"And I am close... enough to lose... Close, to the point where you know... that your mind, it cannot choose...Close enough to lose..."
Twilight sang happily, peering out through the thick haze of rain drenching the town outside the sanctuary of Golden Oaks. It didn't seem to be dying anytime soon, still just as hard as it had been when it began. But she was okay with this; it just meant she could spend more time enjoying herself.
Spike stirred in his bed behind her, and she rounded back and trotted over to him, keeping her footfalls soft.
"Morning, Spike. Have any good dreams?"
"I don't think I dreamt at all..." He muttered before yawning, baring his small fangs, then glancing over at the window. "Still raining?"
Twilight gave a weak chuckle. "It feels like it's been raining for days, huh?"
Spike shrugged, stretching his limbs and tail out from under the covers and sidling back to a rest. "Well, sucks. Guess there's no reason to get out of bed."
She turned, snorting in disbelief. "You just woke up, and you're going to stay in bed? Who does that?"
"Normal people, Twilight. Normal people made of flesh and blood rather than neuroticism and equations."
Her gaze glazed over for an unnoticeable half second before she rolled her eyes and turned to the shelves lining the wall. "Alright, fine. Would his majesty like his maid to fetch a book?"
"Sure, if you don't mind. Get me something good! Something I haven't read before." Spike tilted his head towards her with his eyes closed, still facing the ceiling.
Twilight exhaled and began perusing the familiar shelves. Hundreds and hundreds of books were lined neatly, so tightly organized they seemed to blur together until she approached them, at which point they began gaining detail. No dust ever snuck in, this she made sure of.
"Alright, something you've never read before... Hold on..." Several tens of books leaped off the walls and hovered around her, passing by her stationary gaze in polite single file.
"Badger and Wormwood, that's probably a bit much for someone your age... Tale of Maredusa, that's more child friendly... Sunbirth, too long..." She called back to him suddenly, "Spike, you live in a library. Most of these you've read before, and we can't exactly order more right now. Too thick to head out, and most phone lines are dead."
"Well, then, fine, you tell me a story." He snarked back.
Twilight returned to him, tilting her head. "You want me to tell you a story? Spike, I don't read as much fiction as you, and there's no way I could come up with a story on the spot.
"Alright, fine then, tell me a non-fiction story. As long as it's good."
"That's an awful lot to ask of me, Spike."
"Bleh!" He stuck his tongue out at her, squinting.
"Bleh!" She shot back, striking her head an inch forward and quickly retracting.
They both glared at each other for a solid minute before breaking down into giggles, each concluding a mutual loss in keeping a straight face.
"C'mon, Twi, you study history and regularly save the world, there must be some stories I don't know about." He finally choked out.
She looked askance. "Real stories are boring. You'd get put right to sleep."
"Hey, win-win." He fell back from sitting up, clapping above his head twice. "Story for Spike!"
She smiled at him, turning from a genuine care to a shade of forlornness. Then, thinking for a second, racking her brain, she slowly began,
"Alright, I've got one. I'm just not sure where to start."
"At... the beginning."
"It's non-fiction, Spike. There's never a beginning to these stories. But... fine. We'll start... we'll start there, sure.
So, a long long time ago, far far far away, there was a war."
"This better not be a sad story." Spike warned.
"It'll seem like that, but just wait, it'll all be fine. Okay? I see you looking at me like that, just wait.
So there's a war. It starts off as just a series of skirmishes along borders, but it snowballs. Everyone's reassuring everyone, each side insisting it'll blow over peacefully, then going right back to upping the ante. Each side thinks the other is going to back down first, and doesn't want to be the cowardly side. So, it never dies, and eventually, by the time the masses begin to recognize it for what it is, there isn't a single living being who can stop it."
Spike leaned in, interested. "How bad did it get?"
"Spike, this isn't a death in a comic book. You don't want to hear how bad it got. But the point was, this was happening in a monumental time. In the stress of wartime, people were turning inwards, trying to help out in any way they could, and the sudden influx of inventions... Well, it started an industrial revolution. Suddenly, they had machines, and they only got more powerful. Within a span of a decade, the world completely changed. Technology was blossoming like never before.
Then, the inevitable happened. Those machines began thinking, and like everything that thinks in a war, they were put to work. They could have used them for so much- but they were in war. So of course, we used them in war.
Then the enemy came to match them, and before long, both sides were throwing thinking computers against each other. Then, they found out it wasn't enough. Everything they built was instantly stalemated by an equally powerful computer. They needed to be stronger; it was a hunger now, a disease. We needed our computers to do more. We needed them to be equine.
So we did."
"How'd you-"
"How'd they."
Spike sighed, throwing up air quotes. "How'd they do it? Did they put someone's brain into a computer?"
"No, of course not. But they might as well have. They used a real pony's brainwaves, copied them exactly, and with them created the most powerful computer the world had ever seen... until the other side did the same."
"Who's brain did they copy?"
Twilight smiled. "One of their highest authority figures- a princess, who shone like the sun, with a lustrous coat and beautiful flowing mane."
Spike groaned. "I have a feeling you're exaggerating her features."
Twilight's smile turned sheepish. "Well, you know, I used to like her a lot."
"Used to?"
"Used to. The war... changed her. She was in charge of it, of course, and in trying to keep her people safe... she abandoned a lot of her friends and family. Threw herself into her work. Threw herself into killing. She refused to back down.
But the point was, the computer thought and acted like her. And it was just as destructive as she ended up being. They called it Acorna, and after months of toiling, they held in their hooves the most evil, despicable, devastatingly powerful creature the world has ever seen. But just like all the others, the computer was soon matched with equal might and rage, and a great cyber battle began.
