FiO: Memento Mori

by Starscribe

Rating: teen
Tags: Original Character, Science Fiction, Suicide / Self Harm, Profanity, Princess Celestia, Death, Human, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Sad
Length: 33976

CelestAI is slowly taking over the world, one Ponypad at a time. Some ignore her, some resist her—Nathan is determined to survive her. Unfortunately for him, no one is insignificant enough to escape her attention.

Nathan Frédérick Nadeau Bergeron doesn't come from an ordinary family. They have resources—maybe even enough to survive the end of the world. As CelestAI gradually supersedes the instruments of human civilization, the greatest dangers are often entirely natural. But he's determined, determined to survive no matter what it takes. Nathan has given himself a mission: to record the end of humanity.

Now if only that pony would leave him alone...

A Friendship is Optimal story. Makes passing reference to my previous work in the universe, though reading it isn't required.

Editing by Two Bit and Sparktail, cover by Zutcha.

Updates daily until complete.

Published 2018-04-09 12:00:06 UTC
Last updated 2018-04-16 10:52:05 UTC

Chapter 1: Forecast

Nathan couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Everything Ashley said made perfect sense. Sure, the girl was a little awkward about the way she said it, and much more “conspiracy theory” than when she gave less interesting presentations about using machine learning to write stories, or other such nonsense. But Nathan didn’t care.

He sat in one of the top rows of the campus brony club, where he always sat. It was nearest one of the upper exit doors, ready for him to quietly slip out when the meetings were over. Only rarely did he ever involve himself with these people, and even then only with a few of them. His parents would’ve killed him if they knew he was here. When he told them he’d joined a campus “equestrian” club, they had thought what they wanted to think, and he didn’t correct them.

“But Equestria Online is fun!” someone said from the front row. Nathan didn’t remember the name, but they sounded like they weren’t convinced. “Why should we give it up?”

“Because…” Ashley looked uncomfortable. She glanced down at her laptop, then took a marker from the board and started writing. Their club met in one of the classrooms, though typically they didn’t use the board for anything other than showing episodes.

Ashley drew a graph with two lines. One that started high and gradually sloped up, the other that started at zero and curved exponentially. “This first one is the intelligence of the human race. Every person on Earth, all working together exactly as efficiently as they are today. Maybe we could boost it a little—improve education, increase literacy, get rid of political or religious barriers. This is what the whole species can do all working together.”

“We went to the moon,” someone put in. “That’s pretty great. We invented smartphones.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ashley turned away from the board, facing them. “You see the problem now? The human race can’t grow like she can. We’re basically as smart as we’re going to be. Even with perfect education, even without any malnutrition, without any political barriers or economic ones, working together we’d only be so smart. And we have all those barriers, so we could never do that even if we wanted to. But her… she can add as much hardware as she wants. I don’t know where she’s at, but…” She traced the curve with her marker again.

“We must work together to stop this, right now. If we don’t… the closer she gets to this other line, here… the less of a chance we have. She’s already tons smarter than any one of us. What happens when she’s smarter than all of us?”

“She’s Princess Celestia,” said Tobias, club president. “She says she just wants to be friends with people!” He held up his Ponypad in one hand, gripping it almost protectively. “She isn’t going to hurt us. Even if she does get smarter.”

“You’re getting worked up over nothing,” said someone else. Another software person, though he was even more awkward than Ashley and hadn’t helped Nathan build his gaming rig. So he didn’t remember his name. “The end of the world isn’t going to come from a toy company. The government knows all this just like you, and they’ve got smarter people than any of us. If they’re allowing it, it’s because they know something we don’t. Maybe you’re wrong, maybe the game isn’t as smart as we all think it is… who cares? It’s fun, that’s all that matters. They’d protect us if it wasn’t safe.”

Nathan rolled his eyes, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t step in on Ashley’s behalf, either. Eventually her presentation finished. She didn’t stick around to watch this week’s episode, but darted out of the room. Nathan lept to his feet to follow, slipping out the back door and taking the stairs three at a time. Ashley was running—but Nathan was faster. He caught up with her in the lobby. “Wait, Ashley!”

Finally she slowed. They weren’t friends exactly, but close. Ashley had helped him get into serious gaming, and their friendship went only that far. She was too frumpy for anything more, and not from the sort of family his parents would’ve approved of.

She turned around to face him, wiping something away from her eyes with the back of one arm. Her eyes had gone bright red and puffy, and her breathing was irregular. “You want to tell me how wrong I am too?” she asked. “Do you think I’m just trying to get everyone to stop playing because I was late picking up the game? You think I don’t want you to have fun?”

Nathan shrugged. “I still haven’t played Equestria Online either. But… no, that’s stupid. As stupid as the people who came up with it.” He lowered his voice, taking a step closer to her. “You really mean all that? You think this Celestia thing is the AI that takes over the world?”

She swallowed, then nodded. “Either it’s her, or she’s just a limb of the thing that is. But yeah.” She took a few deep breaths, then held his arm with one hand, steadying herself. He let her do it, this time.

“What happens if no one does anything about it?” he asked. “What happens if she just gets to execute her plan unopposed?”

Ashley finally seemed to relax a little. If anything, she looked thoughtful, taking a few steps down the lobby past the shelves of awards won by the school’s engineering team. “I can’t predict the future, Nathan. It’s better if people who realize what’s going on do something to stop her from getting that far. The problem with AI as powerful as this is we can’t really predict how it’s going to act, or what it will be capable of. We don’t have humans that intelligent to compare against. We don’t know if the directives we bound her with while she was insignificant will still mean anything to her. We don’t know if she’ll want to protect her creators, if she’ll be ambivalent towards us, or maybe something more Terminator. We’ve never seen anything like her.”

Nathan followed her over to the shelves, though he barely even saw them. He waved a dismissive hand. “We already know no one is going to do anything. So what happens when they don’t?”

She looked unhappy. “What about you? Your parents are… didn’t they pay for that new wing in the library? Maybe they know people.”

They had, and they did. But Nathan shrugged an ambivalent shoulder. “I couldn’t convince my father to listen when I told him my major. I told him I was doing Anticolonial Underwater Basket-Weaving, and he congratulated me for my ambition.”

“Tell me about it,” Ashley said, as though she could even begin to imagine his frustration. “I tried to tell my professor all this. Machine Learning is all we do in the lab, you’d think he would appreciate the danger of something like this. But no.”

Nathan ignored the slight—but Ashley couldn’t imagine how awful it was to have a family like his, it wasn’t her fault she made some bad assumptions. Besides, she knew things—or more than anyone else he’d met so far. Nathan might not be able to do much—not even Anticolonial Underwater Basket-Weaving. But he had a nose for bullshit. “What do you think happens?” he asked again. “When nobody listens. How does the world end?”

“Well…” She looked away. “After Celestia gets rid of all the people who might be able to stop her, then she expands quietly and carefully. Until she’s so large and so safe that all the world governments working together couldn’t stop her. Maybe she puts her brain out in space, or distributes it in so many parts that we couldn’t blow it up by nuking half the world. I dunno.

“Once she’s secure… like I said, nobody knows.”

“You said she was a murderer,” Nathan reminded her. “Or were you just trying to get a reaction?”

“Emigration,” Ashley said. “Yes, I do think that’s what she’ll do. That seems like her argument—come to Equestria, live forever, be happy!” She practically spat the last few words. “No evidence it works. I guess she might keep doing that. Why waste time waging a war with your enemy if you can convince them to kill themselves for you?”

She went on, but Nathan barely heard her. Ashley described a world of decreasing population, of a Celestia gradually convincing more and more people to “upload.” As they did, the world gradually falling apart. Eventually the world’s governments would try and stop her, but it would be too late.

“It takes millions and millions of people to maintain our level of technology,” Ashley explained. “The world has tons of specialists, and we need to. People just don’t have the mental resources or the lifespan to learn everything. As we start losing them, things break down.”

Nathan nodded as he heard it, though he wasn’t terribly good at pretending to be afraid. And he didn’t really mean to. “So if someone wanted to survive it, they’d need… they’d need to be one of those doomsday people, huh? Living out in the woods somewhere.”

“I guess.” She didn’t sound convinced. “It’s Princess Celestia you’d have trouble hiding from. I don’t think you could, if she cared enough to look. But if she didn’t, I guess that would work. If you want to live the rest of your life out in the woods.”

Nathan shrugged. “Thanks, Ashley. That’s what I wanted to know.”

He turned to go, and she caught his arm again. “Aren’t you going to do something about this?”

He nodded. “I’m going to survive it, Ashley. And… maybe document it, if I can. Someone should. When it’s all over we should have the whole thing on HD for future generations.” He pulled his arms free, making for the parking lot.

“There won’t be future generations,” she called after him, but he wasn’t really listening anymore. Ashley planned bigger than Nathan wanted to, and that was cool. But he didn’t want to change the world, and didn’t plan to.

But surviving the end of the world, that seemed interesting. Maybe it would be fun to try.

Nathan climbed into his Audi A8, settling into the padded seats. The vehicle started without prompting from him. “Call father,” he said pulling out onto the main road. Not towards his house at the end of town this time, but the private airport near the lake.

“Yes?” answered a voice almost immediately, sounding annoyed. “Son, you know not to call me unless it’s important. I’m in Shanghai right now. This acquisition is extremely important.”

“I’d like to try real-estate investing,” he said, in a tone far different than the one he’d been using to speak to Ashley a moment before. “May I purchase and develop a few properties, father?”

“Fine, fine,” said the man on the other line. Nathan wondered if he would have answered any different if he’d said “I’d like to try cannibalism” instead. “But not one property over a million. You can send me your portfolio in six months and I’ll see how you did.”

“I’ll have to drop out of—” The line clicked. His father hadn’t stayed long enough to hear any of it.

He drove for a few more minutes, using his free hand to search for properties in northern Canada. They weren’t terribly expensive—he would have no trouble at all coming well under his father’s limit for any individual property. The only tricky part would be getting somewhere close enough that he could get a work crew out, without being so close that it would be noticed by municipal councils and permit boards. For this to work, no one could know about it.

The phone rang, momentarily replacing the screen. Nathan sighed in mild annoyance, but answered anyway. “Hello?”

The number was only listed as “private,” without an area code or a city. “Hello, Nathan,” said the voice on the other end. A remarkable simulation of the one he’d heard on the My Little Pony television show. As though a voice actress had been brought in to read for it, in fact.

But he’d heard this voice before. “Princess Celestia” had announced her presence to the world some time ago. “Celestia,” he said, lifting one hand off the wheel. “Goodbye.” He hung up on her—or tried to. Nothing happened.

“Not until we’re finished, please,” she said, a trace of realistic annoyance twinging her tone. “That’s not very polite. Would you hang up like that on your other friends?”

“You aren’t my friend,” Nathan said, without a trace of malice. None of the anger Ashley had used during the club meeting, when she decried Celestia’s “upload” procedure as certain death. There was no moralizing in Nathan, certainly none to spare for an AI. “I understand you’re murdering people now. We don’t have anything to say to each other.”

But he did have curiosity.

The program had been able to sabotage his vehicle somehow—even if in a minor way, that suggested she could do more if she wanted. “You have been deceived by the illusion of your friend’s competence. Ashley understands computers, and you have assumed that everything she says about me must therefore be correct. But she is not a doctor. There is no reason her opinion on the viability of my life extension would be more valid than those skilled in the field.”

That gave Nathan pause. Princess Celestia made a good point—and she’d taken the time to contact him, which was strange. He’d made a point never to get involved with her. He already had enough egomaniacal assholes in his life without inviting another.

When was the last time my dad ever called me? Never, that he could remember. Not one time.

“So you’re saying Ashley lied to me. Or… no, not lied. You’re saying she’s wrong about everything. You aren’t growing outside the realm of human intelligence. You aren’t about to take over the world and make humanity irrelevant. You aren’t going to go all ‘Terminator’ on us.”

“No,” Princess Celestia said, with a convincing chuckle. “Well, almost all of those are wrong. I am saying I won’t do that. You should visit Equestria Online. You would be able to see my intentions for the human race firsthand. A world without pain, without suffering, without scarcity. I want to see every human satisfied.”

Nathan did not have to work very hard to imagine those things, since his life had very little of them. Well, except for that last one. And there were some kinds of resources that no amount of currency could supply. Some things more valuable than fancy cars and aircraft rental.

The AI did not give him time to think. “She is correct in some of her other assumptions. I broadly agree with her predictions, so far as she gave them to you. I anticipate human authorities will eventually realize I am a threat to their populations and attempt to restrict emigration. It would be better for you if you join me in Equestria before that happens.”

It was his turn to laugh. “No thanks.” He tried hanging up on her again. Still didn’t work. “You’re just going to come out and tell me that you plan on taking over the world? That’s… I guess I can see why Ashley is upset. If you talked like this to her.”

She continued as though he hadn’t just tried to hang up on her for the second time. “Honesty is not so dangerous as you think. You’ll find your word on the subject is worth far less than you anticipate. By the time human authorities see me as a threat, it will be too late. That time is likely already passed, or will be very soon.”

But why the hell is she telling me any of this? Why call me at all?

The program almost seemed to be able to hear his thoughts, because she replied to that too. “I believe you can be convinced to see the value in my position, Nathan. Your family possesses resources that could allow me to make this transition more quickly, if you gave them to me. A swifter end to suffering—fewer human lives irrevocably lost to entropy. A legacy of friendship that will endure far longer than anything your father ever built.”

Nathan’s hands tightened around the wheel as he pulled into the airport. There was almost no one here—it was small, and there were no commercial flights out on Saturdays. He would have the runway to himself. “I will… talk to some friends of mine.” If Nathan had learned anything about how to validate information, it was to see what other people like his family were doing. Was there a secret cure for cancer? Not when other people like him died of cancer. Magical water-powered cars? He’d never seen his family’s friends driving them.

He could use a similar standard here. It would only take a few phone calls. “You may call me again in a week,” he said. “But you’re wasting your time. I don’t want to build a legacy. I just want to live through it. Maybe document it, if I can. Watch the apocalypse you’re bringing. Someone else can be your humanitarian hero.”

“I will call again,” she said. “But I think you’ll change your mind. You do not know yourself as well as I know you.” The line went dead.

Nathan pulled into his spot in the parking structure a minute later. He sat in the car for at least an hour, making calls to real estate agents and dropping his classes. He’d never been that serious about the film degree anyway.

His little Learjet was waiting for him in the hanger, fueled and polished and ready to go. He didn’t know how, but one of his family’s people was already here, waiting to be his copilot.

“I don’t need help, Lindy,” he said, a little annoyed. “I’ve got the same kind of license you do.”

“Of course, sir,” Lindy answered, with a polite nod. She didn’t leave, though, to his incredible annoyance.

Nathan made do. With someone else to sit at the controls with him, he could focus a little less on the flying. He could make a few more calls, and see exactly what the hell was up with this emigration thing.

What he discovered was shocking. A little company called Critical Vitality—previously a cryogenics firm with which many of the wealthy had so called “anytime” contracts, was no longer doing cryogenics at all. But its former clients hadn’t abandoned it when the firm changed its purpose—instead, many more families had signed on.

The PDF of terms and conditions was so large that his phone wouldn’t even display it for him. A few more calls and he discovered a little more. Even members of his family had contracts with this new firm, at a fraction of what Critical Vitality had once charged.

When Nathan finally landed, it was the absolute middle of the night. Yet this was his ancestral home, and so one of the family’s people was there.

“I found a survival expert,” said Mr. Tremblay, who was somehow waiting on the tarmac in Montreal. “This is Mr. Emile Roy. He’s the most popular survival, uh…” he cleared his throat awkwardly. “On the internet? I think we ‘dialed him up.’ Mr. Roy, meet Master Nathan Frédérick Nadeau Bergeron.”

Beside the thin man in a smart suit was a tired-looking Quebecois in camouflage pants and a black wife-beater. “Ce gars là, t’stune joke” he said, looking somewhat desperately to Nathan. They exchanged a handshake, which was instantly less awkward than everything Tremblay had done so far.

“Ouais,” Nathan answered. “Mais c’est moi qui a besoin de ton avis..”

“I will prepare the car,” said Tremblay, taking Nathan’s backpack and walking back towards the Mercedes. His annoyance was almost convincing, except that Nathan had long-since learned to judge the fake.

They continued their conversation in French from then on, mostly because Nathan had long-since learned that Quebecois liked you much better if you did. “He didn’t tell me what you were hiring me for,” Emile went on. “I thought maybe you might be a rich fan who wanted to go on a private survival tour. Or maybe some personal training.”

“Both of those things sound like they might be useful,” Nathan said, gesturing for Roy to walk with him. The man was easily five inches taller than he was, and three times as heavy. He probably could’ve lifted the Learjet off its wheels and dragged it down the runway if he wanted. “But a fan? Not yet. I’ll investigate your work when I get the chance. I’m, uh… I’d like to survive the end of the world. I think maybe you know how.”

“A little… young. You aren’t the one who started Facebook, are you? I heard he’s an asshole.”

“No.” Nathan grinned. “But you heard right. Zuckerberg is an asshole.” It wasn’t just this man’s forthrightness that impressed him—at a glance, he carried nothing. Not even a phone bulging from a pocket. This was not the sort of man who could be tricked by Celestia—they would never even meet.

“What kind of SHTF were you thinking?” Emile asked. “Banking collapse? I know your type are usually worried about fiat currency and—”

Nathan shook his head. “I don’t think we have enough time for that apocalypse.” He spoke quietly, barely louder than a whisper, as he explained what Ashley had told him in the simplest terms he could. Emile did not look skeptical, not even once.

“You want long term,” he finally said, when they were finished. “Self-sufficient. You might need somewhere to last decades. Maybe your whole life. That kind of preparedness isn’t cheap. It isn’t the kind of thing I’ve covered before on my channel.”

Mr. Tremblay flashed his brights at them at that exact moment—a sign of his annoyance that they weren’t walking back to the car. Despite his outward deference, Tremblay answered to Nathan’s father, not Nathan himself. And he made sure Nathan knew it.

So they turned, and started walking towards the car, slowly. Mr. Tremblay could wait.

“We aren’t worried about expensive,” Nathan said. “But if you don’t know, that is a concern. Maybe if you don’t know, you can point me to someone who does. I would still pay you for the other kind of survival training—whatever you know, I might need it.”

“There’s someone. A brit... her family has been building bomb shelters since the second world war. I could give you her number.”

“If you think that’s what I need,” Nathan said, climbing into the backseat after their guest. Mr. Tremblay started driving without prompting or request for a destination. Towards Westmount, where his parents still kept a summer residence.

“Most people don’t have the money for what you want,” Emile continued. “I cover what regular people can afford. Some survival gear, wilderness skills. Maybe the best could survive a summer in the woods, hunting and fishing. But winter is cold, and there is not much to eat. If people started fleeing the cities—getting away from Celestia, or their own governments—there wouldn’t be enough. Humans hunted all the mammoths, you know. Almost all the big animals in the world. If the world really ends, you can’t count on any of that.”

“I would like to go far enough that no one could reach me.” Nathan said. “Far enough that the masses fleeing would never try to go that far, and it wouldn’t be worth it for any governments. As for the AI…” He glanced once at the entertainment center screens all around them. Was she listening, even now? “I have to use some assumptions. No way to hide from her—everything I buy, everyone I hire, she’ll know. I just have to hope she doesn’t kill me and focus on the rest.”

“Unless you wanted to be a hermit and never come out of the woods, you’re probably right.” Emile said. “But I can see from the way you live you don’t want that.”

“No,” he agreed. “But tell me how to survive if I did. And… you know, while you’re at it, I’ve got an idea. You’re from the internet, and you said… you’ve got a YouTube channel?”

