It was cold. Fluttershy wanted to pull her blanket tighter around herself, but when she felt for it, there was nothing but cold air brushing through her feathers. Had it slipped off during the night? She opened her eyes, but it didn’t make a difference. The world wasn’t just dark, it was pitch black, devoid of even the slightest sliver of moonlight that usually fell through her window.
But she wasn’t home. She wasn’t home because she wasn’t lying in her bed; she was lying on a surface that was hard and perfectly smooth. When she stood up, she could barely feel it below her hooves. Was it metal? Was it stone? She could walk without slipping, but to what end? There was nothing here. Still, she took a couple of steps. Nothing. It was hard to believe that she was even moving... she had no point of reference, could not even see her own hooves.
She had died. She knew it. That was the only explanation. This wasn’t a dream, but it wasn’t Equestria, either. It was simply nothing, cold nothingness. This was where everypony went after her death, then. A place where there was nothing. Because death was nothing. That made sense.
Fluttershy didn’t remember how she had died. She didn’t remember much of anything. Had she died old or young? Alone or with friends by her side? There was only darkness, a big hole where her memory had once been, with just little bits of information sprinkled in. She knew that she liked sleeping with an open window. She knew that she liked it quiet. She knew her name, and she knew the name ‘Rarity’. But that was it. Was it her mother? Her lover? Her friend? Her child? She couldn’t tell. She knew she was a pegasus. She knew she wasn’t good at flying. She knew she had taken care of animals. What animals? She didn’t know. It was dark, part of the hole.
She ran. She didn’t know why. But then, why not? There was hardly something to lose. She ran and ran, for minutes on end, if time was even a concept here. She might have run until she was out of breath, but that never happened. She never even got tired. Apparently, exhaustion no longer existed. She could probably run for hours if she wanted to... and when she did stop, it was merely due to boredom. How long had she run? She had no idea.
She spread her wings outward. Maybe she wasn’t good at flying, but she could still fly, right? She flapped them. Was it working? It seemed to. She flapped them harder. She could actually hear the sound of air being pushed aside. Coming to think of it, that was strange. If there was nothing, then why was there air? And now she realized that she had been breathing all along, too.
She needed to think. She should land. She stopped flapping, expecting to sail downward. But she didn’t. She was feeling the same surface beneath her hooves. It was as if the ground had ascended along with her.
Experimentally, she flapped her wings again. The feeling on her hooves vanished. She wasn’t standing on the ground anymore. She pressed her wings downward, as strong as she could. She could feel the thrust moving her upward. Then she stopped. Momentarily, the feeling below her hooves returned.
She closed her eyes. It felt wrong. She reopened them. It made no difference. It was all black. She couldn’t see.
But she could hear. So she said her name.
“Fluttershy.” She could hear her own voice. “Rarity.” Those were the only names she knew. “I’m trapped.” It felt good to talk. “I don’t know where I am. I’m talking to myself.”
Some ponies talked to themselves regularly, even while they were alive. Had she? She didn’t remember.
“I’m dead,” she said. No response. “You don’t want to say yes? There is nopony to say yes. But I am.”
She turned around. Had she done it? It was impossible to know. She would never find the direction she had been heading towards again. She had probably already changed it several times during her flight.
Why was there air? It didn’t seem right. Maybe she wasn’t dead after all. Maybe she was alive, just... in a bad place. Maybe the gates of Tartarus had broken, and this was some kind of dystopia. But then... why wasn’t she getting tired?
Maybe it was a dream? Not a normal dream; that was a thought she had dismissed from the very beginning. It felt too real. But perhaps a special dream. Some strange state of hallucination someone had put her under.
A flicker. Fluttershy felt it coming before she could react. A flicker of hope. The idea that it wasn’t real, that she was hallucinating. That she was really lying in bed somewhere, and soon she would wake. Maybe a drug. She was pretty sure that she wasn’t the kind of pony who had taken drugs, but maybe something had made her. Or maybe it was an accident. Maybe a potion she had drunk. Maybe it was a bad trip. A horrible trip. She knew... or at least she thought she knew... that those existed. Things that would mess with a pony’s mind, but only for a while. Her memory was fractured, but perhaps it was coming back. Perhaps it was all just a matter of time.
