing down mom in the street! You think you’re better because you ain’t a facist with a blackshirt? You’re just the same, you’re all the same, and so am I. We’re all in this together, filthy and murderous and awful!”

“You’re insane. This place…” he cried out. He is filled with terror. This was not what he expected. He had never foreseen this. He saw Kiffa again, the Moorish rebels firing from the crags, he felt the heat on his face as his world spun.

“Yeah, yeah, and you’re one to talk. You really, really think that we won’t turn this place into a livin’ nightmare? You don’t think we’ll do it all again here? And over and over and over?” She was practically in his ear now, but he was starting to feel too faint to try and look.

“You… you don’t know that…”

“And now nobody has to, because I’m gonna make sure nothin’ ever happens, and then I’m gonna make sure not even I can fuck it up. We’re all gonna fuckin’ go together.”

“They’ll… they’ll come anyway… you’ll only make… you’ve doomed them all.”

“No, because I’m going to scare the shit out of them.”

_____

I left the soulglow’s memory early. I already knew what came next.

She burned the body with alchemical fire, that much I knew from the lingering trace in the air. The “auto-recall” I assume sent the poor human’s charred remains back to his own land. I have no doubt she did the same with the “Federal”.

The third death was less physical than spiritual.

I went deeper into the castle, and found the remains of her camp and the places where the manticore’s claws had scarred the old stone. The hallways led me down, down towards the old treasure vault, and all the while I followed the fading aura she had left behind, her soul bleeding out in the middle of a great distress.

Down the long stairs I climbed, and I confess that I felt trepidation. I felt more and more of my own unintentional touch upon her. I had done so much work, trying to prevent this. What had I done? What had she done? How much of this was the madness of Presence and how much of it was her own determination? I did not know. I do not know.

I feared that it was less my own interference and more the huntress’ own will.

I found her at last in the vault. It was mostly clear, save for a few dusty relics and a few old paintings.

I found her dirty, bloodstreaked, curled up in on herself, her whole body shaking. Her face twisted with an agony I did not wish to understand too closely. The weapon shook also in those hands of hers, limply against the underside of her jaw. Her ebony hands tried to tighten but could not.

“Gotta… gotta… Oh god. Oh god I can’t.”

I stared, for the first time in a long time without anything to say or any prepared plan. This… this I had not anticipated. Even now I feel again my initial shock.

It took me a moment to remember her name through the haze of that shock. “Samantha? Samantha, do you hear me? Can you understand me?”

“Traps. I have to… Like coyotes. Pin the body to the fence and they don’t come back no more,” she said, all but frothing. “Pin the bodies pin the bodies.”

I took a deep breath. I could not retreat now. She would be too dangerous without something to keep her in check, and I would not choose her comfort over the safety of my ponies. And yet I would not abandon a fellow creature so lost. I drew closer and she groaned.

“I don’t wanna die! I don’t wanna die don’t make me! I’m sorry! I didn’t want him to do it but then he was movin’ and I couldn’t take it back! I shouldn’t’a said it I shouldn’ta! Oh my god. Oh my god.”

I scooped her up in my forelegs and stroked her strange, bright red mane. Obviously colored artificially, clashing strangely with her skin. These humans were beyond me. Her hair was coarse, not unlike a pony’s fresh from the plains. Her eyes, unfocused. Her lips trembling. She looked at me but I do not think that at first she saw me.

“They can’t come I don’t want them to hurt anybody else. That little pony keeps lookin’ at me and I feel like I’m those bastards in Amarillo. I’m the blackshirt now. I had to. I coulda found a way but I didn’t! I just kept feelin it in my head like a drumbeat, over an’ over. Oh my god.” The last came out like a groan and I shushed her. She was streaked in blood, yes, but I realized that much of it was her own. She was cut in a dozen places, and I think those wounds were self-inflicted. She held her gun tight in her hand, and only with the most delicate touch of magic did I pry it free. She whimpered, cradling her hand as if it had been burned and murmured plaintively about hell and spells.

I must be truthful, if only with myself.

For the briefest of moments, I examined the weapon. Truly, it is a fearsome thing. In the old days, before I erased such things from the minds of mortals for hundreds of years, ponies mastered saltpeter and produced flintlock weapons. I recognized the basics but the implementation… this was beyond me. Rifling I knew of, but this was precise. Six shots before one of my ancient musketeers could have even reloaded! How terrifying rifles of this type would be.

For the briefest of moments, I imagined myself tilting the gun back to her temple, kissing her forehead…

And ending it.

I know that must shock you. I shocked myself. It was a terrible moment. I had just witnessed two murders and seen this poor mare devolve into gibbering madness merely by the presence of magic in a world full of it. She was a murderer, that much was clear. A killer, stained with blood. Dangerous and ruthless, capable of savagery that none of my precious little ponies could hope to stand against.

And perhaps I shared her fear. I imagined more poor, damaged humans such as her, with hearts for ponies but with bodies and souls made for a different world. Unable to bear our own, unable to let go of their guns until they were bathed in blood. And like the old man, like this poor soul, I too saw flashes of older days. I saw my sister, and the destruction she wrought on an unsuspecting world. I saw my own failures. I had not nipped the danger in the bud. I had not been a sister worthy of her. I had not done what was needed.

