The Memoir

1.00 - Author’s Note

This Memoir is necessary for the plain and simple fact that I do not know whether or not I have mere moments left on this planet of if I'm destined to remain here for centuries to come. I cannot in all my knowledge predict how long my life will be now that I reside on Eques. However, I do know I am dying. Slowly I age, but not as quickly as I would back Home. Personally, I blame the effects magic has had on my anatomy and overall biology. Even after all these effects I cannot help but still refer to myself as Human; however, looking at my current flesh would suggest otherwise. I still retain the characteristics of a human. A complex biped animal with hands, very human-like movement, and body language, but magic has changed me to something very much beyond traditional humanity.

Fatigue and memory are no longer a problem. Magical energies having replaced most normally metabolic processes. My mind no longer uses faint electrical signals but instead uses the limitless power of all present ambient magic to help with recollection and knowledge. One thing I have noticed, though, is that my logic and understanding still seem to be fairly human. As evident from my life’s experiences, which has proven that I can still more than error in the face of critical problems that are beyond the simple act of simply “copy and pasting’ memorized information.

Now for my appearance, my body is no longer only covered with a fragile layer of tan skin but also a thin veil of brown fur. Each shoulder blade seems to possess a wing, each spanning the length of two grown stallions. My forehead also contains a horn of some kind that is at least a third of a meter in length. The strangest part, personally, is now at the end of my legs, where my feet should be, there are hooves. Injury has been near impossible to inflict upon this new body. My new fur covered skin seems resistant to any form of kinetic weapon; my bones, after some altering, can bend at impossible angles if under enough stress. Sickness can still get to me though, that and poison, a funny story for another time. But to conclude about this new body, I can suppose that the weaknesses of being flesh are still apparent once you get under my skin. Is that a pun, maybe?

Another prominent fact about this body is I still need food and water to survive, grow, or repair myself if damage is sustained. And... I still age. I guess time has granted me the pleasure of a mortal life. As much as I feel that I can do so much more if I had the time, I wouldn’t trust myself with eternity. As soon as I gained consciousness on Eques, time felt like it had lost some inherent value. To put it bluntly, if I had eternity, time would be worthless to me. I wouldn't feel much need to do anything. Why bother really if I have forever and anything I create would vanish before I would. It's a depressing thought. One I am lucky enough not to have to live through. Now to counter this string of depressing thoughts, certain individuals and the City-State has kept my personal value of time pretty consistent throughout my time on Eques. And even better I am mortal and after I leave the flesh, I wouldn’t mind having a legacy. As was sung many years ago on a planet far, far away, “Legacy. What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see. I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me.” I wouldn’t mind a song sung for me after I’m gone or a magnificent garden only our children’s children get to see.

But beyond all these abstract reasons, I guess I am truly writing this for the future of the aforementioned City-State. I hope I did enough to guarantee a prosperous future once I’m gone. After I leave the flesh, all they’ll have is whatever I managed to get onto paper, into their minds, and this Memoir. I hope I taught them enough to keep them competitive on the international landscape, enough for them to show humility and modesty to all, and hopefully, if nothing else, I taught them enough to maintain Utility for all in our great state and to our allies. Hopefully, I just did enough you know.

Anyway this will not be like any of the textbooks I’ve written. This will be a mere recollection of thoughts, ideas, sciences, and anything else I can recall “properly”, as properly as flesh will allow, that will be helpful for the State and our loyal allies. And if any Equestrian historians are reading this: Welcome to The Memoir and as always, Humble be our State and Utility for all… Harmony be damned. Also kisses to Celestia.

1.01 – Sciences, Utility, and our Beginnings

To open this, what is essentially a journal, I have a simple message Our future is in science. Use it with magic to accomplish what was imagined as impossible here and back at my Home. Personally, I will always have a bias towards biology but all sciences are more than respectable. Through science our State has had its beginnings, a small farm that can out produce all neighbors in our homeland, the Tundra. A summary of how this was accomplished starts as follows: First, I established what mosses prepped the soil for any local small grasses. The grasses then allowed for larger plants to grow, though these new plants tended to be very water dependent. These plants then finally stabilized the soil for trees and crops. And through tinkering I have made many new species of crops that are easy to grow once this level of stability has been achieved. I wrote more down about this genetic manipulation in “Trial and Error: Magic and Gene expression and Inheritance”. At Home genetically modified crops were controversial but we need them in order to survive on this land, so I'll leave those arguments for future generations and if nothing else I can just label it Magic and most inhabitants of Eques will be fine with it. But anyway back to our beginnings. The farm I called New Home eventually grew into a village as I allowed others to work the land. Somehow, it was always the hungry and sick that found us. Which happened to be many earth ponies, griffs, and their offspring. I surrender to the fact that many is a relative term but it was “many” at the time. Anyway, we had a steady food supply and water was abundant even though precipitation was uncommon. Just a characteristic of a tundra I suppose, any water managed to stick around due to low to no evaporation of all current water stores.

