The Starlight and the Sunset
Melanie looked out across the street lit by lamps simulating sunlight as the glass pane high above kept view of the stars passing by ever so slowly. The hum of the starship was drowned out by the pre-recorded sounds of birds and wind passing through the leaves. The trees were real. The grass was not.
There were ten small houses built five on each side of the street to nowhere. The end of the road trailed off into an observatory almost a hundred meters beyond the last residence. Melanie stared at the five houses on the left. Her own was the furthest towards the starship’s cockpit. The house was a sky blue with a color scheme which would’ve been more at place in a children’s coloring book than sitting beneath a starlit sky. Each house had a different color to match the personal tastes of the residence’s owner. Except the last one. That house was boarded up and the color had been drained from its facade. Melanie tried not to think about it.
On the right side, all the houses were still gray and unlit. They seemed pleasant enough, but they lacked the touch of homes occupied by residents who took pride in their living spaces.
“Your Emergence Day is almost here, Starlight,” Melanie said as she examined a viewscreen on her wrist computer. A heads-up display appeared over her eye as a shaded purple and pink translucent form stood in front of her.
“I’m looking forward to it, Melanie,” Starlight said through an equine mouth. She stood on her hind legs, as a human would, but she was not human. She had no hands, and instead, hooves marked the end of each limb. Her mane and tail were purple, but a turquoise streak severed the middle of each. She smiled. Her eyes were kind.
“What number is this…again?” Melanie said. Her voice trailed off a little as she spoke. It was hard for her to remember how long it had been since she first saw Starlight.
“Ten. Ten years,” Starlight said. She smiled again. “I’m really excited for this anniversary. We have the plans for the party tonight, right? I checked the guest list while you were getting ready for bed last night. Twenty have RSVP’d and the rest are a bunch of maybes.” Starlight was holding a clipboard in her translucent hands. Of course, she didn’t need one. It was purely symbolic, to show she was performing a memory recall action so Melanie could follow along easier.
“Any…anyone saying they won’t be coming tonight?” Melanie asked. She looked down and away from Starlight. Even though the image was beamed directly into her eye from implants next to her tear ducts, her gaze downward ensured that Starlight’s image would move out of view of her eyes until she looked back.
Starlight winced. “Um…there is the one…as always. But hey! We don’t have to talk about that. I’m certain if we plan well today, we can get close to fifty guests at this party!”
Melanie smiled. She stared at the purple house next to her own. “Okay Starlight. Let’s go check on the preparations at your house.” She walked alongside the ghostly image of her pony friend as both were careful not to stare in the direction of the boarded-up home at the end of the row.
“Melanie, is the starship’s auto-pilot working?”
“Yes Starlight. It’s fine.”
“What about the food replicators? Have they 3-D printed tonight’s entrées?”
“Yes. Chicken and Beef. Plus ample digitized herbivore options in the system for everyone else but me.”
“That’s okay. As long as there’s enough. What about the entertainment?” Starlight asked.
“I’ve prepared three of Twilight Sparkle’s scripts to go through. One is a fan fiction of romance. The second is comedy Derpy co-wrote last night. And the third is the classical episode ‘Lesson Zero.’ Twilight loves that one, so I made sure to include it,” Melanie said.
“Okay lastly: How’s your stress level? Do you think you’re ready for tonight’s random challenge? I can only say it will include two ponies, an argument, and you will have to traverse two or three houses on the gray side of the street to complete the challenge. You’ll have all night to finish it, but shouldn’t take more than 2-3 hours.”
“About that…do we have to do a challenge tonight? Can’t I just skip one night?”
“Melanie, we’ve been over this. Every day you have to engage your mind with socially-stimulating activity. You don’t do that, and your mental state will deteriorate over time. I give you the same explanation every time you ask.”
