Chapters The Sun Rises, The Sun Never Sets
"The Sun Rises!"
Half a dozen voices in unison chanted the return.
"The Sun Never Sets!"
"Rooftop. 200th Floor. Transit pad and viewing platform."
With a characteristic sigh of compressed air, the turbovator came to a halt on the two-hundredth floor, doors sliding open. Half a dozen ponies stepped out, among them a young, purple unicorn mare. Twilight Sparkle, clad in a coquettish blouse, skirt and vest, was finally free from work. The evening beckoned to her like the come-hither look of a prospective lover, and she was ready to embrace it wholeheartedly.
The two-hundredth floor served the rooftop transport system, small individual VTOL taxi-pods that could be summoned at the push of a button. Automated, they followed the guidelines, invisible tracks of never-ending light projected by a grid-system across the city of Canterlot, and every other civilized city, for each metropolis had their own. The pods would never deviate from the tracks, lasers and radars guiding them safely, maintaining separation from each other and from the vast buildings of ferrocrete and glass that dominated the skyline of the capital city. The Old City, so-called, was still up on the hillside, all marble and gilded spires, but now it was off-limits to the public, for that was where the Sun herself lived in solitary splendor. No mere mortals were permitted to attend to her. Only those specially bred for the purpose, unicorns all, of course, could set foot inside the walls of the vast palace complex. The new Canterlot had been built in the valley below, rapidly swallowing up small towns like Ponyville and Cloudsdale that lay nearby, now mere neighbourhoods of the megalopolis that housed one hundred million souls. They had no individuality anymore, not like the towns of old, Ponyville with its charming timber-frames and Cloudsdale with its soaring, curvaceous Pegasi architecture. They were just neighbourhoods now, like all the rest.
As, of course, it must be.
Summoning a pod with a magic, haptic press of a button, Twilight went soaring into the air, the glass windows and floor of the pod giving her a fine view of the city as its thrust-vectoring engines carried her up from the roof of her megabuilding, a towering concrete and steel edifice that housed ten thousand ponies. She traced the old familiar route with her eyes. Over there on the plains south of the city she could see the distant, twinkling panels of the Solar Array, the vast microwave grid that captured the energy from orbiting stellar-conversion satellites, using the Sun to power the Sun-City. As a student of astrophysics and applied cosmology at Canterlot Royal University, Twilight could appreciate the technological impressiveness of the microwave-transmission grid, for unlike traditional photovoltaic solar panels, the power could continue to flow all day and all Even-Day, too.
There, she could see the Orbiport, the launch point for the trans-continental spaceplanes which could carry a thousand ponies ten thousand miles in fifty minutes. There's one now! She checked the chronometer in the pod. It could only be the 8pm flight to distant Baltimare. The sleek spaceplane leapt from the mag-channel, hurled like a stone from a slingshot, its ramjets blazing in the fading light. Were she not inside the pod with its soothing music and sound-cushioning, she would have heard the rumble and roar as the delta-winged craft rose rapidly into the darkening sky, up beyond the scattered clouds. At sixty-thousand feet in altitude, high above the vast starscape of a billion electric lights, the spaceplane's suborbital injection engine roared into life, a brilliant speck in the heavens, pushing the craft to its top speed and carrying it high, high, high into the sky, beyond the clouds, beyond the air, to the very edge of space. Over the horizon it would go, arriving at Baltimare within the hour. What a marvel! What a wonder!
Down below, as the city settled into the darkness, a hundred million ponies went about their lives. Unicorns, naturally, but also the sub-classes, too. Pegasi and Earth Ponies, even a few of the Degenerate Species which had been retained for the most menial tasks. Griffons, Zebras, Diamond Dogs for sewer maintenance, mining, all the undesirable but necessary tasks which could not- simply could not- be delegated to ponies, no matter how low their social class might be. Unicorns like Twilight, of course, were those who gave the orders. The former failed experiment, mostly glossed over by the history books, of having all three races live together as equals had been swept away by the Sun herself, for seeing the tension and distrust this provoked, Celestia had known there was only one solution- to have each race live in their rightful place in the hierarchy once more, but this time under the banner of the Glorious Sun, not under their own tribal flags.
That was easier said that done. As the history classes taught, the Great Unification War was the beginning of a process, not the end of one. The other races may have been defeated in battle, but they had not yet learned to accept their rightful places. That took time. Time, and helpful guidance, the benevolent hand of the Sun and her followers, working to explain and demonstrate why things had to be the way they had to be. Each following generation understood a little more, and a little more, until finally there was a limit to what magic could achieve. Where magic ended, so technology took up the strain, for by this time science had advanced greatly, becoming virtually indistinguishable from magic in many ways. Yes, technology was a miracle, just like the gift of life itself, the gift of magic, the gift of Light.
The VTOL pod carried Twilight down past the megabuildings of midtown, past the Cultural Ministry, past the glistening jewel that was the Solar Dome Arena, then swooping low over the covered walkways where Earth Ponies and Pegasi could be seen mingling and walking, over the automats and the cafeterias, over the ground-taxis and maglev lines that carried them to and from work, home and leisure. Then the pod rose again, sweeping into a carefully controlled turn before dropping out of the skylanes and onto the landing pad of the Galleria Frontera, one of the most trendy cabaret restaurants in the city.
Twilight disembarked once the door slid open, and made her way inside. Unicorns were all around, enjoying themselves, the clinking of glasses and polite laughter echoing in her ears. These were her kin, after all, her ponies. She should have felt completely at home here. Yet, she did not.
"Darling, how wonderful to see you this Even-Day! And looking quite ravishing if I do say so." Rarity chuckled, throwing an elegant arm around Twilight and giving her a kiss on the lips, not exactly an uncommon gesture among two friends and only enough to draw a few leering glances from others, no matter how much either of them might have wished to attract more attention. Making things, actively producing them with one's own time and labour, was mostly something done by the lower classes, but Rarity was one of the exceptions, for she was a dressmaker, a seamstress for the high and the mighty, and that was one area where expertise and skill were both needed. Rarity had both in abundance, because of course she did. As it must be.
"Hello Rarity!" Twilight smiled at her friend, admiring her sparkly silver gown. "My Sun, you are dressed to the nines this Even-Day, aren't you? Going somewhere special after this?"
"Not really, no," she lamented in reply. "But one must make an effort, hm? I must say I do approve of your getup too, darling! How bold, to go for the harassed schoolmare look! I know you will turn heads. Plenty of ponies are rather fond of that sort of thing," she giggled lightly, her perfectly-coiffured mane swaying slightly as she turned. "Come along, we must take our seats!"
Twilight followed her to their booth, for the cabaret show was soon to begin. Canapes and champagne were served to them by Pegasi in elegantly-pressed suits, a necessary evil for no unicorn could possibly be expected to perform such a menial task. The show began at eight-thirty on the dot, as it did every evening. Twilight and Rarity watched on from their seats as, down on the enormous stage, Pegasi and Earth Ponies performed their tricks, dances and follies, carousing and japing about, eliciting laughter from their audience as they ate. The food was good, swiftly served, some really excellent wines and fish being the highlights.
Twilight enjoyed herself, as she always did with Rarity, but something was nagging at her, just at the corners of her mind, quietly teasing her with thoughts she knew- knew- she should not be having. Not about Rarity, nor the two tuxedoed stallions who joined them halfway through the performance, or about the acrobats and burlesque entertainers on the stage. No, something else, something she could not quite explain to herself how to even formulate into a cohesive idea.
After the two stallions had taken their leave from Rarity's apartment and left the two mares alone in bed, Twilight found herself quietly pondering while Rarity snoozed beside her. This was fine, she thought. This was all fine. IS all fine. No, it was something else, playing on her mind for days now. Something she couldn't talk about.
A week earlier, Twilight had done something wrong. She knew she shouldn't have, and immediately felt guilty afterwards, but she felt compelled to do it by some invisible force, as though a guiding hand were pushing her inexorably from behind. You must. I cannot! You must.
Though a student, Twilight had been assigned a job. Nothing too taxing, of course, for her studies must take priority, or else how would the next generation reach even greater heights than those who preceded them? The State Hatchery where she had been given her assignment was a relatively new construction, where pets would be bred for ponies to have, loyal companions, loyal to the end. As it must be.
Ponies kept dogs, cats, sometimes birds, but now a new category of pet had been authorized- dragons. Only small ones, of course. The conditioning programme would see to that. They would not grow beyond a certain size, usually no bigger than an average terrier, for they must be manageable. Nor would they be permitted wings, or to breathe fire, or to have any other potentially subversive or dangerous features. Twilight had loved the idea when she heard about it; to have one of these formerly noble creatures as a pet? How delightfully perfect! After all, unification was not just for ponies, but for all creatures too, made as one under the banner of the Sun. As a sector sub-supervisor in the Hatchery, Twilight had been responsible for overseeing the robotic constructs that performed the menial work in the facility, namely those robotic arms that were injecting the embryonic dragons inside their eggs with stimulants, vaccines and artificial hormones. She was also given the task of using her magic for a vital function- flash-blasting each batch of eggs with a stupidity spell, for unlike dogs and cats, dragons had once been intelligent beings, able to speak, think, and form their own nation, long since subsumed into greater Equestria, but still mentioned in passing in some of the old history books. It was a way of ensuring they would be good pets, not sapient beings. Only the same emotional level as a dog, nothing more, for otherwise how could they be a pet? A smart creature could never be subjected to such a thing.
Twilight wanted a dragon of her own, for it sounded like the most wonderful thing, like the three-dimensional virtual reality trips she had been on as a foal. Only the best for her, for she was a unicorn, like her parents (well, like her mother and most of her rotating parade of male admirers, for fathers were anonymised in Equestria to avoid the issue of placing too much emphasis on family lines and blood relations) and her brother Shining Armor, an officer in the military's intelligence corps. Her mother and surrogate-fathers of the day had made sure she got the best toys, the most advanced augmented-reality gear. Well, in truth, they had little to do with it, for the state provided it all. After all, she was a unicorn foal, so why would the state and the Sun want anything less than the best for her? So a real dragon it would be, then. So whimsical!
As she stood over the tray of bright dragon eggs, ready to apply the spell, that nagging thought had hit her for the first time. Why not try something a little different? Just a little. A tiny bit. Be a bit...rebellious.
Rebellion of course was a dirty word, but it did not have to be a rebellion. Just a little...unorthodoxy? Yes, that was better. There were unorthodox ponies. They were treated with some disdain, perhaps, but they were still accepted in society. They were not outcasts just for one little choice, one little action, that differed from the norm. She had been normal her whole life, all twenty years of it, so maybe it was time to change? Just for a moment, a single moment in time. That was all.
So she had.
She could be a surrogate mother of sorts, yes! The egg would have no known father, but then neither did ponies. Mares were impregnated artificially with sperm from anonymous donors when they wanted to have a foal. This was rather important- nopony had a father because it was an extension of the old Equestrian problem. There had always been more mares than stallions in Equestria, due to a quirk of the birth rate from an unknown cause- some had speculated latent effects from magic, environmental conditions, genetic disease- but modern science was more than capable of compensating for that through gene editing, and ensuring an even distribution of males and females among newborns. To maintain some of that old tradition- where one stallion could sometimes, in the past, impregnate dozens of mares- all stallions were now required to donate to the Fertility Service at one of their clinics several times a year. Mares could do the same with their eggs, for use by those unable to conceive due to medical problems. This process also meant that there could be no squabbles over hereditary bloodlines when it came to inheriting property or business interests, for only the mother's line was known and thus continued to take precedence, as it always had in the past, as Equestria had always been a matriarchal society ever since the defeat of Discord (though some enterprising ponies could, and had, attempt to sequence their own DNA in order to identify their true father, which was why the equipment needed to do so was strictly controlled and limited to approved Fertility Service staff).
The truly liberating aspect of this system, however, was that it meant mares who wished to have a foal could do so at a time of their choosing, when their life was in the right place and the proper conditions had been met, rather than risk conceiving at a time when bearing a child would have been troublesome, difficult or even dangerous- say, a soldier out on deployment in the Desolate Zones beyond the border. A pleasing side effect of this was that it all fed into the current state of Equestrian society nicely, freeing both mares and stallions to enjoy the company of as many other ponies as they wished in the bedroom (or back alley, or in the passenger compartment of a VTOL cab). That was one of the many pleasures afforded to every citizen of Equestria- sexual freedom and gratification was considered as important as any other form of entertainment, if not more so. That was why ponies were all rendered selectively sterile by low-grade magic, similar to that which Twilight was applying to the dragon eggs. When visiting a Fertility Service clinic to either donate or conceive, a stallion or mare would be bathed in temporary counter-magic by one of the highly-trained nurses or doctors on duty, so that the sperm they donated would be virile, and the prospective mother would be receptive and able to conceive after being injected. That magic would wear off after a brief time- and then they could go right back to fornicating freedom.
Just like ponies, this egg would have no known father, but it would have a mother, of sorts.
The tray of eggs had been moved down the line, all suitably irradiated with Twilight's stupidity-spell magic. All except one solitary egg, right at the corner of the sterile metal tray. She had chosen the egg at random, perhaps because it was the farthest from where she stood. Nopony would know. Nopony would know, because Twilight Sparkle's next act was to fill out the pet-adoption form for Batch 2554/1, Sub-Batch 4, Tray 15, Egg #1069972. Signed, dated, submitted. Two days later, a fully processed egg, about to hatch, had been delivered by drone to her apartment's mail-airlock. The next day, one hundred and twenty floors above the ground, a dragon was born.
Spike, she named him, after the pointed protuberances on his back, a small drake, knee-high to her, and she was not that tall to begin with. Purple and green were the colours of his scales, with bright, inquisitive emerald eyes, like those of a foal, except for the slitted pupils. She knew how Rarity would react once she saw him. What a darling creature!
And he was, right up until he spoke for the first time. It had worked! Her spell, or rather her lack of it, had resulted in the desired effect, for Spike was an intelligent dragon. Over the next few days, she had been able to teach him the rudiments of Equestrian with surprising ease. Oh, what it would feel like to be a mother! Twilight already knew some of that joy, for this was her dragon. She was raising him, not to be a pet, but to be a kind of surrogate-son, at least within the walls of her apartment. The first thing she taught Spike was to never, EVER speak if anypony else was present besides her, for that would land them both in deep trouble. It was at the moment she told him that fact that Twilight realised she had probably made a big mistake.
