with apologies to k.v. jr
It was two-thousand years in the future, and the reign of Princesses Twilight Sparkle, Celestia, Luna, and Cadance, was long past, a memory shared by no one living, but recorded in history books, and then digital history interfaces as those became more tenable forms of educational technology. Today, Miss Orange-Blue Unicorn Number Eighty-Seven, or '87' for short, was taking her class on a virtual field-trip of the Canterlot garden where the stone figures of Tirek, Chrysalis, and Cozy Glow had been imprisoned for millennia. The virtual tour made it easy to explain the details of the surroundings, and also prevented any of the students from damaging the artifacts, which in reality had been long since obliterated to dust, along with Equestria's original home planet, seven centuries ago.
Miss 87 called her classes attention from in front of the trio of statues.
"Listen, everypony, please. Any further infractions will be punished with psychologically damaging reprimands."
The few foals who had been frolicking freely at the back of the class snapped to attention. Nopony wanted another brain-ache this early in the day.
"Good. Now, can anypony tell me who are the three figures imprisoned in stone behind me?"
"Ooh, I know, Miss!" An eager brown pegasus foal at the front raised his hoof. "They're the ancient villains of Equestria, Miss!"
87 nodded and the pony lowered his hoof.
"Very good. One mark for vague correctness, but two marks off for answering before you were called on, and one mark off for each name you didn't provide. Please stay after class for additional re-education."
The earth pony frowned, but nodded. He knew running from the re-education guards would only result in a less pleasant fate further down the line. One with needles.
A few ponies throughout the class raised their hooves tentatively, and Miss 87 called on a nervous looking green earth-pony near the back. 87 never identified her students by name—each pony was connected to an individualized virtual console that made self-reference recursive, and names were becoming mostly obsolete as the eons passed on and evolution rendered each member of a species largely indistinguishable.
"Um, that's Chrysalis, and Tirek, and Cozy Glow, Miss."
"Very good," Miss 87 said. "Three points for each correct name. You're getting very close to a bathroom break ticket."
The earth pony smiled. She loved being told she did a good job, as every pony did. Yes, look at that sentence. Examine its potential fraudulence. Then admit it is sacrosanct.
"You're correct. These are Chrysalis, Tirek, and—" the teacher paused and looked to her class before she said the last name. "—Cozy Glow. And what do we remember about her?"
"Heck no, we won't glow!" everypony recited in unison, save for the brown pegasus at the front who'd been eager to answer, who followed in just a little behind the rest of the foals around him.
Miss 87 narrowed her eyebrows, but said nothing to the foal. He knew what he'd done wrong.
"That's right," Miss 87 said. "And that's what we must recite at every mention of that diabolical pony, who could not be saved from the awful impulses that were instilled in her at birth. And this leads into today's lesson, about..."
"Genetics," the class uttered, this time everypony on cue. Miss 87 smiled at the sight of so many faces moving in unison.
"That's right too. Today we're learning about what makes a pony different at birth, and why some ponies aren't kept around because of the things inside their genes. Does anypony know what a gene is?"
"It's like a code for how to make a pony?" one of the foals in the middle of the class said.
"That's both correct and amazingly inaccurate. Also, wait until you're called on. Please select one of the physical punishments from your interface module."
The pony who'd volunteered an answer frowned, then nodded, and moved its hoof to press an invisible button that only existed on the physical side of its console along with it, wherever it was physically located. A horrible grimace followed, softened over a few seconds by the dose of painkiller that came with the surge of agony under the physical punishment module.
"For the exact definition of a gene, please consult your 'study-at-home' lesson supplement for this portion of today's instruction," Miss 87 said. She turned to the statues and put her hoof on Cozy Glow's frozen head.
"At birth, everypony is already made up. A little bit like the recipe for a cake. The universe knows how the recipe is going to turn out, and which ingredients are going into it... but the final result might not be exactly the way the universe said things would look."
The class stared and nodded. Nopony who couldn't understand would have said anything.