I destroyed her fearsome weapon.

She sobbed. I searched her swiftly with my magic, seeing my student’s brilliant but inadequete work. I completed it, enshrouding her in protection so strong I doubted any but myself or Luna could even think to touch her with any arcane force.

She trembled, her breath ragged and warm against my coat.

“I think I killed myself,” she said, and her hollow voice broke my heart.

“You have not,” I said to her. “Samantha, do you recall anything? Anything at all?”

“All of it. Are you god?”

I did not let my anger show. “No.”

“You’re the one that… that one pony. Twilight Sparkle. She said you…” Her eyelids drooped. “Celestia, right?”

“Yes,” I said quietly.

“It’s over now. I don’t know if it was right but I can’t take it back. I didn’t want them to hurt anybody so I hurt them. I’m no better. Please don’t send me back. I don’t wanna have to go back. I can’t do it.”

I took a deep breath. “Child, you are in no shape to talk now, please rest--”

She squirmed in my grip weakly. “Someone has to… has to understand. They think this place is too dangerous… I wanted… C…” She groaned. “I feel really…”

“Sleep,” I said. “Your body has endured much.”

“Shoulda done it…” she said, and then she said nothing else.

Conclusion

Celestia sealed the scroll and placed it on her desk.

With a heavy sigh, she looked to the sleeping human form, tossing and turning on the bed. Even now, her thoughts were twisted. It had taken a few hours, but soon it had all come together from the human’s own logs and what Celestia could glean from her soulglow and the evidence left behind.

The plight of humanity pulled at her heart. So many lost, so many hungry and scared, waiting to die wherever they were. So many in darkness that was, dare she say it, all but eternal. If even half of the things suggested in the logs and by her own feelings were true… what hell she had seen and lived in.

Did that excuse her actions? Celestia was not sure. It certainly helped to explain them. With her limited ability to touch the minds of mortals, she had found a frightening amount of chaotic fragility. It had reminded her of a tower, one that might come crumbling down in an instant around her ears if a single brick were nudged slightly out of place.

What would she do? What could she do, rather, was the question.

It was not her world, and there was much she did not understand. Not to mention the obvious dangers of her own magic in contact with these creatures without proper protection. Food and medicine did not end war. Cynically, she thought they might even prolong it, giving mindless belligerents more energy to kill. She could not let their warring and their danger spill into her beloved world. At the same time, the thought of leaving them to die alone in the dark did not sit right.

She regarded the human still with quiet intensity.

Fluttershy and Zecora had been found safely by her guards, confused and worried for their friend. Twilight had written two letters already, beside herself with worry. Celestia had tried to relieve her of the burden of guilt--no, her report had not caused harm to the huntress in anyway. If anything, it was Twilight’s report that had saved her life. But Celestia did not mention that.

What a contradiction, the mare… woman. The woman who slept on her own bed, bathed by her servants. Luna had come to see her and said very little. Celestia had been blessed by Luna’s quiet comfort, and that had really been enough.

But what a contradiction. Savior of ponies she hardly knew, yet willing to slaughter her own kind. Such shame, and yet she had seemed so filled with… was it hatred? Perhaps. The whole thing left Celestia feeling a little ill and surprisingly shaken. Because it was not every day she found herself confronted with such a mess of information to make momentous decisions based upon. She had two dead and a single addled murderess to judge an entire world upon. She had the confession and the pleas of a young lady who seemed earnest, kindhearted, and sincere and the sleeping huntress who dealt death with deception.

She could not judge the justice of the Pioneer’s motivations. She did not know this other Earth, and she did not know humanity, not in the present time. An overreaction? Maybe. The right choice? She did not want to say yes.

But she was Celestia, and she understood necessity.

Save or ignore? Save or destroy, because she had little doubt that to ignore would be to destroy. Come with open hooves or to bring order by the scepter? Neither, probably. The dread that accompanied the thought of a colony of Samanthas was not unlike the agony of the thought of them all like she had been in the ancient vault.

Celestia crossed over and sat beside the bed.

She softly moved a bit of the human’s strange artificially red mane from her face. Save, destroy, ignore. Bring order or offer succor.

Celestia stared. Intensely. And she judged humanity by its broken remains.

Author's Note

I want to say that I owe a great debt to two stories: Project Sunflower and Arrow 18 Mission Logs. I enjoyed both stories immensely.

But I found that I was... not sure I bought a united human front. I felt at times that their depictions of humanity were far too bright and far too optimistic. Mine is perhaps far too pessimistic here. If you're curious, the setting of Sam's world is the same as that of Samantha Calhoun, of a novel I completed a year ago or so called Absolution. Yes, it's a human version of the story in my gallery. Space Sam lives about 60+ years ahead of Pioneer Sam. Eventually, things do get better. Much better. But not for a long time.

I was also heavily inspired by C. S. Lewis' space trilogy (mostly Perelandra and Out of the Silent Planet) and Konrad's Heart of Darkness. Lewis' massive middle finger to British Imperialism is far less dark, and Konrad is one of the most brilliant writers basically ever.

Thanks for reading along. See y'all around.