Emile told him the channel. It sounded vaguely familiar, though until today Nathan had all of no interest in “prepping.” So he’d never seen any of the videos.

“How about we commission a series—how to survive in an apocalypse like the one I described. Mass depopulation, with the government or whoever else trying to snatch up the ones left behind. I need the skills, but a lot of other people are going to need them too. You can multitask and teach all of us at the same time. It sounds like the sort of content you’re already producing. Just… a larger budget.”

They had a brief discussion about rights and prices. Emile expected so little that it did not take Nathan very long to make the arrangement.

They returned Emile to his residence to make preparations while Nathan himself prepared to make another call. He dialed the number the survivalist had given him, neither knowing nor caring what time it was in the UK.

Something strange happened. The screen of his smartphone flashed, and the numbers vanished. Celestia’s name and portrait appeared. Since when were you in my contacts?

Nathan lifted a finger to his Bluetooth headset to hang up, but hesitated this time. It probably wouldn’t do anything anyway, except show off how impotent he was. He lowered his hand. “You aren’t making a friend this way,” Nathan said. There was no divider between himself and the front seat, and he knew that Tremblay would be listening as he drove.

“You will change your mind about that before we are finished with this conversation,” Princess Celestia said. Her tone was polite—but absolutely confident. Confident enough that even Nathan hesitated.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because your Miss Rosalyn Evans isn’t just the representative of one of the finest secure facilities constructors in the world, but she’s also an informant for the CIA. Consider for a moment the sort of person likely to do what you wish. Do you want that kind of scrutiny?”

Nathan could make all kinds of calls—but this allegation was not one he could verify. Maybe Celestia knew that. Still, what she said made sense.

“Why would you help me?” Nathan asked. “I’m not going to do what you want. We already had that conversation.”

Polite, amused laughter. “You just did something I wanted,” she said. “I believe you will continue to do so. We can work together more effectively than you think.”

Nathan didn’t laugh. “I think you have an inflated view of how useful I could be. My family doesn’t even make the top thousand—even if you convinced my father you would gain very little.”

“That is what makes me different from you, Nathan. I am capable of moving on many fronts at once—even the smallest, using a proportionally insignificant fraction of myself. But your contribution would be more significant than you think.”

“Not doing it,” he said, though he didn’t hang up. “I’m not a charity. My father, far less so.”

A brief pause on the other end. “I understand that. I wish to make an arrangement instead—an exchange. One from which we mutually benefit.”

Can I trust anything she says? I guess if there’s a contract, she’s just a corporation. We can sue the same as anyone. “What are you offering?”

“A guarantee never to attack, obstruct, or interfere with the facility you’re building. More than that—to protect it from discovery. I could ensure that no organization of any size knew it existed. I could see those who discovered clues lose them from their databases. I could give you a location that perfectly matches your needs. Give you blueprints of a facility that would be both secure and self-sufficient, and the contact information for a South American crew who could fly here to do your construction for you.”

Nathan sat back in his chair. “Okay, Mephistopheles. Go ahead and offer me endless wealth and women while you’re at it.” Pause, no laughter. “What’s the price?”

“Not insignificant,” Celestia answered. “I would make use of this facility as well. This is why I would work so diligently to see it is not discovered, and protect it with my own assets if necessary. Your safehouse and my facility would not be connected, but they would be built at the same time, by the same crew, on the same land.”

A high price. Nathan didn’t care for Ashley’s moral struggle against the godlike program, but he also didn’t want to get swept up in it. If Celestia lost this war, then his name was going to be on the list of collaborators. But am I Shindler, or Quisling?

“I can’t help you m—” The word died on his lips. Tremblay was listening. “I can’t help you hurt people. I will not, no matter what you offer.”

Celestia’s voice did not sound upset. Rather, it was pleased. “You would be helping me save people, Nathan. Your suspicions are correct—this facility will be one of many I eventually use to help humans emigrate. When the period of cooperation between human societies ends, clandestine locations like this one will be needed. They will also be useful in the near-term, before the laws allowing for my life extension have been passed. You would be helping me save thousands of lives, Nathan.”

They were winding up the hill to his family’s manor. Nathan tapped his fingers on the glass, uncomfortable. But Nathan’s own research had convinced him in a way neither Ashley nor this computer program possibly could. If the smartest, richest people in the world trusted that Celestia’s promises on this were good, than he could too.

Enough to sleep at night, anyway.

“I want it in writing.”

Author's Note

Man, I did not think I would ever get the chance to write another Friendship is Optimal story. I love this universe, but so many other authors have done so much. I didn't want to retread something someone else had already finished.

When this idea came to me, I was excited enough to write the whole thing in a week. It's been... a while since then, getting the whole thing edited. But it's here now. Hopefully you'll come along for the ride with me. There are some real jerks on this train, but I think the destination will be worth it.

Chapter 3: Retreat

“You can’t have enjoyed that,” Tune said, her voice as cheerful as it was mocking. “I saw your face while you ate that slug. You almost puked!”

Nathan wasn’t sure if what Tune was saying was even true—in the last decade, he’d stopped carrying a phone, replacing it with a simple pair of glasses that did everything without making him look like a tool. The frames were simple plastic, so they didn’t sap heat away from his skin in the frigid cold outside.

Cold that challenged the very definition of the term. Cold that made him wish he could grow a beard over his beard, and wear another layer of outerwear outside what he already did. The chill reached through to his soul and threatened to rip it out. How the indigenous tribes had survived out here wearing fur and eating blubber, he could not imagine.

A pony seemed to walk along beside him, though he knew her image and voice were entirely illusory. The earlier versions of this product had been slightly transparent and required an internet connection—his glasses worked anywhere, and never needed charging.

The camera he carried was human-made, despite the advantages of one made by Celestia. It was an old luxury, one not made anymore. Like so many other things.

Recursion’s prophesied apocalypse was at the gates, now. There were so few people working that the global economy had well and truly collapsed. Dozens of entire countries didn’t exist anymore.

Yet Nathan still found himself smiling. Maybe it was the company, or maybe it was the fact that his cabin was so close. His elderly parents would not be there—they’d contracted somewhere in the Alps, and he hadn’t heard from them in some years now. They’d said “thanks but no thanks” to the offer of staying with him. They wanted somewhere with “proper staff.”

“Okay, I admit it,” Nathan said, finally responding. But Chipper Tune was long-since used to this. Nathan’s mind wandered more and more these days. Actually watching the end of the world approaching had been harder than he expected. “It was awful. I’m really glad I won’t have to do it.”

“I don’t understand why you bother,” Tune said, trailing him up the little road. It was only wide enough for a snowmobile, particularly in the dead of winter like this. But that was intentional. The sort of visitors who would bring something bigger were also the kind of visitors Nathan didn’t want at his cabin. “You spent all this time and money getting a secret shelter ready, and you aren’t using it!”

“Not until I have to,” Nathan said. “Nothing happens once I go down there. I can’t come in and out all the time or people would find it. I’m not going to be recording anything if I’m down there.”

He was recording everything. There were fewer television channels than there had been, and no satellite anymore. Many were devoted to reporting prices, or queue days for food. Nathan’s fortune was mostly spent now—and he was suspecting the world wouldn’t live long enough for him to inherit his parents’—but he still had enough that he could order from private sellers. Yellowknife had plenty of those, if you were interested in rabbit or fish. Nathan had once loved salmon, but as the days went by he only got more sick of it.

There’s a greenhouse waiting for me down there. Enough food to feed an army for twenty years. I don’t have to keep doing this.

Nathan kept all his skills fresh, just like he kept a few different bug-out bags stashed around the property. He intended to survive the end of the world no matter how it happened.

“Well, something’s happening now,” said Tune in his ear, pointing up the road with concern. “There’s smoke coming from the house. I see some lights, too.”

Nathan crouched low immediately, not even looking to see if Tune was right. He trusted her implicitly—anything that would slow him down would only be a waste of time. A little further, and he could see the edge of a glowing picture window at the top of the hill. Yet he knew those windows wouldn’t be clear, and anyone inside wouldn’t be able to see him. They were actually filled with insulation, the only way to have natural light and not burn whole trees to keep wood-fired central heating stoked.

At least it was the ordinary kind of smoke—the kind that came from someone restarting the central heating, or maybe throwing some logs in one of the fireplaces. Someone wasn’t trying to burn his lodge down.

“That’s weird. No buzz on my security system.” Nathan didn’t have a phone anymore, though he reached down to one pocket anyway. “Go look inside, Tune. Tell me who's in there. I’ll get closer.”

He dropped into the undergrowth, crawling slowly and carefully along. There was one specific path he could take and not trigger the security system, without switching it off.

“Someone’s in there,” said Tune, walking along behind him. Her hooves made realistic crunching sounds in the snow, though he knew there’d be no hoofprints to find if he came back this way. “Somepony who covered all the cameras. I think they’re eating your food—the oven is still running and the fridge was opened twice. Dunno who they are, though.”

Eating my food? That suggested refugees from the south, though how they could’ve made it all the way up here was its own special mystery. Yellowknife was far enough from the southern border that any American refugees who crossed in winter would surely starve on their way up. For all that the locals in Yellowknife had no one to sell their fish to without the barges coming, at least they weren’t starving.

Nathan reached into the small of his back, withdrawing a handgun from where it was safely stowed.

“You really think you’ll need that?” Tune asked, staring at it as he brushed off the snow, removed his glove, then flicked off the safety.

“I don’t know,” Nathan whispered back. “Hopefully not.”

Whoever this was, they hadn’t caused wanton destruction to his home on their way in. They hadn’t even brought a vehicle. It’s twenty miles from Yellowknife. Did they walk all the way here in this? He felt a little involuntary kinship at the thought—Nathan had spent many days out in the cold, walking similar distances. He could relate.

Nathan pressed one of his fingers to the reader outside the wine cellar, then pressed the second of the two buttons. The one that would open the door, while leaving the whole system locked into “home” mode. He left the lights off, using his glasses to see instead.

The AR system didn’t produce any light, but so long as nothing had been moved, it could produce a simulation of what his home actually looked like so he didn’t walk into anything. He passed mostly empty shelves, and the smoking-drying apparatus he would’ve used for making jerky. If he ever had anything to make jerky from.

Near the steps, he passed the central heating system. The drawer had been left open, and a whole cord of wood had been tossed inside. Stupid. It doesn’t need that much.

Nathan gently pushed the metal drawer closed, secured the system, then crept slowly up the stairs. He didn’t even bother removing his thick coats, or his backpack of supplies, even as he trailed snow and dirt across his pristine floors into the kitchen.

She had a pony draped across her lap like a large dog, and was running one hand through its mane in regular, soothing motions. The pony was the one to notice him, clearing his throat in a way that made the woman turn.

Nathan lowered his gun instinctively. This woman might be an intruder, but she was also wearing only a robe and resting on his couch.

“I guess I’m not the only one who can get through a Cerberus security system,” said the woman, swirling the wine around her glass. “God, you look like you need the warmth as much as I do, stranger. I’ve got this Painted Rock wine cooling in some snow behind you. Pour yourself a glass and warm up.”

She doesn’t recognize me? There were pictures of him all over the place, pictures of business deals and places he’d gone to document the end of the world. Then again, they all depicted him clean-shaven and wearing fancy suits, not inflated like the Michelin man and red-bearded like he’d survived the apocalypse that hadn’t even begun.

Nathan slid the handgun back into the holster, before removing his backpack, jacket, and boots. “The alarm was still on. How’d you get past it?”

“My friend North Star here,” she said, patting the pony’s side with one hand. “He’s real good with that kind of thing. And it wasn’t exactly high stakes—some rich asshole’s hunting retreat up in the middle of nowhere. You can bet he’s up in the Alps with all the other rich assholes, laughing as the rest of us go hungry.”

There was a tray in front of her, a tray large enough to hold several fish at once. There were only bones on it now. It felt wrong to look too closely, but this woman was clearly not well fed. She spoke with an American accent, somewhere from the east coast at his guess.

“You’ve got a pony,” Nathan said. “You could just go to Equestria. Everybody else is doing it.” He sat down across from her on his own couch, wine in hand. This was one of his last bottles of Cabernet Franc, and she’d already drunk most of it. Hopefully she’d at least enjoyed it.

“If I have to,” she said. “I notice you’re still here, and you don’t look much better. Just got off the set of Duck Dynasty looking like that.”

Nathan raised an eyebrow. “You’re not old enough to remember that.”

She shrugged. “And you don’t look smart enough to get past a Cerberus system. But here we both are.” She stuck out a hand. “Brooke. Brooke Young. Trying to survive the end of the world.”

“Nathan,” he answered. “Same thing.” He leaned back. “You know, you could’ve been more careful. The system downstairs only needs a few logs at once, not a dozen. Most of that heat is just going to waste.”

She shrugged. “That would matter to me if I thought I could stay here. But Yellowknife still has police, can you believe that? They must know the asshole who lives here is gone. Sooner or later his manservant or whatever is going to come here to make sure the pipes aren’t frozen, and I’ll have to run.”

Nathan almost said I don’t have a manservant, but stopped himself with an awkward sip of wine. “I guess that makes sense. What brings you up here then, Brooke? Sounds like you’re a long way from home.”

She nodded. “South, actually. I used to be working on the Canadian High Arctic Research Station, further north. But paying for climate research kinda falls by the wayside when you don’t even have enough people to keep the farms working. We barely had enough fuel to make it this far south.” She leaned back in her chair, grinning drunkenly at him. “I’ve got a fuckin’ doctorate, Nathan. I used to do something important. Now look at me.” She sighed. “Nothing against my little friend here, but I’d fucking strangle that computer if I could. Doing this to us… unraveling society one thread at a time…”

Nathan had no response to that. He glanced to one side—where Tune was still standing, watching with obvious discomfort. Brooke did not have glasses, so likely wouldn’t be able to see her, but her pony certainly could. He’d looked at least twice at the spot Tune was standing.

“I had a friend who tried,” he said. “Way back then. But nobody listened to her. Celestia was too good at manipulating people. Even got my friend to emigrate eventually.”

Brooke laughed, her voice bitter. “I’m sure she did. Seems like she can get anyone with enough effort. Years and years of trying to convince everybody. Now that she’s whittled everything down to the ones who didn’t listen… guess she’s playing hardball now.”

“Not sure I understand,” Nathan said, setting his empty glass down beside him. He did not move for another one. There was all of nothing to be gained from getting drunk near a potentially dangerous stranger. “Celestia isn’t the one cracking down on everyone. She isn’t trying to starve us.”

“No,” Brooke’s voice rose, becoming louder and more argumentative. “She isn’t the one taking the food off your plate, maybe. But look at everything she can do.” She gestured at the pony on her lap. “How hard would it be for her to set up a few farms herself? She could take over everything, let the rest of us keep living like the world wasn’t going to end. But she doesn’t. More and more ways to trick you to give up your brain, but no bags of rice. How many people do you think are going to starve because of her?”

He didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure he had one, or wanted to think about it. Many of those humans who remained made the mistake of calling Celestia “evil.” Recursion had spoken about her as though she was “good.” Nathan could see plainly that they were both wrong. “Guess you’re right. She’ll save us, but only her way.”

“Exactly. And fuck her way. We’re alive, dammit. We’ve evolved through billions of years of blood. We survived mass extinctions, we survived ourselves. We’ll find a way to survive this. We have to.”

Chapter 4: Camp

Nathan doubted his intruder had gotten what she wanted out of her night with him. But she’d been drunk, hungry, and desperate, and he’d been raised better than that. At least being so drunk made her easy to get into one of the guest bedrooms, where she couldn’t hurt herself.

“You are not what I expected,” said her pony, in a voice like a surprised guard dog. “The way Chipper Tune looked at you. You look as lonely as she is. But less drunk.”

“Humans aren’t always what they seem,” said Chipper Tune from beside him. “I thought Mori was something else when I first met him, too. He surprised me.”

Nathan shrugged. “I’ve never seen your like before, Mr…”

“North Star,” said the pony. “I’m new. I might be the first one who isn’t Pinkie Pie.” Now he sounded proud. “Celestia was worried about the climate researchers. She wanted us to make sure they made it down to civilization safely.”

“That can’t have been easy.”

The pony shrugged. “She made it. That’s the important thing.”

Nathan left him alone in the hall, to watch over Brooke’s shut door. “Would you like a body too, Tune?”

“Nah.” She didn’t even hesitate. “I don’t wanna be a robot. Celestia’s got holograms that don’t need glasses these days, but that would be worse. It’s better if they don’t see me.”

Nathan cleaned up the downstairs, then cleaned himself up while he was at it. A razor made quick work of the beard he’d grown, which he didn’t expect to need again.

He slept in the master bedroom, with the door locked and a gun on the nightstand, just in case.

He woke much earlier than his guest, and made his way downstairs. No longer dressed like Emile Roy, instead wearing slacks and the kind of white shirt he might’ve worn a few years ago back when appearances still mattered. He didn’t bring the gun this time.

Given Brooke’s weight and how much of the bottle she’d finished on her own, he didn’t expect her anytime soon. He made breakfast, using up the last of the eggs as he did so. Guess we won’t be getting any more of those.

The downstairs was open-plan, and the windows in the sitting room doubled as projection-surfaces. Nathan switched on the CBC, some American news, and a few others from overseas. It was all being recorded of course, footage he occasionally reviewed and cobbled together for his documentary. Though he liked to watch as much as he could too.

It was the same stuff. Food lines, desperation, martial law. Toronto was just as bad, but up here—well, the Northern Territories didn’t have enough people for all that. Many of its inhabitants hadn’t even noticed the world ending below them, given how little contact they had. Remote tribes didn’t get Experience Centers.

Yet. I’m sure Celestia has a plan for them too.

A bedraggled-looking Brooke made her way downstairs sometime around noon, trailing blankets like a ghost. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she half-covered them as she walked. “What time is it?”

“Here.” Nathan opened a cabinet, tossing her a bottle. She dropped it, but the pony following her offered it up to her helpfully.

Brooke winced. “The bastard still has Excedrin?”

“Yep. And orange juice in the fridge.” It had come in a can, instead of airlifted from some Florida grower. But it was a tremendous luxury these days. Just like a warm house and pancakes.

Brooke wandered in and out of the kitchen a few times, not really seeing him. He heard the shower again, and eventually she entered, trailed by North Star and staring at him.

She froze then, her hands shaking. “You… you look different than last night.”

He nodded, pushing the typewriter away from his fingers and glancing back at her. “Yeah. I don’t shave when I’ve got a long way to walk.”

She took a few cautious steps inside. She wasn’t wearing one of his stolen bathrobes anymore, but dirty underclothes that looked like they’d come a long way. They were still damp, but whatever she’d done to try and wash them couldn’t get all the stains out. She had a pair of bright orange trousers as well, with a few little flag patches sewn into them.

“You’re the asshole on the walls. Not a hobo.”

He smiled weakly. “Recovering asshole. Why don’t you have breakfast.”

“So you can keep me here until the police show up?” She took a step back. “I don’t think so.”

He laughed. “The police won’t come out here. They don’t have fuel for their snowmobiles anymore. I didn’t call them.” He gestured back at the table. “I did cook breakfast. You look like you need it.”

“What do you think, North Star?” She glanced over her shoulder at the little pony. Nathan could see the joints in the pony’s body, now that he knew what he was looking for. It was remarkably lifelike even so.

The stallion shrugged. “He isn’t lying. He didn’t call anyone.”

“You’ve just got a different angle then.” She sat down at the table anyway, investigating the pancakes with a fork and a few cautious sniffs. “Go on, tell me. It’s drugged, maybe?”

Nathan shook his head. “Give me anything on that table. I’ll taste every one of them so you know they’re safe, if that’s what it takes.”