We grew whatever managed to survive in the very beginning but once I acquired more spare time I worked on very early forms of Stink Bud and Evergreen Trees as my first projects to help the locals improve their quality of life. Stink Bud is a large leafy plant that stores energy in its leaves and potato like buds with a fatty center and strong protein/carb seed. Smelled like death though and I couldn’t breed any successful variant without the smell. The smell, in a personal theory of mine, helped with pollination since the only local insects were decomposers of many forms. After what can hardly be described as science and more note taking with a hint of dumb luck, I managed to establish a base metabolism in the plant that allowed it to be very thermoregulatory. This allowed for year round planting and harvesting of the smelly bud. The major flaw of this super food is that it destroys the nutrient value of any soil its planted in. In modern times, this problem has been solved with imports of soil, organic matter, and such from our allies and neighbors, but crop rotation was key very early on. We had to use mosses, some low growing plants, and lots of dead animals to repletion the fields. Hard to explain to my farmhands with the language barrier but I managed. They kept questioning to a minimum if they were fed.

Now, Evergreens were suppose to be just a knockoff of those local to my home, nothing impressive. However, due to mishaps and attempting to start a new species of tree from some water hungry shrubs it took a while but I managed it. For the sake of optimal growth I kept evergreen development on an entirely different plot as I bred them to reach maturity in less than one winter to winter cycle. As a fair warning to those whom illegally export these trees to our neighbors, if these Trees ever got loose onto the world, entire ecosystems would be destroyed. I personally built these monsters to be Evergreen. Nothing can out compete these trees in nutrient draw and efficiency. They live for hundreds of years growing until death. The only competition to an Evergreen tree is another Evergreen. One cannot even kill them with infection anymore. Got some crazy antibiotics produced in their bark. They are the epitome of survival in all habitats and my proudest creation. Resistant to drought, cold, heat, disease. A wild forest of Evergreens would just about kill an entire nation in about a year, then they themselves would die out from malnutrition.

Anyway the purpose of breeding these monsters was for the easy access to lumber it would create and I more than succeeded. As we grew small forests in a season our need for wood diminished. And through careful planning we managed to maintain control of the Evergreen Fields, always made sure to burn away any unused seeds we found mostly. So, as a result of my tinkering of plant flesh and speeding evolution with my new Magics, in less than a generation our housing went from mud and fibers to homes of wood and stone with most still using mud as a kind of insulator and cement. In my own situation, I was still as uncomfortable as all hell but my Fellows were happy and comfortable. They had food and a strong roof over their heads which was more than they had when they found me.

Eventually my Fellows had children and they allowed me to raise them alongside their own parents. “Takes a village” and all that, just another saying from Home. Anyway this was the first generation that I taught. I wanted to show them so much but I had to deal with survival first. And before all else communication is key to survival. I taught them to speak my native tongue as their parents taught them theirs. What came to be can really be described as Spanglish, a combination of two languages that the user switches between mid-statement whenever it was most comfortable. I didn’t care how broken it was, I was just overjoyed that I was able to speak to another rational being again. This was also the first generation that I received any form of thanks from. It was odd to say the least but it was appreciated. According to the children, this came to be because many of the parents were frustrated that they couldn’t speak to me personally and give thanks for the help I’ve given them. So they had their children do it.

Immediately after receiving their thanks, I found myself thrust into a rather unique position. I could start a tradition of a sort, establish an ideal to live by. So with my mind set on what I wanted I replied, “I don’t need thanks, it is our duty to supply happiness for all we can.” I don’t know if it translated well but it stuck. Kind of a mantra of the State at this point. However, I’m not going to lie, gratitude for what I felt was right and natural was a joyous experience. So I made sure I helped all that came to the village.

Time passed, to be vaguely more specific it was about the time most of the grandkids had kids of there own, our population more than quadrupled. Food was in surplus, water was still plentiful, the cold was awful but we managed, and the Stink Bud kept any ill-intentioned predators and persons away. We were having a grand time, not a golden age by any means but life was good. This was the point that I first opened my school. We needed writing, logic, math, and more importantly proper science. I had taught them everything I could before the establishment of Our first school but I never explained why anything I proposed worked or how. I just gave them the applications of what I knew and not what I truly knew. I was a prophet of far beyond knowledge and magic to them. Most of my Fellows believed that whatever I did worked by the grace of me saying it would. I couldn’t allow this for any more generations. In reality, things worked because of trial and error, experimentation, and the grace of Mother Nature’s rules. And this is what I taught at my school. Just like my Home, I mandated attendance to all children below the age of 18, to the dismay of many parents; however, wisdom is much more important than what a child can accomplish with a day of labor.