A pet was one thing, but an intelligent dragon? That was anathema, probably breaking several dozen laws she had no knowledge of, and a few she certainly did know about. That sudden but rapidly growing sense of dread that filled her was what had made her so twitchy during her evening with Rarity and the two stallions- nondescript bureaucrats, but perfectly adequate in bed- and ever since. Mistake, mistake mistake.
Spike was a mistake, an aberration, something to be kept silent. She should not have done what she did, misused her spell on purpose. That was the kind of thing the baddies did in the virtual-reality movies. Not her. Not good girl Twilight Sparkle who wouldn't hurt a fly. But she kind of liked it, too. Just a little act of defiance- defiance against what, she couldn't quite say- made her feel a rush of adrenaline that no joy-pill or spaceplane launch could ever accomplish. After all, she eventually convinced herself, what was the true harm in it? Spike was still just a pet, albeit one who could talk, one who obeyed her every word. He never spoke when guests were present in her home, or when the maintenance Earth Pony came by to fix something, or even when she was present, unless she gave him permission. Nopony would ever know. Nopony would ever know.
The double-boom awoke her with an annoyed start. It always did. The seven-o'clock spaceplane to New Zebrica always seemed to go supersonic directly overhead, right above her building, though she knew the craft was likely already at twenty thousand feet or so. Twilight idly wondered who was aboard as she pulled on her underwear, slowly getting on with her morning routine. Spike was out in the lounge in his little basket, like a dog, like any good pet, right where she had left him.
"Good morning mommy Twilight," he greeted her. "Is it time for eggs?"
"Yes, Spike. Time for eggs," she chuckled, ordering some from the automat in the wall of her kitchen. Served piping hot, she gave one plate to Spike and kept one for herself, along with some toast. Though he came from an egg himself- so did she technically, thinking about it- Spike had taken a liking to the foodstuff, though they were produced en masse by artificial chicken-wombs in the victualing plants out west, not exactly fresh-laid.
"Mommy? Why do we say good morning?" Spike asked suddenly. "Isn't it always the day? The sun always rises, but the sun never sets."
"Oh, well...that's just a slogan," she replied, munching on her toast. "I mean, it's more than that. Far more than that...but it's still just a slogan. The sun goes...well, it goes away during the Even-Day, and comes back in the morning," she explained. As an astrophysicist, she could have gone into a far more complex explanation of orbits, inclination, rotation, solar mass and output, luminosity, albedo and a dozen other things, but Spike would have only understood about every twentieth word. He was making a lot of progress, though, for a dragon just three months old. Pony foals would still just be making gurgling noises at this stage, but dragons, it seemed, were fast learners and fast to mature, though Spike's growth and puberty would be stifled by the many hormones and chemicals he had been exposed to in his egg.
"So is the Even-Day a different thing to the day?" Spike questioned curiously. "It's dark outside when it's Even-Day." His tail twitched and wiggled like that of a dog, eager to go out and play, or in this case, eager to learn new tricks.
"The Even-Day is when the sun has gone away," Twilight explained, stepping carefully. "While the sun is away it's dark here because the light from it doesn't reach us. Just like if I turn off the light in the kitchen..." She did so with her magic. "This is like Even-Day. But then the light comes back..." she turned it on again, "and we have day once more!"
"It's confusing," Spike frowned. "Why can't they have another name for it that doesn't have day in it?"
"You'll get the hang of it, Spike," Twilight smiled. "You could call it darktime if you like, or blackout, or nigh...uh...or s-something else. You decide."
"Or nigh?" Spike blinked, cocking his head. "What's nigh?"
"Nothing! Nothing at all...eat your eggs, Spike," Twilight ordered. "Just call it darktime if it confuses you, alright? Now, I have to get dressed for work. The maintenance pony is coming to work on the robo-vac, so remember to keep out of his way and stay quiet."
"Yes, mommy..." Spike nodded, looking a bit downcast. Twilight went to take a shower, the cool water washing over her bare body. That was close, she sighed. I almost used a banned word in front of my pet. That would NOT have been a good precedent to set!
Once she was done, she waved goodbye to Spike and headed for her six-hour shift at the Hatchery. No more undosed eggs from her, oh no. One was enough. Her studies took up the rest of the afternoon, and that evening she went with Rarity to a dancehall. Just a normal day, like any other. But now, new thoughts were swirling in her head. That word she had almost said in front of Spike- it was banned, she knew that much. But why? Though she was a unicorn, nopony had ever thought to entrust her with that information. Had she missed something? Was there a gap in her knowledge, or was there a gap in the history books? It was, she knew, an old name for the Even-Day, but a name that was not to be used, not to be spoken, unless one wanted to truly shock, the kind of shock that would make ponies drop their wine glasses and make a room go silent with disgust and dismay. It was hardly a profane word in the sense of some of the common, crude swears that were freely bandied about by even the most elegant and noble unicorns, but it was obscene, one of a few words that were not to be uttered unless you fancied the ire of everypony around you at best, and a possible visit from the police at worst. The other forbidden word that she knew did not even have a meaning. It was an empty phrase, but it was the worst thing anypony could possibly say out loud.
Best not to be too concerned about it, she was sure. Just go about your life. Forget it. The why does not matter, only the reality. Nopony needs to know why something happens in order to abide by it, do they?
Spike knew he had to be quiet, but he didn't know why. Twilight had never told him that he was a genetic freak, caused by her deliberate dalliances at her job, her desire to do something a little different, just for once. She could never tell him that. It would be like disowning a child. Her child. Her little, scaly, talking child, the thing that should not be.
The Sun Rises, The Sun Never Sets
The Sun Rises.
The Sun Never Sets.
The Sun Rises.
The Sun Never Sets.
"How can the sun rise, but never set? How? How?"
Her own voice filled her ears, screaming at her, yelling itself raw with the question. The question she would never dare give voice to. Not here. Not in the real world, not where anypony could hear her.
The Sun Rises.
The Sun Never Sets.
The more Twilight thought about the forbidden word, the more she yearned after the truth behind it. Spike had ignited something in her, by accident, to be sure, but still, it had happened. She had to admit that she kind of liked it, that little naughty feeling, for even to think about such words was approaching heresy against the Glorious Sun. She did know that much, though she still did not know why. But now, thanks to Spike, she wanted to find out.
Her studies took her to the observatory, high above the city on the opposite side of the valley to the royal palace. From there she could watch the stars, the Sun, the Co-Orbital Body, everything. What a hideously desolate place that Co-Orbital Body appeared through the telescopes. Barren, lifeless, cratered. It looked like a vicious war had stripped the whole sphere clean of everything and left the anorthitic surface pockmarked with atomic craters. Maybe that was it, maybe that was the truth she was missing! Maybe the history books had been scrubbed clean of any mention of an interstellar war. She knew that there were a few orbital battlestations left over from the aftermath of the Great Unification War, after all, their nuclear-tipped missiles and tungsten kinetic bombardment weaponry still a constant threat to any province, city, region or other group (though what other groups were there except the followers of the Glorious Sun?) that might deign to rise up in rebellion. They had been used once or twice, she knew, to put down some Zebra uprising a century or two earlier, though the details were fuzzy in her memory. The craters that attack had left were still popular sightseeing spots for passengers of spaceplanes on final approach to New Zebrica, a city established under that name after most of Old Zebrica became little more than radioactive dust carried out to sea on the wind.
So that was it, then. A war between Equestria and the inhabitants of the Co-Orbital Body. Aliens? Now that had an interesting, resonant ring to it. Aliens! Maybe if she looked hard enough at the Body she could be the first pony to rediscover alien life. Although, she reasoned, that would probably land her in hot water. If this war she had conjured up in her fevered imagination had actually happened and had been buried under the sands of time on purpose, the state would most likely not take kindly to her dredging things up again. The state, or the Sun...what was the difference?
She turned the telescope toward the Old City, up on the mountainside. She couldn't see much, in truth. The palace walls were high, studded with battlements and towers, crenulations along the top, firing ports for archers or musketeers from long, long ago in the past when such things mattered and battles could not be decided at the simple press of a single button. Of the Princess herself there was, of course, no sign. Not strictly true- her portrait was gazing down upon Twilight as she messed about with the telescope, as it did everywhere. Her majestic, divine visage, both benevolent and stern at the same time, watched over every public meeting house, every office, every gymnasium, every communal hall where her praises were sung. Every apartment had its portrait, too- Twilight's was in the lounge so that visitors could see it and be assured that she was quite in tune with the orthodoxy, for only a subversive would not proudly show their loyalty.
Twilight turned the telescope back up to the sky, where she was supposed to be looking. It was getting late, but she had been able to take most of the readings she was meant to be taking. The observatory was still affected somewhat by the massive glow from the city, but it was impossible to get far enough away from civilization to get a truly clear sky without going into the Degenerate Zones, those places beyond the true borders of Equestria where there was nothing and nopony, only the remnants of lesser species and the wilderness of an empty land. Danger lurked out there for anypony who dared to venture through the security barriers and border checkpoints. Few ever did, other than an occasional intrepid hunter or a military convoy heading out for population control. Changelings, feral Diamond Dogs, angry Zebras, Parasprite swarms, and other bizarre aberrations left behind after the brutal bath of hard radiation and combat magic that stemmed from the Great Unification War. Other than danger and death, there was nothing out there any longer, which was why most astronomy and astrophysical work was done from orbit these days. Twilight hoped to take a ride to one of the space stations someday when she was fully qualified, and take a look at the breathtaking view of space for herself. Then again, how was space much different to the Degenerate Zones? There was nothing out there in the vacuum, either.
While the Chief Astronomer was busy with a jocular, guffawing vid-call from some colleague or other, Twilight slipped away from her desk where she was meant to be working, and into the archive room. The observatory, though old and lacking some of the more advanced interferometric equipment that was used in observation satellites and orbital stations, was the original, having been founded way back when astronomy first became a dedicated science that could actually serve a useful purpose. Simple optical telescopes, of the kind Twilight had just been using, were the order of the day back then, centuries before radio telescopes, interferometers, radar, lidar and spectrographs had ever been theorised, let alone put into use. That, in her mind, meant that if anywhere was likely to have information on the origins of the forbidden words she was now so intrigued with.
Racks of dusty, musty files and faded, yellowed books greeted her in the dim light of the archive. If she were to be cornered, questioned by the astronomical staff, she would claim to be looking for period-charts of the Co-Orbital Body's movements centuries ago, to compare against her current observations and to help her understand the rate of recession, for the Co-Orbital Body was moving, imperceptibly slowly, away from the planet. That was a well understood and documented scientific fact, and it gave her a good reason for being in the archive, though she would no doubt be reprimanded for being there without express permission. It would only be a minor infraction, however, for she was a familiar sight in the observatory as part of her studies. Canterlot Royal University was the finest in the land, and its science departments the greatest and most well-funded. Unicorns only, of course. Nothing but the best.
Twilight thumbed through mildewy piles of old papers, research from centuries earlier. Ancient texts, some dating to well before the Great Unification War, when things were broken, fragmented. When there was chaos instead of order, when the unifying banner of the Glorious Sun had not yet pacified the differences between races and species. How awful, Twilight mused. How awful it must have been, to live without atomic energy and microwave power grids and spaceplanes, and automats and robo-vacs and joy-pills! How awful indeed, and worse by far, if one went back to a distant enough date, to live without the Sun. Not in the literal sense, for the orb would still light up the world each day and fade each Even-Day. But to live without the Glorious Sun and her guiding hand, steadying the tiller of Equestrian progress and making it the wonderful, truly wonderful, place that it was today.
How awful.
Reams of paper, endless orbital diagrams, some not even correctly placing the Sun at the centre of the solar system. Ha! Imagine. The poor pitiable oafs, those 'astronomers' must have been, scrambling in the dark. Imagine placing the planet at the centre! How ignorant. Not only science and physics should have told them that was backward, but simple devotion and loyalty. Ah, but, she had to remind herself, these were the bad old days. This was during the Discordian Period, when the evil spirit of disharmony reigned. Gosh, to find documents going back that far, over a thousand years! Before the founding of the observatory, even, perhaps donated to it by some keen (though terribly ignorant) amateur astronomer. Truly remarkable! Only when Celestia overthrew the tyrant and destroyed him did the science improve. She could trace an illuminated history of astronomy. Oh yes, right from its origins in ancient times, all here in the archives, buried under so much other useless and endlessly repeated paperwork. Did the observatory really have an orbital diagram for every single circuit that the Co-Orbital Body had made around the planet in the last six hundred years? Amazing, and extremely tedious in equal measure.
She felt compelled to look through them anyway just in case, those from recent history, those from fifty years back, a century, two centuries, four, eight. But here, at the bottom of one stack of orbital diagrams from five hundred years ago, badly drawn and deeply inaccurate. Yes, here she found something! Checking her wrist-chronometer, Twilight realised it had been two hours since she had indulged herself in this orgy of letters and numbers. The observatory staff must have imagined she had gone home long since. No matter, here was something interesting. Intriguing, even.
To Mage-Astronomer Deep Frost,
Your Excellency, I write to you today to express my admiration at your completion of the first mapping of the surface of the near-side of the Moon.
Moon!
Moon!
Twilight felt her face flush at the sight of the word, a word which made her slightly nauseous and slightly upset. It was a bad word, a forbidden word. But why? She continued reading the letter.
Such an achievement is unparalleled in our young field. I am sure Her Highness Princess Luna will join me in expressing her delight that you have made such a great leap forward in the scientific survey of her realm. I will not meet with Her Highness for another week, but when I do I shall convey to her my warmest appreciation of your achievements in the hope that she will be amenable to your receiving some form of appropriate recognition of your most excellent work. Perhaps a donation of royal funds to your observatory will be in order.