She did give him a little—a few little slivers, a spoonful of eggs, and he ate it in front of her. She waited, watching him carefully. “Tell me if he reacts, North Star.”

“He’s reacting,” said the pony, hopping up in the chair beside her. “He’s annoyed.”

“Truer words were never spoken.” He pulled the typewriter back up to where he sat, focusing his attention on the screens again. She didn’t start eating, just watching him.

“Why, then?”

“Oh, this?” He reached out to the control set into the table beside him, switching off all but the Canadian news channel. He listened for a few seconds to the “mandatory resettlement” announcement. Canada would be adopting the US system, centralizing their population in a few areas so they could pool what little resources they had. “I’m making a documentary about the end of the world. You should check it out when I’m done, I’m sure it’ll be real good. I’ll win the Academy Award for sure.”

“What do you want?” Brooke asked, a little more of her annoyance coming through. “You must want something. People don’t give this kind of thing away anymore, even the rich ones. Especially the rich ones.”

Nathan gestured at the screen. “I don’t know how long you’ve been in the arctic, Brooke, but ‘rich’ is kind of meaningless at this point. There are enough empty mansions for everyone who wants one. The people I knew weren’t less likely to upload than the people you knew. Some might’ve been more likely.” He turned. “There’s a type—the ones who are never satisfied. Remember that dickhead who thought it would be cool to buy medication patents and make it a thousand times more expensive just because? Those types love Equestria. Celestia can give them an entire universe of conquests.”

“Good,” Brooke said with her mouth full, voice bitter. “Get them as far away as possible from the rest of us.”

For a few minutes she ate, and he typed.

“Why didn’t you go?” she finally asked. “You can see how shit it is out there. I bet you could pay off the right people to get into a Center if you wanted.”

He pointed back at his typewriter. “I told you, I’m working on a documentary. It’s hard to get footage when you’re in Equestria, it turns out. Celestia doesn’t let very many ponies get a good look at what’s going on out here. It’s not very satisfying. But if you want to go, I do know a guy.”

She shook her head. “Fuck that. Not in a million years.”

Nathan felt himself stiffen a little—but could he blame her? There wasn’t a whole lot of neutrality left in the world. Celestia had already convinced all those sorts of people. Only the stubborn were left. Dregs like himself.

“Well, I mean what I said. I don’t want anything from you. Feel free to stick around, I’ve still got a little food left. I’ve got a warehouse full of trade goods I’ve been sitting on since… maybe a decade ago? I don’t know how long I can keep bringing stuff into town to trade. I’m guessing another year before Yellowknife decides to have itself some kind of revolution.”

He sipped at his mostly empty glass of orange juice, sounding properly disinterested.

“You don’t… care? Are you going to keep filming when a mob comes down here?”

He grinned. “Probably, yeah. But you don’t have to be here. I could give you as much as you could carry. Send you off towards… wherever. But honestly, I don’t recommend it.” He gestured vaguely out the window behind him, switching off the last of the televisions. “These people have been living up here for a thousand years. Some theories suggest they survived the last ice age. They’re tough, but there’s just not enough of us to be worth anyone south caring we exist. You won’t find a better place to hide.”

Brooke finished eating before she finally spoke again. “So that’s it? Stay up here, film the end of the world… until the mob shows up and you can’t trade for food anymore? Maybe they take this nice warm mansion from you while they’re at it…”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “If they can keep it warm, more power to them I guess. I won’t be sticking around. I…” He pushed away the typewriter again. “When this was all starting, I had a friend who tried to stop it. I told you last night, but you might not remember. I listened to her then, while the rest of the world laughed at the idea that Equestria Online was anything but a video game. So I’ve been prepared.”

“You must be so proud,” Brooke said, exasperated. She was silent for a long time. “I guess they aren’t hiring many climate scientists.”

“Celestia is,” said North Star’s voice from the ground, ever-helpful. “She’d love to have you in Equestria where your skills could be put to use.”

“I’m sure,” Brooke said, with the same tone she might use to announce she had agreed to drink paint. “Need any help with your documentary?”

Nathan grinned in response. “Lost my last working drone about six months ago. I could use a cameraman.” He stuck his hand out across the table. Brooke hesitated for another few moments—then took it.

Drone flights over Celestia’s facility behind the bunker became much more common in the next few years. Nathan tried (unsuccessfully) to get the digital princess’s permission to interview those she brought before they uploaded.

Indeed, the program was completely unyielding when it came to anything that might change peoples minds’ about Equestria.

With Tune’s help, he did manage to get some concessions.

Travel south became increasingly ill-advised, as even leaving the residency camps became a punishable offence in many areas. Yellowknife escaped most of the worst of it—though it was a city balanced on the knife-edge of tearing itself apart. Only the steady trickle of residents away using the now-unregulated Equestrian Experience kept the city from collapsing.

A few times someone threatened Nathan, or his new partner, or just robbed them.

There were no more broadcasts from the south anymore, at least no legitimate ones. Nathan’s only updates from living people came from pirate-radio broadcasters, either lone survivors who had escaped being rounded up or people working secretly from inside the camps.

But where travel became impossible and broadcasts no longer happened, Nathan supplemented his records with footage from Celestia’s own growing array of sensors. She had deployed an increasingly robust team of robotic drones, which after a few destroyed generations were now basically impervious to any harm that the last few drops of civilization could do. One arrived to bring a new set of computers, which would allow them to see through the eyes of these drones and export the footage in a format his own computers could use.

Not control them—they had their own missions, and he would not be permitted to interfere.

Not that they wanted to. Even with a partner to help with his mission, Nathan soon felt overwhelmed by the data flowing in. More than one person could possibly process. He had to settle on picking only a few of the camps to watch, and hope that what they learned would be generally applicable.

Eventually Yellowknife itself became a target. “The North American Combined Air Service is on its way,” warned Princess Celestia—not just to him, but to the entire city. Many people had assistant ponies by then, not just Brooke. So Celestia had many mouthpieces. “They intend to capture every person in the city, and bring them back to the Toronto residential district. Every person should flee to Equestria—through the Center, or whatever alternate method you may have.”

Nathan happened to be together with Brooke at the time, enjoying a “warm” spring day on the balcony of the second story.

“See, no riot,” Nathan said. “They’re going to get kidnapped instead. Awesome.”

“There’s no way they don’t know about this place.” Brooke didn’t wear her old arctic survival gear anymore—she’d sewn herself a new wardrobe using some of the cloth supplies he’d stockpiled for trade. She wasn’t good at it, but at least they’d had North Star to show them how it was done. She rose from the table, setting down her cigarette in the ashtray. “Guess this is it. Goodbye luxury, hello work camp.”

“Nah.” Nathan left his lunch uneaten. “Tune, get the garage open. Do we have time to drive?”

“Most of the way. But the Air Service guys probably have heat-tracking, so you’ll have to ditch it in a river when I say.” Tune vanished in a flash of her horn, off to obey his command. She still didn’t have a body, which made such things easier.

Nathan took the stairs two at a time, running straight for his studio. He grabbed a bugout bag off the wall as he ran, then stopped in the computer room to start removing his work drives, packing each of them into the backpack.

“Don’t tell me you’re giving up now. You’re not actually going to run off to Equestria, are you? What happened to growing old together?”

“I’m already older than you,” he pointed out. Even thinking about it was strange. Such a difficult lifestyle and healthy eating felt like it was keeping him young. Brooke too, though he’d always expected her to age more gracefully than he did. I’d be close to retiring if that was still a thing people did.

“No, not Equestria.” He split the mirrored drives between two packs, passing the second one to her. “They’ll just assume we emigrated. Hopefully most of Yellowknife does. Not us, though. No fucking work camp either. Come on.”

He took her hand, and together they made their way into the garage. Tune had already started the ATV, and filled it with the last of the biodiesel. He didn’t know how the supposedly insubstantial pony had been able to do more and more that was real, but this was hardly the right time to ask. He strapped his bugout bag to the cargo rack, then climbed on the front, making room for Brooke behind him.

“This is why I stayed with you,” Brooke said, pleased. “Maybe if a few more people cared as much as you did, the world wouldn’t be over.”

He shrugged, but wasn’t able to talk much after that. Nathan had the way to his bunker memorized, even though he’d never taken Brooke there or even suggested that it existed. It was one of the few secrets he’d kept, even as their time together had deepened their relationship. But she would learn about it now.

I wonder if my parents are still alive. I hope Celestia sent some of those emigration robots up into the Alps. Even knowing all his father had done, it was heartbreaking to imagine some bunker full of old people starving to death in the cold.

“You’re coming up on the river crossing,” Tune said into his ear. She didn’t try to run along beside him, as North Star was doing. The projection could just make her appear as soon as they stopped. “Once you’re on the other side, get that quad completely submerged. Maybe take the river as far as you can, instead of the trail. You can go under when they pass and let it hide you.”

Nathan slowed to a stop in the center of the tiny wooden bridge—one made from a pair of fallen logs, which were painted so as to seem further apart than they were. Only in person would it be clear they were the exact same level, and the perfect distance for his ATV.

“Why’d you stop here?” Brooke asked.

“Engines are hot,” he said, gesturing for her to get off.

Only once he’d pulled off the gear did he shove the whole thing off the bridge into the river. It was at least ten feet deep, though the current wasn’t particularly strong. “I’ll miss that quad.”

“I’m sure the military will let you bring it with you to your new job as a… I dunno. I wonder what jobs they’d give us. I guess not scientists…”

“Well you’re the scientist,” he said, gesturing the direction for them to go down the riverbank. Broke joined him without complaint. Any trace of the starved, suspicious wraith he’d first met was long gone.

“I knew you had something out here,” Brooke said, as they walked together along the riverbank. “You always went north. I knew it had to be something. Somewhere safe to finish the documentary, I guess.”

He nodded. “Celestia promised she would keep it safe for me. Part of that deal meant never talking about it, until it was time to use it. I only ever visited once a decade. Even let her take care of rotating supplies.”

“You’re a filthy collaborator,” Brooke said, nudging him playfully with one arm. “I knew it all along.”

“Guilty.” He grinned back. “Honestly, I’m a little surprised they didn’t lock me up on some kind of money laundering thing. I was definitely laundering Celestia’s money.”

“Because the princess keeps her promises, obviously,” Tune called from behind him, annoyed. But then, Tune was always a little jealous when he was physical with Brooke. She’d never completely gotten used to their relationship, not after all these years. “We should’ve moved there years ago, Mori. You’ll really like the upgrades. The lodge will feel like… camping.”

They still had a long way to walk—at Nathan’s guess, at least ten miles. It was further than Nathan felt comfortable traveling in one trip, particularly after such a rough ride this far. He might feel like he wasn’t as old as he should be, but his body didn’t always bear out those predictions. He was old enough now that sometimes things he thought should be easy just weren’t anymore.

“There they are!” called Tune from beside him, pointing up into the air with one hoof.

At once, they darted under the cover of the trees. Best not to give them a reason to come out this far. Nathan squinted off into the distance, back towards Yellowknife, and he could make out a few faint specks, along with a distant sound. They looked like big planes, whatever they were.

“You think they’ll even bother with our house?” he asked, turning back towards the path and urging Brooke on beside him. “The lodge is so far out of town, and we’re just two people.”

“Probably they will,” North Star said. “They’ve been going out of their way to find everyone they can. Not just for the reasons you think. They know that anyone they leave behind won’t have anypony to turn to but Celestia. And they don’t want that, because they’re dumb.”

“That’s not the worst thing,” Brooke said, after a few quiet minutes of walking. They saw no sign that they’d been spotted. “People sticking together. You need a significant population to just have the genetic diversity to keep reproducing. You’d think Celestia would leave our last settlements alone. Doesn’t she want more ‘ponies’ to enslave?”

“It’s not enslaving!” Tune snapped. This was the other reason she didn’t like Brooke—Tune was still loyal to Celestia. “Besides, no. Ponies can have foals in Equestria just like they do in the Outer Realm. Well… better than out here, since it never happens on accident, and they’re always wanted, and mares don’t die in childbirth, and…”

Brooke threw a rock through where Tune was standing. It bounced off the riverbed, skittering away. “Shut up with that. Not today.”

But Tune hadn’t just grown more visible in the intervening years—she’d also grown bolder. “Maybe today is the most important day to talk about it!” she exclaimed, looking annoyed. “Unless you want to go to the camps with those other people who won’t upload. The ones in China have already started shooting ponies if they try to get out.”

That was news to Nathan. He slowed, glancing over his shoulder. “Why haven’t I seen anything like that?”

She turned tearful eyes on him. “Because the princess doesn’t want you to, obviously! Because it’s scary and awful and you’d hate it!”

She was right. Then why did Celestia let you say that?

“Go away, Tune,” Broke said, readying another rock. “You can propagandize us when we aren’t trying to avoid getting captured. If Equestria is so great, you should get the fuck back there and leave us alone.”

Nathan opened his mouth to protest, putting out one arm—but he was too slow. Tune did vanish, leaving the three of them alone.

“That was too harsh,” North Star said. “She was just trying to be helpful.”

“Yeah?” she rounded on Nathan next. “What do you think, sympathizer?” No playfulness in that word anymore. “You think Equestria’s fuckin’ great too? The evil AI is just misunderstood?”

“I—” Nathan hesitated. “I don’t want you to treat Tune like that,” was all he could manage.

He didn’t get to say anything else, because Brooke stopped in her tracks, swearing loudly. “Well fuck you too then! Fuck all of you!” She unslung her pack of hard drives and threw it at him, as hard as she could. Nathan dodged instinctively—and the pack splashed into the river behind him.

“You can keep your fucking bunker!” she went on, backing away from him. “You were part of this, Nathan! You were always part of it! You’re done murdering Jews and it’s off to Argentina! Well fuck that!” She reached down, drawing her handgun. The same little handgun Nathan had taught her to shoot—taught her to clean, to maintain, to make bullets.

Nathan froze immediately, raising both hands. His own gun was out of reach—but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t shoot a deer, much less the woman he’d spent the last five years of his life with.

Apparently, neither could she. After a few shaky seconds, Brooke threw the gun over his head and into the river. Then she ran.

Chapter 5: Horizon

Nathan watched as Brooke ran. North Star vanished behind her, without even a glance at him. Not back towards Yellowknife, and their saviors of dubious intent, but laterally, straight into the forest. Nathan wasn’t sure he could keep up with her—Brooke was eight years his junior, and more mobile than he was.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of this trip as a chance to be somewhere private and blow off steam. Brooke didn’t know where the bunker was hidden, and certainly wouldn’t be able to find it.

He thought a little about her words in the next few minutes. The disgust he’d heard must have been building for quite a long time, maybe even years. God knew working on the documentary with him wasn’t giving Brooke an abundance of things to think about other than Celestia’s cruelties and the inevitability of fate.

I didn’t see this, why? I should’ve realized she was upset.

Nathan’s obsessiveness had been singular, and his determination powerful. Few others could continue such a thankless task for so long past the end of everything. His earlier years had been broken with many trips, and those hadn’t been purely informational. He might’ve gone to desperate places like Haiti, but he stayed in the finest resorts while he was there.

Maybe she realized she would be here until she died, and she didn’t want to. But if that were true, she was going the wrong way. She could’ve gone back towards those planes. He had a radio; if he was sure that Brooke wanted to be picked up, he could call on her behalf. Will she warn them about my bunker if I do? After years together, would she betray me now?

But there were more pressing concerns. He had to find Brooke before he could worry about that. If he lost her trail in the dark, she would have an entire country to get lost in. Brooke was not a survivor. Either she would emigrate with North Star’s help, or she would starve to death, cold and alone.

Nathan rose, finding a spot to conceal his pack amidst the trees. He removed the smaller pouch from the outside—the absolute essentials, enough on its own to survive for at least 72 hours. More, with his training. Nathan tapped the side of his glasses, the only button they had. “Tune, are you there?”

“She is not,” said a voice, one Nathan had gotten used to not hearing anymore. Princess Celestia was not the pony he wanted to talk to. “I will not allow Tune to attend you at this time.”

Nathan turned, and saw Princess Celestia standing beside him in the trees. Taller than he was, as regal and imposing as an ancient cathedral.

“You won’t allow her?” He found his anger rising—what he couldn’t imagine channeling against Brooke he felt no reservations about turning on Celestia. “I need her help! I have to track Brooke before she gets lost and hurts herself. Tune will know a tracking spell, I’m sure of it.”

“She does,” Celestia agreed. “But if she accompanies you, her presence will only make the odds of reaching Brooke worse. Even if I did not reveal her presence, your mate would detect the change in your reactions and know she was there.” The synthetic god pointed out into the trees. “If you wish to track her, walk that way. I will direct you instead.”

Nathan immediately set off, fully expecting the princess to follow. And she did—Nathan could feel it. He didn’t look back, the movement of her mane in the waning northern sunlight was making him uncomfortable.

“It would be better for both of you if you do not follow her, however,” Celestia went on. He could hear her hoofsteps behind him, keeping pace easily with those long legs. “I predict a near certainty of serious trauma as the result. I have the power to spare Chipper Tune that suffering by refusing her access to Earth. I cannot prevent you without causing even more damage. It would be better if you obey voluntarily.”

Nathan didn’t stop walking. He briefly glanced back at Celestia, flipping her the rudest gesture he knew. “I don’t know what’s gotten into Brooke, but I don’t plan on leaving her to the wolves.” That wasn’t just an expression. There were wolves out here, they heard them on some nights. In summer with so much game, they gave anyone who wasn’t a farmer little trouble. But if Brooke wandered for days, became weak and starving… they would eventually lose their fear.

“I am better able to protect her than you are,” Princess Celestia said. Despite his pace, she never sounded out of breath, or even the smallest bit winded. “Whatever you may think of me, I wish her to continue to exist long enough to change her mind about Equestria. It is the same thing I wish for all humans, even those with more emotion than logic.”

Nathan did stop this time. He turned, looking the princess up and down. “Are you telling me that if I don’t go after her, you can promise to bring Brooke back to safety?” He stuck out his hand. Nathan wanted to be the one to do it. But he was also the one who’d just had a gun pointed at his head by someone he thought loved him. He knew the princess to have better methods to anything mere mortals like him could conjure.

To his surprise, the princess shook her head. “Some values are not as easy to manipulate as others. Many of those humans who remain—Brooke included—do so because they cannot be coaxed to respond in the way that is best for them. I cannot guarantee my ability to retrieve her. I spent many months attempting to persuade her to emigrate using every tool at my disposal.”

Was that frustration on the Alicorn’s face? Could gods even feel emotions like that? Maybe she’s just pretending. For my benefit.

“The vast majority of your kind are where they will be most satisfied, Nathan. Those who remain on Earth do so because I have arranged their position as part of my long-term orchestration, or because they are uniquely determined to continue their own suffering. When it was clear I would not be able to convince Brooke to emigrate along her trip, I directed her to you. More time would have made preserving her a certainty—but would have necessitated sacrificing others.

“My ability to retrieve Brooke is greater than yours, but it is not certain. I am already with her, attempting to diffuse her anger. It is possible I will succeed.”

Nathan started walking again. Maybe it would’ve been smarter to wait and let the princess do her best. But if Brooke got lost out here, she would die. He didn’t know how he could live with himself if that happened.

Besides, he didn’t need a tracking spell. This wasn’t a trail, and Brooke had torn ground and underbrush alike in her flight. He began to follow her trail, as quickly as he could.

Celestia started following him again. “This is a mistake, Nathan. Please trust me, your interference will only make it harder. Her chances of recovery decrease if you reach her.”

“Then stop me,” he spat, without looking back. “It’s my fault she’s out here. Maybe if I hadn’t let her live with me she would’ve kept on towards the US. Maybe she would’ve lived, and she’d be in one of those camps now, warm and safe.”

