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.