And perhaps not. The flicker died as quickly as it had come up. She didn’t believe any of it. This was not a dream. At least not one she would wake from. An eternal waking nightmare from which there was no escape, maybe. Might as well call it real.
Rarity was probably here, too. If not, she would be, soon. But Fluttershy would never see her again. She would never see again. Probably because there was nothing to see. If everything was black, then it made no difference whether one could see or not. Whether her eyes were
open
or
closed.
° ° °
And she could hear. Things that were not her own voice. She didn’t know what they were, but they were there. And feel. Soft. Rough. Different. A blanket? Something that could not be.
“ . . . ”
A change of air. An exhale. Then nothing. In and out. Another exhale. Breathing. Breathing that wasn’t hers. And more feelings. Many more feelings. A softness under her body. The blanket above her. The warmth around her. The irregularity of everything. Different pressures on different spots of her body. A tiny itch on her muzzle. Irregularities that had not been there in eternity. And then a color.
A color. Red. Slight red. Against the lids of her eyes. Light. Light outside. Light beyond her closed eyelids.
She was lying in a bed with somepony else beside her, and her eyes were yet too heavy to open. Or were they? She tried again. Almost. Again. And again. And again.
Light. Sensations. Images. Things. Colors. Gray. Brown. Red. Pale. Not pale. Purple. Images. And warmth.
She closed her eyes and it vanished and she re-opened them and it returned. So many sensations. And someone was standing there, a purple pony, looking directly into her eyes.
“Welcome back, Fluttershy.”
Welcome back, Fluttershy. Back. Wherever she had been, it had been temporary.
Temporary. Not permanent. Not death. It hadn’t been death. After all this time... after spending so many years in eternity... the castle of lines had awoken doubts in her, but nonetheless... she had believed... always believed... always believed that it was death. That it would last forever. That there would be no end. No waking up. No warmth. No company.
But now...
She tried to speak. It was hard. But she could move her eyes. Not her head, though. She was facing the purple pony, and behind her, there was a door. And a wall. And a floor.
“You’ll recover in no time. Just another minute and you can stand up. You’re probably almost ready to talk.”
Fluttershy tried to. She failed, and tried again. She failed again, but she realized how much closer she had come. At the fourth try, she succeeded.
“A... mm... mhl...”
A wide smile spread on the other pony’s face. “I’m so glad you’re back!” she said. “I’m so happy! Do you know who I am?”
Fluttershy’s recovery must have progressed farther during the time the purple pony had spoken because when she replied, she could form a real word.
“No.”
“Aw.” The mare’s smile flickered, but only for a bit. “That sucks. Well, what do you remember?”
“Rarity,” Fluttershy responded without thinking. “Will it... come back? My memories?”
“No. No, they won’t. What you have now is what you get. I’m sorry.”
“Who are you?” Fluttershy tried to move her head. It worked! She could see a bit more of the room now and of her own bed.
“Twilight Sparkle. Call me Twilight.”
Twilight. Fluttershy repeated the name in her head, but it didn’t ring a bell.
“What happened?”
“You died at age ninety-six. Now you’re back.”
“I died,” Fluttershy repeated. So she had been right after all. She had thought that, because she was back now, that it couldn’t have been death, couldn’t have been... because... because that wasn’t something you could return from, was it? But apparently, apparently she had, apparently, she had returned...
“So that was death,” she murmured. “It really... it really was death.”
“Yes,” Twilight said, “that was death.”
“How? If I died... how is it possible?”
“It’s possible because your mind was preserved. But it’ll be better if I tell you things in order. Fluttershy... a lot has happened since our previous lives.”
□ □ □ □
“How much do you remember about our society?” Twilight asked her, a strange look in her eyes.
“Almost nothing. I remember... my name... I’m a pegasus... there are three tribes... I remember bits of my home... I remember Rarity... but just the name...”
“What about technology?”
Fluttershy shook her head. “Light... buildings... running water... I’m not sure what else...”