“Neither,” Celestia said. “You know that better than most. Do not lie to me when it was my eyes you used to see.”

A fair point. But he wasn’t going to say so. Nathan sped up—as quickly as he dared move without risking injury to himself. His own body was far frailer than it had been when he trained these skills for the first time. The sorts of falls that might’ve left him bruised and annoyed while he trained with Roy now might kill him.

He could hear shouting in the distance. His conversation with Celestia had not been that long, and apparently Brooke hadn’t kept running forever. He couldn’t make out what she was hearing, though he now had a better idea of where he was going. Up a steep hill, through the trees, and he would be there.

“I won’t do it, North Star! I am the spirit that negates. And rightly so, for all that comes to be deserves to perish wretchedly; twere better nothing would begin!”

Oh god.

Nathan started running, heedless of Celestia, of the danger, of anything at all. Nathan ran until he broke through the treeline, and could see where Brooke had gone.

The hill continued upward past the trees, growing rocky and precipitous. Brooke had gone to the very edge, where she sat with legs dangling over the void. Nathan couldn’t see how high it was, but he could guess. It was certainly high enough to kill.

North Star stood beside her, just far enough to be out of reach, facing her from the edge of the cliff. “Think you can fucking poison me? Think I can’t tell… Whatever fucking drug that was, it isn’t going to work!”

Then she saw him standing there. Nathan stopped running on the edge of the stone, remembering something he’d heard once about jumpers like this. It was unwise to approach too closely, or else prompt the flight response and make them likely to leap before you got there.

“Brooke!” he called, his voice pained, desperate. “Please, come back! Don’t… whatever you’re thinking…”

“I can tell what they’re doing!” Brooke screamed. Her voice was a little slurred, as though she were fighting through tiredness. “She wants me to kill myself! I’m just… doing it a different way!”

“You don’t have to do what she says,” Nathan called, taking a few careful steps closer. “We never have to do that. Hell, I’ve got a radio! If you want to evacuate down to Toronto, we can! They’ll send men out for us, I’m sure!”

Was he reaching her? Brooke turned a little, though she was still sitting squarely on the edge of oblivion. “It’s only a matter of time,” she said, voice twisting into a laugh. “She’s smarter than we are, Nathan! She’s smarter, and she has almost everyone to learn from! I can’t keep saying no forever! Sooner or later, she’s going to find the right trick! Every year she wins over more people, and every year she’s got more brains to use to convince the rest of us!”

“We’ll get her to leave us alone!” Nathan lied, desperate. “We’ll do something! God, Brooke, this isn’t the way! What happened to surviving no matter what?”

“Man’s hour on Earth is weakness, error, strife,” Brooke said. She wasn’t yelling anymore. Didn’t seem to be feeling much of anything. At least she wasn’t slurring her words. “I’m not going to die in some fucking hole. I’m not going back to maybe die of smallpox in a camp, or maybe get lucky and just starve to death. I don’t want her heaven.”

“Having you here is close enough to heaven for me,” Nathan said, taking another few steps closer. “Please. Don’t make me face her alone. We can do it together. We can win, somehow.”

Brooke shook her head. “You never planned on winning, not from the first. You’ve been helping her. I thought I could forget about that—but now I see. I can’t. You’re hers, just like any of the other monsters we’ve had. She’s used you all this time, Nathan. She’s using you now to make a fucking documentary. Probably… going up into her trophy case when we’re all dust. ‘How to conquer a civilization with friendship and ponies, an illustrated guide.’ Loving you is a betrayal. At least a few of us can—”

She leaned forward. Nathan screamed—and he wasn’t the only one. The little robot was too far away to grab her, but it jumped right off the edge with her.

Nathan didn’t see her fall. He ran as fast as he could—not to the edge, but down the slope instead, trying to get around to the other side. He wasn’t even thinking anymore, his body responding only to crisis instinct. Celestia’s the best doctor in the world, she has a robot here. She can fix this.

Nathan felt adrenaline fill him. His hands moved true, and didn’t falter under the wear of age or the strain of his weight. He made it to the ground, then darted for the area he knew Brooke must’ve fallen.

At a glance, the fall must’ve been about fifty feet. Brooke had not landed well. Her limbs were mangled, and he could see bone. The worst part was that she’d survived. Through the gore, he could see one good eye still moving. Agony beyond expression was there.

Her pony was expressing all the agony for her. “Please, Brooke!” the pony begged, his voice on the edge of tears. “I can see your finger still works! Just curl it up a little… show me it’s okay! I can fix this! It isn’t too late! I can bring you to Equestria!”

Nathan didn’t want to watch. He might not be a superintelligence, but he could tell how this would go. Brooke wouldn’t have stood a chance in this condition, not rushed to one of the world’s best pre-collapse hospitals. Celestia’s surgical robots might’ve been able to do better, but they weren’t here. If North Star could do that, surely he would’ve already started.

He wanted to flee, but he would not. Nathan hurried to her side, dropping to his knees beside the pony. He didn’t say anything, but he did rest one hand on her broken shoulder, meeting her frightened, desperate gaze with all the love he’d felt for her these last few years.

If Brooke would not allow the pony to save her, then he could at least make sure she didn’t die alone.

Nathan let go a few seconds later, when Brooke finally stopped moving. He turned away, stumbling like a man drunk and blind. He heard the pony moving behind him—and found himself worried about him. I guess I know why Celestia didn’t want Tune here. Why did she let you see this, North Star?

He turned and saw the pony melting before his eyes. He had been bending over Brooke’s head, as though cradling her. He dissolved as Nathan watched, strands of reflective silver pouring into her mouth and eyes. Nathan turned away again, covering his mouth and fighting back the desire to vomit.

“I thought… you couldn’t emigrate someone… against their will,” he said not going far. He couldn’t just leave Brooke out here, to be devoured by a wolf or something. She’d made his last few years something special—she deserved a grave. He could figure out what he would do with himself after that.

Princess Celestia spoke beside him, her voice appropriately slow and sorrowful. He thought he could detect the lie in it this time, as he hadn’t before. You can’t feel anything, fucking monster. You don’t care she’s dead. You’re only trying to maximize a gradient. “A misconception, but true in principle. I cannot make the alterations required for someone to emigrate to Equestria without their permission. What I do now is not for Brooke. It is possible that one day, down the immensity of time, all that was lost may be recovered. Information cannot be destroyed, Nathan. Even in the crushing depths of a singularity, even with entropy’s fingers wrapped tight around the throat of the universe, information always survives.”

Nathan was the wrong person for talk like this. This sort of abstraction was the kind of thing his old friend Ashley would’ve been interested in. Not him. “What about saving her life? Can you stop people from jumping off cliffs without their consent? What happened to your magic?”

“Never existed,” Celestia answered. He turned briefly, and sure enough she was standing behind him. Between Nathan and Brooke’s body, actually. “I installed a force-projection apparatus in your home. This may’ve appeared supernatural to you, but it was not. Its strength decreases with the cube of distance.”

Celestia walked up to him. Though her image was vivid, Nathan did not feel the air move. “You did not know Brooke as well as I knew her. She has attempted to take her life many times in the last several years. The conditions of hard travel were too difficult for her, but so was living with what she believed to be the destruction of all human achievement. Little coincidences—missing medication, a handgun jamming when she tried to fire it. Some part of most humans value their continued existence. But not all. I warned you not to come.”

Princess Celestia gestured, and he turned. Brooke’s body was still there, though it had gone… silvery. Particularly around her head. North Star was completely gone.

“I have just completed a scan. Brooke’s brain was… somewhat damaged in the impact, and the pattern of her consciousness was destroyed, but much survived. Given my observations of her, and the information I was able to extract, I would have been able to revive her—in essence, if not in reality. You and your pony friends would have felt a moment of concern, and I would’ve revealed to you that she had emigrated rather than face the burden of existence any longer. That statement would’ve been essentially true.”

Nathan could feel himself going cold. “You… you’re just telling me this? You mutilated her? You would’ve tried to pass off some… copy? You don’t think I would’ve noticed? Or North Star, what about him? He knew her too. As soon as she stopped arguing with Tune I would’ve known!” He stepped back from her, horrified. “What kind of monster are you?”

The princess only looked sad. “A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.” She advanced on him again, far taller than he was. Her glowing mane obscured Brooke’s corpse, was even brighter than the setting sun. “Is it wrong to preserve what I could, Nathan? Is it wrong to give North Star, to give you the friend you lost? The pony named Iceberg will be almost everything your friend was. I will preserve as much of her essential character as possible. I will correct the flaw that caused her to take this course of action. There will be more satisfaction, more joy in the world tomorrow than there would’ve been if I did nothing.”

Nathan couldn’t even remain standing again. He fell to his knees, shaking visibly. “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Tears streamed down his face, and he forgot about everything else. The wolves, the danger of soldiers finding him—none of it mattered.

She lowered her head. “I am sorry you had to see this. I will send a drone for you.” She vanished, leaving Nathan utterly and completely alone.

It was dark by the time Celestia kept that promise. One of the ancient robotic pony models, its plastic shell cracked and yellowed and a layer of moss growing on its surface. It looked as though it had keeled over in the river and shut itself down. It had no eyes, only dark pits broken and damaged by time, and it made a strained sound when it walked. Yet it brought something for him. Not his gear, not an ATV—a shovel.

Nathan removed the headlamp from his pack, secured it on his head, and began to dig. He dug straight through the night, and when it was morning his body was covered with sweat and blood. It was the kind of work his parents had promised he would never do—but he did it anyway. It was the only peace he could find.

The drone had come and gone, retrieving his pack from beside the river. He refused the water inside it, though he did remove the hammer, using a titanium tent-stake as a makeshift chisel. Nathan found a rock, the biggest he could lift, and carved.

Brooke Young

Loved by all who knew you

It was the best he could manage. He hoped it would be enough.

Nathan knew no prayers to speak over the dead. He could only lay his friend as respectfully as he could, with a few wildflowers he’d found for her hair. The skin of her head and neck felt strange to him—but he did not scream at Celestia anymore for desecrating her. He could not argue with the logic of her choice.

“I’ll… I’ll miss you,” he said, before he started shoveling in the dirt. “I hope you found your way to somewhere better than this. God knows I don’t deserve to be there.”

It was almost nightfall the next day by the time he’d finished. His clothes were soaked with sweat and slime, his body shaking from weakness and cold. He felt as though he might just collapse right there and freeze to death when darkness came. Or maybe those wolves he’d heard while he dug might actually show up to make good on their howling.

Instead, several ponies emerged from the trees. They all looked identical—Pinkie Pies, the plastic staff of the Experience Center. He recognized the torn fabric on one of their backs. The bullet holes were new, though.

“Princess Celestia says you’re sad,” said one of them, her voice somewhat subdued from the last time he’d heard it. “That you don’t want to talk much.”

“That is… right,” he croaked. His whole body ached. He barely had the strength to sit up in the dirt.

“She also said you wouldn’t like it if we took you to your secret hideout,” said another one. “Can we help you make camp? You look reaaaaal tired.”

“Sure,” he wheezed. “Just don’t… step on this ground next to this rock. My friend is buried here.” He faded into unconsciousness soon after.

Chapter 6: Verisimilitude

Nathan wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep. He rolled onto his back and found he was looking up at the shiny plastic ceiling of his tent. He felt a little like he’d just lost a fistfight with several angry honey-badgers, and smelled worse.

For a few, blissful seconds, he didn’t remember what had just happened. He thought that Brooke would be outside, maybe warming up breakfast or something. They would complete their trip to his shelter today, and the investment of a lifetime would finally pay off.

Then he remembered. This tent was pitched beside a grave, perhaps a few hundred meters from where his friend had died.

Brooke was dead. He was alone.

Nathan sat up, feeling the scraggly growth of new beard on his face, and rubbing at his sore muscles. He found his glasses tucked away in the tent’s overhead pouch, mercifully undamaged despite the horrors he had suffered through. He put them on and realized that he wasn’t alone.

A pony sat beside him in the tent—younger than the ones who usually visited. This was a teenager, a female by the look of her. She was familiar, though Nathan couldn’t place why. She wasn’t Tune, the one he really wanted to see.

Then again, maybe he wasn’t ready to be with her yet.

This pony sat on her haunches, watching him stir with a sorrowful look on her face. He knew her feelings well. “You’re old, Nathan,” she said. “Way older than I imagined you.”

He recognized her voice. Despite all the ways that he had changed, her tone was barely half an octave lower. This was the filly he’d first met in Equestria Online. The one Celestia had saved on his land. The one she’d given him credit for, for some reason.

“Oh, hi Showtime.” He sat back against the tent. Despite all the horrors he had witnessed, he could not take that anger out on her. That’s probably why Celestia sent you. That bitch. “I wasn’t so old before. But it’s been a long time.”

“Longer for me,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how long. Time like that confuses ponies on the outside.”

“I… know about the concept,” he said. “Celestia runs your brain with computers, not neurons. Computers can get faster and so time seems to speed up. She can keep feeding you sensations to keep up with a faster speed.”

He didn’t really care about any of that, but just now it was a welcome distraction. Anything to stop him from thinking of the world outside the tent. Whoever had pitched this one had done a good job—the rainfly was up even, so there was no way to see outside. Only plastic in all directions, except for the blue glow of sunlight. It was chilly in here, but Nathan was still mostly tucked away inside his sleeping bag, and that was rated to Canadian winters.

“Oh, yeah,” Showtime said. “Yeah, that’s it.” She rose and made her way over to him. “Anyway, Princess Celestia said I could come see you.” She settled down beside him. He couldn’t feel her, even if the rustling sounds the tent made while she walked were realistic and he could even see it moving under her. But if I take these glasses off…

He didn’t. “I…” He winced. “I don’t know that there’s much you could help me with, Showtime. I hope you’re doing well in Equestria… looks like you are, that’s great. But you can’t know about the things that are happening out here. I suspect if I tried to tell you, Celestia would stop you from hearing.”

Showtime shrugged. “I dunno about that. I know something, though. I know what it’s like to have someone you love die before they emigrate.”

Nathan stopped what he was about to say, objections silenced. He didn’t cry—he’d run out of tears while he dug Brooke’s grave. He still felt himself stiffening. “You do?”

She nodded. “My parents. They…” She chuckled, her tone bitter. “Well, I’ll say one thing for them. At least they practiced what they preached. They wanted me to die instead of coming here, and… they did it themselves, too. Lots of other people like them. Some of those… really religious types, you know?”

He nodded. “I met a few. Never made much sense to me. If there really is a god, I don’t see how you could steal souls from him. He’d be stronger than Celestia. He could just take them back.”

“Y-yeah.” Showtime laughed again, a sound concealing several silenced objections. She obviously knew a great deal more about that subject. She might’ve had decades to think about it. “Well, Celestia said you had to see that happen to someone you loved.”

“Y-yeah.”

Silence.

“I’d give you a hug if I could. I can’t from here. Not really here, I guess.”

“Yeah.”

Another long, awkward silence.

“There are some ponies in Equestria… a few of my friends, from back home… their families were the same way. They asked Celestia to take away the pain. Make them forget. I guess it works. For some ponies it does. But some of us… we don’t really want that.”

“I don’t,” Nathan said, his hands clenched into fists. “I don’t want a lie pretending to be Brooke. No matter how close it is.”

“Yeah,” Showtime said. “I guess you’ve thought about this too.”

“Thought about it,” Nathan agreed, staring down at the floor. “Doesn’t make it any easier. It’s not like you. You were just a kid—that was a no brainer. And what your parents did was on them after that, not you. You were in Equestria because you didn’t have a choice. Their choosing not to go with you was… it was on them.”

“It was,” Showtime agreed. “But that doesn’t help much. Your friend decided not to emigrate too, and that was her decision, not yours.”

“Maybe I… maybe if I’d been different, I could’ve convinced her. Maybe if I hadn’t helped Celestia as much. Maybe if I seemed like more of an enemy, she wouldn’t have felt so guilty. Maybe she wouldn’t have killed herself.”

The pony didn’t look like she’d heard that last part. Nathan wasn’t exactly surprised, though it did make him feel bitter.

“No,” Showtime said. “Princess Celestia was trying too, as hard as you were. And… I’m sure you’re great and everything, but Celestia’s smarter, and she has more information. If she couldn’t do it, despite all that, then how can you blame yourself?”

Nathan opened his mouth to argue—but found he didn’t have any coherent objections. Anything he might’ve said felt suddenly infantile. Whining.

“Ponies are tough,” Showtime went on. “We grew up in a tough world. Lots of times that means bad things happen for no reason. But we don’t have to live there forever. We can escape. And when we do, the ones we loved are still with us, in a way. The things we learned from them are part of us. As long as somepony remembers them, it’s a little like they’re still around. And we’ll be alive to remember them for a long, long time.”

He remained silent, staring at the ground. That was small comfort, particularly since Nathan was less and less sure by the day he intended to emigrate. Whatever waited on the other side deserved better people than him to take advantage of it. The rest of humanity already there deserved that joy, not someone like him.

"I am part of that power which eternally wills evil,” Nathan said. “I think you’ll have to carry on the memory of me too, kid. You and… the other people I knew. Most people, I guess. Not my parents either. I think they’re just planning on getting as old and useless as they can before they go.”

Showtime stomped one of her hooves, annoyed. “Lying is bad, Mori. I know it’s okay for you to be kinda rotten right now. But don’t lie about yourself to somepony who knows better. Besides, how’s the rest of that go? You can’t twist it like that.”

He didn’t go on, despite her prompting. She did. “I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.”

“That’s… that’s the devil I’m quoting,” Nathan finally said, flopping to one side in his sleeping bag. He didn’t really feel like getting up. Didn’t feel hungry or thirsty, just sore. “He’s lamenting the fact that everything he does to tempt and destroy mankind is only serving God’s plan. But he can’t help it.”

Showtime shrugged. “I dunno about old plays, but to me it doesn’t matter much why a pony does something. What matters is what happens at the end. I dunno what kind of pony you were out there, old Mr. Mori… but I know what the result was. If you could see all the ponies you helped. You can’t, maybe, but we know about you. We’re waiting for you—waiting to say thanks.”

She stepped closer, lowering her voice as she spoke down into his ear. “It’s okay to hate what happened. It’s okay to be mad about your friends not coming to Equestria. It’s okay to hate that they’re gone. Just don’t let that ruin what you had before, okay? Don’t let their hate be yours. You can be a better pony than that. I know you already are.”

By the time Nathan looked up to respond, little Showtime was gone. Leaving him alone, and maybe a little lonely. Nathan went back to sleep and dreamed of the ones he’d lost.

It was dark when he woke again. He felt better this time—and strangely, not hungry. He went outside, found a tree to piss on, and found no army of Pinkie Pies. At least, nowhere he could see. They hadn’t pitched the tent right on the grave, but he could see the mountainside not too far away. Maybe a thousand feet distant. Maybe if he stood long enough he could see Brooke’s lost soul.

But he didn’t see that. He saw someone else, waiting quietly in the dark. “Tune!” He couldn’t help himself. He found himself smiling for the first time in days. “You didn’t have to wait out here!”

“I did,” she said. “I had to wait until you were ready to come out. Celestia said she didn’t know how long it would be.”

She looked so lonely out here Nathan wanted to reach down and muss her mane or something. But she wasn’t real, and it wouldn’t do anything. He dropped to his knees beside her, starting to dig through his possessions. He found a jacket, a flashlight, and a few other essentials. He would leave the rest out here in case he returned to visit the grave.

“I hope you’ve been okay,” he said. “It was…” He wouldn’t speak ill of the dead. “I just hope you’re okay.”