“I know…”
Melanie looked at the white interior of the house. All of the furniture was bland and featureless. She pressed a few buttons on her wrist-screen and saw an image overlay itself in the environment. The ivory turned into a sharp, contrasting colors. The bar stools in front of the kitchen countertop took on a 1970’s style with forest green. The floor was an ugly brown shag carpet which looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in months. The couches and chairs took on the appearance of worn red vinyl with a few tears here and there. Melanie ran her fingers over the image of the tears and her force-feedback gloves gave her the sensation of rips in the fabric. The walls were now wooden with dark black streaks segmenting each section into smaller planks. Fuzzy lampshades rested on tables at each major corner of the room and a dim underlit bulb shone from the kitchen area as the lamps turned on to give soft light to the remainder of the room.
“It’s hideous,” Starlight said.
“I know. Isn’t it perfect?” Melanie said as she smiled. She hugged the couch and breathed in deep as the scent of vinyl filled her nose. “Scent replicators are working,” she said in a dreamlike daze.
“Check,” Starlight said as she marked an item off her clipboard.
The rest of the house took on the 1970’s aesthetic inside the two bedrooms, the restroom, the gaming room, and even the closets. Even though the rooms were populated by objects in her digital mindspace, Melanie was overjoyed to find all manner of small treasures hidden away in the corners of the house. She found small well-rendered figurines of transforming robots and placed them on the kitchen counter.
“Look Starlight! Transformers!”
“Huh,” Starlight picked up one of the toys in her hoof. “These are from 1984. This doesn’t fit with the 70’s look of the house.”
“Not everything is from the same era, Starlight. No place is isolated within its own time. This house may be 1970s, but the toys are from the 80s, and hey, maybe we’ll see something from the 1990s too! Maybe even 2000s if we’re lucky!”
“Heh. Only you can get so excited about toys three centuries old,” Starlight said. She smiled and handed the form of the transformer back to Melanie. Her force-feedback gloves grasped the intangible object as she moved its arms and legs like an excited five-year old.
“This is awesome!” She said. Her eyes lost their brightness for a second, even though her smile held itself in stasis. “I wish I could keep this.”
Starlight’s eyes softened. She embraced Melanie and the young woman’s bodysuit transmitted the sense of contact all around her. She wrapped her arms around Starlight and rested her head on the pony’s shoulder. The form solidified for just a few seconds as Melanie felt her eyes water. Starlight’s body became transparent once again as Melanie loosened her grip. Her tears fell through Starlight and landed on the fake carpet floor.
It was three hours before the party. Melanie decided she should pay a visit to her favorite human. She stood at the third house on her side of the street. This one was the largest of them all and served multiple purposes. She clicked a few buttons on her wrist computer and watched the rear exterior of the building change color to a more pleasing orange pastel. The sign above the rear entrance said Canterlot High School Auxiliary Entrance: Employees Only.
“I was a teacher here for two years. I’d say that’s good enough,” Melanie said aloud. She opened the door and stepped inside.
All around here were signs of school spirit with streamers, hastily drawn posters about the local football game Friday and posters of various nondescript humans teaching the viewer about the importance of reading. Melanie’s shoes made appropriate echoing sounds off the tiled floor as she stepped by the entrance to a nearby classroom. The teacher, Ms. Cheerilee, stood at the front of the class with a body similar to that of any human, including the soft purple skin pigmentation. There were about twenty desks in the classroom and various students stared ahead at the board, though a few feigned interest and drew in their notebooks or passed notes to one another. One however stood out. It was the black jacket, really. Well…that and her striped hair always reminded Melanie of bacon.
The moment Melanie stared at Sunset Shimmer, the girl stared back. She smirked and made an encouraging wave while Cheerilee’s back was turned. She then raised her hand as Cheerilee turned around and asked to be excused. The teacher looked at the window to the door and opened it herself. “Miss Melanie!” Cheerilee said. “So good to see you again! Nice to have you back in the class.”
“Thanks Cheerilee. You’re doing a great job,” Melanie said as they hugged. For some reason, Cheerilee smelled like fresh apples. “Nice perfume!”