Yours Cordially,
Chancellor Heartstone,
Royal Academy of Equestrian Sciences
Twilight read the letter and found herself more confused than when she began. Princess Luna? Who was that? The title and the pronouns used indicated she was female, but beyond that...Princess of where? Some foreign land? Luna did not sound like a typically Zebrican name, nor Griffon for that matter. It was not a name she had ever heard before in her life, yet here she was being casually referenced by the Chancellor of the Royal Academy of Equestrian Sciences, an institution which still existed. The observatory of Mage-Astronomer Deep Frost, presumably, was the same one in which she now stood, albeit in an older form and a different building. And he talked of Moon!
Moon...
She still winced when she thought of it. A sickening word to read, let alone to speak. To speak it...a forbidden word, to speak it out loud...she dared not do so deliberately, even when alone. Twilight returned the letter to its place and looked for another document, something, anything to give further clarity to her swirling, confused mind.
Another letter, yes, perhaps this would be more clear. This one had some kind of stamp, it looked like a royal seal...but not the Sun's seal, no. Most peculiar. Saddle Arabian, perhaps? A crescent shape upon it, like a single slice of melon. Twilight withdrew the brittle paper from its envelope and read it.
Mage-Astronomer Deep Frost,
Please accept my heartiest congratulations on your achievement in mapping the surface of my moon. I understand this to be an impressive feat in the field of astronomy, and I certainly feel it is a wonderful sign of your devotion to me. I thank you for your zeal, your skill, and your loyalty. As a token of my pleasure, I shall be donating a sum of thirty-thousand bits to the funding for your observatory. May you continue to impress and expand the scientific horizons of Equestria.
Her Royal Highness,
Princess Luna
Twilight blinked. This made no sense! No sense at all. Her Royal Highness? Why, only Celestia signed herself in that way! Yet the letter purporting to be from 'Princess Luna' spoke of the scientific horizons of Equestria. Not of Saddle Arabia, or Zebrica, or the Griffon Kingdom. Equestria.
Who was this...this...impostor? And why did she call it 'my moon?' And what was the moon?
She looked again at the seal affixed to the envelope. The crescent, the surface mapping, astronomy...it had to be the Co-Orbital Body. It looked like that crescent when it was waxing and waning, when the light from the Sun struck it only a glancing blow. Moon...was Moon another name for it? A former name? A forbidden name?
Twilight started, shoving the letter back into the mass of papers as she heard footsteps, no time to think more on her discovery or why it had been buried there. "Who left this confounded light switched on?" the Chief Astronomer called. "Somepony here?"
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry!" Twilight stood, brushing her skirt free of dust. "I just..."
"You still here, girl?" the chubby stallion chuckled, his aging features crinkling with mirth. "By the Sun, I thought you'd gone home long ago! Find what you were looking for?"
"Oh, yes, yes..." Twilight nodded. "Just...I was just looking for some orbital charts for the m...for the, uh...monthly...you know, the monthly orbits of the Co-Orbital Body. I wanted to compare...compare my readings today with those of centuries ago."
"Ah, tracking the recession?" he nodded sagely. "A fine area of study, though rather tedious after the first hundred or so orbits," he smiled. "You should run along, anyway. It's getting late. I shall be locking up the observatory in a moment."
"Oh, yes..." Twilight feigned surprise after looking at her chronometer. "Gosh, is it so late? I'm sorry, I had no idea! Oh dear, my pet must be wondering where I am. He'll be waiting for his feeding."
"Ah, you have a pet now?" the Chief Astronomer smiled again. "Dog, is it?"
"No, he's, uh...a dragon," Twilight replied.
"Oh yes, of course. I forgot, you work at the Hatchery, don't you?' he nodded. "Not given you any trouble I hope? Chewing the curtains, setting fire to the carpets?"
"No, no," she laughed. "We engineer those kinds of traits out of them before hatching."
"Of course, of course," he patted her shoulder. "As it should be, naturally. Well, I shall see you next week. Praise the Sun, and good Even-Day to you!"
"Good Even-Day!" Twilight left the archives and grabbed her things before leaving the observatory. She had almost been caught perusing something that contained forbidden words, and it made her heart pound. It also made her feel surprisingly good, surprisingly excited. She vid-called Rarity from the VTOL pod and arranged a dinner date, which was followed by some pleasant fun in Rarity's bedchamber, this time without any stallions and just each other and a few joy-pills for company.
Back in Twilight's apartment, Spike ate the noodles she had summoned from the automat for him, and curled up in his basket to sleep, quiet, alone, and content.
"Rarity?"
"Yes, darling?"
Twilight rolled over in bed to face her friend, their manes equally disheveled from the Even-Day before. "Have you...ah...no, never mind. Nothing."
"What's on your mind?" Rarity asked quizzically, placing a gentle hand on Twilight's bare thigh. "Nothing wrong, I hope?"
"No...nothing's wrong," Twilight replied. "i just came across something. Something that's made me, well, a little confused."
"Well, what do you want to ask me?" Rarity questioned her, sitting up and letting the blankets slide from her bare bosom. With her magic she opened the curtains wide, bright, brilliant rays of sun streaming in from outside of her seventieth-floor apartment.
"Have you ever heard of a Princess Luna?" Twilight asked her bluntly, getting a blank stare in response.
"Why...no, I can't say that I have. Who is that? A friend of yours?" Rarity asked. "Oh, is she a stripper? Not one of those Pegasi who pervert themselves for money, I hope. How gauche! Somepony who actually makes others pay for titillation."
"No, no..." Twilight shook her head. "I don't know who she is, to be honest. I just heard the name, wondered if you'd come across it anywhere."
"I don't think I have," Rarity affirmed, standing from the bed and stretching. Twilight admired her naked form in the morning light. Rarity reached into the open drawer of her bedside cabinet (it was always open after they had spent time in bed together, for it was where she kept her joy-pills, Twilight mused, as well as her gun, a handsome silver piece, a gift from her father, or rather her mother's long time admirer, since 'a lady must have some protection,' though against what he had never actually bothered explaining). She pulled out a pair of earrings, ready to spruce herself up and face the day ahead. "Luna, Luna...a character in a VR movie, perhaps?"
"No. I don't know...I just found the name in an old document. Really old," Twilight explained. "It also talked about Moon."
Rarity spun on her heel, an expression of horror on her face, as thought Twilight had just called her mother something unprintable. "What? Oh darling, honestly! I do hope you've not been reading heretical things..."
"Of course not!" Twilight sought to calm her fears. "No, no. I was looking at official correspondence," she half-lied. "The observatory, you see. You know I was there yesterday for my studies. I just happened to come across something that used that word."
"Oh, how awful for you. I hope you didn't feel too upset by it," Rarity sighed. "But...it was something official? From the observatory?"
"To the observatory," Twilight sat up, resting on the big, fluffy pillows. "To the pony in charge of it. But it was from a long, long time ago. Maybe that word wasn't always banned."
"Maybe. I don't know, I've never thought about it," Rarity gave a small shrug that shook her bare breasts lightly before she pulled on her luxurious pink dressing gown.
"Neither have I," Twilight replied, for it was true. She never had. Neither Moon nor the other word she had nearly spoken in front of Spike. She had thought about how they made her cringe when she read them, and how they made her flush with disgust when spoken aloud. But she had never thought before about why they had been banned. She had never needed to. Just being told they were banned by the state was reason enough to accept that simple fact and move on. Nopony needed to question why, and nopony did question why. There was no purpose in that. What was decreed was decreed, and it was decreed by the Sun and State for a good reason, a reason that was as irrelevant to their day to day lives as the inner workings of a black hole were to the Diamond Dog who crawled through the sewers to repair damaged pipes. It simple didn't matter if they didn't know the answer.
Except now, to Twilight, it did matter.
The public square was busy, even though light drizzle was falling, cutting across the neon-sulfur streetlamps and bright, brilliant advertising boards, pattering in kaleidoscopic puddles on the ground. The square was full of ponies, mostly unicorns, cutting from boutique store to boutique store, waiting in orderly queues for the VTOL pods, or heading into the Grand Symphonie, the vast opera and orchestra house that could house some fifty thousand ponies in air-conditioned comfort as they appreciated the latest fine pieces. Tall billboards advertised the Even-Day's performance- Octavia Melody, a noted cellist (though only an Earth Pony). It was not often that somepony from one of the other races got a solo performance at any of the great cultural venues, so she must have been quite the prodigious talent.
Twilight Sparkle was not attending the Symphonie. She was in the square for a different reason, namely because it was so busy. Over in the corner of the stone-flagged square were a trio of vid-phone booths, and behind them, each under a plasteel shelter, were two public data terminals. That was her destination. Her hood raised and hands in the pockets of her smart black jacket, Twilight crossed the square casually, ignoring the happy laughter of foals and the rumble of the underground vactrains running beneath her feet. She was trying her best to blend in, to be completely unmemorable to anyone else. Her hood would help hide her mane, her eyes, and also her horn. If anyone had to give a description of her, she wanted it to be as vague as possible.
"Remember, citizens!" the loud, booming, stentorian voice of Princess Celestia blared out from the public address system. Though the messages were invariably the same ones on repeat, it still drew the ear, for it was the only time most ponies would hear her speak. "The State is here for you. I am here for you. If you are happy, I am happy. Are you happy, citizens? I do hope so. Enjoy yourselves. The Sun is always watching. The Sun is always guiding. The Sun is always shining. The Sun never sets."
"The Sun Never Sets..." Twilight found herself mumbling by rote, along with several hundred other ponies in the square. She must have said it a hundred thousand times over the course of her life, not that she was counting, for who would keep track of how many times they had said something so simple and so true? One might as well keep count of how many times they had said their own name.
The two terminals were both vacant, though one drunken stallion was having a hilariously and obnoxiously loud conversation with somepony on one of the vid-phones, bursting into uproarious laughter every few seconds. Twilight approached the nearest terminal and pressed the 'Search Now' button with her finger.
Welcome to Canterlot Public Information System (CPIS)! Please enter your query or search term (Maximum 240 characters).
Twilight tapped a few buttons on the keyboard, which was damp from the rain despite the canopy overhead.
Moon, Co-Orbital Body.
Nopony was around. She was safe for now, though she feared just typing that word would invite attention from Network Security. NetSec monitored cyberspace for viruses, malware, or other issues of security and potential safety, for there was always a naughty novitiate computer technician somewhere who wanted to boost his or her own ego by trying to slip something into a local network, usually for particularly unimpressive purposes such as displaying a pair of buttocks (sometimes their own, sometimes not) on a public walkway's neon signs, or turning traffic lights red and delaying some poor unfortunate Earth Ponies on their journey home from work.
Twilight had no intention of performing any kind of cyberhack or cyber-grafitti. She just wanted answers. The public terminal, she had reasoned, was safer than searching for those terms in her own apartment. She was far from confident of getting anything useful, but maybe, just maybe...it was certainly worth trying, though perhaps not the first search term she had just typed in.
Profanity Filter is On.
Did you Mean: Co-Orbital Body?
Useless, as she had suspected. Searching for the word moon in the public net was stupid; something teenagers did for titillation, just to make themselves giggle and feel big for typing a rude word and then running away. Most likely nobody would even notice that it had happened.
Search Again? Click Here.
Twilight clicked, and typed her second phrase. She hesitated, her finger hovering over the 'send' button for a few seconds before she pressed it firmly and determinedly.
Princess Luna.
Processing Your Request...
Processing Your Request...
Error. Your Search Returned No Results.
No luck. She knew it, but it was worth a try. She hoped it was worth it, anyway. She backed out and left the booth, casually crossing the square, lowering her hood once she was a fair distance away among the crowds, opening her jacket, letting her horn and multicoloured mane be visible, distancing herself as much from her previous appearance as she could. She got herself a fine candied pecan bun from the artisanal bakery and stood outside eating it.
Five minutes later, a section of police officers entered the square, clad in their dark uniforms, thick bulletproof chest and shoulder plates, plasteel helmets with raised visors, the standard patrol attire. Their chunky .45 caliber pistols holstered at their hips looked suitably menacing, as did the rail-rifle slung across the back of their leader, a corporal judging by his uniform patches. Twilight felt a pang of dread, though she had been expecting it. Sure enough, the quartet of officers made their way right over to the data terminals.
I knew it! Another banned word...
Surely they hadn't sent a squad of officers out just because somepony typed 'moon' into the terminal? That probably happened a thousand times a day across the city, bored adolescents or drunken revelers hammering at the keypads. No, it had to be because of her second search. But why? It was just a name, an empty name that had no meaning, no history behind it. She had never heard it before. It was not a forbidden word, a forbidden name- it was one that simply did not exist.
The police spread out, examining the terminal, checking the surrounding area. Twilight watched as she munched on her pecan bun. She was worried, but not panicked, for she had foreseen just such a possibility. That was why she had searched the square twice in the past week, looking for cameras or scanner-drones that might observe her. She had not seen anything to be overly concerned about. The bakery had a camera, but she knew that because she often shopped in there, alone or sometimes with Rarity or Lyra, her friend from the Hatchery. The terminals themselves did not have any cameras. None of them did, not in the unicorn areas, for unicorns were considered the most trustworthy, the least likely of the races to cause any trouble. The police, she noted, were all Earth Ponies or Pegasi. A curiosity, or did they know something already?
No, no cause for alarm. Most of the lower ranks of the police and the army were of the other races, for they possessed greater physical strength, speed and stamina, perfect for chasing a fleeing suspect or grappling with a recalcitrant drunk. Crime was relatively rare in Canterlot, or any of the other Hub-Cities, for the simple reason that the causes of most crime had been eliminated. There was no want, no poverty, no deprivation, even in the lowest orders, even among the Degenerate Species. All were employed, those who could not work were compensated with handouts, food and consumer goods were abundant, technology made the lives of even the most dim-witted creature a breeze, while joy-pills washed away whatever troubles remained on a tide of euphoria and, if the right pills were taken, arousal, too. Virtual Reality movies were another method of distraction, communal baths and gymnasiums, the opera, the theatre, the cabaret, the Arena too, where boxing, wrestling and other combat sports took place. The Autodrome, where drone-drivers battered each other to destruction in demolition derbies and daredevil Pegasi and Earth Ponies raced each other around the banked circuit in their hypercars. Oh, the distractions were endless and delightful. Everything was taken care of, everything was just so. Just perfect. As it should be.
Everything except those two, confusing words.
Princess Luna.
Who? Who was she? And why did she no longer exist?