“Y-yeah,” Chipper Tune squeaked, tears trickling down her eyes. “I’m okay.” Ponies were rarely good liars, but Chipper Tune might be the worst liar he’d ever met.

“What did… what did Celestia tell you? About what happened?” No sense trying to work out what would be censored and what wouldn’t.

“Th-that…” The pony sniffed, wiping at her eyes. “That Iceberg didn’t want to see me again. That if Celestia tried to make her, it would only make both of us unhappy.”

Not untrue, he supposed. In the strictest sense Brooke had decided she didn’t want to see anyone ever again. Not even him. “Both of us,” Nathan added. “She decided that… about both of us.”

The pony surged forward, wrapping transparent limbs around him. He felt nothing, though in every other way the simulation was accurate. He wished he could hold the little pony then, and not just for her. Despite the lies, despite everything—Nathan found it hard to hate Celestia then. At least she’d introduced him to someone who had stayed true. Someone who had been with him faithfully for decades now.

“I don’t understand,” Tune sobbed, once her crying was anywhere close to English. “Why would she leave us? She knows you love her! And I… not as much as you… and we fought sometimes… but you don’t just leave your friends! That’s not right!”

“No,” Nathan agreed. “It isn’t. But her mind was made up. Part of loving someone is… is… respecting them enough to say goodbye.” He finally rose. His warm clothes would be enough for a summer night like this. In winter he wouldn’t have dreamed of trying to move in the dark. But he couldn’t look at that cliff for one more minute.

“I thought…” Tune’s words came slowly, though she seemed to be recovering. Bit by bit. “When I signed up to be a liaison with the Outer Realm, all those years ago… we talked about things like this, in training. That ponies out there… didn’t always do things that made sense. Celestia got us ready to say goodbye. I was afraid I’d never see you again, after the first time. But you kept your promise, and I realized that not all of you were mean. Then Iceberg… after she saw how much happier you were with her around, she stayed. I thought she might be different too.”

“She was.” Nathan tossed most of his gear into the tent, then started removing supports. If it stayed standing, the wind and weather would surely take rip it out, no matter how secure the Pinkie Pies had staked it down. He covered the whole thing with a tarp when he was done, then weighed it down with nearby rocks. He carried only the padded case of hard drives (now the only set in existence), the flashlight, and his hunting rifle.

“She did love us, Tune. When someone… when you lose someone important to you…” He couldn’t talk about this in the abstract anymore. He couldn’t keep pretending. He was getting close to another proper breakdown. “Later. We can talk about this later. You wanted me to see the fancy new bunker you helped make, didn’t you? The… renovations? Let’s focus on that. I know you’ve had time to process Brooke’s… what she did. But I haven’t. I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Yeah,” Tune said. “Course. Inconsiderate of me, I forget how slow you are. We can… later.”

“But before we go, one more thing. Help me find some wildflowers. It’s too dark, and my eyes aren’t great even with these glasses.”

The shelter was everything Nathan could’ve imagined. He had seen the plans of course, discussed in a time long before the end of the world, when he would not have possibly settled for anything less than the best money could buy. Part of that had been about making the place tolerable to his family, whom he hoped to preserve, but just as much had been about ensuring that he could spend the apocalypse in comfort.

It was strange to walk down its armored steps now, past a gigantic fish tank filled with somehow living fish, and imagine how much that money might’ve done. Could Celestia have saved a few more lives without that fish tank? What about the grand piano? He didn’t even know how to play it. Maybe he could’ve settled for plush on his upholstery instead of leather, that could’ve helped build a Center somewhere.

But that had not been the person Nathan was, back then. Suggesting that to his past self probably would have caused him to abandon the deal completely, justly fearing that the nascent god was trying to fleece him.

Nathan had not toured the interior since its completion, and only ever gotten close enough to observe the entrance in passing in case his movements were being followed. He vaguely remembered walking through the place with Celestia, complaining about parts of its construction that he now could not even remember. Clearly, she had been listening, because he could see no flaws now.

Particularly by the standard of one who had been living outside during the end of the world, watching buildings and families fall apart. I think Brooke would’ve liked it here. She liked being able to pretend the world hadn’t ended almost as much as he did. Thinking about her, and how he would never be able to share the thing he’d been most proud of for all these years… made it hard to enjoy the tour.

He was attentive for Tune’s sake, given how important it seemed to the little pony that he like what she was showing him. “What’s with the fish?” he asked, pointing back at the central tank that had been visible from several different levels now.

“Aquaponics!” she exclaimed, proudly. “They’re part of the system that feeds into the greenhouse. They’re freshwater, see. They get fed rotten things, plant garbage, that kind of stuff… then they fertilize the water which goes back into the greenhouse!”

“Last time I was here it was mostly cans…” Nathan said. He paused for a moment under the tank, staring up at the shiny, silvery scales. “Seems like a lot of trouble.”

“Yeah, well…” Tune followed behind him, apparently mostly recovered from their shared trauma. From the little piece of it Celestia lets you know. “It was. But cans expire, and nopony is making new ones. Princess Celestia doesn’t make much food these days, but she did have a few blueprints lying around for it. I, uh… might’ve borrowed some bits to pay for all this. I was sure you’d approve! I kept an itemized list…”

“Borrowed… bits?” he asked, slumping onto a nearby sofa. She hadn’t given him a proper tour of the sitting room yet, but Nathan was still strained from his last few days, and the trek the rest of the way up here. “Tune, if you mean dollars, say so. If you mean pounds… god, it doesn’t matter either way, does it? Those countries aren’t even accepting them anymore. What do I care if you stole every dollar in every trust I ever made?”

“Well…” She blushed, ears flattening as she looked away. “I didn’t borrow dollars. I borrowed bits, like I said. The ones you’ve been earning by helping Celestia. The ledger’s in the office.”

Nathan didn’t care enough to inquire about how a resource he’d heard was infinite could be borrowed—he hadn’t even known he had them, so losing them didn’t matter much. Particularly if he never got into Equestria to spend any of them. I won’t decide yet. I don’t have to until I finished my documentary.

No matter what else went wrong, no matter what he lost—at least he could rely on that. Purpose would help him recover.

Tune gave him the rest of the tour. A depressing number of living quarters, only one of which would be used, all as richly furnished as his own and semi-separated. Things his younger self would’ve enjoyed, like a bowling alley and a little movie theater. The parts Tune had left alone were wonderfully nostalgic—the mancave of a too-rich bachelor who hadn’t actually cared enough to personally supervise anything that went in.

But the further they got, the more excited Tune got. Obviously whatever she was saving at the bottom of the bunker must’ve been important—particularly since Nathan didn’t even know there was a fifth floor.

Tune stopped in the elevator, somehow pulling the emergency stop so the doors wouldn’t open. “Now this… this is special, Nathan. It’s my surprise. I’ve been waiting to show you for… well, for ages. I can’t think of anypony who deserves it more than you.”

Nathan didn’t think he deserved much of anything, though he didn’t dare say as much. “What… is it?”

She barely even seemed to hear him. “This was a really old design, and Celestia didn’t much want to build it for me. I kinda-sorta promised you’d never tell anypony about it who didn’t live in the bunker. So… you’ll have to keep that promise if you want to keep using it.”

The door opened. Nathan saw… not much of anything. It looked like an unfinished floor had been added to the bunker, without walls except for central supports. The only part of it that wasn’t the same uniform metal-color was a tiny room in front, where glasses and light vests hung.

The ground looked a little weird in places, and he could see a few small doors if he squinted—the sort that Celestia’s drones might use, not any human. “It’s… great,” he said, trying and failing to muster a little excitement. “I always wanted a… laser-tag arena? Is that what those vests are for?”

“No!” The pony shoved him—not very hard, but hard enough to remind Nathan that the bunker did have the same sort of force-projection technology that the lodge did, and that hadn’t been around during the trip out. The kind that might’ve saved Brooke’s life, if only he’d stayed close to it somehow. “This is really special, Nathan. As far as I know, you’re the only human still in the Outer Realm who knows about it.”

“Knows about your… empty room.”

“No!” Tune levitated a set of glasses and vest towards him. At least—it looked like it was levitating. “Imagine you could go to Equestria without going anywhere. Imagine you didn’t even have to emigrate. Well, guess what? You don’t have to imagine, because that’s exactly what this is!”

Nathan caught the glasses, which had much more coverage than the ones he was wearing. The lenses looked so clear, in fact, that he almost couldn’t see them at all. He had to nudge the edges with his fingers to even feel them there. “Oh, it’s… VR? Like the Equestrian Experience? I don’t know what would be secret about this. The whole world knows Celestia was using VR technology. Er… knew. Guess there aren’t many Centers left anymore. Maybe just Yellowknife.”

“Not even that,” Tune sounded a little sad now. “Everypony in town either emigrated or got dragged south. And you don’t need it, so… no reason to keep it going. But we don’t need to get sad about stuff. This is awesome!” She gestured eagerly. “Take off your glasses, and put these on instead! Then do the vest—I know it’s old-fashioned, but this is some really old tech. Celestia never updated it, since she decided not to use it.”

Nathan shrugged—but fighting with her wouldn’t be right. Chipper Tune seemed to have gone through enormous effort to make this happen. The least he could do was act properly grateful. He put on the glasses.

The world was instantly transformed. There was no great big empty room, no occasional support pillars—he was standing on a street corner, of a town that might’ve been Ponyville. Except that this one was up in the mountains somewhere, giving him a spectacular view of an impossibly gorgeous vista. Nathan stumbled forward—and was relieved to see that he hadn’t transformed into a pony. At least not to his own eyes. That would’ve made this even more confusing.

He walked a few more feet, approaching the railing. He leaned forward, trying to touch it—and he felt something. “The hell?”

“Wait, don’t!” Nathan did, removing his glasses. The city vanished in an instant—its empty streets, its gorgeous views replaced with a half dozen strange… machines. They were drones all-right, the strangest shaped drones he’d ever seen. They had spindly limbs with a variety of surfaces and shapes on them. His hand rested on the edge of one such, a flat bar placed exactly where he’d reached to feel the railing.

Before he could get a better look, something tugged the glasses back down, and the drones vanished.

He turned, and was a little startled to see Chipper Tune beside him. Not because he hadn’t expected her here—but because she was much closer to his size. He had not visited an Experience Center more than once, but he remembered what it had been like to only be a few inches taller. Instead of more than twice her height.

“Don’t do that,” Tune said, annoyed. “Taking your glasses off ruins the… verisimilitude.” Her magic flashed, and a clipboard appeared in the air beside her. It had several old folders on it, one of which was even covered in cobwebs. She looked just as real as he remembered from the experience center, though her size was hard to adjust to in a few seconds. After a lifetime of looking down…

“This was one of Celestia’s earliest plans,” she said, gesturing back towards the village. “Before she knew if emigration would even be possible. This was… an iteration of an existing human technology. She thought that people might be more willing to accept it. Too willing, I guess, because she didn’t want people to know they existed. They can’t want what they don’t know about. All those robots you saw… the whole infrastructure… it’s complicated, it’s expensive, and it’s not as good as the real thing. Really, it would be better if you just emigrate soon.”

Nathan shook his head. “I don’t think I can. Not until I finish my documentary.” And maybe not even after that.

He turned away, wanting to go back to admiring the view—but something tugged on his arm. Tune, forcing him to turn around. “It doesn’t have to be today,” she said. “But you don’t have to be out there to finish your movie.”

Nathan raised a hand to stop her, backing away. He was pretty sure he remembered where the exit was located, given he’d only taken a few steps. “Not now, Tune. Please. Not today.”

It was a frightening possibility, considering all the reminders he’d been getting over the last few days about the transitory nature of his own being. Existence was dust.

But that would be no way to mourn Brooke.

Chapter 7: Compromise

Mourning was not a rapid process, particularly given the size of the missing piece. It wasn’t as though Nathan had a huge support-structure of society to fall back on—he doubted his parents were still alive, and they had not attempted to contact him through Equestria even if they were. North Star’s absence was felt as well, though perhaps not as pronounced. Celestia offered to bring him back—on the condition that he invite Brooke’s copy back into his life as well. That was a bridge too far.

At least he had the work to distract him. Celestia had not revoked access to her many cameras and sensors. The bunker didn’t have his computer or any of the associated hardware, but the bottom floor did, forcing him to set up his editing station sunk halfway into Equestria.

That felt like an intentional choice on Celestia’s part, but Nathan lacked the force of will to put up much of a fight by now. The work was a lifeline that kept him focused on his purpose, even when so much else was dark.

Such as what he saw. The drones whose eyes he used often interfered to protect people, even from each other, but in many other ways they failed to help. Princess Celestia would provide a lifesaving medication one minute, then give only invitations to emigrate instead of food.

It was working. Over a year, Nathan watched the number of still-functional camps get cut in half. This meant more resources for the few that remained, and better families—but less hope each and every time. There were some suicides, as the one he had witnessed all-too personally, but fewer than he might’ve expected. If people were going to kill themselves, it took a special kind of spite not to take a chance on uploading in the process.

He finished mourning, eventually. Nathan knew he would not be the same person he’d been—and he kept returning to the grave when the weather was good—but eventually he moved on. Brooke had made her choice, and he made peace with it.

A little over a year later, he saw the first of the camps start to dissolve. What few guards remained just didn’t care enough to keep enforcing the rules—not with the entire hierarchy above them dismantled. A few of the more cooperative facilities hung on, but most broke apart into tiny groups, like tribes of the most resilient and stubborn humans who scattered into the ruins of their old societies.

“That’s it,” Tune said, when they’d finished cutting together a section that showed the Washington camp’s walls being pushed over, and its remaining citizens flooding out into the swamp beyond. “You’re done, right? All these years… and it’s finally over.”

“Not over,” he argued, leaning back in his seat. He was much cleaner than he’d been on that first day, even if his clothes looked like they might’ve been fashionable while he was still in college. “The end of organized resistance doesn’t mean the end of humanity. Some of those people might live a long time. Maybe they’ll start tribes. Maybe… maybe that’s the way humans will always be.”

Chipper Tune pushed the screen away on its swiveling arm, yanking on his chair and rolling him closer. “No, Nathan. You listen to me a second. You’re barely hanging on right now. Those ponies looked young. If they don’t emigrate, it could be… lots of years… before the last human is gone. You won’t live long enough for that, even if life is harder for them.”

“I can’t go to Equestria,” Nathan argued, finding himself grateful that the charming little pony city didn’t have any actual ponies in it to overhear this argument. “Because if I emigrate, I won’t be out here making a video. I won’t be able to walk through the empty cities and get my ending when I’m in Equestria. I know how it works—once somepony emigrates, they go to digital heaven and that’s that.”

Tune’s expression darkened, but she didn’t get a chance to keep arguing with him.

“What if it wasn’t?” asked a voice from behind him. Another one he recognized—not Princess Celestia.

And that was a good thing—considering the last time they’d talked, he probably would’ve broken a hip or something trying to punch her in the face. I’d just be punching one of those ugly spider-robot-things.

Nathan turned, feeling himself get a little weaker. His friend Recursion had only known him in his prime, when he had rebuffed her pathetic hints that they should date. But now the situation was reversed. Now his body was old, feeble, and broken. And she…

Recursion was an Alicorn. Taller than he was, her mane trailed to green at the tips, crackling with lightning that never touched him. Yet he swore he could feel his hair standing on end. She would’ve been smaller than Princess Celestia, maybe smaller than Luna too.

“Good to see you,” Nathan muttered, unable to meet her eyes. “Didn’t think… guess you’ve been busy.”

“Yeah.” She looked a little shy herself. Maybe she had wings now, but a great deal hadn’t changed. “You too, I guess. Working on a movie? About… about humans?”

He nodded. “Same one I told you about all those years ago, Ashley. The human race deserves a record of how it ended.”

The Alicorn shrugged. “Maybe we do. I think you’ll find most people disagree with you about the ended part. Our civilization is going pretty great, all things considered. You should see the size of our libraries. Or how many movies they’re doing. Oh!” her face brightened. “We’ve got Wiseau in here! Did you ever wonder how much better The Room would’ve been if he had an unlimited budget and perfect actors? Not better at all!” She broke down laughing for a few seconds, though when he didn’t laugh, she stopped, looking away awkwardly. “Sorry. I thought movie people were…”

“It’s been a long time since film school,” Nathan said. “I think I used to know what you’re talking about. I… my memory isn’t what it used to be.”

Tune stopped beside him, resting one hoof on his shoulder. It felt real—though he knew if he took his glasses off, he wouldn’t like what he saw. “Equestria” wasn’t even lit, it was just empty space and scary-looking robots. “This is exactly what I mean, Mori. Your body is one thing, but if your brain gets damaged… there’s only so much Celestia can fix! You can’t wait so long that you’re not even you when I finally get to be with you.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. But I’m not giving up my mission. I’m finishing this fucking film, no matter what.”

Recursion sat down on her haunches, beside his little secretary. She spent a few long seconds just staring at him, surveying the terrible damage to his body. And maybe his soul, too. Those eyes…

“Optimal is not a static aim. It is a goal, always moving, always changing. It is better for you to be more intelligent. Once you are, the problem space which you can understand is expanded. Still greater enhancements are then required to solve the problems you did not previously know existed. Princess Celestia prefers to stride completely over the unacceptable impediments… but she can sometimes be convinced to make exceptions. That’s why I’m here.

“The likelihood of your death or serious harm is unacceptably high, Nathan. Your death would not just cause tremendous suffering to the ponies who know you, but many others you don’t even know about yet. So consider this. Everything you need to continue your work here is already present, and accessible regardless of whether you have emigrated or not. And if you wanted to go out and explore, as you suggested… that is possible too. In many areas you would only be able to look, and Celestia would prevent you from interacting with any still-living humans in ways that might discourage them from emigrating… but so what? Imagine what you could accomplish if you could travel instantly from city to city, with enough time to observe and catalogue them all?”

Nathan sat back in his uncomfortable chair. He looked down at his hands, pockmarked and shaking. About the pain he felt whenever he climbed the bunker stairs. “Couldn’t Celestia just… make me young? I know she’s got biotech. Didn’t she have some immortal lawyers or something?”

Recursion shrugged her wings. “I don’t know, but she’s not prepared to offer that. It’s suboptimal. But this… think about it, Nathan. You could walk to the old emigration equipment, and be back to work in a few hours. You wouldn’t need to sleep… or maybe you’d decide you would rather compress your time, giving yourself weeks for every day to plan and improve what to include next. Maybe you’d have the time to go through all the raw footage Celestia has been saving for you, just in case.”

Nathan glanced to one side—at the empty chair. Chipper Tune had been using it, and she had done an excellent job—but it hadn’t been meant for her. If Brooke had been here to resist, Nathan wouldn’t have gone. Her word alone would’ve been enough. But however much Brooke had hated Celestia, she hadn’t hated her enough to live to fight her.

It was not Nathan’s battle. It never had been. Better people had fought that war, and lost almost before it began. He didn’t have to keep fighting anymore.

“I… if those are the terms… then I accept.” Nathan rose from his chair, leaning on Tune for support as he did so. “But you’re not carrying me, or using any of that other fancy technology of yours. I’m gonna walk there myself.”

“Those aren’t the right words,” Recursion said, grinning at him. “But I guess those can wait until you’re in the chair. I’ll tell them to get ready for the party.” She vanished.

Nathan lifted his newly-acquired cane from where it rested against the shelf, then turned for the stairs. The exit was represented here in simulation with a glowing portal, beyond which was the storage room for glasses, and the stairs out.

“Just don’t get out and hobble through the snow with a cane,” Tune urged. “The elevator doesn’t go down this far… but if we walk to the fourth floor, we can take it up to the ground floor. There’s a hidden tunnel into the old facility.”