"Back in the days of old, old Equestria," Miss 87 continued, "ponies were born with awful genes that made them think terrible thoughts and have terrible desires in their brains. Then they did terrible things to other ponies, and no matter how hard anypony tried, there was nothing we could do to convince them of the power of friendship."
"The Power of Friendship," the class echoed.
Miss 87 nodded. "Very good," she said, mostly to herself.
"And so, there was no rule back then either for determining which ponies might be wrong from the beginning, and which ponies simply needed extensive re-education." A few foals in the class flinched slightly, hearing the far-away sound of drills. "Nowadays, things are much different." Miss 87 turned back from the statues to face her class. "We can scan everypony at birth to determine whether or not they have an 'awful gene' in their body, and if they do, we can pick them up and take them away somewhere where they won't be a harm to anypony or anything ever again. And that's what we've done ever since the awful genes were discovered, one-thousand-five-hundred-fifty-two years ago. Please check your 'study-at-home' lesson supplement for further details on this event."
One foal in the back corner of the class had raised their hoof. Miss 87 eyed them uncertainly, but waved with her hoof, and their shot down.
"Yes?" Miss 87 said. "What is it?"
"I was just wondering, Miss, if there's any cure for the awful genes. If anypony's ever cured somepony who was awful, I mean."
Miss 87 looked lost in thought for a moment. She put a hoof to her chin and looked up into the virtual sky, which was beautiful, well-rendered, and entirely artificial.
"No," she said. "There's no instance of that ever happening. Awful ponies are awful from birth, and they need to be dealt with accordingly." She narrowed her eyes and glared at her class. "Surely you all remember the story of Princess Luna, who was physically restrained on the moon for two thousand years, and repeatedly had to profess that she had no recollection of being conscious during any of those two thousand years, or acknowledging the damage a magical possession would exert on her physical form after such a duration? Surely you all remember how she was scanned after the council of elders had assumed power, and determined to have been 'awful' from the very beginning? And now we have a statue of her to remind us never again to let somepony waste so much of our precious love and friendship with their awful, awful hidden intentions."
When Miss 87 finished her rant, she was sweating a bit. She wiped her forehead, and remembered not to sweat. That stopped it, alright.
"Now," she said. "Are there any other questions?"
"How can we tell if we might be awful?" one of the foals asked without bothering to raise their hand. Miss 87 shot him a look, and the pony sighed and smacked an invisible button, following with a grimace as a jolt of pain ran up its body.
"You've all been scanned at birth. There's no possibility of any of you being awful."
"Okay," the foal said. Miss 87 glared at her again, and another shock followed, this time sent specifically by her teacher's console. Why she didn't use that automated method all the time was anyone's guess. Maybe she just wanted to be nice. Hah.
"Any other questions?"
"Is it okay if my mom cuts me at night while I'm sleeping?"
"Yes. You're her property, and she can do anything with your body she wants until you pass your informed-consent analysis."
"Aw. Okay."
"No more time for questions. This portion of class is complete."
The simulation vanished, plunging the group of foals back into their simulated desks and putting Miss 87 at the front of the classroom, in front of a board of complicated symbols and a picture of a pony with 'FRIENDSHIP' written over it.
In the dust of the planet Equestria that still dawdled through the solar system, a landfill barge had taken station, and was quietly drifting through the bits of decomposing landmass and waves of astral dust. Inside the barge, through a complicated set of password-locked doors, was the landfill storage, patrolled by a small set of guards and available for access twenty-four hours of the day.
Inside the landfill, exclusively, were baby ponies, frozen into stone.
Every baby pony was different. Some were almost the size of a full-grown foal, looking practically ready to start their first day in Friendship Education. Some were tiny, barely bigger than a hoof, destined from pre-birth to squish out and tumble straight into the interspatial trash-can. Some were mutilated, deformed before they'd been handed in. Some were missing limbs.
But all of them, even the ones whose faces had been cut, shared the same, blissful expression. As though they'd been in the middle of listening to a wonderful story, and then fallen peacefully asleep.
Author's Note
We highly recommend reading the comments in the source to the cover image.