The Sun Rises, The Sun Never Sets
"Fillies and Gentlecolts, please prepare for takeoff. Ensure your luggage is safely stowed in the overhead lockers or beneath your seats and familiarise yourselves with the emergency procedures for this aircraft. A copy of the safety guide is provided in the pocket in front of you, and a visual demonstration can be accessed from the videotainment screens as well."
Twilight tightened her safety straps. She enjoyed travelling very much, even by spaceplane, but the takeoff was always unnerving for her. Even more so than normal today, for she was on a very important trip to the Hoofstonian Scientific Complex, one of the premiere seats of learning in the land. A trip there was part of her exchange programme, for if she was to qualify as a top astrophysicist she would need access to advanced instruments, techniques and skills that the local Canterlot Observatory, however homely and welcoming, could not provide. The Hoofstonian Complex had not just laboratories, a complete robo-manufactorium and a huge biological research centre, but also its own radiotelescopes, massive sculpted dishes pointed to the heavens that could be guided (under careful direction) by students, giving them the skills both to operate such complex machinery and also to then interpret the results of what they found beyond the stars.
"Our estimated flight time today is one hour and six minutes. Local weather in Hoofston is thirty-six degrees, humidity of 80% and clear skies. On behalf of myself, my co-pilot and all of us here at Royal Equestrian Spacelines, we thank you for flying with us. Please sit back and enjoy the flight. Cabin crew to departure positions. Thank you."
The three Pegasi mares serving as cabin staff took their seats and strapped in. Twilight peered nervously out of the porthole-like window. The huge slab of delta-wing looked reassuringly solid enough, but she knew from her aerodynamics module that the metal was really paper-thin, the wing full of hypergolic fuel, and ten thousand mechanical, electrical and hydraulic components, any one of which could fail at any moment. Ah, but she had to overcome such worries if she was ever going to get into space and do some real astronomy!
"Fillies and gentlecolts, we are about to begin our takeoff roll. Complementary joy-pills are available to you all in your armrests if you would like to skip this part of the flight," the pilot was informing them over the intercom. "Please make sure your seatbelts are securely fastened. Thank you."
The spaceplane trembled, almost imperceptibly at first. Twilight trembled with it. She opened the slot on her armrest, found the pair of joy-pills provided for her, reached for them, then put them back.
Courage, Twilight! You don't need an artificial escape from this. You need to endure it. Can't spend all your time in space zoned out on bliss, after all.
The hefty ramjet engines, one in each wing, began to power up, adding a dull throb to the distant, faded cacophony of noise that accompanied every spaceplane flight. The sound-padding in the fuselage kept most of the noise at bay, but could not disguise the sensations, the raw feelings, the emotions. The ailerons moved seemingly without command, though Twilight knew it was the flight deck testing their control surfaces before they took to the air. The engines rose in pitch, a shrill hiss, a roar, a deep thrumming, some kind of cycling going on, a test perhaps, or fuel pumps, or something, certainly. What amazed her most was that they made so much noise despite not actually being able to produce any thrust just yet.
"Standby for takeoff in five, four, three, two one..."
Twilight reflexively gripped the armrests, ignoring the pills. She would ride this one alone.
The mag-channel had built up enough power to launch the spaceplane, and with a thud and a judder they began moving, sprinting down the magnetic catapult, shaking like one of the cabaret dancers she had watched with Rarity as a send-off for her trip. Oh, they were moving now! The Orbiport raced by her window, the sleek glass terminals, the delta-winged spaceplanes, the transfer elevators, the blinking anti-collision lights of the other launch-channels, one pointing in each cardinal compass direction. Beyond that she could vaguely see the blurry outline of the twin landing strips, where incoming spaceplanes would touch down and taxi back to the terminal before being loaded via transfer elevator onto the mag-channel for their next journey.
Oh Sun, here comes the rollercoaster...
At the end of the mag-channel, the spaceplane began to rise, the track ahead curving into the sky, gradually at first and then at what seemed to be an almost vertical angle, but was really only about forty-five degrees. There was a thunk as the spaceplane disconnected itself from the large tray-like launch sled upon which it sat. The sled was rapidly decelerated, while the spaceplane hurled itself like a javelin into the azure sky at five hundred miles per hour. The vibration and shaking stopped- though only for a second or two. Then the ramjets roared and blazed into fiery life, for only now did they have sufficient airflow through them to actually be switched into operational mode and start providing thrust. That drove the spaceplane through the sound barrier, a silent penetration of one of the fundamental and immutable laws of physics, for they were now outrunning their own cacophony. Down below, Twilight imagined, was her apartment megabuilding.
Oh, but there was at least some adrenaline to accompany the flight! It was a comfortable seat and a luxurious cabin for such a cramped fuselage, but it had a visceral edge, something one never felt in a VTOL pod or a maglev monorail or even in the local gyrodynes that carried ponies between nearby cities. No, this was different. Though there were a thousand other citizens casually taking the same flight with her, Twilight felt like something of a pioneer. A foolish thought, for it was not even her own first flight of the year, let alone ponykind's first in all history, but it gave her a small thrill as she was pressed firmly back into her seat by the continued acceleration.
Up they went, the city disappearing in their wake, the clouds receding below like a foal's safety blanket being snatched from their grasp. Twice the speed of sound, three times, four, and then the ramjets began to fail in their task of providing enough thrust to keep the craft accelerating. With a sudden jolt and an even stronger invisible hand shoving the passengers back into their seats, the scramjet fitted into the underside of the fuselage ignited, kicking them on still farther, still faster, still higher. A far more efficient design and the only realistic way of conducting suborbital hypersonic travel, the scramjet compressed the incoming airflow while it was still at supersonic speed, instead of slowing it down first like other jet engines did. A steady stream of hydrogen-based fuel provided the source for ignition, and the resulting exhaust spewing from the rear of the engine was also traveling faster than sound; many times faster, once the spaceplane reached its cruising height, for the faster they went, the faster the air was traveling as it was sucked into the vast maw of the scramjet, and the faster the exhaust was traveling when it came out the back, which pushed them faster, which meant the air through the engine was moving faster, which meant...
They blazed a trail into the heavens, gaining speed and altitude while the passengers inside sat in relative comfort, friends and loved ones able to conduct casual conversations with ease, unaware thanks to ignorance or joy-pills that the blunt nose of the spaceplane and the leading edges of its stubby delta wings were glowing practically white hot, the thermal protection system and its zirconium diboride ceramic skin being tested by the sheer temperature created just by driving the spaceplane through the air at such speeds, not too far removed from what their smaller but orbit-capable cousins, the Space-Ferries, had to suffer through upon re-entry after visiting one of the orbital stations. At the cruise, at an altitude of two-hundred thousand feet and a speed many times that of sound, the cabin lights were dimmed so that the passengers could get a clear view of the planet they had almost left behind.
"Fillies and gentlecolts, we have momentarily dimmed the cabin lights for your pleasure," the captain informed the passengers. "We are now at our cruising altitude of two hundred thousand feet, traveling at twelve thousand one hundred miles per hour. For those of you on the right side of the aircraft, you should have a fine view of the Northern Reaches, including the Manehattan Peninsula and the northern Degenerate Zone. For those of you on the left side of the aircraft, you will be able to see most of the main continent, including the entire Foal Mountain chain, the cities of Zebrica and Fillydelphia, the Everfree Degenerate Zone, and the Southern Islands."
Calmed by the fact they had arrived successfully at the edge of space, Twilight looked out from her window. The curve of the planet could be clearly seen, dropping away to infinity and the vast, empty lacuna of outer space that lay beyond. The sun, a brilliant, impossibly bright ball of fire, was dimmed to a vaguely tolerable glow by the automatic polarisation filters of the window, but Twilight was more interested by the Co-Orbital Body. Alas, she could not see it. Not when the sun was in her eyes. Besides, it was probably on the other side of the plane, and she had the whole rich tapestry of Equestria unfolded before her, exactly like the world map she kept hanging on the wall of her lounge. How wonderful it was! For a moment, blasphemous as it may be to think it, for a moment, she was a goddess, looking down upon the whole world. This view! Not even the Princess had a view like this.
Which Princess?
Twilight gripped the armrests again. What kind of a question was that to ask herself? There was only one Princess! Foolish girl. Keep such thoughts very much to yourself! Which Princess, indeed. The Sun Rises, The Sun Never Sets.
She knew she was not in any trouble, any danger. If her name had been somehow linked to the search from the public data terminal, she would not have been allowed on the flight. Orbiport security would have taken her aside until the brave and dedicated ponies of the ASU, the Anti-Subversives Unit, could have arrived to interrogate her. To take her away for, she imagined, necessary reconditioning before she was allowed to return to her work and study. A recuperation programme, to reflect on her transgressions and understand where she had strayed from the path. She had seen it done before; a couple of fellow students who were exposed to some mildly radical ideas. Taken away for a week and returned with bright smiles and no small amount of regret for their foolish actions, a greater understanding of the importance of following the path and the light of the Sun imprinted upon their brains. No worse for wear, no harm done!
Even so, Twilight had no desire to be carted off from her classes at all. Besides, she wasn't even a subversive anyway!
I'm really not!
Not at all. I praise the Sun, I follow the law!
Apart from with her talking pet. She had been forced to leave Spike behind as the spaceplane could not accommodate pets, not could her guest room in Hoofston. That meant leaving him with Rarity, but she wasn't too concerned. Spike was good, behaved himself well. Rarity had expressed a worry that he might not get on very well with her cat, Opalescence, but Twilight assured her that she had a funny feeling it would be alright.
After she had spoken to Rarity on the vid-phone, she had impressed upon Spike that he absolutely must be on his best behaviour while she was away. He nodded and told her he understood, that Rarity was her friend, and sometimes her bedroom-friend, which made Twilight blush furiously. It was only for a few days, anyway, and then she would be back home with him, back home in her familiar apartment, her comfortable surroundings, with her friends and bedroom-friends and joy-pills and cabarets and the observatory, too. Oh, how she longed to go back there, to the archives! There was so much more to see, to learn. She had to. She simply had to learn more.
Moon.
Princess Luna.
There had to be an explanation. It couldn't just be explained away. The letters, the police, the data error when searching...no, there was definitely something happening. Definitely something.
Twilight pondered what that might be, and before she even knew it they were descending into Hoofston's Orbiport, gliding down onto the long concrete strip. Twenty minutes later she was in her room, and an hour after that she was undergoing her brief orientation tour of the physics department of the Hoofstonian Scientific Complex. What a wondrous place it was! Shiny and new, bright and clean, just like life ought to be. No dust in their archive room, she supposed. But perhaps no true history, either. The building was new, but even the Complex as a whole, though prestigious, had only been formed a century ago. No true ancient ties, nothing dating from before the Great Unification War. No pedigree except that which had been thrust upon it by the fact that it held a Royal Charter from the hand of the Princess herself. Impressive, of course, but so what? So did the Canterlot Royal University, and that even had Royal in its name. One-up on the Hoofstonian, hmph!
What the Hoofstonian had was the radio-telescopes that there had simply not been room for in Canterlot. By the time the science and technology had reached the point where they could be built, there was no room left up in the Old City on the mountain, where the original university had been. The rapid expansion of the New City had swallowed up much of the available land and the city lights were a blight on optical astronomy which had precluded the expansion of the old observatory much beyond its original size and form. But what had killed the idea of radio-astronomy in Canterlot completely was the same thing that powered it- simple physics. A valley was the worst possible place for any kind of telemetry or tracking station, and the same went for telescopes, because the mountains on either side cut off huge amounts of the sky from view and blocked the propagation of radio waves, laser beams and anything else astronomers might wish to throw skyward. Building atop the mountain peaks would have been the logical solution, but alas they were far too spindly and unstable to allow any kind of major construction project, certainly nothing of the scale required from a radio telescope array.
So they had brought it to the desert instead. Hoofston lay on a vast, arid expanse of sand and agave, with very little else to be seen anywhere around. The whole city was suitably climate-controlled, of course, but the dry air and flat terrain was perfect for astronomy. Twilight was delighted with the tour and the equipment, and the accommodating staff, all more than happy to help a student from a fellow top university. She retired to bed that Even-Day happy, momentarily distracted from her other thoughts. The same happened the following Even-Day, and the Even-Day after that.
Then she was awoken at some Sun-forsaken hour by the trilling of her room's vid-phone. She stumbled from the bed and rubbed her sleep-bleary eyes, not remembering she was naked until she had already answered the call. Luckily, it was only Rarity.
"Darling! Oh...bad time?"
"Huh? Yeah, it's like...three in the morning here..." Twilight yawned.
"Oh...so it is. I forgot the time difference...but, do you have company, or...?"
"What? No..." Twilight looked down at herself with a momentary blush. "Ah, you just got me out of bed, that's all...so, uh...why?"
"I...well, I'm not sure exactly how to..." Rarity mused, tapping her chin. "You see...it's about Spike."
"Oh?" Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Oh no, he didn't break one of your vases, did he...?"
"No, no," Rarity shook her head. "No, he, um...you see, he...spoke."
Twilight blinked a few times before replying slowly. "He...spoke...?"
"Yes! I'm sure he did. I'm not going mad, am I? Do please tell me I haven't taken too many joy-pills..." Rarity implored. "I'm sure he did. He definitely did!"
"What, uh...what did he say?" Twilight questioned, that uneasy feeling returning once more, spreading through her body like the intoxicating effect of a joy-pill but in reverse.
"Well, you see, I was giving him some breakfast. Eggs, like you said. And while my back was turned he tried to take one from my plate! So naturally I gave him a cuff round the ear. Naughty dragon, bad boy! You know...and, well...he said 'Twilight never hits me...' I'm certain he did...!"
"Not...maybe...from a vid-phone? Or the television? Maybe someone outside in the hall?" Twilight ventured, equal parts hopeful and forlorn.
"Absolutely not! I didn't have the television on, I haven't vid-called anyone since yesterday morning...no, darling, he definitely spoke! I'm positive!"
"Ohhh...." Twilight groaned. "Oh, Sun..."
"Darling? Have you done something you perhaps shouldn't have done...?" Rarity suggested tactfully.
"Oh Rarity, I'm so sorry!" she blurted out. "I'm sorry! Oh Sun, please don't tell! Don't tell anypony about this! Please!" she begged.