Incursion

Author's Note

“I was leaving the South
to fling myself into the unknown . . .
I was taking a part of the South
to transplant in alien soil,
to see if it could grow differently,
if it could drink of new and cool rains,
bend in strange winds,
respond to the warmth of other suns
and, perhaps, to bloom”

― Richard Wright

Incursion

The Pioneer looks back towards the bubbled control deck. There, staring back at her, a lone East Indian man stands before the controls. His undershirt is soaked through with sweat. His bald head shines with it. He says something, but even over the live mics on the board he is lost in the chaos of battle. Above, Federal shock troops sweep away a half-asleep resistance in a hail of bullets. They blast open doors and mow down the startled inhabitants they wake only to be met with death. Their sonic grenades render the valuable personnel insensate, ready to be carried off, never to be seen again.

She holds her father’s gun in one hand. The other rests on the floating carriage on the ramp. At her back, she feels the electricity in the air and the heat of the gate.

Time seems to stop. The Pioneer’s sweat-drenched red mane of hair tickles her cheeks but she does not have the presence of mind even to shake her head. The whole world is wrapped up in the silent exchange between herself and this lone genius. He has done so much, worked so hard, sacrificed his time and his health and perhaps even a bit of his sanity…

And she is the only one who can go through.

Whatever either might have said or thought is annihilated with an explosion two floors above that shakes the great room. The Pioneer loses her grip on the repulsorlift carriage but shields the last modicum of her father’s love as she falls.

The Scientist yells through the mic on the board: Run. Just go! Hurry!

And she tries to yell back: Close the door after me!

But she need not have bothered. She struggles to her feet, and as she turns, the control room is breached. Two imposing figures in gasmasks and dura-ceramic armor approach the severely underdressed, infirm man with powerful rifles held high. He does not look at them when they bark an order at him.

He whispers: Go then, there’s another world over there. Go see it.

The Pioneer is halfway up the ramp. As she is bracing to push her supplies through, the door to the Gate Room opens and another masked invader pushes in. He fires two bursts. They tear past her, hitting the carriage. It falters. Her gun, massive as her heart, barks back but in futility. She pushes her supplies through and then she runs through the swirling, roiling, stormy surface that exists between the circular passageway.

The Scientist in the control room is beat with a baton that shocks him into silence and unconsciousness. But not before he has done his last work. He has already set the final command in motion. The board sends loud warnings out. The soldiers look at each other, confused.

The Gate superheats, the great machinery begins to buckle. The failsafe destroys the passage, but not before the Gate rains hot metal, fire, and angry electricity on all four men. The Pioneer is gone and the way is shut.

LOG 1

I made it.

I’m not sure what else to say but that. Sounds stupid as hell, but… I mean, what do you say? One small step for man? First, I’m a woman, and secondly… I didn’t step anywhere. I fell through a fucking hole in the universe.

Don’t let my tone here fool you. I’m… I’m rambling just to keep myself from staring. It’s unspeakably beautiful. Wild as the Arkansas Badlands but without the danger. I feel like this place ain’t seen war. At all. I can’t say that of any place back home.

When I rolled out onto the grass I was weak. My mind and body seemed almost disconnected. It probably took me an hour just to remember my name, and another to sit up again. By the time I was up to crawling over to the Mule and leaning on it, I was soaked with dew and the sun was rising. I propped myself to see my first sunrise on a new world.

And it was beautiful. I wish I knew more words like that. I wish they had sent somebody who could write pretty, flowery descriptions. What a damn waste. They sent a drifter instead of an artist, because all I could do to capture the moment was cry my stupid fool eyes out. It’s nothing like our sun. Nah. Nah, that’s a lie and I know it. Give me a moment.

It’s… It’s everything our sun was meant to be.

Sorry if this all seems vague and strange. Ain’t in the right head space. They picked me for this mission because I can handle my self. You have to, in this world. That world. I survived the bombing of Shreveport and the rape of Little Rock. I was born in Amarillo and my daddy hauled ass out of there when the war started and the Massacre happened with me strapped to his back. I ran medicine through raider territory in Arkansas and Mississippi, and I’ve been doing salvage and recovery all over the Republic and on the Concordat border for years. I can shoot a bird on the wing with the Judge from one hundred yards with someone screaming in my ear and one eye shot out ten times out of ten. Perfect person to throw into a potential hostile situation, yeah?

Well, here I am, just starin’ at the world like I’m a child.

And kind of like a child, I’m a little afraid. I want to be honest in these because… I didn’t leave peacefully. I didn’t leave with all of my shit in order, either. Blacksite facility got hit around four in the morning, I’d reckon the time. Woke up right away, wide awake, soon as I heard the first explosion on the ground level. You live through as many fuckin’ Federal raids as I have and you learn to roll out of bed with your guns up and your hangover cured, praise God, hallelujah forever.

Knowing the Doc, the Gate is probably dead. I think he would rather have died than let those bastards have it. I wanna hope he didn’t die… but I know what they do to people. Maybe it’s for the best, you know? God, I don’t wanna say that. No, no it ain’t for the best. Dead is dead is dead. Livin’ is better. But the Gate. If it isn’t totally destroyed there is no way in hell it will be working anytime soon. Maybe they could open one here in like… a week and a half. At the earliest.