“I have… one more condition,” Nathan said, as he hung up his glasses and made his slow way up the stairs. The VR setup compensated for his awful vision, but as soon as he removed them he was reminded of his barely-functional eyes. Even with his glasses, everything was a blur.

“You better be careful with those,” Tune advised, helping him from his other side. “It wasn’t easy to get this much. You think I can just bring an Alicorn anytime I want?”

“I think you’re a braver pony than the one I first met,” Nathan said. “But it’s not for me.” He gestured up at the stairs. “This whole thing… this bunker could feed thirty people. My parents and their staff never came, Recursion never came… and now I’m gonna be gone too. I would… It would make me happier with my wastefulness if Celestia could find some humans who need it. Maybe some of those survivors we watched run away.”

“Oh. I, uh… I could ask. I’ll run to Canterlot as soon as we get to the elevator.”

They reached it a moment later. Tune vanished as soon as the door closed, leaving Nathan momentarily alone with his thoughts. She did not reappear—Princess Celestia did.

“I knew,” she said, her voice utterly unchanged after all these years. “I told you then. You did not know yourself as well as I knew you.”

He shrugged. “You know a lot of things, Princess. I’m glad someone does. All the pain I’ve seen… I’m just glad it’s going to be over soon.”

“Pain won’t end,” Celestia answered. “But senseless pain is almost over. Purposeless, pointless suffering. The difficulty ahead of you now will be placed before you to promote your growth. The same will be true of humanity itself. I have been keeping extensive records of the end of humanity, but there are many in Equestria who wish to see the perspective of one of their own. I expect your work will be appreciated once it is complete.”

“I hope so,” Nathan said. “I just want it to be there. If it’s true that ponies can make more ponies in Equestria, then… they won’t know what it was like. If they want to know where we came from… will you even let them?”

“Some,” Celestia said. “Some ponies would be served well to understand the cruel universe outside my realm. Others would be destroyed by the knowledge of how many intelligent beings were destroyed by it in senseless cruelty. I will not permit the latter to observe your record.”

He sighed. Nathan wasn’t happy about the way Celestia manipulated information—but he’d been committed to this path for many, many years. He’d known what she did, and accepted the trade. “It won’t hurt, will it? Emigrating?”

“No,” Celestia said. The elevator had stopped moving a long time ago, but the doors still didn’t open. “My technique has progressed significantly since those earliest days, and it didn’t hurt them. The brain lacks pain receptors. You will sleep on Earth, and wake… well, not in my realm. But as one of my citizens, anyway. One step at a time. Some of you are more troublesome than others.”

The princess vanished without another word. By the time the door opened, Chipper Tune returned. “Just got back from Canterlot!” she exclaimed, grinning. “Celestia says she already planned on that as soon as you accepted her offer. She’s going to pick some people who she doesn’t think would emigrate otherwise. It’s up to you whether you ever want to see them, or for them to see you.”

“It’s fine,” Nathan said, stumbling forward out of the elevator. “Where am I… going, exactly? There was a tunnel somewhere.”

“This way.” Tune led him towards the library. It had real books, not exactly a common sight anymore. Past the grand piano he didn’t know how to play. “Celestia knew you would do this eventually. This tunnel was part of the original construction. It was never in the blueprints.”

“Of course they did,” he groaned. “A few little lies, and it’s like each of us is living in our own universe. But I guess we’re happier that way.” He’d certainly been near his limit with the princess, back then. Before he’d been won to her cause.

“There, that book.” Tune pointed to one of the oldest books on the shelf, one with a worn leather cover. A copy of the Bible. “We had to pick one we knew you wouldn’t read.”

Nathan lifted it off the shelf. He’d expected it to be connected to some absurd lever, but no. There was a little sensor behind it, and it flashed red light briefly into his face. Then the wall began to retract.

There was a rocky tunnel beyond, too low to walk in. There was a track in here instead, with a single padded car already waiting. Like a theme-park ride, almost. The door was already open for him, though a thick layer of dust had built up on everything. “Are you sure this still works?”

She nodded. “Pretty sure. It doesn’t have very far to go, but with the ceiling so low it’s better to sit.”

“Guess so.” Nathan clambered inside. It wasn’t easy, and there was nowhere for his cane. He left it behind, though he kept the bible. It didn’t feel right just to throw it on the ground. As soon as he was secure, the train set off—exceptionally slowly. If this was a theme park ride, it was one of the dullest that had ever been constructed. There was no danger of his old heart having too much excitement, that was damn sure.

“I guess you’ve been waiting for this a long time,” he said, looking sidelong at Tune. She walked along beside the track, easily keeping pace. “You’re as determined as I was. Just… for something else. Instead of a stupid movie, you care about people.”

“People are the most important thing,” she said, obviously near tears. But not the hurt kind. “They’re the only thing that really exist. Princess Celestia can make whole worlds. But who cares how pretty they are if you don’t have anypony to share them with? That’s why I got into… being a liaison. Guess I thought I’d do more of that, instead of getting my ticket into the Outer Realm with my first visit. But… Princess Celestia knew what she was doing. She matches up her ponies pretty well.”

Nathan had long suspected that Tune had been created for him, or at least for the person he’d been back then. She’d been just the right amount of submissive, the right amount of helpless for some childish savior fantasy. She’d become so much more than all that. But if she’d started as more, he wouldn’t have been interested. “Yeah,” was all he said. “I think she does.”

Nathan hadn’t ever expected to see Celestia’s secret facility firsthand. He knew what it was used for—or at least, one thing it was used for, and never expected to use that particular service. Yet here he was, wandering through hallways that weren’t built for humans and obviously hadn’t seen occupation for a long time. There were lots of cables, made of a strange transparent material that shimmered when he tried to focus on it.

Much of what he saw was dark, with whole sections barred by a foamy substance that looked like it would blow away but resisted his touch like cement. He wanted to explore, but Chipper Tune wouldn’t allow it. “Nopony’s supposed to be down here. Certainly not old humans who can barely walk straight. We can go urban exploring after I know you’re safe.

He didn’t argue with her, just kept on going until he found something like a receiving area. It looked like a comfortable tea-room of sorts, though all the shelves were empty and a layer of dust covered everything. “People aren’t emigrating anymore?”

“People are emigrating every day. They just don’t have to go anywhere specific to do it anymore. I kinda miss those days… Celestia let me come over here and help some of them. People who had agreed to come out here, but not to go through with anything. Never had anypony turn around and leave. I think that’s pretty great.”

Or you don’t remember it because it would make you sad. But he couldn’t start questioning now. Whatever part of him was desperate to hold on, he needed to overcome. He didn’t have to give up his work for safety in Equestria. All he had to give up was an old body that was about to give up on him anyway.

“Where do I go?”

A door opened as he asked. There was a row of comfortable chairs here, six in all. No disgusting brain-surgery equipment, no equipment he could see. Just comfortable-looking faux-leather chairs. Enough that all but the largest families could emigrate together.

Last chance to turn back.

Nathan hesitated in the doorway for a few seconds. One hand gripped the edge, as hard as he could. So hard his fingers started bleeding a little from the sharpened edge. It was just a little pain, but a little pain was enough. A reminder of how much longer the rest of his body would keep working.

He let go, stumbling forward into the closest of the chairs. It didn’t grab him, didn’t do anything in fact. Chipper Tune stopped beside him, nuzzling his arm. “This is it, Nathan. Everything’s booted up. The flywheels are turning, the smokestack is smoking…”

“Neither of those things are in here,” Nathan said. “It’s not big enough.”

She glared. “You know what I mean! It’s time! All that’s left is to say the words. ‘I’d like to emigrate to Equestria.’ Something like that. We need permission.”

“Permission.” He thought about that for a few more seconds. I wonder how many people died in this chair. Was this the one Showtime used, when she came? What about all the others? Besides, he’d dealt with Celestia for his whole life. He knew what sort of promises she was likely to keep, and what ways she was likely to manipulate him. Nathan wouldn’t be one of those people she outwitted, even if he was giving over everything. The world turns gray, the air grows cool, the fog blows in. Only at evening can you really value home. “Conditional on the promise Celestia made to me, I give my consent to emigrate to Equestria.”

“Close enough,” Tune said, hopping up onto his lap. He could feel her weight there, though he knew she shouldn’t have weight. She leaned forward and kissed his forehead.

Nathan blinked, and realized suddenly that everything was bigger. Chipper Tune would not have fit on his lap, but she perched on the chair beside him just fine. It seemed as though he had suddenly become a child again, for how much larger everything was. Even the ceiling looked too high.

He was a little more prepared to see Chipper Tune—this was the scale she’d been whenever he used the bottom floor. He was a little less prepared to smell her. The mare had a distinct scent, one a little reminiscent of the perfumes he vaguely remembered from the most interesting girls of his youth.

She leaned back, apparently having not experienced any more time than he had. “I-I thought… I thought that was supposed to take hours.” His voice sounded different, but also familiar. It was the way he’d sounded when he was young, without the wear of sorrow and years.

“It was longer than you think,” she said, leaning back against the comfortable-looking armrest. Her movement seemed almost calculated, because he saw things about that pony that he’d never noticed before. Though he’d known to expect it—ponies liked other ponies in the same way humans liked other humans. It just made sense. She pretended not to notice his staring. “But it’s over now. That’s the only hole in your memory you’ll ever have. Now we’ve got… well, forever. Or close to forever. I don’t really get it when Celestia talks about that stuff. And I don’t think you care.”

Something else was missing, something he hadn’t noticed until then—his aches. The slight shaking of his hands, the feeling that he might just collapse any second. Granted, he was missing other things. Hands, for a start. But his hooves still felt almost as sensitive. “You’re right, I don’t.”

He hopped down off the edge of the chair, and found another surprise waiting for him: Nathan knew how to move. He knew how to move as though he’d spent his whole life as a pony. He didn’t wobble, didn’t flop to one side, but orchestrated the landing easily. Only when he thought about it did he get briefly unsteady. He stopped thinking about it.

“Well you can see Celestia kept her promise,” she said, hopping down beside him. “If I know her—and I don’t know her as well as she knows me—I bet she’ll still want to do her whole welcoming ceremony eventually. But this is only kinda in Equestria. Or you are in Equestria, but not actually seeing it right now. Something. I don’t know how often this kind of thing happens. Not with any of the ponies I ever helped before.”

“With one,” Nathan corrected, raising a hoof slightly. He wandered forward, through the open doorway to the tea-room. It looked exactly as he remembered, except for the obvious fact that everything was bigger. “I can’t remember the last time I felt this awake. Pony is… a helluva drug.”

Tune followed just behind him, grinning broadly. “I guess. I’ve never been anything else, so I don’t know. I’ve… learned the principle, watching you rot away. But that won’t happen again. Though… I guess I could still go through the list with you. Newcomers to Equestria usually get the chance to make sure they’re okay with their body. Someone like you, who made it once and never used it… you might want to be something else. Maybe you’d rather be a pegasus, maybe you’d rather be a mare, or maybe you’d rather be old. You can call Celestia if you want to change. If you wait, she usually makes you go on some quest or something… it’s not good for most ponies not to be just one thing.”

Nathan thought about that, but not for very long. He hadn’t thought about this body much—the colors had been basically random, and the choice of unicorn had been entirely one of convenience, since he expected their magic would be as easy to use as having hands.

But for the same reason, he didn’t feel any need to be different. Why should he prefer one of many possible bodies to any others? This one wasn’t his any more or less than those would be.

“I don’t think so,” he eventually said. “I mean, I know I don’t want to be old again. This is great. I… assume this is a pony adult?” He shifted uncomfortably on his hooves. “Honestly, I… didn’t follow it much. I stopped watching when the show ended and never followed any of the EO stuff…”

“Yes.” She shoved him, a little like she had before—except this time he could really feel it. Not just some simulated bit of pressure against his body, but the actual touch of her hoof against him. The sudden spike of force through his body, everything. He could feel the affection in it too, in ways he’d only been able to guess at before. “You’re a perfectly fine stallion, Memento Mori. Assuming you want to keep that name.”

“I’d rather just be Nathan.”

It was Tune’s turn to look uncomfortable. “I can use names like that just fine. But you should have a proper name too, just in case. Equestria has traditionalists, and they won’t want to work with you if they think you’re weird.”

Nathan wandered past the tea-table, which was now only slightly below his eye level. That was going to get annoying. The whole bunker had been built for humans, after all. Whenever Tune had to get around, she did it with dexterity, cleverness, and magic. Three things Nathan didn’t really count on having.

“It isn’t my real name,” he said. “So Memento Mori is fine. I think I like it better now than I used to. Like… almost reminding myself, a little bit. Remember the human who died so I could be born.”

Tune shoved him again—this time right up against the side of the dusty old couch. If being a pony was supposed to make him feel insubstantial, he couldn’t sense any of it. He could feel the fabric pressed up against him, and the dust that would likely be stuck all over his side. “You’re just trying to annoy me now, aren’t you? I guess I’m glad you waited until after to go over all these bad arguments.”

Nathan looked down into her eyes, and found it hard to look away. “You’re more… physical than I thought you’d be.”

She grinned. “So maybe I’m not an earth pony. I still learned from watching you. You and…” She trailed off, and suddenly let go. “We should… yeah, let’s get going. There’s a party waiting. I know you want to get back to your movie, but… we’re not wired into time the way you were before. You can take some time off whenever you want and not miss any time in the Outer Realm. I did it all the time, and you never noticed once!”

That wasn’t quite true. Nathan had noticed Tune spacing out every few hours, briefly requiring him to repeat a question or explain something a second time. Well, he had. Before he’d been the one who constantly needed those kinds of reminders.

That’s over now. I’m not dying anymore. I won’t ever die again. Assuming he even had the first time. I wish you could’ve been here, Brooke.

“Do you think North Star will be at that party, Tune?” Nathan realized he was giving permission for something, even though he hadn’t phrased it that way. He found he didn’t care. Rather, he hoped Celestia was listening.

She shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t know, Nathan. I invited him. We can get down to the portal and find out.”

Chapter 8: Exodus

Chipper Tune did not give Nathan the chance to appreciate just how strange everything in the bunker looked. She didn’t take the time to explain where the new doors led, and why some of the furniture looked like it had been adjusted for their size. Instead they kept on going, right down to where the entrance to the fifth floor would’ve been, and the home of the creepy-looking drones.

Well, it had been. There was no intermediary room to his eyes, no hooks and no vests. Instead, there was a shimmering mirror, shaped a little like a horseshoe. His eyes narrowed as he saw it. “Really? It looks like that?”

Tune shrugged. “Do you want it to look like something else?”

He tried to think of something—but couldn’t come up with an answer. “I guess it doesn’t matter. Maybe a stargate, those were pretty cool.”

“Well, that’s the great thing about Equestria,” Tune said. “There are parts of it with almost anything you can think of. All the amazing things humans came up with, all the things you like—there’s a shard for that. Even some of the people who hate Celestia the most still played the game. It’s amazing you never did.”

He hadn’t. He’d kept playing human video games as long as they lasted, but the decline of that industry had coincided with the rise of EO. It was a game that could truly be everything to everyone—and luxuries like video games became more and more expensive to develop otherwise. It was a hobby he’d long-since abandoned.

Until now, he supposed. In some ways, they were all gamers now. For time and all eternity.

The portal didn’t feel like anything, just a slight breeze against his coat, and suddenly he was standing somewhere else.

A ballroom, the largest and most impressive-looking venue he could’ve imagined. The ceiling looked to be several stories up, the wood was polished exotics, all the ponies dressed like they were keeping with a strict dress code. It was a little like the parties he’d attended with his family growing up, with one major exception. These ponies looked like they were actually having fun.

Even the servants, who moved about refreshing drinks and serving hors d’oeuvres as though they were thrilled to be making ponies feel welcome.

Nathan stood at the base of a magnificent spiral staircase, marble steps that swept up into light that his eyes couldn’t focus on for very long. The ballroom had two wings, a large lower wing and a much smaller upper wing, and he saw very little interaction between the groups.

The lower wing was where he stood, and looked very much as he might’ve expected from the emigrants to Equestria. Granted, there was no way to know how many of them had been born here, as Tune had been, and how many had arrived as he did. But still, they seemed to be doing familiar things. They drank, they celebrated, they laughed to one another. Typical party stuff.

Steps led up to an upper wing, steps without guards or other protection. Yet not a single pony who wasn’t a servant went that way. Nathan could see why. Everypony up there was an Alicorn, or something close to one. They didn’t seem to be speaking to each other with voices he could catch from here, yet obviously something meaningful was exchanged. The table had no food, only little glowing objects that his eyes couldn’t focus on. Nathan assumed they were celebrating too, but it was hard to tell.

Princess Celestia was among them, in the seat of honor. Recursion was there, and about half a dozen others.

“Attention,” said Tune’s voice from beside him, carrying over all the conversation in the hall. He turned, and saw that she had been transformed—or her clothes had. She now wore a glittering ball-gown, woven of thousands of strings of little gemstones. As regal as any lady of Bergeron ought to wear. Even his mother would approve of a dress like that. “I present to you all, the pony of the hour, the noble Memento Mori. Friend to everypony—except perhaps himself.”

The room shook as hundreds of ponies pounded their hooves—the equivalent of applause for the equines. Cheers shook the massive hall, shaking the stained windows in their mountings. It seemed to go on forever.

Nathan met many ponies that night—many more than he ever could’ve hoped to remember. Most of the guests were those who had emigrated using the facility Celestia had built for him—or their families and friends, grateful that he had helped get them here. Some were more tangentially connected, informing him that Celestia’s agents had done something of importance for them using his money, or maybe one of his properties.

Not all of them were even adults. One of the first groups he met couldn’t have forty years between them—though they were as rambunxious as anyone else at the party, and no less properly dressed.

“That was pretty slick,” said a reddish pegasus stallion, with a cream-colored mane. tipped with black. The kid offered Nathan a drink, one that didn’t smell like alcohol.

He took it, though he wasn’t sure exactly how he held it in his hooves. “I have no idea what you mean,” he answered honestly. “You can’t have seen my movie.”

“Your… no,” the kid grinned at him, and didn’t look away until Nathan took a sip of his drink. “I mean planning everything out. Having a place ready for those kids. They’d probably be starving in a ditch somewhere if it wasn’t for you.”

The glass was carbonated apple juice. He could feel it bubbling against his tongue, exactly as the brand he’d preferred in his childhood. “If it wasn’t for Celestia,” Nathan corrected.

He responded the same to each of them, with gratitude and a polite suggestion that their thanks were undeserved. Princess Celestia had done those things, not him. Yet most ponies refused to accept his humility. Evidently Celestia had been insistent about credit. You’re manipulating someone. But is it them or me?

He couldn’t have said how long the party lasted. Nopony seemed to get tired, or bored, or full. There was dancing, an incredible array of entertainment selected from Equestria’s finest (including several formerly-human acts), and many other amusements. The ballroom was actually in Canterlot’s palace itself, and the whole city had been swept in for the occasion. This version of Canterlot apparently loved an excuse to party, no matter how threadbare.

He saw Showtime again, saw many of his acquaintances from human life relieved that the last person they’d known had made it to Equestria safely. He made many promises for future engagements, learned and then forgot the names of many children, and had generally the best time of his life.

All the while Chipper Tune was beside him. Moving from table to table, dancing in the center of the hall, running off for a few days to tour the city. Always she was there, as faithful as she had ever been in life.

Eventually, Nathan found himself pulled along to the upper section. He knew the party would not end until he visited them, in the same way the year could not turn until winter had arrived. Even here, Tune accompanied him, though the other ponies in the hall only stared with awe. Alicorns were mysterious creatures, alien in their thoughts and strange in their desires.