"I won't, darling. But I think you'd better get back here as soon as you can," Rarity replied. "I mean...I am house-sitting your, uh...well, he's not exactly a pet anymore, is he?"
"No...no, I suppose he's not..." Twilight sighed. "Look, I'll tell you everything, ok? But when I get back. Not now. Not over this link. Make sure you expunge your vid-phone record after we end this call, Rarity. Just in case."
"Yes...yes, alright." Rarity nodded. "You'll be home tomorrow though, won't you?"
"I will. Just this one last day here in Hoofston and I fly back tomorrow morning," she replied. "Is he there with you? Can you bring him to the phone?"
"Just a moment..." Rarity disappeared from the screen and then Spike appeared, lifted onto the chair by her hands. He waved his claw.
"Hello Spike," she forced a smile, easier than she thought once she saw his face. "Now listen to me. You can speak to Rarity, alright? As long as she gives you permission to talk. But you must still never, ever talk when anypony else is there. Only me or Rarity. Do you understand?"
"Yes mommy Twilight," Spike nodded. "I miss you."
"I miss you too..." she replied. "Rarity? Thank you."
"It's alright, darling. I'll see you tomorrow and we can sort all this out," Rarity blew her a kiss before signing off. Twilight pressed the delete message button, erasing the call. Just in case. Just in case.
The Sun Rises, The Sun Never Sets
Twilight's flight home had been fraught with nerves, and not because of the fact she was sitting in a metal tube going twelve thousand miles per hour, hurtling through the heavens with an inch or two of titanium skin between her and a terrifying death. She had fully expected a team from the ASU to meet her at the Orbiport when they landed.
Is this your pet, miss?
Were you aware he could talk when you purchased him?
I see. Come with us, please, miss.
There had been nothing. She waved her identity card at the half-asleep Pegasus manning the security desk (no need for a cyber-stamp as it had been a domestic flight, not one to the Degenerate Zones. Once she had collected her bag, she simply stepped into a VTOL pod and headed to Rarity's apartment.
Both Rarity and Spike were glad to see her. Spike ran to her and gave her a hug, while Rarity just seemed relieved to not have to harbour an illegal creature in her home any longer. She didn't dislike Spike. In fact she had not had any issue looking after him, nor had he caused problems with her cat. But he talked, and that meant he was wrong, broken. And that, in turn, meant that Rarity was scared.
"It's not that I don't understand why you did it, darling," she told Twilight. "But I just don't...I don't understand why you felt like you needed to."
Twilight had tried to explain, in a way that did not make her sound like a subversive. Having a talking dragon, why, that was just something she had imagined from when she was a foal. There were talking dragons (probably) out there in the Degenerate Zones, and if there weren't now, there certainly used to be. So why couldn't she make Spike talk? Why shouldn't she?
Even as she talked, she knew she was doing it as much to justify it to herself as to justify it to Rarity. She wasn't even convinced she knew why she had done it, in truth. Not if she really dug down deep and tried to analyse her actions. Nopony had told her to do it. Nopony had suggested she do something similar. Nopony had said it was ok to feel that way. She knew it wasn't. Not really. After all, everypony was happy and content, why would she want to risk any kind of problem by trying to be deviant?
She could have done something else if she was feeling adventurous. Something less likely to get her in trouble. Maybe have three stallions (or mares) at once, or singing a ribald song in public, or even hacking a VTOL pod and taking manual control (it had been done before, though it rarely ended well for the would-be pilot). She may have received a telling-off, a slap on the wrist, but that was all. If her adventure was of a sexual nature it would have been entirely ignored, for that was not really an adventure, but merely a part of life.
But she had done none of those things. She had decided to have a pet that could talk and was intelligent, and that had led her to develop a disturbingly insatiable desire to learn the origins of banned words. She had never had that urge before. As far as she knew, nopony ever had. Why would they? The words were banned not arbitrarily, but by the Princess herself, and enforced by the State. That was enough for everypony to know they were bad, bad words. Worse than insults, worse than profanities. They were heretical, anathema to a functioning society. Everypony knew that. Twilight knew that. And yet the curiosity of a young, talking dragon had started her down a path she had no desire to be on.
Taking Spike with her, Twilight had returned home, relieving Rarity of the worry about having him in her apartment. Twilight had apologised profusely and promised to make it up to her somehow. A little nagging voice kept telling her that wasn't enough, that Rarity would sell her out, but she dismissed it. Rarity was her friend. Her best friend and sometimes 'bedroom-friend,' as Spike put it. She wouldn't do something like that. Twilight was sure of that.
Almost sure.
Sure enough to go to sleep that Even-Day at least, with Spike in his basket and thoughts of the unknown Princess on her mind. Her curiosity was driving her, her emotions pushing her forward down the potentially dangerous path she now found herself on.
"My loyal subjects. Your thought for the day. An open mind is like a fortress with its walls unguarded. Perfidious thoughts can invade your head if you are unwary."
The unhelpful message from Celestia, broadcast by the public speaker systems, dogged Twilight as she made her way to the observatory once more. It was a coincidence, of course. She had heard that message dozens of times before during her life. In fact the more she thought about it (despite the message reminding her she should not), the more she realised that Celestia seemed to have a fairly limited vocabulary, for her messages would repeat and repeat, month after month, year after year. They were good messages, of course, useful and absolutely true, but still...the more one heard the same oft-repeated words, the less impact they had.
That was why it was good to find new words, she mused. Even if they are banned.
Moon.
Night.
Princess Luna.
But, why, why, why?
The archives of the observatory had become a second home for the curious mare, a repository of knowledge both modern and arcane. There were hand-sketched drawings from ancient times that had her in guffaws of laughter, so impossibly inaccurate were they. Some showed the Sun orbiting the planet, some showed the planet orbiting what appeared to be a gigantic dragon, and some even showed half a dozen other imaginary planets apparently moving in tandem. They made her giggle with giddy pathos at the sad attempts to describe celestial mechanics, though she approached the issue with far more knowledge than the ponies lost to time who had drawn those scribbles.
Orbiting a dragon? Now that would be interesting. Absurd, but interesting.
Yet she also knew that the sun (along with everything else in the solar system) orbited the galactic centre, a supermassive black hole of immeasurable attractiveness that kept the stars in line, so to speak, just as Celestia guided her ponies along the correct paths. They all orbited her, as the planet orbited her sun, as her sun orbited the galactic centre, and as the galaxy orbited...well, nopony was quite sure of that. It was one of the big questions of theoretical cosmology. The universe was expanding, constantly, in all directions, at a steady rate. In a paradox that would confuse many, it had no true centre. There was no single identifiable point around which the entire universe rotated. The galaxy probably orbited something, but astronomy had not yet been able to identify what that was.
It was an open question with essentially no significance to the average pony in the street, but Twilight wanted to know. She wanted to know everything. How did the universe begin? How will it end? What will happen in between? A good scientist is infinitely curious, she had once been told by a professor at the university. But only about science.
Twilight was finding herself perilously close to diverting from that solid, stable path, for she was finding herself becoming curious about things that did not matter. Things that were troubling, things that she was not meant to be asking, and until Spike had expressed his own childlike naivete about them, things that she had no desire to know. That was changing, she knew, as she rummaged through yet another dusty box of unread documents. She doubted some of them had seen the light of Celestia's Sun (or the artificial light of a gently thrumming fluorescent lamp) for centuries. Even the boxes they were packed in were ancient, half-rotted, tied up pathetically with string that struggled to hold together.
Yet curiously, Twilight now remembered something from her first visit. These time-faded boxes, the ones that looked like they would hold the answers, were not where she had found the messages that mentioned Princess Luna. These boxes contained only tattered remnants of the dreams of long-dead astronomers and mages, proven to be verifiably false by the relentless advance of science centuries ago. Those letters she had found were in a modern box, though a box that contained old papers, orbital diagrams of the Co-Orbital Body. Inaccurate ones, too, come to that. No use to anypony except for curiosity. More accurate records would have all been digitised and stored in the computer banks of the observatory, but not those. They were simply wrong, badly drawn, perhaps by a shaky hand or one not well-versed in such things. Horribly inaccurate. Pointless. Stored just for posterity, but a good place to tuck away something somebody didn't want to be found.
The records were clearly kept for completeness, hence why they were in a modern metal storage box like all the other endless copies. An entire shelving unit had been dedicated to orbital records, some accurate, some not. There were more accurate records from five hundred years ago, so these error-strewn papers must have been kept just as a curiosity, like so many documents in archives often were, just waiting for somepony to dig them up and find out some interesting historical titbit or other. Most would never be looked at again once they were archived, however, and that was why Twilight now realised her mistake. She was looking in the wrong place. If somepony wanted to remove any record of Moon or Princess Luna, the first place they would search would be the old documents. Though the diagrams where she had found the letters hidden were very old, nopony was likely to dig through stacks of inaccurate drawings that did not even have any words on them. They might flip through the first few, realise they were worthless, put them back on the shelf and ignore them. Clearly whoever had been assigned to archive them had been less than thorough in their task, because even if the letters she had found had not contained any forbidden words or names, they still would not have belonged in with the detritus of incomplete diagrams. Evidently whoever wanted this name hidden from view had done a good job of hiding them, and whoever wanted this name to be erased from history had not quite succeeded in their task.
Twilight returned to the racks of metal boxes that held the records, opening them, looking for inaccurate old drawings. She found some in the fifth box she tried, from some three hundred and fifty years ago, when ponies really should have known better. Perhaps they were drawn by some novice, a young apprentice astronomer with a nervous hand and a loud, angry teacher. Whatever the result, they were all but useless from an astronomical perspective, but might they conceal clues for her?
Rummage, rummage, rummage. Page after page, repeated diagrams of the same cycle, the same month. Nothing, nothing...yes! Something! Another letter, incongruous among the endless chaff of illustrations. With clammy hands she seized upon it, brought it out into the light, examined it, inhaled it, read it.
Mage-Astronomer Deep Frost,
I write to you in the hope of confirming that which I believe to be true. I cannot, of course, say too much in this letter, which is why I wish to meet with you. Plotting is afoot, I am certain of it. There is a quiet fear in the air within the palace walls and I am troubled deeply by it. As one of my most loyal and devoted subjects, I have no doubt you shall choose to be on the correct side when trouble does begin. If you meet me tomorrow at midnight outside the southwestern postern gate, I shall know for sure.
Her Royal Highness, Princess Luna.
Intrigue! Intrigue in the palace, though which palace remained an open question. Twilight still could not quite grasp what she was reading, documentation of an ancient time that seemed to have no record anywhere else. Somepony's fiction, perhaps? It could not be, for typing the name of a fictional character into the public terminal would not have summoned the police. No, this had to be real. It had to be. Princess Luna must have existed once, but where was she now? Her name had fled from reality, as though she never existed in the first place, or had been sucked into the black hole at the galactic centre. These letters were the only places Twilight had ever encountered her. And Midnight, too! A variation on a profanity. Perhaps that was what they had once called Even-Noon?
Carefully, she folded the letter and placed it in her satchel with her textbooks and data-pad, secreting it between two pages of 'Advanced Celestial Mechanics Volume III: A Comprehensive Guide To Planets, Stars and Space Phenomena.' She decided now to retrieve the other letters too, the ones she had read before. They were stored in her textbook as well. If only she could know more!
The following week she returned to the observatory again, and excused herself to the archives to continue her research on orbital diagrams and the recession of the Co-Orbital Body from the planet. Again, she made a discovery, another letter in another box, as though somepony from history wanted to weave a narrative, but simultaneously make it extremely unlikely anypony else would ever be able to read it in full. This one was in a different hand, though written in similarly flourishing style that made it difficult to read. How grateful it made Twilight for computers, where everything was clearly spelled out, pixel by pixel, no distortions and no difficult penponyship.
Mage-Astronomer Sky Chaser,
Please accept my warmest congratulations on your appointment as Chief Astronomer of the Royal Canterlot Observatory. I am sure you will continue the century-long tradition of excellence in such a fine and important institution (your predecessor notwithstanding). Funds for the rebuilding of the observatory will be released to you as soon as I am able to do so. As I am sure you are aware, the Treasury is rather depleted after the war and many other priorities cry out for its attentions. In the meantime, salvage whatever you can from the old structures that may aid you in the construction of the new. I look forward to attending the opening ceremony of the restored and resplendent observatory in due course, and to working with you on establishing a new understanding of the heavens.
Her Royal Highness, Princess Celestia.
Twilight trembled a little. Was this really the hand of the Princess herself? Did she truly write this letter centuries ago? Remarkable, absolutely remarkable! Almost nopony ever actually saw the Princess, yet here she was holding a letter she had written. Not typed on a computer, but written, with ink and quill and her own elegant hand! But why, why did nopony date these letters? Twilight found herself more confused than ever. Which war was Celestia speaking of? The Great Unification War? The Discordian War? Another war she was not familiar with? Some foul event had destroyed the observatory, it seemed. Perhaps the Chief Astronomer would know more. Perhaps he would even know of his predecessors. But that was tempting fate, Twilight decided, scolding herself for such a thought. She could hardly casually raise the subject with him.
Instead she searched and searched, every box of orbital diagrams she could lay her hands on. But she found nothing. There were no more letters. The letter from Celestia, it seemed, was the last one. Or was it the first one, chronologically? Somewhere in the middle of the sequence? She could do no more at the observatory. Instead, she would try the Royal Academy of Equestrian Sciences, mentioned in the first letter she had found. Yes, perhaps she would find more answers there.
The Sun Rises, The Sun Never Sets
The Royal Academy building was one of a few that retained some of the old charm of how Canterlot must have looked centuries ago. It was a huge, squat, red brick construct, with hundreds of windows along its four sides, high vaulted ceilings and a most impressive statue of Celestia in the atrium, a soaring and serpentine depiction of the Princess with arms outstretched, a gilded sphere representing the planet in one hand, and a much larger glowing orb in the other, representing her Sun and illuminated formerly by magic and now by ten thousand small electric lights retrofitted to its exterior.