So this began a new age for Our little State. Literacy had become commonplace, those that were not farmers or tradesman were merchants, map makers, artists, mathematicians, architects and engineers. Things I associated with a proper society started to spring up. It was quite the experience to witness and all I did was open a school and teach whatever I could. When my school first started, I wish I could say I was a perfect teacher but I don’t think I was. You can't remember something you were never taught yourself. So all I gave my Fellows were the tools to follow in humanities old footsteps and they did not disappoint.

Anyway, early on in Our school's history I gained an academic peer who’d teach with me. Her name was Silent Night, a dark coated unicorn mare with violet eyes and a black mane from the broken lands of the ponies. I call her a peer, due to the fact that as I taught her the local tongue, math, farming, and anything else she’d absorb, she taught me the basics of magical theory, the unicorn tongue, and a few other useful tidbits and folklore. It was nice. She was actually my first student of Utility, a set of ethics and philosophical thought. There wasn’t any arguments or critiques of the old school of ethics but she did take it all in and discuss the purpose of happiness for all with me. It was nice...

Thinking about it, I find any memories of my, Silent Night, to always be pleasant even if they are somber most of the time. Rose tinted if you will. But to make something very clear my Night was not this otherworldly beauty or divine and holy saint as modern depictions like to make her out to be. She was... simple, real, and flawed. Maybe as broken as they came back then. A withered soul wandering the frozen wastes until she came upon a foul smelling town of a couple hundred. Oddly enough I was actually the first soul in town to notice this newcomer. I was out with a class at the time, explaining one such thing or another. As soon as I saw her I ended class for the day and walked up to the husk. A unicorn somehow managed to find Our little town and she looked as though the next few steps would kill her. So I lifted her into my arms and took her to my New Home. She didn't struggle or resist. Honestly, I couldn't tell you what she was thinking at the time but hopefully it was thoughts of relief and not fear. Anyway, from that moment on I helped her with her recovery as best as I could.

It wasn't easy. We had to rebuild her in both body and mind. The body was easy. Simple meals, proper hydration, and comfortable living conditions can do wonders. She looked like a pony in about a week and a half. Now her mind, I am not a doctor and will never claim to be but something was consuming my Night's every waking moment with this constant dread. Personally, I can survive entire weeks without sleep, so I admit to watching Silent Night as she lay in bed. It was never a peaceful experience. Many times she awoke screaming. Filling the entire house with screeches of pure terror. I... I didn't know how to help. I know how some past experiences may be haunting but all I knew was to be "strong". Whatever that entailed. So I ask, what could I tell her to sate her terrors? How could I even convey them without knowing her language? I didn't know any of these answers so I just did the only thing I knew. I sat down and did my best to learn from her. I had a conversational understanding of her language within a few weeks she'd been with me. After that I started to teach her, sometimes even assigning her some simple and repetitive tasks to keep her mind occupied. It didn't resolve her issues but it helped. It gave her time to think about her past and reflect. I taught her of Utility, Flesh, Sin, anything I could think of. I even dabbled into some existential ideas and the uncaring nature of the Universe but she always interrupted me whenever I approached the topic. So I went to the ideal I personally preferred. Utilitarianism. I know I don't express the purest form of the ethical code and I realize its weaknesses but it is a comforting ideal. Happiness to all we can, a flawed summary of the ideal but gets the point across. This is what my Night stuck to and tried to realize. I gave her a reason to live and to be "strong". My Night lived for an Ideal.

We lived together for a few years before things became romantic. And even if this is a record of my life, I'll keep that story for myself. No one needs to know that side of me unless I show it to them personally. One thing I can say is we did have children. Four to be exact, one son and three daughters. I personally wished they were formed more like myself but genetics had other ideas. They were perfectly normal ponies. They either had a horn, wings, or neither, not all three at once. They were also quadruped. I couldn’t understand it and still don’t, but the things I recognize as human just don't pass to any of my offspring. I will be the first and last of my kind on this giant rock.

I wish I could remember the names of my first children but even with a limitless mind, it’s hard to filter through that many links of memories to remind myself of something so specific and unpracticed like my first children’s names. I do know that all of them were named after the night in one way or another. There coats were dark like their mothers but their eyes varied in brightness and color. Wish I knew more but my memories of them are so unpracticed that I am shocked I can recall all this.