I’m the first woman to step outside of our galaxy. Our universe. The first human ever, far as we know. Not countin’ anybody abducted, mind you. I had the thought earlier, as the sun was rising up in the air and the canopy started to hide it from me, that I might be the last one, too. What if the lab is so wrecked that the Republic gives up? They’ll probably assume I died over here. You know what? They’ll be right.

I probably will die over here. The Mule’s lift won’t work, and it’s too heavy to drag, and I don’t have even half of the rations I was supposed to have… only a fifth of the water… shit.

And there go the waterworks. Perfect. Just… Just perfect.

I just don’t wanna die here. I’m used to bein’ alone but there were always people somewhere, doing something, you know? Eventually there would be another person. Even if I just ended up shootin’ at them cause its the fuckin’ tribal salute in Arkansas now at least it would be with another human being.

As far as I know I’ll be the only human being to ever be here and…

LOG 2

Mule Status: About 70% done with repairs.

I’m not a mechanic, but luckily they designed the Mule to be easily repaired by people just like me. I can hotwire a car, kick a generator hard enough to make it work again. I can pick locks, which is always fun, but I ain’t worth a dime if I actually have to fix something. It’s nice to be on top of things for once. Lucky for me the thing comes with a spare lift.

I’ve taken to doing a full inventory. When the raid came I gathered what I could but I’m short in every department but ammunition, and only because I didn’t have that much in the first place. When you have the Judge, you often only have to fire once. I’ve had fights that ended as soon as I pulled the thing. Daddy’s gun has a big voice and don’t take shit from nobody. It helps that it’s like a cannon in your hand, old as it is. .454 Casull is the last argument of kings, he used to say.

So, the list. For posterity, just in case anyone finds my logs or can even listen to them.

The Judge. Thirty .454 Casull rounds and a couple of shells in case I need to shotgun anything.
The Clothes on my back.
The knife on my hip.
My daddy’s old shades.
A half-full fifth of Canadian Hunter, which is a damn shame because it’s awful. It was in the bag when I bolted.
12 full day rations. I’ve eaten two now, so it’s really 10 rations.
Three gallons of water.
My ratty backpack.
The field lab module, thank god it was in the Mule already.
Two canteens.
A sample gathering kit that was with the module.
Old world binoculars.
Proximity alarms to go with the implant the Republic gave me for my brave volunteerin’.
A tiny tent.
A bedroll that’s absolute shit.
That harmonica from Greenville that was in my pack.
A picture of my mother that I pried off dad when he shuffled off the coil with a bottle in his hand. And in his eyes.
A few basic tools.
A useless beacon.
And myself, I guess.

That’s it.

What’s the diagnosis doc? Slow death by starvation if the water is drinkable, delirious death by dehydration if it isn’t. Or, if I’m lucky and I can find food…

Then it’s the Swiss Family Robinson until the cavalry arrives.

Which is, of course, about as likely as high cotton in the slagheaps of Shreveport.

I can’t let myself think like this. I’ll finish fixing the Mule tonight and then… and then I’ll keep moving.

I wanted to say something about the nights in the universe. They are beautiful. Just stunning. I forgot how awesome it was to see all those stars, way up high… I never had the chance to just look at ‘em all before. I was always runnin’. But now I don’t have anywhere to run, and I can look, and I feel like maybe it won’t be so bad, dyin’ here. Maybe it would be better than any way I might go out at home. This place is heaven compared to the badlands or the long roads. Why?

Cause no one has shot at me in two days. Maybe all we needed for paradise was there to only be one of us, yeah?

When Zecora finds the Stranger, she is on her way towards Ponyville.

It is market day. Since finally being accepted in town, Zecora has made a point of never missing market day. She has wares to sell, yes, and it is nice to be of aid and receive it, but more than money or food she cares most for stories. When she left the mountains south of the great desert, she did so to collect them. She had thousands, yes, tucked away in the shrine. But there were more. So many more! Some grand and spanning a dozen scrolls, kept together with great love. Some so small they were encapsulated in a single sentence.

She wanted to know all of them.

When she first noticed the creature, she had been distracted by a bed of Yollis flowers, which were rare but useful. If one knew their secrets, Yollis petals could be used in a half-dozen draughts and Zecors knows them all. But very soon her attention is diverted. The Stranger stirs behind her, watching. It thinks that it is being still, but it is clumsy. Clumsy like ponies are clumsy... no. She pretends that she does not hear, and the creature still does not move. It is a bit smarter than a pony.

What betrays it is the smell. Such a strange odor, and not a good one. Zecora schools her face. She will not give it any sign that she has noticed it's presence, and then she will gauge its intent. She cannot see the newcomer. In fact, she is a bit surprised it has not already sprung.

It continues to fail to attack, leaving her bewildered. Unless... unless it is no creature of the Everfree. One last test. Zecora is braced to swing her hooves and grab the alchemical fire in her bag as she trots away in a random direction.

The Stranger does not follow. After she is satisfied it has left, she changes course of Ponyville and Market Day. The smell of the interloper does not leave her. Neither does the memory. The Everfree is itself a kind of story, and Zecora is the teller.