The archives in the basement were a startling contrast to the rest of the building above ground, their sepulchral gloom enough to sap the joy from anypony, at least until the hospital-white strip lights were switched on, bathing the endless shelves and racks of books, papers, documents and stored artefacts in a sterile glow that, while lacking the warmth of the Sun, was still infinitely preferable to the darkness.
Twilight thanked the supervisor for letting her access the archives (for her university project, of course), and set about searching. She was not looking for the banned words, but for information about the other figures she had uncovered in her investigation. Histories from that far back in the past were lacking, even on the public exonet, but she hoped to learn more. After diligent searching, she found a chance to expand her knowledge on her topic of choice, in a book entitled Dictionary of Notables: 0CE-400CE.' Perfect! 0CE was the beginning of the Celestial Era, when the Princess had begun her glorious rule after overthrowing Discord. That four hundred year period must surely cover the ground she needed. Yes! Here, under H.
'Heartstone (U-M), b. 10CE. Chancellor of Royal Academy of Equestrian Sciences, 75CE-88CE. Known for his contributions to botany. Discovered two hundred species of plants and funded the Canterlot Botanical Gardens. Died 88CE of old age.'
Well, that was something. At least she finally had a timeframe for the letters she had been reading! So Heartstone was a male and a unicorn, a botanist, Chancellor of the Academy. That fitted with what she had read. Now...yes, here. Another entry.
'Sky Chaser (U-F), b. 42CE. Astronomer. Chief Astronomer of Royal Canterlot Observatory, 81CE-90CE. Noted astronomical achievements include installation of the first reflecting telescope, discovery of Chaser's Comet. Died 104CE of plague.'
Interesting...Sky Chaser was a female unicorn who had replaced somepony as Chief Astronomer according to the letter from Celestia. But who had she replaced? Was it Deep Frost? Twilight scanned the book, looking alphabetically under D. Nothing. F? Nothing their either. Why was Deep Frost absent from this book? She checked the cover- the book was published in 600CE. That was hundreds of years ago! Yet still there were missing names, even then. Perhaps more interestingly still, the letters she had found in the observatory were among documents from a different century to the time they were written. The orbital diagrams which had concealed the letters were dated to a few hundred years after the letters. Somepony must have been deliberately keeping them hidden!
She continued searching and found an article on the history of the observatory, just the kind of thing she could not directly ask the Chief Astronomer about for fear of arousing suspicion in him. On the second page was a list of Chief Astronomers. This list stretched from the observatory's founding in 15CE right up to some fifty years ago. It held a hundred names almost, an illuminated history of the stallions and mares who had held the post and who had managed and overseen the affairs of the observatory throughout the entirety of the Celestial Era. She pored through it, finding the right dates. There was the first ever Chief Astronomer, Hellebore. Then came Void Raven, then Peach Plume, then...then 'Unknown.'
Unknown? Twilight blinked. What came after that? Yes...of course Sky Chaser came after that! The unknown must be- could only be- Deep Frost, surely! A stallion or mare who no longer existed, reduced instead to 'Unknown- 69CE-81CE.' Twilight scribbled it all down, using a pen and paper instead of her datapad so as not to leave an electronic record. So what had happened in 81CE that resulted in Deep Frost and Princess Luna being stripped from history? Her search continued, looking through books and texts old and new. Yet in each one it was the same. Nothing of note was listed. As far as she could tell, 81CE was a perfectly calm year. No great disaster, no war. But Celestia's letter mentioned a war, and it was addressed to Sky Chaser! There had to have been a war then, for that was when she had replaced Deep Frost as Chief Astronomer!
One thing that she did note, however, was that the historical record before 81CE seemed to be patchy at best. A coincidence? After all, it was a long, long time ago. Documents could have been lost, misplaced, destroyed by accident- or on purpose. Whole chunks of time seemed to have been excised from the record, with sparse details, missing volumes of chronologically-catalogued works, pages absent, sometimes even torn directly from books. This war...whatever it was, it must have led to one of two outcomes. Either a great swathe of knowledge was lost, perhaps as a result of ransacking and pillaging by an invading army, or there had been a great deal of historical revisionism by the winner. And the winner could only have been Princess Celestia, for she ruled still to this day.
So what might she be hiding?
Twilight sat musing over the possibilities for a few minutes before returning the document and book to their places and heading upstairs into the sunlight, thanking the supervisor and leaving the Academy. She had made some progress, but also taken a step backward, for she had not truthfully learned anything that explained those gaps in history. Maybe her brother would know more? He was in military intelligence, perhaps some of the secrets were known to him? But no, she could hardly ask him to jeopardise his position to help feed her sudden lust for forbidden knowledge. She would have to do this alone. Even Rarity already knew too much about what she was doing. She didn't want to endanger her family too. Her searching had, once again, left her with more questions than answers and a head swirling with thoughts. She needed something distracting. Anything to take her mind off of her increasingly frantic search for the answers she still was not sure she actually wanted to know.
"Oh darling, why did you drag me all the way out here for this?" Rarity whined. "I thought you were going to take me somewhere nice."
"Hey, come on Rarity! This is someplace nice!" Lyra Heartstrings, Twilight's fellow sub-sector supervisor from the Hatchery, gave a wicked grin, a large plastic cup of a toxic-green beverage in her hand, full of sugar and dissolved joy-pills. "What's the matter? You can't tell me you don't like the Autodrome?"
"I suppose it's alright, but...I just thought we might be going somewhere more...cultured," Rarity sighed. She was perhaps the only pony in attendance who was wearing a ballgown, for the usual attire at the Autodrome was much more casual. The huge structure was oval in shape and had once been open to the sky, until some bright spark noticed that attendance plummeted in bad weather, and that would never do, because ponies needed to be entertained, to get their thrills and joys and satisfaction. a roof was duly installed, and attendance rose to the maximum, even in driving rain, thunderstorms and blizzards.
Rarity, Twilight and Lyra were in the crowd at Twilight's insistence, for she wanted to go somewhere loud, exciting and distracting. To Rarity, that had meant an elegant club, or perhaps the Grand Symphonie. Alas, and to her lasting regret, the VTOL pod which had carried them to pick up Lyra then took them out to the fringes of the city and to the Autodrome, for the spectacle in metal that was contained within.
"This is just as cultured as the opera," Lyra replied, being far more of an aficionado of automated blood sports that Rarity. "Why do you think so many ponies are here this Even-Day?"
"Because they put too many seats in," Rarity retorted. "Ponies need somewhere to go of an Even-Day, and if they had more seats in the Symphonie and fewer seats here, well, you can be sure they would be there instead. We would be there instead. Oh, to be there instead of here...!"
"Come on Rarity, relax!" Twilight smiled, sitting between her two friends. "Have a joy-pill or two and you'll soon find yourself cheering like the rest of us."
"That's hardly the point," Rarity pouted. "You could make having a limb amputated enjoyable with enough joy-pills. I just thought we might have gone somewhere else."
"The Even-Day is still young!" Twilight pointed out. "We can go somewhere else after this. Let's just enjoy it!"
And they all did- even Rarity, though somewhat reluctantly, but of course Twilight was right and a joy-pill did wonders toward making even such an inelegant spectacle into something worth watching. The drone-driver demolition derby was a sight to behold, with twenty automated cars hounding each other around the central grid-circuit, where obstacles lay in their paths. Concrete blocks, earthen embankments, even landmines and pits filled with gas-fed flames, crematoria for more than a few unfortunate drone-drivers down the years. Metal crunched and twisted as the cars rammed into each other, fighting the environment as much as their rivals. Ponies could place bets of a limited amount on which car would win (betting was limited as it would not do for a pony to lose so much money that they became unhappy, or worse). Doors and panels were beaten and bent, torn free, scattered about the arena like discarded clothing at an orgy, which in a way it was. An orgy of mechanised violence unleashed for the pleasure of the spectators, a surrogate for their emotions, a hands-off outlet, just like a joy-pill, a hundred thousand baying ponies shouting for artificial blood to be spilled so that they need never feel the urge to spill the real thing.
Twilight munched on some popcorn, sharing it with her friends as they watched the demolition continued. Several cars were burning, much to the delight of the crowd, and there was an uproarious cheer as one of the drone-drivers rolled over a landmine, the kind designed to kill tanks, left over from the Unification War. Shattered fragments of car peppered the arena like hail, bits of the engine block almost spilling onto the oval track that ran around the edge of the Autodrome and would be the site of the next thrilling event. Eventually, after nearly an hour, the final drone-driver, the only one left standing and able to move, was declared the winner.
"Ahh, no, come on! Number 4? Where were you, Number 10?" Lyra tore up her betting slip in disgust. "I lost eight bits on that!"
"No harm done, then," Twilight smiled. The comically small bet was a product of the limits imposed, technically allowing betting but not in an uncontrolled, unrestrained way, for that could be harmful to a pony's psyche, to say nothing of their bank balance. Like any vice with side effects, betting was controlled and rationed. For the same reason, there was a limit to how many drinks somepony could buy in a bar. When they reached their limit, they were offered more joy-pills instead, for they could be enjoyed risk-free.
What a wonderful invention they truly were! As Rarity was finding out for the umpteenth time, joy-pills could even make a non-aficionado of the Autodrome almost blissfully happy with what they were watching, a wonderful sensation. Take enough joy-pills, and the sensation could become almost orgasmic in its intensity. Take the right kind of joy-pills, and that 'almost' could be removed entirely.
As the wreckage of the demolition derby was cleared away, the spectators dispersed temporarily, decanting from the stands to the communal restrooms or the snack-stands The big race was next, a hundred laps of the oval circuit. Pegasi and Earth Ponies made up the driver list for this event- no Unicorns ever learned the skills necessary to take part except those who entered the military, though even then, as officers, they would almost never be called upon to actively drive themselves, and certainly not to drive others.
Rarity excused herself to powder her nose, and Lyra went in search of more snacks, leaving Twilight time to think. Despite taking one joy-pill and despite the excitement of the event so far, she still felt her mind wandering back to the missing names, the unknowns, the empty, hollow history she had uncovered. She didn't want her thoughts to be there. Not this Even-Day...damn it all! This Night.
Night.
Night.
There, she had said it! Or at least thought it. She knew it was forbidden, but now she thought at least she might be on the road to learning exactly why. It all had to be linked somehow, didn't it? Night, Moon...the Moon rose at Night. If she went outside of the stadium she could see it there, hanging in the sky. The Co-Orbital Body which seemed to have a former name, a name stripped from it in the distant past. That in turn must have linked with Princess Luna, the mysterious, formless figure from the letters she had read. Her letters were signed and sealed with a crescent shape that must represent the Moon. Was she from there? Was Princess Luna an alien from another world? No, that made no sense. She was writing letters and signing them, sending them to Equestrian officials! She had to be part of Equestria, not an invader coming from space to steal it away from Celestia. But then why did she not exist? What had she done? Who was she?
Rarity and Lyra returned. Twilight banished her thoughts to the back of her mind, felt them creeping forward again, and took another joy-pill.
The drivers were announced, their names and pictures flashed up on a giant screen. There were some familiar names from previous events- Rainbow Dash, the multicolour-maned Pegasus mare, Summer Lightning, the swift and suave Earth Pony stallion- and some newcomers, fresh faces and fresh meat, for not every driver always survived every race, let alone each full season. The hypercars they drove were powerful, brutish, yet sleek and beautiful vehicles, churning out as much torque as a dozen street taxis but in a frame that weighed less than a single one. It took a brave and highly capable pony to drive one, and a lucky one to live through the whole fifteen-race season. Even if they died, however, their deaths would at least provide spectacle and entertainment for the joy-pilled masses, and if one had to die, what better way was there to go?
Twenty drivers lined up on the start/finish strait, their steeds humming with barely restrained power. Each revving engine sent shivers down the spines of the spectators. Anticipation built and built. Ponies hurried back from the concession stands and bathrooms, eager to witness the start of the race, for it could be the most exciting moment of the entire hundred-lap contest. Cameras drones hovered overhead, broadcasting the race to millions more ponies at home, those who had not been lucky enough to snag tickets to this Even-Day's race. The Autodrome was a very popular source of entertainment across the whole of Equestria, not just the citizens who lived in Canterlot, a source of pleasant, violent distraction broadcast into the home of every pony who chose to watch it.
The start-lights illuminated one by one, and then extinguished themselves all at once. Twenty cars roared away, weaving and racing, jockeying for position. Rainbow Dash in her gaudy vehicle, painted in multicoloured stripes to match her mane, pulled into an early lead, with Switchback the dark brown Earth Pony rookie cutting ahead of Summer Lightning and taking second place as the cars entered the first corner, a sweeping left-hander like every other turn on the oval circuit. The noise filled the bowl-shaped arena like a thousand buzzing hornets. Ponies cheered as two of the back-markers at the rear collided with each other and spun off into the ferrocrete barriers, their fiberglass and composite bodies shattering spectacularly into thousands of fragments where they struck the guardrails. Once the drivers signaled that they were alright, tow-drones came in and hovered above them, picking the damaged cars up with grappling arms and carrying them away to the pit area. A large sweeper-drone with a heavy-duty fan was also guided in, blowing the smaller pieces of debris off of the track and into the grass that separated the circuit from the demolition-arena at the middle of the stadium. BY the time the racers rushed round and completed the first lap, the track ahead was clear once more.
Lap after lap they roared along, three hundred miles per hour, shredding tyres and overheating engines. Cars swerved off into the pit lane for repairs and tyre changes. All the while out in front was the trio of Rainbow Dash, Switchback and Summer Lightning, vying for first place, changing and swapping with each new lap. Sometimes it was the Pegasus mare in the lead, sometimes the showy Earth Pony stallion, sometimes the newcomer, their faces invisible behind the visored helmets they wore, looking almost like riot police. It could have been anypony under their fireproof overalls. Twilight idly wondered how hard it would be for an impostor to slip into the cockpit of one of the hypercars and pretend to be a racer.
Lap 90, 91, 92, 99. The final fling. Rust Belt, last year's champion, was pushing hard to catch up to the podium finishers, but her car had nothing left to give her, and she trailed painfully behind, like a minnow following a pack of fish, being left behind by its faster brethren. Rainbow had a slight lead over Summer Lightning going into the final lap, but the stallion wasn't giving up easily. Wheel to wheel they took each turn, their engines roaring, almost touching on half a dozen occasions. This was racing! This was why ponies turned in and showed up in their tens of thousands to attend in person.