“Celestia used to prohibit all technological progress. Do you remember who – no, you said you only remember Rarity, right? Celestia was the ruler of our world, an alicorn who had already lived eight thousand years. But her natural life was coming to a close... and she knew that magic wasn’t the answer, but she was afraid of change... afraid of what technology would bring if we allowed it to flourish... she said that she wouldn’t make a decision out of self-preservation. I tried so hard... tried to convince her... for years I had tried to change her mind... told her that she had to live, not for her own sake, but for the sake of Equestria... it’s not selfish... even if she put no value on her own life, if she just wanted to help everyone else... even then... she was integral to keeping peace in Equestria, and we both knew it... without her, everything might fall apart... but she wouldn’t listen... only so late... when I was already old... and was still trying... still writing her every week... finally, she gave in. Finally, she changed the law. And when she did... it opened the floodgates. No-one had expected things to progress that fast. I, I had never thought it could be in time for me... certainly not when the years passed and Celestia remained stubborn... I just wanted her to live, and eventually... for our ancestors... do you know how long normal ponies live?”
“Around ninety years,” Fluttershy said. “I don’t remember any of this... I don’t remember Celestia... but I can understand that you wouldn’t want to go there. Or for others to go there.”
“Yeah.” Twilight nodded grimly. “Yes, well. We both expected it to be in time for her. She still had a few millennia left, and we expected that to be enough. But me? I was fifty-one when we started. I never expected to live long enough, not even close. But... I did. Not long enough to see a cure for aging, mind you. But the technology to freeze a pony... cool her down, really far down... so that she’s like dead but with her mind still intact...”
A chill ran down Fluttershy’s neck. So that’s what had happened to her.
“Celestia offered it to everyone,” Twilight said, reading from Fluttershy’s expression that she had understood. “But most ponies didn’t want it. Most ponies... so many... almost nine out of ten... didn’t sign up for it. The rest of us six didn’t sign up for it. But I did. And you did. We both took the chance, the one chance everypony got to escape it.”
“You were there, too? In eternity? In the darkness?”
Twilight bowed her head.
“Did you meet-” she began, but Twilight shook her head.
“No two ponies ever meet. Even though they all seem to be at the same place. I’ve heard dozens of others talk about it, they all describe it in the same way.”
“And... our... children... or grandchildren... our ancestors... they...”
“They did it,” Twilight said. “They really did it. They, and Celestia, too, she deserves a lot of credit. But here’s what you don’t know yet, Fluttershy. It’s not them who cured aging. Or them who unfroze us. Or them who built this room... they did something else. They made one invention, and that was the last invention ponykind will ever have to make. They created an artificial mind.” She took a deep breath. “Artificial intelligence. You said you remember electric light? It’s an invention on the scale of electricity. A machine. Unconscious, but intelligent. Far, far more intelligent than anypony who ever lived. And it’s here. In this room. And in every other room. It’s watching us right now. It’s watching us... to serve us. To grant us every wish we might have. Look, I’ll show you. Yrr, two glasses of water, please.”
Where had it come from? A little thing on wheels came rolling towards them. On its top a plate with two glasses of water.
“I could have ordered anything,” Twilight said. “Anything, as long as it’s not dangerous. You can even try, if you want. It will follow your orders, too.”
Fluttershy let all of that pass over her, but she didn’t know what to think...
... and even if she knew, she wouldn’t be able to accept it. All she remembered was eternity. And eternity was dark, and peaceful, and cold. It was possible, or at least it felt possible, that she would be back there in a moment...
“You can also ask for whatever you want. Again, as long as it’s not hurting anyone.”
... perhaps in the next moment...
She shook her head, trying to shake off the thought.
“Just like that?” She asked with some delay. “I just have to say it?”
Twilight nodded.
“I’d like to hear a song,” Fluttershy whispered. “For so many years, I’ve heard nothing but my own voice.” That, and it might make her feel... make it feel more... real.
“You’re in a for a real surprise. Yrr, play the song you think Fluttershy will enjoy the most.”