And yet she has no recollection of this being or its scent.

Log 3

Nine day-rations left. Pills. Bland tasteless pills, but they keep you going.

Today I was on the move. I started by goin’ roughly a mile out from the starting point and just makin’ a big circle around the center. It’s rough if it even connects, but I’m not worried about finding that spot again. There’s no reason to go back, is there?

What I really want to talk about tonight is the creature I saw. First, I figure I ought to explain why seeing anything at all was a surprise. I haven’t seen hide or tail of nothing moving in these woods. I’ve heard bird song, or something that sounds like bird song--hey, it’s an alien world!--but I haven’t seen a single animal.

I was taking some samples of fruit to dump into the field module to test if they were safe to eat when I heard it. The rustling. It’s identical to the sound that deer make sometimes as they walk, so very light, so very very hard to hear, but once you hear it you’ll never miss it again. Not if you want to eat.

I froze.

You gotta understand something here, because I feel like the people who listen to this, or the aliens who listen to this or whoever it is, aren’t going to get what I’m talking about here.

Imagine for just a second: you’re in deep piney woods, rocky terrain, rough in every way. It’s raider country and you have food and medicine bound for Combine, Texas from across the Red River. You’re me when I was still stupid enough to be in the Courier Service and take the damn worst jobs right through survivalist nests and raider country.

Every time you hear the tiniest sound, it could be a knife. It could be a fucking cannibal grinning in some fucking tree lining you up in his grandpa’s rusty old hunting rifle with a big stupid grin on his face. His hands all movin’ with the shakes like he’s got the damn holy spirit. It could be one of those survivalists that drove through Shreveport the day daddy got us out lookin’ for girls to take back for breeding stock. Coyotes. Wolves. Hell, a panther. Anything. It doesn’t matter what because my dad was right when he said that the world wants to kill you and that it will kill you if you let it have enough rope to do the job proper.

What was the creature like? It’s hard to say… if I’m right, I think I may not be alone here and I don’t know how to handle that right now.

Four legs. Grazin’ animal, most likely. What I saw looked like fur. It was either covered or it had long hair so thick it looked like a covering. Maybe it’s domestic and got out in a storm? The covering could be from that, I guess. Looked like a soft black or gray nose… It was grazing in a clearing, I guess, or that’s what it looked like. I thought I saw some sort of tags on its ears? It might have been the neck. God, for the life of me it looked like a horse or a cow or a goat or something under that covering. I can’t help but think of it as some kind of alien horse. That covering… I know it was artificial, and if those glinting things were some sort of tag… it couldn’t do that to itself.

Which means…

Which means there are people of some sort here.

There has to be.

But that thing was eighty yards off, probably. I should have thought of the binoculars before it left, but I was all froze up and didn’t wanna startle it. If I’m wrong, and it’s a huntin’ type, I don’t want it after me. I’d rather not be prey, thank you.

Lucky for me, I don’t think it’s hostile at all. It was sort of… not docile, but it reminded me of the horses the Courier office kept.

I’ll withhold my judgement on whether or not there’s civilization here. I don’t wanna rush into anything. I have to be calm. Treat this like any other ob, that’s how you survive. If it’s all just another job, you never panic. If you never panic, you survive.

The presence of the whatever it was does give me some hope: if I can trap one I can check to see if it’s edible with the field lab and if it is… I might just not starve. I’m about to run the water through as soon as I sign off for the night. Cross your fingers. I’ve put it off long enough. If I can drink it, then I’ll keep making logs. If not? I’ll make one more, sign off, and go find a nice tree to wait under. Set up the beacon just in case.

But if I have even the smallest chance, I’ll take it. I’ll trace the creaks and catch rainwater and set traps and gather. I’m going to survive.

LOG 4

Not sure where to even begin. The things that have happened today… hoo boy.

Right, first: water is fine for drinking. About half of the stuff I’ve gathered from the woods is edible, if not nutritious as it could be… so I can eat. I still have a problem with food, but I have half of a solution. Honestly, we should have seen this coming. Just because it’s nearly identical to home in so many ways doesn’t mean it will be the same in the ones that matter.

Best way to even this out would be to start buildin’ traps. If I can get the occasional critter I’ll be sitting pretty on a mountain of calories. If the plants are good the fauna will be good.

Secondly, Mule is working. It floats again. I’ve got the tether on my belt and it’s followin’ me through the woods decently now.

Today I spent looking for any signs of activity, just in case I’m right about the tags on that animal from yesterday. Paths, logging, crazy cult shrines, anything. The morning passed slowly and I found nothing for all of my trouble. Ended up stopping by a stream and filling my two canteens. Water tastes fine.

Stopped and ate everything I’d gathered along the way and knew was okay to eat. I’m going to try and go without one of the pills today. I want to space them out.

From there, I continued, looking for tracks that might tell me where that creature went… and then I found it. I almost fell into a gorge finding it, but I found it. I know that there are people here, human or otherwise, but people. There’s no doubt in my mind.

Because there’s a fucking castle in the middle of the forest. Goddamn Camelot.