“Thanks! It’s called Wild Orchard. We can talk more later. I have to finish this class and then get to a meeting later today with Principal Celestia and Vice Principal Luna.”
“Oh nothing too serious I hope?”
“Well, if you count tonight’s party as serious, then perhaps.” Cheerilee giggled. “We’ve got something special planned for Starlight. Don’t tell her!”
“Oh I won’t!” Melanie said. Sunset Shimmer stood next to the two as Cheerilee nodded and went back to teaching the class the merits of astrophysics. Sunset closed the door behind her and stood in the hallway with Melanie. They embraced. Had anyone watched the hug take place, they would’ve thought it odd to see two humans so vastly different in scale exist alongside one another. Sunset’s proportions were entirely different from Melanie’s naturally-evolved human form. Sunset Shimmer was what Melanie referred to as a “stylized human.” Her overall body was thinner and more elongated. Her head and eyes were significantly bigger than the average human and when she emoted, her facial expressions were far more pronounced than anything Melanie was capable of. In reality, Sunset Shimmer was a cartoon character come to life. Her proportions were just human enough that Melanie’s mind thought nothing of it.
“Meli! What brings you here, sweetheart?” Sunset asked. “Before you ask, yes, I am attending Starlight’s party tonight.”
“Oh that’s totally fine. I was never worried about you,” Melanie said. “I just…” She looked out the door. “Can we take a walk?”
“Well I have class but…look for five minutes, okay? But that’s it.”
As they walked out the front door, there were greeted by the sight of stylized humans just like Sunset Shimmer, talking with each other as they passed by on the sidewalks across each side of the street. Others sat under trees and read. A young couple, Lyra and Bon Bon, kissed on a bench when they thought no one was looking (Sunset and Melanie were looking) before going back to studying something in their science books. A few people waved at Sunset and Melanie as they passed by. Before they could start talking, Melanie looked off onto the grass in front of the school entrance and gasped. There stood a horse statue atop a large pedestal.
“Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh MY GOSH!” Melanie shouted as she ran up to it. “This statue almost NEVER randomly appears in front of the school! I can’t believe it showed up today!”
Sunset giggled. “Melanie, I don’t have a lot of time. I know what you’re thinking, but I gotta get back to my class soon.”
“Sunset it’s ONE class and this is SUPER rare! So you know what you have to do.”
“What do I have to do, Melanie?” Sunset asked with a bemused expression and playfully annoyed eyes.
“Stick your face in the pedestal.”
“What?”
“Stick your face right below the horse! See what happens!” Melanie ran over and pushed her hand through the side of the statue’s granite wall. She saw her hand take on the hoof of a pony beyond the threshold of the wall as though it were a magic mirror. “Hey I had a hoof for a few seconds! Sunset, you do it!”
“I don’t know, Melanie. I mean, it’s been a while since I’ve been through that portal.”
Melanie walked over to her friend and put her hands on her shoulders. The rough leather of the jacket pressed against her hands. “I'm going to let you in on a little secret: every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it; don't wait for it; just let it happen.”
“That’s from Twin Peaks, Meli. Special Agent Dale Cooper said that.”
“And Coop was right! This is our present today, Shimmy! Let’s experience it together.”
“I’m gonna get detention…aw what the hay. What’s a lost Saturday nowadays?” Sunset and Melanie held hands and stepped through the portal together.
Author's Note
Extra Story Details
Writing Time: Approx 2 hours
Draft Number: 1 Draft
Story Settings: Starship, Synthesized Ecosystem Interior, House/Building Interiors
Story Themes: Loneliness Made Not So Lonely Through Technology, Digital Companions, Mental Companions, Friendship, Enthusiastic Exploration
Story Background:
This chapter was written on January 14, 2016.
I just love writing pony companion stories <3
A story with a similar theme to this one is "The World Inside Aurora Ray," located here:
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/333472/the-world-inside-aurora-ray