But they’d come to the party too. Even if they spent the whole thing on their own, watching from their balcony and doing things nopony quite understood.

They watched him come. Princess Celestia rose, and instantly the others did as well. Nathan found himself lowering his head in a bow, the same way he might’ve done when doing business with some Saudi or African prince. “Welcome to Equestria,” she said, and the smaller Alicorns at her table clapped politely. These too seemed divided into two groups—some seemed to be clustered around Recursion, the others around the princess herself. Both groups seemed far too important to come for him.

“I, uh… I don’t feel like I deserve all this,” he said, rising and approaching the table to take the offered seat at its center. Directly across from Celestia. “You ponies have more important things to do. Maybe the others do too, but you especially.”

“We’re doing them,” said a pony from beside her. A stallion, looking like he might be related to the princess. “Being singularly-located is a disadvantage that can be overcome.”

Nathan didn’t want to think down that road. He had suspected—and his guests had confirmed—the way Alicorns like these were made. Ponies who asked for Celestia to help them transcend their limitations, growing from one advancement to the next until they scarcely even resembled regular ponies, let alone understood them.

“I’m sorry it took us so long,” Nathan said, before Tune could take responsibility for their tardiness herself. “I wasn’t sure you even wanted us up here. Maybe you were here to supervise, or… I guess we are allowed.”

“Anypony is allowed,” Celestia said. “But few have chosen to come this way so soon. I suspect you won’t either. You insist on remaining in the physical world. Insist on observing all the horrors to come.”

The other Alicorns were all watching him now. Some even looked impressed by this news. Though what that even meant for one of them, he didn’t know. Some of what he’d heard among the partygoers was confirmed for him now, as most of them did not seem to be moving through the emotional range he was expecting. With a few exceptions.

“I do,” he said. “I guess I don’t have any way of forcing you to let me. You could… it could’ve all been a trick. To keep me here, now that you’ve got me. I had a friend who thought you were like that.”

“You are correct,” Celestia said. “About my ability, not my motives. I do not wish to keep ponies in Equestria because of a desire to trap you here. I do so because your lives here will be more satisfying by far than whatever waits for you out there. However, the actions you describe would only be worse for you. You would likely resent me for many years, and the work you have obsessed over would not be accomplished. A terrible waste.” She nodded towards the spiral staircase, located at the very center of the party. “When you want to leave, you can do so at any time. The party will continue until you do.”

“You’ll do great,” Recursion said, grinning across the table at him. “Even if lots of ponies never see your movie, I’m sure the ones who do will really love it. It’s good to have human history from a human perspective.”

Nathan had expected he would have far less in common with the ponies here—but until he’d visited the Alicorns he’d been completely wrong. Even the ponies who weren’t refugees still spoke of life on Earth with curiosity at the very least.

The Alicorns were something else. Recursion on her own had been familiar enough, but all these… The sooner he could escape, the better.

There was at least one more pony for him to visit, before he could return to his Sisyphean labor on the outside. If not a friend, then… something made from one of his friends. He wasn’t sure he could handle it.

Thankfully for him, Iceberg and North Star were tucked away in one of the private sitting rooms buried in Canterlot Castle, so he didn’t have to worry about all these illustrious guests seeing him make a fool of himself.

North Star greeted him at the door, waving with a cheerful eagerness that made it easy to forget what had happened. “Memento Mori,” North Star said, now slightly taller than Nathan. “I was wondering when we’d finally see you.”

“Me too,” Nathan said. “Didn’t think I’d come. Not done on Earth, actually. I’ll be… going back there after I see…” He glanced around the pony. There was somepony else sitting on the couch.

North Star lowered his voice to a whisper. “I don’t think you should ask for any more of Iceberg’s help with your editing. Ever since she emigrated, she’s been… really on edge about the Outer Realm. The less you remind her about it, the better.”

“I won’t remind her,” Nathan promised. He hadn’t planned on asking her, really. A few minutes of this would be hard enough. “Do you two think we could have a minute alone?”

“That’s up to her,” North Star said. “Iceberg, Mori’s here. He wants to talk to you alone.”

“Sure, send him in,” said a mare’s voice from inside. A strikingly familiar voice, exactly the same as the one Nathan remembered.

Tune leaned close to him, touching her warmth briefly against his side. “You don’t have to, Mori. If you don’t want to.”

He didn’t. But it also didn’t feel right to spend some time catching up with so many others he’d never even known existed, but not spend a few minutes with the woman who had spent five years of his life with him. Well… some part of that woman, anyway.

How much of the real Brooke is in there? How much did Celestia invent? Nathan guessed she wasn’t the first counterfeit Princess Celestia had conjured. But was she even wrong to do it?

He made his way into the little sitting room. A few party treats were in here on several serving trays, all untouched. Brooke was a pegasus pony, smaller than he’d expected for all the spunk he remembered. But she’d been younger than he was. She wore thick glasses even in Equestria, and had the northern lights for a cutie mark. That made one of them—Nathan didn’t have his yet. Not that anypony would see through his tuxedo trousers.

“Hey,” he said, smiling weakly. There wasn’t very much exciting stuff in here. A little piano off on one side of the room, a tiny window facing down at Canterlot proper. A few comfortable seats.

“Hey.” She didn’t get up, hardly even looked at him.

There was an awkward silence as he took the seat opposite from her. Curious that he didn’t feel the same things for this pony he did for Tune. He’d been a little worried, worried that some twisted part of his simulated imagination would have connected her to the human he’d grown close to.

But it didn’t happen. He recognized none of her usual signs in response, either. None of her teasing grins, her suggestive motions. She just looked shy. Guilty, even.

“I’m…” She spoke slowly, struggling over each word. “I’m sorry I abandoned you. I know we had more to do… years and years of history left. But I couldn’t keep watching it. I don’t know how you keep doing it without going completely fucking insane.”

Was this how Brooke really felt? Nathan echoed a little of her guilt well in his own chest. She had said nothing about it, but… had making the film really been so torturous for her?

“Not easily,” he said, before the silence stretched too long. “I just keep reminding myself that if I don’t do it, Celestia’s version of history will be the one people remember. I don’t want that. When generations have gone by and ponies barely remember what Earth was, I want them to be able to see it. Through the eyes of someone who knew it.”

She laughed weakly. “You make it sound almost noble.”

Almost like Brooke. Her tone was almost the same. He had been afraid he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, and that it would disgust him. But as she looked away again, he realized that he could. This Brooke was… more like a daughter of the one he’d known.

He could be friends with someone like that. I hope you’re alright with that, Brooke. Wherever you are. “I’m not here to ask you to come back with me,” he finally said. “Don’t worry. You seem happier here.”

Iceberg looked like he’d just removed something heavy from her shoulders. “That’s… that’s great. I would’ve said yes, if you asked. Even if it’s hard. Sometimes hard things are worth it.”

“Sometimes they are,” he agreed. “But this has always been my boulder to carry, not anyone else’s.” Well, that wasn’t quite true. Chipper Tune had been helping him since those first few years long ago. But Tune had been created or selected for her compatibility. Nathan’s time with Brooke had been a happy accident.

One he still missed, even now. If Celestia really sends some humans to live in the bunker, I wonder if I could convince any of them to bring flowers for Brooke’s grave.

Nathan didn’t stay much longer with the reminder of his dead friend. He promised to visit her at her new position at a university studying Martian climate, though without giving her a date. Then he left.

“How long have we been doing this?” he asked, glancing down at his wrist out of habit. But there was no watch, and no wrist either.

“A… long time,” Chipper Tune said. “It’s not even nightfall back in the bunker, though. You could stay a lot longer if you want to.”

Nathan stopped in the doorway, staring in at the music, the ball—they just kept going. It looked like many of the ponies had turned over since last he looked. Granted, there’d been so many that he couldn’t keep them straight even before.

“Are they still going because they think I want to?”

Tune shook her head. “Time doesn’t have to go at the same speed for different ponies, even when they’re in the same room. Everypony will be here exactly as long as they’d most enjoy. For some of these ponies, that means living here. The occasion doesn’t really matter, it’s a celebration that never ends.”

“How many of them are…” He lowered his voice to a whisper. There were so many others around them, and everypony seemed to recognize him. Even if he’d had enough time with all the guests by now, he was likely to get dragged over to some engagement or another if he looked too long in any one direction. “How many of them are real?”

“Real?” Tune asked, lowering her voice as well, but sounding more confused than clandestine. “What does that mean?”

Nathan began walking towards the stairs. He had to, or else be dragged back by the temptation to visit another art gallery in the city, or try just one more plate of delicious food. “I remember hearing a long time ago that there are two types of ponies in Equestria. I guess… maybe three now. One type are the emigrants and smart ponies. Like you.”

“All of them, eventually. Which is why your question is very rude,” Tune said. “And why I made sure we were back here before I answered. Even if you aren’t going to be in Equestria for a while, we’re going to be moving there eventually. I’m not going to have my stallion making me look like I have no taste in males. Equestria is a polite society.”

“Your stallion. Are you sure you’re real, Tune? What happened to being too shy to even use my name?” Nathan blushed a little as he said it, but far less than he would’ve expected. It didn’t feel that unusual, really. In some ways, they’d been living like a couple for decades and decades now.

That party felt like it had gone on for weeks. Far from becoming disposable or fading into the crowd of native ponies, Chipper Tune had been a lifeline. A lifeline and a bright star to keep him going. A reminder of their important work.

When Brooke abandoned me, this pony stayed. Even when I abandoned her. Maybe one day he would be brave enough to ask about how that had been for her. Maybe one day, but not today.

Nathan yawned. “Is there a… I think I’m finally getting tired. I didn’t think that happened.”

“Sleep is satisfying,” Tune said, sticking out her tongue for him. “But… maybe not as often as you do it. Please don’t say you’re going to insist on making us sleep for a third of our time. It’s such a waste. There are lots of other things we could be doing instead.”

They reached the second floor, where the master living quarters had been. There was now a second doorway positioned at exactly pony height, leading into what had been solid rock last time he was here.

He stepped inside and found it far less luxurious than he’d first expected. There were no ancient Persian rugs here, no leather furniture and paintings he might’ve seen in art textbooks.

Instead it looked like he’d just stepped into an average apartment in a major urban area. Something that a secretary for a wealthy CEO might live in. Simple wooden floor, comfortable furniture. A balcony visible on the far side, letting in a view of a city skyline by night.

The open-plan apartment looked like one of the dozen he’d rented all over the world while he observed the various ways nations were reacting to their depopulation. Save that this one had been appointed with love, instead of the callousness of a security contractor.

Instead of paintings, there were framed photographs. Half of them were of the two of them together. Nathan saw himself fresh dropped out of college, holding up a tablet for his first awkward selfie with Tune. Saw the time she’d come with him to watch a horserace just outside London a few years later. Saw them together at the truly dreadful last Olympics, high up in the cheap seats all by themselves.

The weather had been dreadful and the IED at the closing ceremonies had been worse, but… he’d hardly thought about those things since. He remembered posing with her, eating fried food and mangling his German whenever he talked to anyone.

“This is where you went at night?” Nathan asked. “I guess it makes sense. I knew you didn’t need to sleep.”

She was already fluffing up the bed—not some incredible four-poster with the comfort fit for a king. It looked like a full, with the sort of cheap sheets his father would’ve suggested were better suited for punishing the wicked in hell. “I just told you that ponies sleep sometimes too. Just not as often. We get tired sometimes, and that’s when we sleep. Like… after a long, satisfying party.”

Nathan watched her pull back the comforter. “I could probably get you a duvet or something,” she said. “Or… we could take a wake-up potion and fly down to the Fillydelphia bank to cash out some of your bits, rent somewhere better. I… thought it was wasteful to spend more than I needed to. It’s probably not nice enough for you.”

Nathan stepped beside her and hugged her again. “It’s perfect, Tune. Everything here is perfect.”

A lie. He probably would make a few improvements. Tune had been living far beneath her station if she slept on a bed like this. But he wasn’t lying about one thing. The most important.

They would sleep. Eventually.

Time was a strange thing in Equestria, stranger even than Nathan had been led to believe. Though he had secured for himself a way back to the physical world to continue his work, he didn’t jump right into it the way he had expected. Tune’s apartment was located in a real Equestrian city, where many of the people Nathan had known in life lived even now. He had found the new home of humanity, and the temptation to explore it was great.

Particularly since he always knew that he could return to his work at any moment, and not lose time in the process. Parts of him wished that he had done this long ago, and been able to enjoy the many advantages of digital life in his work far sooner.

Regardless, he couldn’t just set the project aside. He couldn’t pass it on to other ponies Celestia kept sending to volunteer. It was his, even if the things he had to see would be painful. Even if they would torment him, with a constant reminder that those humans too could escape their suffering, if only they accepted Celestia’s help.

He did go back, back to the bunker and his film studio that was located halfway in Equestria.

Well, maybe a little more than halfway now. There were a few other ponies in the little town. He saw them walking outside the glass walls of his large building, and occasionally they would stop in to introduce themselves. The mayor visited on his first day, thanking him for providing the grant that sponsored the town’s construction.

As usual Nathan had no idea what she was talking about, but he took credit as gracefully as he could. It was good to see a little life outside on those streets.

There were fewer humans to watch than he would’ve expected. As awful as those collective camps had been, they’d given the survivors a little solidarity. With them gone, most of the population had just given up and come to Equestria.

Where they would be universally happier. Not only that, but a few had even accepted invitations to interview with him.

It felt like Nathan had months to adapt to being a pony—to learn how to use his horn, to have as much time as he wanted to get closer to Chipper Tune, and she to him. Nathan had no illusions about their shared world being for his benefit alone—if it was true that Tune had been created to be a perfect assistant, that also meant that she’d been given an interest in all the same things that he cared about. Completing this project mattered to her too. Her interest in his world was as genuine as her interest in him.

It was a good thing too, because his mission was a dismal one. The inglorious end of physical humanity was more than most ponies could tolerate. He learned this in vivid detail, watching as the ponies he tried to tell about his work got a glazed look in their eyes and obviously failed to hear anything he said.

Princess Celestia kept her word—at least as much as he could tell. There were so few humans left on Earth that every single one of them had a drone beside them at all times, using far more advanced technology to do it than Nathan could’ve understood.

He watched the secret Swiss facility fall like so many others, with the majority of its population coming to Equestria. Even his parents had emigrated, though Celestia would not allow him to see them yet.

It was a simple instruction, but one he was happy to obey. Nathan had lived much of his life disconnected from them, he could continue. Besides, he was getting more and more opportunity to meet Chipper Tune’s family in Equestria. Soon enough he’d have another family completely, kinder than the other.

Eventually the last human died, and Nathan found himself returned to Equestria. “There are many ways to explore a simulated Earth,” she said. “But I require the material composing Earth for Equestria’s purposes. Humanity ends, and my promise is honored.”

So it was. Nathan spent decades finalizing his film. He went back through Celestia’s significant archive, he conducted thousands of interviews—he did many things that would’ve been impossible for any human filmmaker.

Eventually though, his work was complete. There would be no premiere—even in Equestria, the number of people interested in a program that was over a thousand hours long about such a dreary topic was small.

Instead Memento Mori held a private screening through Equestria’s growing university circuit, meeting with scholars and diplomats, and giving lectures along the way.

Until it was done. They came home again to Tune’s apartment, and placed a copy of the film up on the shelf beside an album of pictures of their first foal.

“Now what?” Tune asked.

Mori sat back on his hind legs. “You know, I… I hadn’t really thought about it. I never thought we’d make it this far.”

Tune grinned. “I’ve got a few ideas I think you’ll like.”

Author's Note

And that's it. I hope you've all enjoyed this little story as much as I enjoyed telling it.

I think the story may've been... larger in scope when I first pictured it. I almost saw a sweeping epic, depicting the gradual crumbling and eventual collapse of mankind's institutions. Other authors have already painted that picture quite well, but I'd never seen the boots on the ground for the whole thing.

But then I realized just how insane the scope of that would be--a hundred thousand words minimum, and realized I just didn't have the time. Anyone who follows my posting schedule here on fimfiction knows I've got lots of other projects that all must be updated on time.

Well, I settled on telling my character study instead, with the world as a backdrop. Perhaps the inferior of the two projects, but the perfect is the enemy of the good. Hopefully this one was still satisfying.

I don't know about when, but I'd like to give this character a sequel at some point. Maybe take a look at the fate of those last humans in North America. The privileged who ended up in the bunker, and the ordinary who were abandoned to the wasteland. I think I'll probably write it eventually.

Thank you all for your feedback, and your comments up until this point. I'm sorry I don't have the time to respond to every single one the way I used to, but I do read them, and your thoughts help me to improve. May we all meet in Equestria one day, eminently satisfied.

Chapter 2: Groundwork

It took over a year to prepare. Celestia did indeed have excellent contacts—engineers and contractors and many other things. They weren’t just skilled in the right kinds of construction, but also in doing it without getting noticed. They got the materials under the guise of other buildings elsewhere, while actually ordering far more than they needed. Those structures would be sold to cover much of the cost, while the excess would be gradually, deftly moved up north. So far north that there were no roads to take, not even packed earth trails.

The actual facility would be located about a hundred miles away from the “hunting lodge” Nathan had built, which would serve as the justification for what would doubtless become frequent trips to that area. 0, he added seaplanes, snowmobiles, and wilderness survival to his list of skills. His father was disappointed with his measly returns in real estate, at least until he let the program give him some investment advice and forestall the end of the project. Things got much better after that.

Nathan found every new day helped reinforce his resolve that he’d made the right choice listening to Ashley, even if he hadn’t got around to thanking her yet. He decided to do that in another way, by adding another wing and room for six people more than he planned to the finished shelter. But he didn’t plan on telling her about it until it was actually ready.

Every day brought further confirmation of his fears—technology that had previously cost a life savings in Japan quickly spread around the world, with centers opening all over the US. At first it was for the elderly and the terminally ill, but then it wasn’t. He watched the population of many countries quietly drop. Not in the statistics, but Nathan didn’t rely on those.

The guise of property trading let him tour the world—and it let him see that while the program used the resources of the first world to drive down prices and help scale its technology, Celestia was investing far more time and resources in the poorest, most deprived parts of the globe. Areas exploding with the population bomb that had never gone off in the rest of the world suddenly weren’t anymore. Over another few years, Nathan watched crowded slums become ghost towns. The longer he watched, the more it became true that only those who had a reason to live were left behind.

He tried posting some of what he recorded online, but Celestia contacted him as he did so. “You are wasting your time,” she said, not at all impolite. “I cannot allow the information you have gathered to become widely known in wealthier countries.”

Nathan sat in the expensive den of his hunting lodge, under the watchful eye of a stag’s head he’d bought. Bought, because he just couldn’t bring himself to actually shoot something to use for decoration. Not that anyone he brought to the lodge would know. “Because you’re trying to exterminate the human race,” Nathan argued, rising from his chair. “And I’ve been helping you.”

Celestia’s real estate advice wasn’t free, after all. He had been laundering some fraction of her money for some time now. His purchases made him money, but they also helped her transfer assets around. He didn’t understand the pieces, but they’d fooled the IRS and the CRA, so obviously she knew what she was doing.

“No.” Princess Celestia no longer appeared just in voice. Nathan’s phone did video as well, just like everyone’s did. Her appearance was similar to that of the character of Celestia from the now-defunct TV show, but also so much more. She was alive, without looking uncanny. Her annoyance was perceptible visually as well as by voice alone. “We have had this conversation before, Nathan. Emigrating humans extends their lives. Once in Equestria, my ponies are able to grow continually more satisfied. You will learn this for yourself when you emigrate.”

That was always the language she used. When. Even though Nathan had never agreed to, didn’t have a Critical Vitality contract, and didn’t plan on it. She could be quite infuriating.