It’s ruined and old, covered with vines and moss and tall grass. But it’s still a castle, and enough of it is standing to explore, so explore it I did! I’ll be damned if the place didn’t take up the rest of my day.

Inside I found… strangeness.

Mostly, it was normal sized. Tall doors and big grand corridors and great halls and all of that. Stairs, or what was left of them. I haven’t really gone past the outside complex… I’ll try the center part. The keep, right? Hell, I don’t know.

Sorry. I mean, the record won’t show any difference. I started this log around four, when I’d just scooted along the edges of the keep. It’s definitely a keep, that’s the word.

If you can’t tell, I’m struggling to put words to what I found. Imagine me just sort of stumblin’ around like an idiot saying, “I’ll be damned” and “Well, lookit that,” for like hours at every little rock and knick-knack. That’s what happened.

There were tapestries, but only two, moth-eaten and stained. I think the rags on the floors were the others, a long time ago There were two weirdo unicorns on them. They had like, wings. Is that a thing unicorns have? I mean, hell, they might always have wings for all I know. I’ve read a lot of books, but I got them when I could and I got ‘em piecemeal. I’m not stupid, I just don’t know a lot of stuff that the old world used to think was so important.

But, whatever they were aside… I liked them. They were pretty, I guess. Wow, that sounds lame, but I don’t know what else to say. Beautiful. Majestic? I sat and just looked at them when I found ‘em.

There were other things to. The tower had some weird shrine in it with arms for candles, I guess. I found what was left of an old library… books… a few honest-to-god treasure chest stuffed with all kinds of old shit that is completely worthless to me here. Candelabras and coins with a bust of the weird unicorns from the banners. I guess its like the logo of this place, whoever lived here. Two thrones in a big room that seemed more impressive and central than the others.

But the more I looked, my excitement sort of died off and I started feeling like I was back home again. It’s not a good feeling. My first home town was Amarillo and my second was Shreveport. Home for me means a slagheap hiding the bodies.

Maybe this place isn’t so perfect. This castle is abandoned and half-destroyed, and I’m pretty sure that isn’t an accident. Someone fought here. Armies, I guess. One came and one defended and I think the defenders lost and now their home is a ruin.

I’m sitting between the two thrones, working up the motivation to set up my proximity alarms for the night. I was insulted when they wanted to give me an uplink, like they didn’t think I could keep up with stuff myself… but it’s pretty comforting having a silent alarm only I can hear right in my brain. They won’t know they’ve set off the alarm until the Judge is pronouncing his verdict.

I just… I just got to go set them up. Then the tent. I’ll sleep between the two chairs tonight. Judge by my side, between the judgement seats, get it? I guess. I kept thinking about Shreveport, when I was a little girl. I spent most of it underground, but the very beginning I was aboveground for. I remember the sound and the heat and the people running. I kept thinking about this Republic guardsman, trying to wave runners towards one of the shelters… and a shell hits the building behind him and it just is gone. It didn’t explode so much as it kinda dissolved outwards and he was just not there anymore. He didn’t turn around. It just swallowed him. All these fallen walls and stuff… I wonder if I dig, if I’ll find some poor little skeleton where it happened here, too? And they probably had to do it face to face, with swords or something. It was all knife work here. It’s bad enough when you pull the trigger and you feel the shock go up your arm and you just know that you’ve hit someone. It’s another to stab a knife in from right in front of their face, close enough for kissin’, and you watch ‘em die. It’s… It’s just too much to think about right now.

So the castle is great. The castle’s kind of sad. But It’s also sort of peaceful. I don’t dislike it, even if it makes me think of things I’d rather be forgetting.

Log 6

Today, with my basecamp set up, I focus on my food supply and my access to water.

As for water, I found the castle well, which was mostly dry, and a cistern that wasn’t. Module says that its clean enough to drink, even if there are trace elements in it. Safer than drinkin’ some rivers in Old World America, ‘bout the same as the tap in Yazoo Commons. It tastes kind of bitter.

That’ll keep me going awhile, and the cistern will refill with rain… which reminds me: the sky is getting darker. I think it’ll rain soon.

Oh! Also, noticed some more markings when I was out. There’s a sun and moon motif on the castle well. After seeing it I noticed it everywhere. The tapestries with the weird unicorns have it to, what’s left of them. Sun and moon, day and night. I like that.
Food is a bigger problem. Water is water, and I can rely on nature to lend me a helpin’ hand, but my luck is sour with gatherin’. Half of the fruit and stuff I’ve tried the field lab on are poisonous or I can’t digest them. Those I have found are mostly not really that helpful--just digestible enough to give me calories but not enough to live on unless I was eating nothing but them nonstop all day long.

I need to find a source of food. Either I find some local plant I can grow more of, or some… See, I’m getting ahead of myself. Cultivatin’ shit is gonna take time. I need something to keep me going past the day my day-ration pills give out.

Short story is, I’m going to set traps. I had a few of the fruits I’m calling Waterfruit for breakfast and then gathered vines from the walls. It’s surprisingly sturdy, way more than I expected. I still wish I had managed to find rope in the Outfitter’s office but these will work.