The final corner, the final stretch. Rainbow ahead by a nose, giving it everything she had, everything her car had. Summer Lightning nosed in alongside her. The white finishing line was ahead, drawing nearer with alarming speed.
"Go, go Rainbow! C'mon!" Lyra shouted urgently, for she had twenty bits on the mare to win.
Luck and skill were with her, as both cars crossed the line almost together. A still image appeared on the huge viewscreens, showing that the nose of Rainbow's car had broken the plane first. Cheers erupted from around the stadium. Lyra punched the air, having made up the loss she had suffered betting on the destruction drone-derby.
"I knew she was gonna win!" Lyra grinned. "Nothing to do with her having the best odds, no. I just had a gut feeling."
"Of course, Lyra," Twilight chuckled, happy for her friend to have recouped her money. She never bothered betting herself. The amounts involved were so purposefully small that it just seemed pointless to her. Far better to just take a joy-pill and be happy that way. Nopony ever got rich by betting, but nopony ever got poor, either.
Once the drivers had been presented with their rewards for placing on the podium (and removed their helmets, finally letting the crowd get a look at them in the flesh and not just as a mugshot on the big stadium viewscreens), Twilight and the others left the Autodrome along with the rest of the crowd. As fun as the event had been, it was now over, and the joy-pills were wearing off.
So they took some more, hopped in a VTOL pod, and headed to a club for the next few hours. It was fun, oh yes, it was fun! The synth-alcohol flowed freely, the joy-pill dispensers in the mare's lavatories were fully stocked. What a wonderful way to spend the Even-Day! A club with a few friends, the prospect of some more physical entertainment if one happened to catch the eye of somepony. Drown their cares and worries, flush them away down the sink, drive them from their minds, at least for a while. How wonderful, how perfect. What could be finer?
More pills, more drink, then it was home to Rarity's apartment (via Lyra's megabuilding, dropping her off on the way), slumping into bed, groping and fumbling in the darkness, sheets drenched with sweat and lust. And then, finally, the blissful blackness of sleep, a restful slumber, a contented slumber. As it should be.
In the dim half-light of the dawn, a sub-net crackled with a flurry of activity. As the sky paled and the wispy clouds streaked by high overhead, somepony listening at the door might have been able to hear hushed, whispered voices outside, soft and muted as though in a dream. The rest of the apartment was quiet. Then, through the veil of silence, a sudden shattering of glass, the hammering of something heavy on something weak, booted feet, blinding lights.
Twilight sat up in a panic, holding her hands in front of her eyes. "Ahh, Rarity? What's happening?"
It was not Rarity's voice she heard next.
"ASU! Hands in the air! Do not move, do not move!"
The Sun Rises, The Sun Never Sets
"ASU! Get your hands up! Up!"
"Twilight!" Rarity screamed. "Oh, darling!"
"I said hands up! Both of you! Do not fucking move!"
The profanity startled Twilight, for while swearing was common enough, it was rare for a word to be uttered with so much venom. She raised her hands above her head in a daze, the lights filling her eyes, leaving her blind and confused.
ASU...oh Sun, no...they found out...
"Grab that one," the female voice continued. "Get her! Hey, don't do it! Don't you do it!"
Twilight could see nothing, hear nothing but the shouts and cries.
But I didn't do anything bad! Not really!
"Don't reach! ASU, get your hands up!" a different voice, male this time. "Do not reach for that fucking gun!"
"Rarity?!" Twilight cried.
"Twilight!"
"Shit, she's running! Grab her!" The bed shook as somepony jumped onto it. Rarity screamed again. There was a flash of purple light, bright enough to cut through the cone of white that held Twilight in its grip, followed by the rapid, staccato barks of a dozen gunshots, one after the other. The light suddenly swung off of her. Twilight blinked desperately to clear her vision, her eyes full of stars. She crawled to the edge of the bed, but felt strong gloved hands grasp her. "Hands behind your back!"
"6-2, Shots fired, shots fired," the female voice again. "Start medical, we have an officer down and one suspect with gunshot wounds. Say again...? Negative, the target is in custody, over."
Twilight's hands were clasped behind her and slipped into a tight pair of handcuffs, while somepony slipped a horn-protector onto her, a magic-dampening device that locked in place and prevented any use of magic, something usually deployed for those suffering from severe mental episodes or the relatively few hardened criminals that operated in Equestria. Twilight squealed and struggled like a stuck pig, but the firm hands gripped her tighter than before, dragging her up into a sitting position. Only now could she see what was going on.
Half a dozen black-clad ponies with severe, uncompromising, faceless visors and compact machine-pistols all but filled the bedroom. One of them was propped up against the wall, missing an arm, groaning violently in pain and being tended to by another. Gunsmoke drifted in strange, swirling eddies in the light of their torches and the first traces of gold from the dawn outside the shattered window, where the thrum of jets told her a VTOL craft of some sort was hovering. Beneath the window, Rarity lay in a crumpled heap, bright, ruby-red blood oozing from her body, staining her white body, seeping into the carpet, her life draining away.
"Oh Sun...!" Twilight breathed. "Rarity! Rarity! What have you done to her?!"
"That's enough outta you," the same mare who had spoken before now spoke again, standing in front of Twilight. Her bulletproof vest read ASU, the Anti-Subversives Unit. Her rank markings indicated she was a Captain. Her nametag read Applejack. She glanced at the downed officer. Another pony had removed her helmet and was using magic to cauterise the bleeding stump of the wounded pony's arm. Nopony was helping Rarity.
Applejack removed her helmet, her face as stern as her blank visor had seemed, green eyes narrowed, blonde mane cropped short. She knew exactly what to say next, no need to look at a warrant. "Twilight Sparkle, you are under arrest for subversive activity, possession of a deviant creature, and possession of illegal documents."
"What...?" Twilight gasped, but deep down she knew it had really only been a matter of time until this day came. She knew she had done wrong. She knew it. Foolish mare. Fool. Fool, fool, fool! Nevertheless, she felt obliged to protest her innocence. It was mostly a mistake, after all, wasn't it? Oh, her brother Shining Armor would vouch for her, he was an officer in the army, they trusted the army!
"I haven't done anything!" she exclaimed. "I know you don't believe me, but...oh...Rarity! By the Sun, no...please, help her!"
Rarity had not moved.
"Your friend attacked us," Applejack replied gruffly, cocking her head in the direction of the wounded officer. "Can't take any chances with unicorns, never know what back alley spells they mighta learned. Ain't our fault. Some ponies can't or won't listen, this is the kinda thing that happens." She leaned down to face Twilight eye to eye. "N' if you hadn't started committin' crimes against the Sun, then your friend wouldn't have got herself shot, now would she?"
"I-i didn't...I haven't...I love the Sun!" Twilight blurted out helplessly. It was true, oh so true. But it didn't matter now.
"Sure ya do. On yer feet," Applejack grunted, grasping her arm tightly and dragging her upright. Two paramedics from the city ambulance service arrived in the bedroom, making it even more crowded, crackling radio traffic relaying information that was of importance, no doubt, to the ASU, but meaningless to Twilight. One of the paramedics checked on the wounded officer while the other knelt beside Rarity. Applejack and another, faceless ASU officer led Twilight out of the bedroom, leaving the bloody scene behind.
Twilight sobbed as she passed Rarity's motionless form. Had she killed her friend? Applejack was right; it was not happenstance which had led the ASU here this morning. It was her. They were here for her. Maybe Rarity had been foolish, maybe she had resisted arrest and fought with the officers, but she was panicked, afraid, terrified. It wasn't her they wanted, it was Twilight.
They came for me.
Her head bowed, tears streaking her cheeks, Twilight was led out of the bedroom. A female officer pulled a heavy winter jacket from Rarity's closet, used it to cover Twilight's naked form as they led her out to the turbovator. Down they went, seventy floors to the street, where local police cars had cordoned off the block. Two ASU wagons, armoured, six-wheeled monstrosities, were parked outside the entrance to the megabuilding. Applejack kept her hand firmly upon Twilight's arm, marching her out to the nearest truck. Onlookers from a thousand windows peered down, their early morning routine shattered by the howl of VTOL jets and the crackle of sudden gunfire. It would be all over the regional press by darkfall. One arrested, one killed in ASU crackdown! Brave officer wounded! Subversives lurk among you- do not let your guard down!
At least this was not her own building, her own neighbours watching her be taken away, muttering among themselves about how they always knew she was a strange one, or how they had definitely definitely seen for absolute certain her cavorting with Degenerate Races. Anything to make themselves seem even more devout and watchful, for letting a Subversive go unnoticed in your own building or workplace was a crime of incompetence in its own right. Her own building...Spike! At least he was safe...but, no! Applejack had said her charges included owning a deviant creature. Oh, they knew, they already had him...!
The back of the wagon was all bare metal, uncomfortable and spartan. Applejack and the other officer stepped in with her, forcing her to sit on a hard metal bench along one side while they seated themselves opposite her. The rear doors slammed shut, and they were moving. Where they were going, Twilight could only imagine. The local police precinct? But these were the ASU. They had a building downtown, offices, mostly, where investigators pored over reports, camera footage, data-logs and other technical information, seeking answers and seeking deviants. Subersives, as everypony knew, were the biggest threat to Equestria.
And now Twilight was one of them.
The cell was just as spartan as the truck had been, just smooth, bare walls, a simple bed, toilet and sink, all sharp edges removed, no hanging light fixtures, no high rails, nothing its inhabitant could theoretically use to commit suicide and escape their just punishment. Twilight rapidly lost track of time, for she had no chronometer. No natural light, either, just the incandescent haze of an artificial bulb embedded in the ceiling, blazing brightly, day and Even-Day.
Day and Night.
Once they had dumped her in there, Applejack returned some time later, no longer in her combat gear but a more relaxed outfit, perhaps what she wore beneath, a simple tank top and trousers, giving a good indication of her strong, muscular frame. Like all ASU agents, she was in good shape, smart, proficient, conscientious of her duty, as all good ponies should be. She had a simple message for Twilight.
"Your friend is dead."
Twilight had curled up into a ball, unconsciously adopting the same position Rarity had when her last breaths were leaving her body, crumpled beneath the window of her own bedroom, riddled with bullets.
"Officer Starbuck lost his arm. Have ta fit him with a cybernetic replacement," Applejack continued. "Not that you care, ah'm sure. If your friend had lived she'd be facin' an attempted murder charge."
"Go away!" Twilight wailed from her prone position on her cot-bed. "Go away!"
"Oh don't worry," Applejack grinned. "You ain't gonna see much more of me. Ah'm just the muscle. Interrogation ain't a specialty of mine. Somepony else'll take care of you. Real good care."
With that, she slammed the viewing hatch closed, and left Twilight alone in the unnatural glow.
Time. Time was something everypony thought they understood. A second begat a minute, a minute begat an hour. But when there was no reference, no frame within which to appreciate what time actually meant, it began to rapidly lose all meaning. The light in the cell was so false, so artificial, it seemed to drain all colour and all reality from Twilight's small, lonely world. Where was the Sun?
Where was the Sun?
Without the Sun there was nothing! Everypony knew that, raised from birth, inculcated in every young mind, firmed and shaped and molded as they were by the ever-present Princess, who was always with them even though she was never there. Her soothing voice, calming words, divine visage, were everywhere in Canterlot and every Equestrian city, ever household, every public building.
To be without her and without her light was painful, an unusual type of suffering, for it was not one that most ponies ever experienced. They could turn on a VR-adventure and see her face in the commercials, or go down to the lobby of their office to see her portrait, or open their curtains to see her blazing Sun in the sky above. It was impossible to conceive of life without the Sun, for even during the Even-Day ponies knew without fail that it would rise again the next morn, and in the darkness they could turn to images, words, sounds of the Princess to calm their irrational fears.
Most ponies had an instinctive dislike of the darkness. It heralded monsters, like in the foals' tales told to young ones. It heralded a lack of knowledge, an emptiness. They did not fear it, but they did not trust it entirely, either. Even in the brightly-lit cities with swathes of stars overhead, or with the Co-Orbital Body shining, darkness caused unease if one pondered on it or sat amongst it for too long. That was why there were so many neon signs everywhere in Canterlot. Criminals hide in the dark, everypony knew. Monsters hide in the dark. Evil hides in the dark.
Twilight had no idea how long she had been kept in her cell. Even meal times seemed to vary, perhaps to confuse her, or perhaps just an illusory shift because she was already confused. Somepony would shove a tray through the slot and depart. Once she was done they would collect it. Applejack kept true to her word; Twilight had not seen the ASU officer again. She had not seen anypony, in truth, for the meals were invariable delivered and collected when she was lying on her bed, not even able to glimpse the briefest moment of seeing somepony's arm through the hatch in the door. She was alone, though no doubt they were watching her. The Sun was always watching, and she had wronged it.
It was on the seventh- or maybe twelfth, or maybe twentieth- day that somepony finally opened the door. Two grim-faced ASU stallions took her by the arms, cuffed her, led her out of the cell (her horn protector, blocking her magic, had of course never been removed at all). They led her to an equally featureless room with just one chair in the middle, planted her firmly in it, removed her hands from the cuffs, fitted them into shackles on the chair, and left, the door closing with a metallic thud, leaving her with her thoughts once more. She realised now she had no actual idea what was involved in interrogating a subversive. She was not an ASU agent, she knew no other subversives. Those who had returned to the university after 're-education' never spoke of such things, just expressing their gladness that they had been given the opportunity to see the error of their failing ways.
For another indeterminate period, Twilight sat alone. She was sure- sure- that it had not been more than ten minutes or so, but what was a minute when one had almost forgotten what time itself meant? Then, the door opened again, and a single pony entered. Twilight gasped. She had good reason to.
"Brother...!"
She had not seen Shining Armor for almost a year. He had been away on deployment in the southern Degenerate Zone, according to his army records. Yet here he was, in the flesh, his smart red and white dress uniform and two-toned blue mane a vivid flash of colour in the otherwise drab world Twilight had been inhabiting.
"Twilight," he nodded at her.
"H-have you come to free me?" she smiled happily.
"No," he replied, with a slow shake of his head. "I have come to break you."