Strings. Where were they coming from? It had begun as soon as Twilight had finished talking. From all around them. Music. Soul-crushingly beautiful music. A melody straight out of the heaven that didn’t seem to exist. Without realizing it, Fluttershy began crying. The music captured everything. This was her. Her journey. How she had first woken up. She remembered it so vividly, now. The confusion. The flight. The endless flight. She couldn’t comprehend anymore what elements the music was made of. She wasn’t listening, she was floating. Utterly helpless. The music had total, unconditional control over her. She was reliving the endless flight, never once turning back. Not once. Then the dot. It slowly grew, so very slowly. Until it faded into the lines. The lines of the castle. Coming closer and closer, but so very slowly. At last, the arrival. All of the years spent at the castle, strolling through the courtyard.
Fluttershy blinked. Where was she? She couldn’t remember anything. Then it came rushing back. The dot. The castle. The... the resurrection! Twilight! The music.
The music...
Suddenly she was aware of her surroundings again. She was sitting on a bed, next to Twilight.
“What happened? Did I pass out?”
“No,” Twilight said. “The song just finished. About a minute ago. Ponies tend to have strong reactions. Especially for you... hearing it as your first taste of our art. ...so you really reached the Fortress of Lines. I didn’t. Very few ponies did. But I’ve heard about it.”
“I d-don’t understand,” Fluttershy breathed. She realized she’d wet the sheets with her tears. She took the blanket in a shaking hoof, wiping her eyes.
“I told you it’s smarter than anypony. That means it’s better than anypony, at everything. That includes making music.”
“It c-could have made me do a-anything. Anything.” Fluttershy knew that this was true as she said it. “If the music had told me to... to attack you, I would have done it. If it had told me... I don’t know... but it could have made me do anything. How is that possible, how can it do that, it’s just...”
“Imagine you were a genius musician. The greatest musician who ever lived. Imagine all you wanted was to write a ten-second song. Just a ten-second song. Imagine you spent your entire life doing that. Year for year, just figuring out how to make those ten seconds sound as perfect as possible. That is what you just listened to. That, except that it’s composed by something far more talented than the greatest musician who ever lived, and it’s been tailor-made for you specifically. Do you understand now, Fluttershy? Do you understand now what we created?”
“No.” Of course she didn’t.
“Yrr, make the room look like a place in the clouds.
How had it happened? Fluttershy was sitting on a cloud, overlooking a wide sky dotted with spots of white. She turned to her left. Twilight was sitting beside her, smiling.
“... it was the most beautiful thing I ever heard,” she eventually said.
“Duh.”
“Duh,” Fluttershy agreed. “That doesn’t give it justice. Wow, Twilight, I... I don’t get it. Of course I don’t get it. But I think I get... a bit of it. I don’t know. Just...” She took a deep breath. “Just to be s-sure. The song. Did it have lyrics? I don’t... I don’t... know... remember.”
“I don’t think it did,” Twilight said, “but I’m not sure. It’s hard for me, too, to hear it. You’re just... in trance, while they go on. It’s so overwhelming.”
“Yes. Trance...”
“Do you want to come with me? There are so many other things you need to see.”
“Yes,” Fluttershy said numbly. “Yes, of course. Can you make the room go back to how it was? This feels... weird.”
“Of course,” Twilight responded, “but you can do it yourself, too. Just... phrase it as a demand, not a question.”
“Uhm. Can... uhm. Please... please make the room look... like it did before.”
Three seconds later, they were sitting on a bed once again. Then Twilight slid off it, and gave Fluttershy a smile, signaling her to follow.
“Do I get this right,” Fluttershy said as she did so, “that this is not magic?”
“Yeah.” Twilight opened the door. It revealed a hallway, fairly simple looking and without windows. But Twilight seemed to know where she was going. “Magic is limited in what it can do, comparatively.”
“I’d have never thought... it would even be possible. To have that effect... just through music. I thought there would be a limit to what music can do.”