There are three ways to hunt. You can stalk prey, you can bait or trap, and you can wait. Stalkin’ is badass and all, but it takes too much energy, which cuts into how much you’re gonna get from a successful kill. On top of that it’s hard even with animals on Earth I know aren’t going to turn on me. Also, I can’t find nothin’... disregarding that bird that I saw this morning in the courtyard.

Waiting works. You build a stand or sit in a tree or something and you wait for them to come along and go all sniper on ‘em. But if you have no idea what the habits of prey are… like me, than its pointless. You’ve got to set the stand up strategically, and I woudn’t know where to begin.

Traps it is then. Sometimes people will put out a salt lick or corn and let hogs or deer come find them. You keep replenishing anything eaten away, do that for a while… and then one day you stalk it out and you kill the freeloaders. Sounds kind of harsh, doesn’t it? A little expensive, too.

But I’m good with traps. I can make like a dozen different kinds, from harmless to brutal. My favorite? An old Apache trick. Dig a little hole and then you put sorta sharp sticks all facing inwards towards a hole in the middle… that’s what it looks like. The idea is that you cover it up and when a deer or some big animal bumbles by they’ll step in it and not be able to figure out how to get out. The sticks will keep them there. A human could probably worm out, but a hog? Nah.

My least favorite is probably the drowning snare, even if dad always said it was merciful. The idea is a little noose that the critter steps into hauls it into nearby water, weighted down with a big rock. You can guess the rest. Deep enough water and it drowns in a minute. A little panic and then nothing, instead of maybe an hour or more of pain and fear and suffering. So I get why dad thought that…

I probably sound really cold-blooded. The truth is that I ain’t looking forward to this. When there was still an America, folks went hunting for fun, they tell me. I don’t understand that at all. Just because I have a bigass hand cannon doesn’t mean I like shootin’ people or even animals with it. Everytime I pull that trigger I do it because I know I have to, or I die. Every single time I’ve hunted, it was to survive between towns and between jobs. I don’t like it. I like the feeling of success when I nab something big, and I like venison, but I don’t like shooting it down. I don’t like wounding a buck and then trailing it, knowing in my heart that it’s hurt now and I did that. I made it hurt… and that feels awful. Being sorry doesn’t help. It doesn’t mend the bullet hole and it doesn’t make the poor thing bleed out faster.

But I don’t want to die. I can’t die yet. I’m twenty seven. That’s just too young to die, even in a world like mine or this one. Not yet.

So I have to. I don’t want to hurt anything out there… but I’m going to starve. I could hold off and wait until I’m desperate, but if I do that, I decrease the chances I catch anything while I have the strength to put it out of its misery and actually test and eat it.

I’m sorry, new world. But you do whatcha gotta. That’s the savage way.

First Interview: Sailors on a Becalmed Sea

Author's Note

“Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.”

― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

First Interview: Sailors on a Becalmed Sea

[Autoscribe Activated, Set to Record… Range Increased to 50 feet radius. Auto-adjusting gain and equalization. Transcript compiled at the 15:49 mark. Voices distinguished for convenience.]

S: Don’t you move. I ain’t about to shoot if you don’t… okay. Okay, okay. Jesus. Who the hell are you?

?: My, they did say you would probably greet me a bit roughly. I hadn’t expected to see such a weapon pointed at me… so quickly, too! Please, calm yourself. I’m a friend, ma’am.

S: Hardly. I don’t know you from Adam. And you know what? I’m pretty fuckin’ pissed that you’re sitting in my camp, so why don’t we cut the smiley crap and you start talking about stuff I care about.

?: That is acceptable. I’ll oblige, if you will drop the act. I’ve read up on you, Miss Marshall, and would you like to know what I’ve concluded?

S: No.

?: I’ve concluded that you won’t fire. You’re a good woman. I’ll agree with your associate Dr. Eroll that you’re a bit rough, but you’re a good woman.

S: Are you a Fed? Man, if you are…

?: I am certainly not one of those butchers.

S: How should I believe you? Voice sounds like… Concordat.

?: And you are right. I am here as a representative of the Concordat on a mission of peace. I bring gifts, and you’ll notice that my hands are raised still. I’ve not touched my own weapon.

S: Yeah, but I also have the Judge on you.

?: That you do. First, some news from the homefront: your colleagues are alive and well. The good doctor sends his greetings and an apology. They were rescued out of Federal hands two days ago. My government returned them as a gesture of goodwill, and our respective employers have brokered a mutually beneficial arrangement, and thus I am here.

S: How many? Why should I believe you aren’t the blackshirt sumbitch who shot all those bullets the other day?

?: The… pardon? You’ll have to catch me up on that. I know nothing of it. I arrived yesterday.

There is a pause.

S: I don’t want to shoot you, you’re right.

?: I would rather avoid that myself.

S: Were you the one that trashed my camp?

?: No.

S: Sighs. Dammit. Fine, for now I’m gonna go along with this. The Judge is still out, heh, literally. I’m watching. Kindly step away from my tent, would you?

?: Certainly, ma’am. Might I put a hand down to help me rise? The leg is a bit stiff. It’s an old wound.

S: Go on.

?: Thank you. I appreciate that you’re willing to listen, and I am regretful that my presence seems to have coincided with evidence of some third party. Having used no ammunition myself as of yet, I can safely say that I am not responsible for any casings you may have found. What were there make?