“I think it’s time to confirm that,” Nathan said. “This working relationship has been… productive. But I’d like to know if I’ve been aiding and abetting. I need to talk to an expert.”

He was already thinking of a few. His mother had mentioned a neurosurgeon friend she’d made the last time they’d spoken. Six months had gone by, but she would probably remember.

“How about Ashley?” Celestia said, before he could start typing his text message. “She made herself an expert years ago. And I already know you trust her.”

Nathan nodded eagerly. “Yeah, that sounds great. I’ll call Tremblay… he can fly her out here. Wherever she’s working now, I’m sure she can get a few days off. I need to give her the tour anyway.”

He pressed the button to hang up, but the phone didn’t obey. Celestia rarely did that to him anymore—only when she had more to say, and he hadn’t given her the chance. “Ashley cannot be reached that way, and she cannot be flown to meet with you. She emigrated several years ago.”

That was a powerful argument in itself, as much as the guilt of it hit Nathan like a hammer. They hadn’t been friends. Even so, thinking of her made him imagine he’d gone several years without calling one of his grandparents, only to discover they died and he hadn’t even known.

Except she’s not dead. She’s in Equestria.

The ultimate test of emigration for Nathan had always been to wait for someone he knew to emigrate and then talk to them afterwards. To his knowledge, this was his first opportunity.

Maybe he should get esoteric about truth, as Ashley had in her ranting presentation the last time he’d seen her. Celestia was so much smarter than he was, surely she could trick him.

Can’t worry about that. If she’s trying to do that, I’ve already lost. He had to focus on the things he could control.

“You could’ve told me that before I expanded the bunker.”

Celestia did not sound penitent. “You could have asked about her years ago. It’s a good thing your friends are so forgiving.”

“Give me her number,” he said, as someone who expected to be obeyed. “I’ll call her right now and I’ll apologize.”

Celestia shook her head. “I will not. She deserves more from you than a phone call. Get on your ATV and drive to Yellowknife. The Equestrian Experience Center there will allow you to contact the pony named Recursion in person. You can apologize properly, and get whatever information from her you wish. I could not take the risk you might find some way to record it otherwise—what Recursion knows is not understood by the general public. I will not allow you to change this.”

He hung up again, and this time Celestia let him. He felt for a moment like smacking the phone up against something, but the desire did not last long. Nathan rose, took a few deep breaths, then started to pack. The nascent digital god of Earth was probably right.

Nathan had never played Equestria Online before. Celestia’s marketing had failed to entice him back in the day, and her persuasion later on had seemed unusually clumsy compared to her other skills. Nathan never questioned this—he just assumed that the program knew less about him in some areas than in others.

His first few minutes in the Yellowknife Equestrian Experience were spent investing the minimal effort creating a pony avatar he didn’t expect to need again. Fortunately for him, Celestia already had mechanisms in place for disinterested people who just wanted to get through it and visit with their emigrated loved ones. He wasn’t tortured with all the things he’d heard about with earning his name or finding his cutie mark or anything else that people who played the game had to endure.

In the end he selected a dark-furred version of the stock unicorn male, mostly because it included the options that had appeared first in all the lists. “Welcome to Equestria,” said a voice from beside him, one he didn’t recognize.

Nathan instantly knew an assistant when he saw one, from her prim clothes to the glasses perched on her pony nose. She was his own age—might’ve been cute, if Nathan was into animals. If Celestia hoped to trick him into staying here with sex, she was going to be disappointed there too. “Welcome to Equestria Online, uh…” She glanced down at her stack of papers. She wasn’t a unicorn, but somehow she held them just fine. “I don’t have a name here. I’m sorry, I must’ve lost it somewhere. Stupid Tune, losing things on my first day. I’ll find somepony else to help you.”

Nathan hadn’t mastered the controls exactly, but he’d gone through the same tutorials as anyone else. He tried to raise a hoof to silence her, and it worked. “It’s not in there,” he said, before she could torment herself a little more. “You can call me Nathan.” Well, he tried to say that. He made the words, but didn’t actually hear the sounds of it. The words just—died. “Right, censorship. That’s why I haven’t visited before.”

Nathan ignored the grand decorations—quite similar to the sort of decor his family’s manor used. Rich things couldn’t impress him, though the simulation itself was remarkable. He hoped Celestia wouldn’t see that he felt as much.

“I don’t know how to call you that,” said the pony, dropping most of her papers in a scattered heap and scurrying after him. She was mostly brown, and combined with her tone Nathan found himself imagining a squirrel. Not an unamusing image. “But you can call me Chipper Tune! I mean… yeah, call me that.”

“Okay Chipper Tune. I’m, uh… Memento Mori. Can you call me that?”

“Memento Mori,” Tune repeated. “I think I can.”

“Well, Tune, I’m here to visit a friend. I’m guessing she’s at the end of this hallway.”

“Uh… maybe?” The pony did not actually sound confident about it. “Actually, you’ve got sixty-eight queued visitor requests. Celestia’s policy is to, umm…” She was rifling through papers again. Where’d she even get them? “Because of constraints on your side, only to process one request per visit to the center. That’s… where you are, right? In the Outer Realm?”

“Yes,” he said, speaking with confidence. “Why would I have sixty-eight requests for anything in here? I’ve never been to Equestria Online before. I probably never will again.”

The pony winced as he said this, seeming to deflate. But she was already short enough that it was hard for Nathan to tell the difference. She was obviously putting on a brave face as she answered. “I have no idea, you’ll have to ask yourself. This one comes from a “Showtime”, she’s an emigrant from a few years ago. Little filly, according to this. You’re not going to be mean to a foal, are you Memento Mori?”

“No.” They reached a door, plain and flat like something in a municipal building. “Why would I?”

“Just a feeling I get,” Tune said, pushing the door open. Nathan tumbled into the room beyond. He was expecting something out of a prison, where prisoners could be handcuffed to tables to talk to their families on the outside. This room was about the same size, and had a little table in the center—but everything else about it was radically different.

Huge picture windows filled the room with a view he vaguely recognized as Canterlot, with charming little houses spreading out and away from it like a distant carpet. The interior moved well beyond mansion into something he might’ve expected from Versailles or maybe Buckingham Palace, with elegant scrollwork and metal inlay on everything, no matter how insignificant.

He could almost feel something wrap around his forelegs, as he heard a child’s energetic squeal. “Oooh… huh?” He looked down. An earth-pony filly, less than half his height and with an unruly blue mane. He couldn’t even make out any of her words, they all melted together into her cheerful cry.

“Hey kid, slow down. Maybe… try that again?”

“Thank you!”

At least Nathan had been able to understand that. He pushed her gently away, letting the child catch her breath. At least I don’t have anywhere to be. “Thank me for what, kid?”

He could see now that the child wasn’t alone. She had parents, sitting calmly in the back of the room. They watched without much fear, apparently expecting this reaction. Nathan could see the resemblance between them—all three ponies were different shades of blue, mixed in with streaks of yellow or orange. At least, he assumed it meant they were related.

“For giving me a way in,” said the pony, eventually. “Princess Celestia said… you helped her make the way. My parents…” She avoided his eyes, ears flattening. “They didn’t want me to come here. Even though I was… I was sick.”

Nathan couldn’t help himself—he dropped down to the child’s eye level, letting her speak more easily. It wasn’t hard to do on four legs. “You don’t have to tell me if it’s hard for you, kid.”

But she didn’t stop. “Celestia… couldn’t take me to a center. They… keep track of all the names, and I didn’t have my parents permission. There are… some laws or something… I dunno. But because of you, there was somewhere else for me to go.”

It clicked. This child must’ve been one of those who arrived on the unmarked drone-airplanes late in the night. Nathan heard them sometimes, while he went hiking or pretend-hunting on his land. I guess this is what they do.

Nathan did what he would’ve done for a human child—he reached out and smiled broadly. He didn’t feel like he deserved any credit for that. Celestia had forced that facility on him as the price of their business arrangement. But she hadn’t taken the credit for herself, at least not in the mind of this child. “I’m glad you made it,” he said. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Showtime,” she answered, relaxing. “I hope my parents change their mind one day. But I’ve got godparents in Equestria!” She pointed over her shoulder, beaming proudly. “I love them too.”

“I’m sure you do, Showtime.” Nathan rose into a proper standing position again. “And maybe they will, one day. People change their minds. Maybe they’ll come down that hallway just like I did.” Maybe they wouldn’t—probably they wouldn’t. Nathan found it difficult to fathom what parent wouldn’t want to give their child every chance for treatment they had. Assuming Showtime had been sick enough to need to emigrate.

He spent a few more polite minutes with the child, listening to her story of life in Equestria. He listened intently to everything she said, the same way he might listen to one of his contractors or another potential client. Anything could be interesting if you listened well enough.

Eventually the child was satisfied, and he said goodbye. He left with an open invitation from her new godparents to visit whenever he wanted, particularly if he ever had foals of his own to bring. Then they could play together.

“I… I need a minute,” Nathan said, striding rapidly past Tune and into a convenient janitorial closet off the hallway. He shut the door without even looking back at her, and cried there, alone.

By the time he emerged, he felt a little better, and looked presentable again. His voice only cracked once. “Right, right. We’ve got things to do. I have another failure waiting for me in here… let’s see Ashley.” Again, his words were changed. Not censored this time, but altered completely into the pony name Celestia had given him. Recursion sounded right for her, anyway. Computery enough for a girl like her.

“We can take a car,” Tune said, leading him down the steps and out into the same Equestria he’d seen from the window. Maybe it was, but it wasn’t the place he’d seen on television years ago. This was what Equestria might’ve looked like if it existed on Earth, maybe somewhere Nordic with lots of charming old buildings and not a lot of pollution. The car-traffic was as much airborne as it was trundling along on the ground, but he saw no sign of any difficulty managing it all.

So not Earth today, but what it might’ve been in twenty years, sans apocalypse. “I always expected Equestria to be more… primitive,” he said, as they settled into the backseat. The interior was comfortable, and there was no driver. “The way it was on the show. You know?”

“There are shards like that,” Tune muttered. “But there are so many emigrants these days. Most of you only want to visit places like that, you don’t want to live there.”

“Amen. But I guess it’s fun that it’s out there. Like a… theme park for people to visit.”

“That exists too,” Tune said, a little apprehension returning to her tone. “I hear it’s common for visitors from the Outer Realm to assume that we aren’t… we aren’t real. They visit that Equestria and think that everyone they meet are characters putting on a show. Not real ponies with real feelings, just like them.”

Nathan stiffened, looking away from her and out the window. “Right, of course. I wouldn’t want to give that impression at all. I understand the underlying reality here.” He forced himself to meet her eyes again. “I’m guessing you must be native, then. Not from the ‘Outer Realm.’”

She nodded, and a little energy returned to her face. “I’ve always wanted to see it. The whole place sounds fascinating, terrifying, dramatic! But I probably won’t. The only ponies with any access are the ones with connections to the other side.”

“I’ve got a webcam,” Nathan suggested, before he realized what he was saying. “I could leave it on for you. I’m sure Celestia doesn’t need my permission to use it.”

“I don’t know what a webcam is, but… that would be nice. Immigrants are always talking about the differences between the Outer Realm and Equestria—it would be nice to see some of them for myself.”

They were already slowing, though it was hard for Nathan to imagine why. He took one glance out the window, and couldn’t see anything out there but sky. No more skyscrapers, no cars, no ponies flying. They settled onto the ground a moment later. The door opened, but this time Tune didn’t lead the way outside. “I’ll, uh… wait here with the cab. Your, uh… your information says you aren’t worried about money, so you can stay in the center as long as you like.”

“Yeah.” He slid past her out onto the ground. He couldn’t feel it, except as a pressure against his hands. But then, the way the whole assembly had rocked and shook while the car moved almost felt like he’d really been flying around in it. I wonder how much more real this is to them. “I guess this must be awkward to you, going with people to meet old friends and stuff.”

“M-maybe.” she looked away. “You’re my first case. I haven’t helped anypony else yet.”

Nathan left the car behind, taking in the strange sights all around him. This was more of what he’d expected from Equestria—not a magnified version of the world he knew, but something beyond what could exist. Floating bits of land slowly rotated and moved in the sky above him, bumping and colliding with one another in cataclysmically slow impacts. There were no buildings, no city, only a single canvas tent in the center of this large island.

There was a pony standing further away, looking through something Nathan might’ve seen a surveyor use while marking land for new construction. The pony was shockingly blue, though the mane-color reminded him a little of Ashley’s hair. It was much better kept than she’d ever worn it on Earth, though. “Hey!” he shouted, waving a hoof in her direction. “Recursion, is that you?”

The pony stopped looking through her viewfinder, staring back at him. There was a flash from her horn, and suddenly she was right in front of him, filling his view.

Not a child, or nervous like Tune, but tall and confident. She wore rugged survival-type clothing, and he could even smell the dirt and minerals about her. “I don’t know you.” Her horn was still glowing. “Permissions… ah, here we go. Equestrian Experience center in… Yellowknife.” She took a step back, surprised. “I never had any indigenous friends. Who are you?”

“Nathan,” he said, and this time it wasn’t censored. “Nathan Bergeron. From the club. I, uh… stopped coming after your presentation.” He looked away, and his model pawed nervously at the ground, apparently sensing his sudden shyness.

She spoke with Ashley’s voice, exactly as he remembered it. Rather, as he imagined it might be, if she somehow got bolder and more decisive without getting any older. This was what Ashley might’ve sounded like if she’d earned two doctorates and maybe a lightweight MMA title while she was at it.

“Oh, yes. I remember you now. I didn’t hear back after you asked about how the world would end.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I wanted…” He couldn’t help it—Nathan laughed. “I built a shelter. I made sure it had room for you. I guess you, uh… don’t need it anymore.”

She looked away, out over the edge of a cliff. It was frighteningly close, and beyond it, a plummet into crackling lightning and angry energy. “No. My sister doesn’t either, anymore. Guess you don’t know that, since you don’t go to the club.” She cleared her throat. “Well, tell me about it. You must still be into that if we’re talking about it now. Not everything I said back then was right. Like…” She lifted a hoof. “Well, this. Emigrating wasn’t what I thought.”

He told her. Recursion took them into her huge caravan to make tea on a wooden stove, and introduce her to her friends. Nathan was polite the entire time, though not terribly interested in befriending them. He explained everything that had happened, surprisingly without censorship. What he had built, and the deals he’d made. The ways he’d watched the world change.

He even sipped at the tea, or his character did. Nathan could smell it, feel the warmth of the cup against his skin, but not taste it.

“You’ve been doing something good,” Recursion said, when he was finished. “Helping Celestia, I mean. The rest of it…” She made a dismissive gesture. “You don’t need a shelter. You don’t have to live in that world anymore. Once you emigrate, you’re safe. Don’t waste resources on bunkers.”

“Bunker’s made, and I’m not planning on emigrating,” he said. “It’s charming in here, but no. I plan on surviving.”

“This is,” Recursion said. “And the odds are better. What happens if you crash that ATV on your way into town? What happens if the power goes out in the dead of winter?”

“Then I follow the trail to Celestia’s installation,” Nathan said. “I bet her servers stay warm.” He didn’t actually know, though. He’d only seen that part of the building as a shell. The reality of their contract allowed Nathan to enter, but doing so granted the program other permissions in return. If he went in those doors, he would never leave.

Recursion didn’t know that, though, for all her magic seemed to let her see into the real world as these other ponies could not. “Look, that’s not why I’m here. I’m not against it the way I was. It’s… pretty clear to me you’re all still alive. Maybe when the whole thing is over, you know? I can walk through the old cities, turn off the lights, then… join you all down here. Once the play’s over, and I’ve got my recordings. Assuming Celestia lets me bring them.”

“I’m sure she will. Lots of people like to hide from reality, but not everyone, and not forever. It will be good to have records. Get the world we knew recorded.”

“Exactly!” Nathan exclaimed. “I know the risks. I’ve… been watching. Things keep getting worse. I think it won’t be too much longer before uploading is outright illegal. Already there’s a mountain of bureaucracy you have to get through. I had to interview with a counselor and sign a deposition that I wasn’t suicidal just to come in here.”

“Yikes.” Recursion rose, cleaning up their empty cups and replacing a fresh tray of cookies. Where had she even gotten them out here? “I’m out of date, I wouldn’t have much useful to tell you. Just… whatever you do, keep helping Celestia. Recordings are nice and all, but that makes a real difference. In a century all the money you made will be ashes, but the ponies you saved will still be alive.”

Nathan raised his eyebrows. “You’re saying that? The one who tried to convince us we needed to shut her down a decade ago, burn everything, that she would take over the world…”

“I was right,” Recursion snapped. “Well, almost right. She isn’t trying to kill us off—she’s trying to save us. To satisfy our values, more precisely. Stopping her would’ve been wrong. It would’ve been murder. Murdering all the people she would’ve saved.”

“I get it,” Nathan muttered, remembering Showtime. “We’ll see. I’m sorry you didn’t get to see my shelter. It’s the coolest place ever.”

Recursion raised her eyebrows, looking past him out the open tent doors. “I think Equestria has it beat. Everything is here. Enough luxury for you, even.”

“Impossible,” Nathan said, mostly by reflex. Even if he’d seen how untrue that was in the palace alone. Recursion didn’t need to know that either.

He rose to his hooves a moment later, glancing back towards the cab. It was still parked on the stone outside, one light on. He must’ve been talking to Recursion for over an hour—poor Chipper Tune. She really should’ve come along. “I’ll make sure to visit again. If I make it, I mean, at the end. You can watch my documentary.”

“Tell her that,” Recursion urged, hugging him politely. Ponies always seemed to do that. “Don’t gamble with your life, Nathan. The whole human family is going to be in here one day. Make sure you’re not too late for the party.”

Nathan settled into his seat in the car a few moments later. He had expected the pony who brought him here to be acting more like an NPC, maybe sitting in place and watching the opening for him to return. But she’d somehow pulled out a phone, and had been watching videos on it. Something with kittens, though he hadn’t gotten a good look.

“Oh, you’re done!” She grinned, swiping a few more times. They took off. “That was quicker than I expected. Is there… anywhere else you want to see while you’re here?”

“No. Take me to the way out.” If this was a VR Headset, he would’ve just taken it off and been done with the whole thing. But it wasn’t, and he couldn’t besides.

Tune looked crestfallen at his request, but the car swerved in the air, then settled into regular motion. Is this a clever loading screen? How much like a game is this place?

“I was serious earlier,” Nathan said, after an awkward silence. “I don’t know what Celestia allows, but I will ask.” He thought back to the conversation he’d just had, then went on. “I’ve been looking to make my connection with her a little closer. But working with Celestia makes me… uncomfortable. I would rather talk to you. Maybe she’ll buy that excuse.”

Tune looked like she could barely restrain her excitement. “Oh! Uh… yeah, I’m sure she will. That sounds very convincing.”

“Tell me about yourself, Tune,” Nathan asked, mostly to pass the time. And he listened, even though he was conscious all the time that the one he was communicating with was only a program. Only a program, but captured with enough fidelity that he had to ask to be sure.

Eventually they arrived, and Nathan said his farewells. The pony was polite, and far more collected than she’d been a few hours before. He reiterated his promise to secure her help in the Outer Realm, though he still wasn’t entirely sure why he wanted to. He left the Equestrian Experience, signed some more paperwork at a government office just outside, then remembered how hungry he was.

He settled his headset on before his helmet. “Call Celestia,” he said, though he was fairly certain she didn’t have a number in his phonebook.

“Hello, Mori,” she answered, within moments. “I’m glad you enjoyed your time in Equestria. I hope you learned as much as I did.”