“There is a limit,” Twilight said as they entered another room, this one looking like it was out of a normal house rather than a hospital. “What you just listened to. That was the limit, or at least something close to it. But that was the mistake many ponies made. I had this discussion with lots of ponies in my first life. We talked about it, too, you and I. Ponies used to say ‘there are limits to how smart you can make something’; ‘there are limits to computing speed’. And yes, that is literally true; there are limits. But they are really, really high.“
Fluttershy nodded. “Where is everyone?” she then asked, suddenly feeling anxious. The room looked normal, as far as she could tell, like a place that somepony really lived in. But who? Twilight?
“I planned for us to spend some time alone so I could ease you into things. There are plenty of ponies – more than there were back when we were first alive. If you want, we can meet some.”
“No,” Fluttershy replied immediately, “no, not yet. I’d like spending more time with you. I want somepony to explain everything to me. I just wanted to be sure that we aren’t the only ones.”
“We’re not. Alright.” Twilight smiled. “Now... I have an idea what we could do next. Unless you just want to talk.”
“No,” Fluttershy said again. “More... things. Show me more. We can talk later. What is it?”
“A movie,” Twilight said. “They were invented a few years before you died. I don’t know if you remember what they are.”
Fluttershy shook her head.
“Moving pictures,” Twilight explained. “Yrr, show a little preview. Nothing too impressive.”
Immediately, a pony appeared in front of them. It was a pegasus mare, and she was standing on a hill, with buildings behind her that Fluttershy had never seen before. She was looking across the landscape below, her mane blowing in the wind.
It took her a while to realize that she wasn’t real. Moving pictures...
“It’s just images?”
“Yes,” Twilight said, “just images. Nothing can happen to you. It’s just like playing a vinyl, only it stores both images and sound. My favorite movie lasts two hours. You’ll forget who you are while watching. You’ll be inside of her head – that pony here. Right now, it’s not as immersive, so we can talk. But when it starts, it’ll overwhelm you. Just like the music, only a bit less intense. It’ll be like a dream. In two hours, you’ll wake up. But it’ll be a pleasant dream. I always feel great after watching it. I think it’ll be the right thing for you.”
“It sounds perfect.” Fluttershy’s mental state was indescribable, but escaping for a while sounded wonderful. It was still too much. If she could just prolong it for a while, prolong understanding and thinking about everything, just, everything... “I trust you. We can start right now. Oh, does it have a name? Like a song?”
“Scale,” Twilight said. “It’s called Scale. Yrr, play Scale for us.”
Fluttershy woke up. She felt boundless energy and optimism, and even though she gradually realized that it hadn’t been real, the feeling didn’t disappear. On the contrary: now that, for the first time, eternity seemed so far away, she was finally ready to accept her revival, and perhaps... perhaps begin to understand the world she now lived in.
Without thinking, she leaned over to the other pony, giving her a hug.
“Thanks. That was incredible.”
“It was. Don’t thank me. I didn’t make it.”
The end of the struggle was still so close. Daring felt so real that Fluttershy had to remind herself at every moment that it had just been images.
“The others won’t come back?” She suddenly asked, at last feeling ready to know everything. “You said we were six friends.”
“I begged them to apply for cryonics. I tried for years. With all five of them. Including you.”
“You had to beg me to sign up?”
“Yes,” Twilight just said, her voice completely serious. “I did.”
For the first time since she had regained her voice, Fluttershy felt utterly lost for words. She had chosen eternity? Or been meaning to choose it? Over this? It had been peaceful, but... cold... and... empty... and this... the music... and Scale... and all of the countless wonders that only waited for her to uncover them...
Why?
It seemed unimaginable. And yet, it never crossed her mind to doubt what Twilight was telling her.
“Thank you,” she breathed, and tears dwelt out of her eyes as she hugged the other mare once again. For a few moments, she lost awareness of her surroundings once again. The gratitude she felt was so strong, so all-encompassing...
After a while, it faded enough for her to think again. Twilight had replied nothing, but she smiled as they parted.
“Was... Rarity... one of us six?”
“Yes.”
There was only a slight stitch of pain. She had been prepared for that. All throughout eternity, she had never had hope of seeing Rarity alive again.
“Rarity said that waking up in a totally different world wouldn’t be consoling.”