S: .45 auto.

?: Ah, then I shall further put your mind at ease. I will not reach into my jacket, but might I pull it aside?

S: You touch a piece and I’ll show you why .454 Casull’s the last argument of kings.

?: Oh! That was good. I like that… I’ll have to remember it. Do you know the original quotation?

There is a rustling sound.

?: It’s from King Louis the… I believe the 14th? On his cannons, he ordered it be inscribed “Ultima Ratio Regnum” which is Latin for “The last argument of Kings”. A delightful sort, he was. As you can see, it’s an--

S: M97, but it’s all weird.

?: Good eye, I’m pleased you’re quick on the draw, if you’ll forgive the joke. Yes. An M97A4, specifically, designed as a designated marksman rifle, and approved by the late United States army roughly two years before the Massacre of Amarillo. I took this particular example with me when I left the service.

S: Were you there?

?: Pardon?

The Raging Judge is cocked.

S: Amarillo. Answer the question. Now.

?: I was not. At the time, I was on my way home from the war in Panama. I avoided the much lesser known massacre there by only a week, in fact. Watched the horrors unfold on the news, before the soon to be Federal Junta pulled the feed.

S: So you’re one of the ones that walked.

?: That I was. Truth be told, Panama and Mauritania… I was quite ready to go. The world was falling apart and the old empire Franklin started rolling was cracking. You might find it hard to believe, but I do sincerely believe it might live again.

S: America’s deader than my mother and she got torn to little tiny pieces by .50s in the streets. Amarillo.

?: I had read that. I am sorry, for what is worth. My generation failed yours.

S: You know what? I think I believe you.

?: I’m glad to hear it.

S: But I’m not exactly excited about you bein’ here. Even if you’re Concordat. You guys can be shady. At least a little offense meant. What’s the name?

CM: Christopher Malthus. It’s a pleasure to meet you.

S: And you talk like you’re out of Gone With the Wind.

A soft sound of the Pioneer as she resets the hammer without firing.

CM: Ah, that hurt a bit. I’m loathe to be associated with the Lost Cause. Bad for business, as well as a bit sordid. I’m surprised you know what is, actually. Your file did say you were surprisingly aware of the old world. The personnel we rescued. mentioned your request for reading material on base.

S: What’s your angle? Shoot straight with me.

CM: Exploration, curiosity, commerce. Cartography, really, like Joshua and Caleb in the new promised land. At the moment? I meant to find you and converse. I assumed you would not wish my presence in your camp and came prepared to set up stake elsewhere, but not before I had delivered my second gift.

S: Yeah?

A rustling sound.

S: Oh fuck me. Is that…?

CM: Food? Yes.

S: I don’t even care about that smartass smile you have. You slide those over towards my tent and I’ll take back the crack about your voice, on my mother.

A grating noise.

CM: It is done. Also, this. It’s a rather primitive device, an old radio. If you’re right, and I feared such might occur, then there is a third among us. Possibly more, but the Federal Union has a presence in this new world. They will be monitoring the more conventional methods of communication, so we shall settle for the old analog. The range is limited to about a mile, even with the improvements I had my subordinates install, but it will do.

S: Where do we go from here? I ain’t completely comfortable with you knowing where I am but me not knowing where you are. But I ain’t about to get violent with someone who’s been neighborly with me.

CM: I would say, but I do not know myself. I assume you would not be accompanying me.

S: Hell no.

CM: Yes, well. The work of a cartographer of alien worlds is a bit lonely, I suppose. Best to make the… well, best of it. That one fell apart on me, didn’t it? Regardless! Have we an accord? I shall not bother you, and you always have a line to me. Your superiors requested I not badger you and the details of the arrangement brokered by both of our governments insists that we conclude separate investigations of this world, so as to provide a better picture through independant eyes. However, I would love to compare notes in a few days, yes?

S: We’ll see. I’m puttin’ my gun away, okay?

CM: I’m glad to see it.

S: Well, you kinda killed the mood by not being a baby-murderin’ blackshirt or the one who trashed my camp, so…

CM: I’ll lay the radio here, alright? If you see our mutual… friends…

S: If it’s more than one, then yeah. I’ll call ya. If I live, I might call you afterwards too. You any good with that thing?

CM: The stories I could tell. Very good.

S: I hope you don’t have to use it. I think he might have met somethin’ too big to handle. Blood everywhere and a dozen or two dozen shells spent. Scared off the game too. You’ve saved my life with those day-rations. If they ain’t poisoned, obviously.

CM: Suspicion suits you surprisingly well, Miss Marshall.

S: Sorry, but that dumb smile don’t work on that face. The coat is nice though. Keep it.

CM: And on that note, I’ll away. I assume I have no fear of being shot in the back?

S: I’m no murderer.

CM: Oh, I know you aren’t. I read your file. I was impressed, sincerely. You are the right sort of woman for this enterprise, Miss Marshall.

S: Yeah well… thanks, I guess. Watch out for my traps. If you’re gonna make camp, do it south of here. I didn’t put anything there. The trees have markings, so you’ll see any pitfalls. Good luck, man.