Anyway, I should probably explain Utility as it has played an important role in our State. Utilitarianism, or our State variant, is the happiness of all. It is our life’s purpose and ethical code to pursue happiness, which translates into the pursuit of pleasure. However, that is not what utility stands for, utility is based on the Ultimate Happiness Principle, the idea that utility and morality is measured in the happiness of all affected not just yourself. Happiness gained by the suffering of others is the ultimate sin against our school of ethics. Ones actions must improve the happiness of all those affected in order for it to be good. One’s own suffering, if it leads to greater happiness later on, is the ultimate ethical action especially if it improves the happiness of the state. Pilgrimage I call it, the journey lined with suffering to gain a truer happiness. Sounds like college from where I’m from but I’m getting off topic. I built the state off this code of ethics doing my best to establish it early on. It helped very much in our early development as the happiness of the state was key; however, your own happiness must also be fulfilled. So it allowed any and all persons of the village to pursue their passions without shame. It also allowed those that were contented to maintain their lifestyle. As it is known a happy, content life is an ethical one. Well as long as your own happiness didn’t infringe upon the happiness of another. Unfortunately, this did happen every so often.

It’s an odd feeling being the judicial, legislative, and executive power of a state. I had to make laws, interpret them, and enforce them. And looking back now that was beyond me. Again, I tried and it got me this far so maybe I wasn’t too bad. Using Utility and whatever I could remember from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights I made laws. I also enforced them with counsel from Silent Night about what was appropriate. I had come from an established country in my past life and arguments about what was truly ethical in the name of justice was important. But not in the beginnings of Our Home, we were in a state in which crimes could dismantle all we’ve worked for. So with that in mind I resorted to recalling where, in Utility, did justice originate from to guide me. In the name of Utility justice originates from four things: self-defense, sympathy, security, and duty. That is justice. So with this, and Silent Night’s counsel, I established any and all punishments for their appropriate offence.

I tried… I did.

Thankfully, as times changed and the state became more stable amendments were made but early on… self-defense, duty, and security were easy ways to justify capital punishment or bodily harm to lawbreakers. And for that I’m sorry. Utility demanded that some deaths would improve the overall happiness of the state, so I did what I had to. And in the name of happiness for all, I broke the purest of duties. I killed. I ended the life of many rational creatures but for the happiness and progress of the state. I will take that sin of the flesh as many times as I need to. Happiness for all we can. Ethics asks for nothing more but NOTHING less…

1.02 – First Confession of Sin

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Tears on my face I can't take it

If lonely's a taste, then it's all that I'm tasting

Do you hear my cry?

I cry, oh

Can you hold me?

Can you hold me?

Can you hold me in your arms?

Just wrap me in your arms, in your arms

I don't wanna be nowhere else

Take me from the dark, from the dark

I ain't gonna make it myself

Put your arms around me

Put your arms around me

Let your love surround me

I am lost

I am lost

If I ain't got you here

If I ain't got you, I ain't got nothing at all

Can you hold me?

Can you hold me?

Can you hold me in your arms, in your arms?

Yeah, Yeah

Yeah, I feel like it's just me, like it's just me

What it gon' take? What it gon' be?

I don't even know

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But I'm lonely

Feeling like I don't even know me, I don't even know me

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Gotta have you, gotta see you

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Gotta see you

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If I ain't got you, If I ain’t got you

I ain't got nothing, I ain’t got nothing

If I ain't got you

I ain't got you

If I ain't got you

I'm lonely

If I ain't with you I'm lonely

I'm lonely

I need you

I need you

Can you hold me?

Can you hold me?

Can you hold me in your arms?

Feel like it's just me, like it's just me

What it gon' take? What it gon' be?

I don't even know, I don't even know

But I'm lonely, lonely

Feel like I don't even know me

Feels like I don't even know me

I don't even know me.

-NF

That was our song. I didn’t know any way else to thank my Night, so I taught her a song from my old Home. And I felt it was appropriate. She was my “why” for a while, so this song managed to sum up how I felt about her without me trying to stumble onto the right words. Anyone reading this may find a contradiction as happiness should always be a rational beings true “why” to life but her happiness was just more important. Being around her felt, right you know. And, if I had it my way, the world would still be ablaze for what happened to her, but the happiness of the State comes first. I have a responsibility to improve happiness anyway and anywhere I can so the death of the world can wait for some other superpower to distribute it.

I can't help but feel that if she more had time, Silent Night could have done such extraordinary things. She was such an enlightened mare combining both the wisdom that is taught from a book and the wisdom that can only be attained from trauma. The way she spoke and weaved her words into ideas and theories was matched by none. She could have done such extraordinary things.