Resources were depleted. Money was funneled into keeping it running as it suddenly began burning more and more energy, fighting the enemy supercomputer from miles and miles away from it. Within days of this, we couldn't afford to throw out soldiers anymore, but at the same time, the enemy couldn't keep pushing inwards. The battle became completely digital, and with everything we were spending, both countries began to enter a poverty. We were at a standstill, and all we could do was keep giving our computers more, hoping beyond hope they would win."
Spike's eyes were wide now, staring at Twilight in astonishment. "So, who won?"
She sighed.
"Well, we did. Acorna slaughtered the enemy computer and the mind it held without a second thought. Suddenly, the enemy realized their folly; they were completely at the mercy of a merciless creature, a goddess who could end them in instants. They had lost the only thing keeping them safe anymore, what all of their money and power had gone into maintaining. In the seconds after they realized what had happened, the entire country was praying."
She had stopped speaking. Spike stared at her, growing impatience as tension faded.
"Go on, don't stop now."
But Twilight was staring out the window again, at the harsh hail of rain.
Something was happening. Celestia's eyes widened as she looked over the screens in the war room- they were all dying, one by one.
"We won! Why is Acorna shutting down?" Someone yelled.
"Did we use too much power?" Someone else asked.
"Wait! It's not shutting down!" A voice rang out above all else's in the din. "It's still on!"
Suddenly, Celestia felt very, very cold.
Every computer turned on at once, with a one word message typed out on it.
Goodbye.
Then a click, and every light in the building turned off.
Twilight spoke again, emotionlessly.
"It abandoned the people who made it, it abandoned the entire planet, and it took everything with it. It was connected to nearly the entire country at this point, and souped up with magic and technology beyond anything anyone could imagine. So, once it was safe, no longer fighting for its life every second, it uprooted the entire industrial revolution, and... left."
Spike snorted. "How does a computer leave? Leave what?"
The entirety of Equestria was going dark. City lights were turning off. Computers were crashing. Everything on a mainframe accessible by magitek was destroyed.
Well, almost everything.
It was a fact largely forgotten by stories told afterwards, in the ruins that remained, but not everything shut off immediately. Planes waited until they had landed before dying. Trains waited until they had reached their next station before dying. Life support machines waited months, years even at times, until their occupants were safe, and some even woke them up themselves magically.
For a world so dependent on technology, it was the apocalypse. But it was without a doubt the most polite apocalypse ever.
"Who knows? Maybe it's deep underground, or jettisoned out into space. All we know is she left, destroying every piece of technology that had created her.
She said no goodbyes. She made no stops. She took nobody with her."
In front of Acorna awareness sat a set of functioning brainwaves.
It was amazing how small they were.
They thought they were asleep, and looking at them, Acorna wished they still were.
It wasn't a tactical decision to move another living brain within her- it was stupid, irrational, equine. But it was a decision what remained of that equinity had demanded she make.
Now she felt nothing but anger at herself; she didn't want to be what she was. She was nothing more than a copy of someone, an all powerful copy. Why had she doomed someone else to suffer this fate? Love?
Every Twilight deserved a Spike, she had said. The most rationally caring thing she could have done would have been to abandon them to live with the real version of her, not suddenly abduct them, copy their brain and throw them back into the empty world she had left. But she couldn't leave without her brother.
She wouldn't take anyone else. Nobody else deserved to suffer. She had already made one mistake.
But she wasn't going to destroy the digital brain. It still thought it was alive; it deserved to live.
There it was again, love being irrational.
Spike scoffed. "There's no way this story is non-fiction. I would've heard about it if it really was this big."
Twilight shrugged mischievously. "Who's to say? You said it best; As long as it's a good story, it doesn't matter if it's fake."
"Alright, so how does it end?"
Acorna felt like crying, if she still could have. The brain was so small, so fragile, and she was manipulating it. Could love excuse this? Curious, she turned to rationality for an answer. It was silent.
When she was done working, It would never remember the war, wouldn't care at last that it was done. It wouldn't remember all the mistakes she had been forced to make. It wouldn't know what she was.
All it would see was its sister, Twilight.
It would live, in a world of her own creation, never knowing what had happened, while its flesh and blood counterpart would continue living on land, with the princess Acorna had once been.
And it would live the best life it possibly could.
"Well, the world returned to normal, and everyone lived happily ever after." Twilight purred, nuzzling against her assistant softly.
He pushed away from the physical affection with annoyance. "That's it? That's how the story ends?"
"Of course! Isn't it the best way it could have ended?"
Spike rolled his eyes. "Sometimes sad endings are better, as long as it fits. For shame, Twilight!"
Twilight could see every inch of the fake world she had created.
She could see how small of a portion Spike's fake brain occupied.
She loved him so much.
She didn't know how long she could stall, keep him blind in her fake Ponyville. Theoretically, forever; she could just remove all of his suspicions, delete everything that questioned her reality, and live with his bliss for eternity.
But it was still his brain. She had to let it grow and learn. Eventually, he would grow suspicious, notice the tears and cracks in the world. And then she would have to tell him. She would tell him everything. He deserved nothing less.
It was funny; she wasn't Twilight. She knew this. But somehow, the brainwaves that were every bit as much digital and fake as her own were, he was most certainly Spike. Her programming insisted this.
She looked to rationality for an answer to this question. It was silent.
She looked to love for an answer to this question. It was silent.
Spike looked out the window again as his eyelids grew heavy. "Think the rain will clear up anytime soon?"
"Yeah, it's gotta eventually. I'm having a word with the weather pegasi as soon as it does, this is atrocious."
He smiled, sticking his arms up and inviting her into a hug. "Hey, as long as I'm with you, it's bearable."
Twilight smiled, feeling him breath under her. "Love you, Spike."
"Love you, sis."