Those words send another shiver down her spine.
“If you spend five minutes in the world we now have, it seems insane. For you, since you’ve forgotten so much about how it was, and you were alone and cold for a century, I’m sure it sounds even more insane. And it is insane, I know that. But... it is what it is. For them, it was a glimmer of hope... they didn’t know it would work... and they were also older, they couldn’t imagine returning to how things were. And they made the mistake of thinking that what they could and couldn’t imagine mattered at all.”
“That’s... a tragedy.”
“It’s the greatest tragedy in the world,” Twilight simply said. “Every death is a tragedy, but those who made their choice, and chose death over life... there is no greater tragedy than that. They have an eternity of darkness when they could have had an eternity of happiness. It is cruel and they don’t deserve it. No-one does.”
“I hope they can learn to enjoy eternity,” Fluttershy murmured. “It’s peaceful.”
“It’s horrible, Fluttershy. I know you dealt with it in your way. But you’re an anomaly. Almost no-one has the strength to accept it. Many spend much of their time being angry and depressed. Yes, some deal with it as well as you or even better. But they’re a minority.”
“But, but maybe... with enough time... maybe eventually...”
“We don’t have to guess,” Twilight said dryly. “Yrr can tell you with pretty high confidence. It knew death wouldn’t be as bad for you as it was for most. It told me that, and it was right. That’s why it revived you so late. Unfreezing ponies is so difficult that even Yrr needs time to do it. So it has to choose an order, and it chooses the order based on who suffers the most. You’re one of the last ponies to be brought back. I was somewhere near the middle. But... it doesn’t really matter, does it? You’re back now. The ponies who weren’t frozen, those are the ones we have to feel sorry for.”
“Are all of them... going to be there... forever?”
“Yes,” Twilight simply said. “It’s best not to think about it. How did you do it? Yrr told me you would probably spend weeks not even turning your head. I never spent more than a few hours doing one thing. I would always be frustrated, running around, being angry that I wouldn’t get warm, lying down, distracting myself, and so on.”
“Not weeks,” Fluttershy corrected. “Once I saw the light, I never turned around. I just kept flying.”
“Not even once?”
“No, not even once.”
“Well,” Twilight said, “the good news is that everyone who’s here now will stay here.”
“Hm,” Fluttershy made. “I hope so...”
“We know it for sure,” Twilight said, emphasizing the last word. “Yrr has proved it. No-one else will die. Ever.”
Fluttershy opened her mouth, but then closed it without saying anything.
“Alright,” she then just said. “Um, something else I’ve been wondering.”
“Yeah?”
“Doesn’t it get boring? Movies, for example, no matter how good they are, does it last after you’ve seen them... I don’t know... a thousand times?”
“You make yourself forget. I’ve seen Scale many times, but I don’t remember it. I erased it again yesterday. When I watched it with you, it was fresh like on my first time.”
“But then... couldn’t you just... watch the same thing, or listen to the same thing... over and over again?”
“Yes. You could. But no-one does. If you want to just be happy, there’s a simpler way.”
“A simpler way?”
“You can just have Yrr stimulate your brain to make you artificially happy. There are some limits as to how long you’re allowed to do this – you still have to eat and sleep – but you’re free to spend most of your time like that if you want to. Most ponies don’t – but some do.”
“Have you ever tried?”
“Oh, sure. Yeah. There’s no harm trying. For most ponies, anyway. If it was bad for you, Yrr would tell you. Me, I’ve never done it for a long time. Maybe that’s foolish. I’m not sure. But I just don’t want to give up autonomy. I want to decide what I’ll do. When you’re made happy, you don’t think anymore. You’re just in a sea of bliss. I like it occasionally for short intervals, but not... not all the time.”
“Could I... try? Just for, um, a few minutes? Like you? I want to know what it is to be happy... really, really happy. Just for a bit.”
“Sure, if you want to.”
“But you’ll stay here? Promise? I want you to show me more.”
Twilight nodded. “Promise.”
“Alright...” Fluttershy took a deep breath. “... Yrr... um, could you...”