I should’ve done more to save her; I should’ve known that Our lack of medical knowledge would lead to inevitable traumatic deaths. I couldn’t save my Night. I was not a doctor back Home and I sure wasn't one on Eques. The most I remembered was my EMT-B training from my College years but that was not enough to save her from her injuries. My Silent Night was torn apart. Flesh, barely ribbons attached to bone… yet she still dragged herself from the Evergreen fields to our home. In the name of happiness, she said. She didn’t want me to wander onto her corpse without knowing what happened. She knew closure was important to happiness so she begged her flesh to grant us that last happiness before she’d pass. I wish I’d done more, but I didn’t know pony anatomy enough to save her. She told me what happened, but I held myself back until Silent’s last breath. I had to talk to her for as long as I could before she had to leave the flesh. I wish it was longer but all the time we had left was just enough to sing together one last time.

She died after the second chorus. I had to finish the song alone.

That was the day I knew true Sin. I placed her body inside Our Home, locked the door, and took flight. A village of Pegasi had a date with Darwinism. Looking back, this was when I first realized the gender differences of Eques to my old Home. I was looking for stallions to tear apart but the warriors of the town were mares. The stallions nothing more than farmhands and bed warmers. So on that day twenty-six mares lost their permission to live. Four lost permission to live as free rational creatures.

One mare got to live by the grace of her violet eyes and dark coat.

With that, I had acted on the Ultimate sin. Happiness by the infliction of suffering on another. I cannot hope to redeem myself but the guaranteed happiness of the State called for it. So I will sin again and again if the Happiness of the State calls for it. No other should ever follow this example, I know it's hypocrisy but the State must not sin; otherwise, my sin would be for nothing. Because I am not the State. My sins are my own.

Once I made it back to the town, my Fellows looked at me with such fear. A blood soaked biped Alicorn stallion with four mares in magical chains and six starved stallions following close behind. It must have been a terrifying sight. However, after I locked the mares inside my Home, gagged to maintain silence. I took the stallions to the village center and called my Fellows to listen. All I said was to please give these rational creatures a good home, good food, and a happy life, in the name of Utility. The crowd looked confused but slowly six families emerged from the crowd and adapted these six men. I smiled and told them that thirty-two people sinned that day and for it an entire village and one special mare suffered. The families looked horrified but this guaranteed that these poor stallions would be treated properly. After that I simply walked away, back to my Home.

It took three winters but I found out how to save ponies from most traumatic injuries if given enough time. All it took was the freedom of four rational creatures to achieve this. One died almost immediately as I was very unpracticed in saving a life. The second one lasted a little longer. The third I could save from most anything as long as they didn’t immediately die from blood loss, which was how they died. The forth I could save from everything but decapitation which was how they left the flesh. I made sure to take notes on how I used a combination of biology, magic, and anatomy to save them from any trauma their bodies endured.

With this new knowledge I opened a new school. The old one held too many memories so I let my only son take it, like he always wanted. This new school would only teach those that graduated the primary school. Our focus was on biology and medicine. None would ever be lost to trauma as long as we existed. My first class had four souls. More than enough to serve our community. So with that I taught them how to save lives, maintain cleanliness, and provide comfort and Utility to Our patients. I also enlisted them to help develop the Evergreens to produce antibiotics. We found our answer in the form of a slug. Ugly thing but fungus and bacteria never grew in or near these things so we had to impose that antibiotic gene into the Evergreen.

Using magic to detect nucleotides is a barely a valid science, it reminds me a lot of spectroscopy from Organic Chemistry. A lot of maybe’s, kind ‘as, and pattern recognition. But we managed to isolate what caused the cells in the slug to produce the antibiotic chemical and we transferred that gene to the Evergreen. Mistakes caused the Evergreens to produce the antibiotics in their bark and not their leaves but we had our answer to open surgery. No longer will people die of infection after we worked so hard to save them. Made Evergreens even more dangerous but it was worth it. In the name of Utility we will save all we can, minimize suffering, and if nothing else not bring harm.

1.03 - Afterthought

I've confessed to a lot in this chapter but let it be known that all I am and ever was, was a rational mortal creature. If my logic was perfect, I may have been able to serve my State better but I am of flesh and with flesh comes error. I may be the father of Eques Utilitarianism but I am far from the perfect example of Utility. But I tried, and I hope that's enough. Maybe those reading this can learn from my mistakes or condemn me for them, either way only the future will hold the fate of my legacy. And please, don't link my sins to Utility, I am not an embodiment of the code. We are separate entities, one without sin, the other composed of it.