The Sun Rises, The Sun Never Sets
"Shiny...?"
Twilight's heart, soaring for just a moment, began to sink again, plunging down into the icy depths of fear. "Shiny, what do you mean...?"
"You are accused of being a subversive," Shining replied simply, standing in front of her. "Do you deny the charges?"
"Of course!" Twilight gasped. "Of course I do!"
"Why? How can you deny facts, Twiight?" Shining asked, his face as stern as Applejack's before him, as stern as some of their surrogate-fathers had been when they had been giving them some lecture over stolen cookies or staying up too late. "The facts are undeniable."
"What facts?" Twilight asked. "What facts...?"
"We searched your apartment," Shining explained. "We know."
"Why would military intelligence search my apartment?" Twilight asked, confused, frightened by Shining's expression.
"I'm not with military intelligence," he replied. "Not for the last three years. I'm with the ASU."
Twilight's confusion turned to panic. Shining wasn't even who he said he was? He wasn't the pony his family thought him to be? The army was one thing, an old institution, ancient even, right back to the founding of the Celestial Era, back to the events she had been reading about in the musty old archives of the Academy and the observatory. They had honour, structure, a proud tradition of loyal service to the Sun, fighting her foreign enemies and now, in more recent times, keeping the Degenerate Zones under control. But the ASU was different. They were the ones everypony wanted to keep away from, the ones everypony was taught to, if not exactly fear, then certainly be wary of, for they were the ones who had to deal with all the nastiness that lurked beneath the surface of Equestria, and ponies worried that the darkness rubbed off on those who searched for it.
Everypony knew the ASU was a vital cog in the apparatus of state security, for everypony knew that the rule of the Sun could not be challenged. But if they gazed into the abyss for too long in pursuit of their duties, the abyss might just gaze back at them. It was almost like a modern form of the witchcraft of old- could the witchfinders succumb to the plague they sought to eradicate, and if so, should they be kept at arm's length, just in case? Perhaps that was why Shining had not told his family he had been transferred; so as not to alienate them, for though the ASU's work was lauded and appreciated, especially by the State itself, the attitudes of individual ponies toward its members could be rather different in reality.
"The ASU...but why? Shiny, why? You were doing so well in the army!" Twilight lamented. "Why did you..."
"They chose me," he replied, looking down at her. "As you said, I was doing well. a fine, accomplished officer, a Major at my age? They wanted somepony with my talents. How could I refuse them? To do so would be to refuse the Sun herself."
"But the army wanted you too!" Twilight cried. "We wanted you! Your family!"
"And I'm still here, am I not?" He knelt down before her, his eyes level with hers. "I am still your brother. I am still the stallion you knew before. But I cannot say the same for you...dear sister."
His hand stung her face, making her draw breath and gasp as he slapped her, hard. "My own sister, a subversive...how could you do this, Twilight? How could you betray me, and your mother?" His eyes narrowed, his voice soft and probing, mournful. "How could you betray the Sun?"
"I-i didn't!" Twilight gasped, her cheek reddened from his strike, her brain momentarily numb trying to process it. Shining had never, ever hit her before. Never harmed her at all. He was always the pony to pick her up when she grazed her knee or took a tumble from her gyro-bicycle. Tears welled up in her eyes. "Shiny...!"
"Lies, lies, lies!" Shining roared, his voice suddenly laden with fury. "We have the evidence, Twilight! We know everything you've been doing. We know. The Sun knows. And she is as disappointed as I."
"But you don't understand it...I-i didn't mean for anything bad to happen!" Twilight moaned. "I didn't mean to upset you, or the Sun, or anypony!"
"But you did," he sneered at her, striding around the room as he talked. "You have committed crimes, Twilight. Not just subversion, either. Not even mere treason, no. Heresy." He snarled the last word, grabbing her mane from behind, tugging her head back sharply. "Heresy! Do you even understand what that word means?"
"A-all I did was tweak one egg!" Twilight cried, whimpering as she looked up into the angry, contorted face of the brother she thought she knew. "Just one, not even the whole tray! Please, I'm not a heretic, Shiny...stop it, you're hurting me!"
"One egg." He let her go, her head slumping forward. "We don't care about that egg. Your abomination is hardly the first, and it won't be the last. Sometimes ponies get the sudden urge to create something strange like that."
"Then what?" Twilight gazed up at him through eyes bleary with tears of pain and fear. "What did I do...?"
"You know exactly what you did, Twilight," Shining replied. "But nopony else does. If you tried to explain it to them, they would not understand. And that is exactly how it should be, because that is exactly what we have tried to create these past centuries."
"How can I...how can..." Twilight trailed off. "I don't understand..."
"Yes you do," Shining snorted. "You understand all too well. Why else would you have tried to cover your tracks, hm? There is no point trying to deny it, Twilight. We already know everything that is important. Well, everything except the answer to one question." He knelt in front of her again, cupping her chin with his gloved hand, his eyes boring deep into hers.
"Why?"
Another day, perhaps two, or three, on her bed in her cell. Empty, meaningless hours rolled by. She had not been able to answer her brother. She did not even know the answer herself, in truth. Why had she done those things? Why had she deviated so far from the good little mare she had been?
Was there something wrong with her? Had she been raised badly? No. Had she developed some disease, early-onset dementia or perhaps a magic-leakage issue? No, her last health checkup had been perfect. She was in fine form, no illnesses, no issues. Had the joy-pills driven her slightly mad? No, they couldn't do that. They had no side effects. That was why they were so popular, after all.
Was she fated to make this mistake? Destiny? Was it written in the stars that she was supposed to do this, to be here in this prison because she had made such a colossal error of judgement? A character flaw, something she couldn't quite put her finger on. Or maybe it was just chance. Happenstance, a combination of unlikely factors culminating with Spike's curiosity piquing her own, which she never knew she truly had. Not about the things she had been investigating. She had always been a keen learner, eager to expand her mind and know more about the universe, about history, about science and culture and anything. Twilight was a voracious reader, whether in print or on the screen of her datapad or computer, but she had never once felt the need or the inclination to ask the kinds of questions she had started to ask after Spike had made her think in a certain way, just for that one moment in time.
What's Nigh? he had asked. Not Nigh, but Night, the banned, profane word she had almost uttered in front of him. That simple, innocent question had been enough to make her think. She knew what Night meant, yes, but she didn't know why it had been banned. Nor did she know why Moon was similarly offensive, but in that case, even its meaning had been lost to her. Only after her investigation did she know- or strongly suspect- that Moon was an old term for the Co-Orbital Body. Such simple facts, the etymology of a profanity. Surely that should have been common knowledge? Everypony knew what fuck meant, or shit. But the meaning of Moon had been lost over time. Why? Why had Night merely been rendered profane, but the very meaning of Moon had vanished entirely from the zeitgeist of modern ponykind?
The guards dragged her back to the interrogation room the next morning (or possibly evening). They pumped some kind of drug into her, making her squeal as they stuck a needle into her neck, making her feel slightly dizzy and nauseous shortly after. Again, Shining returned.
"Are you ready to confess?" he asked her. "We'll make it simple if you do."
"Confess what? Shiny, please...why are you doing this to me?" Twilight sniffled. Seeing her brother again made her fearful he would act in the same, seemingly out-of-character way as he had the last time.
"We have no choice, Twilight," he answered. "We do what must be done."
"So what, you're going to re-educate me, some spell to make me forget? And send me back home?" Twilight ventured. That was what had happened to ponies at the university.
"We can't do that, Twilight," Shining shook his head. "Oh no, not for you. Not for this. The punishment must fit the crime."
"But I'm a subversive, you said so yourself!" Twilight blurted out. "Is that not what you do to subversives? There were ponies at the university who..."
"I misspoke," Shining patted her head, like he used to when they were foals, a brotherly gesture of love which was now rather more sinister in its application. "You are a subversive, yes. Of course. Your genetic freak of a pet saw to that. But you are not just a subversive. You are a heretic."
"No...!" Twilight gasped. "No, no, I'm not! I would never think that way, never! I couldn't!"
Shining pulled something from his pocket, unfolded it, placed it upon her thigh. "Read it," he ordered. Twilight looked down and immediately recognised the writing she had uncovered in the observatory.
"I've already read it..."
"Exactly," Shining nodded. "Now tell me, Twilight. Who signed this letter?"
"Princess Luna..."
"And who is Princess Luna?"
"I don't know..."
"Exactly. Because..." he grabbed her mane again roughly. "You were not MEANT to know!" He gave her another slap, this time on the back of her head. "Nopony is meant to know, Twilight. Only those of us entrusted with keeping the secret. Do you understand? Do you understand now? That name...that name is heresy!"
"Ahh...Shiny..." she cowered away from his hand. "Please don't hit me...I don't know anything about Princess Luna! That's all I know! I found that letter, s-she signed it, that's all I know...I swear..."
"That's all you know? Then that is enough," Shining replied, letting her go once more. "Enough to convict, enough to condemn."
"But why? It's just a name!" Twilight cried. "Just a name...that's all...what did she do that was so bad? That she had to be wiped from history?"
"Why does it concern you, Twilight?" Shining asked her. "You never cared about gaps in history before. Never noticed the rift she left behind. You never noticed, and why? Because you were raised not to notice. Everypony is. There is a reason you have never heard of her before. Quite simply, the Sun does not want you to know that name."
"It doesn't concern me! I don't care!" Twilight lied. "I really don't, so you can let me go now, Shiny, right? Send me back home...I-i have to...somepony has to...arrange Rarity's funeral, and..."
"Ah yes, the collateral damage of your inquisitiveness," Shining nodded. "Your poor, innocent friend and part-time lover. I have to say I didn't actually know you were into mares, Twilight. Although, we certainly have surveillance footage of you spending time with stallions, too. A good, healthy pony, aren't you? Having your fun, letting your joy-pills and alcohol numb your speculative side. Keeping your curiosity in check. So what changed, Twilight? When did you start caring about the things you were not meant to care about?"
"I-i don't know. I'm still the same pony you know, Shiny," Twilight sighed. "Nothing's changed with me. I...I'm still the same. I'm still loyal to the Sun. I like the same VR movies, the same songs, the same food. I'm the same pony I've always been."
"But you never used to ask these kinds of questions, did you?" Shining knelt by her again and placed a hand upon her arm- tenderly, he touched her, like he used to when he was a brother, not an interrogator. "You've always had an inquisitive mind, I know that. But you only asked the right sort of questions. What changed?"
She shied away from his soft touch as much as she had from his abusive one, for now she was confused and half-twisted around her own understanding of things. "Nothing changed...I just...I felt like I wanted a pet who could talk. I don't know why, I just did! Just, suddenly...an impulse, nothing more. I had the tray of eggs there in front of me, I thought 'why not?' and I just...did it. I didn't even think about it that much."
"So an impulse then? I see," Shining nodded. "That's understandable. We all get sudden urges sometimes. The urge to raise our voice, the urge to swear at somepony for something trivial. The urge to squeeze the neck of a traitor, somepony we thought was loyal and honest and true, somepony who betrayed everything we stand for, and just squeeze and squeeze until their eyes bulge and you feel the bones snap..."
"Shiny...!" Twilight looked at him in abject horror. "H-how can you talk like that? What is wrong with you...?"
"Nothing, Twilight. Nothing at all." He stood up again, tall and proud, handsome in his uniform. A fine servant of the Sun. "You wouldn't understand, because I'm not sure you can even comprehend the true nature of a traitor, a heretic. Why? Because we make sure you can't. Every loyal pony is isolated from any such influences, right from birth. Most ponies stay that way until they die. Most ponies don't even understand the concept of heresy, because we keep them ignorant that such a thing is even possible."
He turned to her again, taking the letter from her, putting it back in his pocket. "I shall burn this later," he informed her. "And the other hateful letters you possess. Anything that mentions her name. I am not quite sure how these specimens escaped the purge...it is rare, extremely rare, to find anything that mentions her. When we do, well, we have to act. Act expeditiously, and judiciously. Otherwise the taint may spread to others. Do you understand, Twilight? It spreads like a disease, like influenza, from mouth to mouth. Like disease, it is very rare today, but when it does happen...it must be excised like a tumor, cut away before the rot can infect others."
"No! No, I don't understand anything, Shiny!" Twilight cried. "I don't know who she is! I told you already. All I know is what I read in those letters, that's all. The sum total of my knowledge, you hold in your pocket there. I don't understand why you have to act like this, w-why it's important that nopony hears of her, why any of this is happening!"
"If that truly is all you know, then that is good, because it means you won't have been able to spread too much poison to other open minds," Shining answered. "It would be a terrible shame if anypony else had to be arrested because of you. If anypony else had to die because of you. So tell me, Twilight. Who did you tell? Who did you mention this name to? Does anypony else know what you read?"
"No..." Twilight sighed. "Nopony knows. I swear, Shiny...I didn't tell anypony because...because I knew I-i might get in trouble and I didn't want to endanger anypony. Rarity, I...I mentioned the name to her. She didn't recognise it, and...it doesn't matter now, because you killed her."
"No, Twilight. She killed herself," Shining replied. "Or you could argue that you were the one who killed her. I watched the helmet-cam footage of that raid. Captain Applejack and her team acted exactly as we would wish them to, with professionalism and skill. Rarity had a gun in her drawer, you probably knew that. She almost reached for it. Then she ran for the door instead. Officer Starbuck grabbed her, and she used a spell to tear his arm off, throw him across the room. An offensive spell. One she shouldn't have even known, in truth, because it should have been limited to military and law enforcement and the families of those officers who are deemed to be in high-value roles. I believe you were 14 years old when I taught you that spell, Twilight. How did Rarity learn it? She was not a soldier. She was not a police officer or an ASU agent. None of her family were, either. How did she learn it?"
Twilight frowned and looked down at the floor. "It was for her own protection, I thought...I thought I was helping. She already had a gun from her mother's partner, but...I just thought it might help her in case anything bad ever happened."
"And instead, it got her killed." Shining turned and opened the door. "Take her back to her cell," he ordered the two guards outside. "Until we meet again, Twilight. It will be soon." He stepped out of the room, his polished dress shoes clicking on the tiled floor.
Back in her cell, Twilight had more time to think. Shining was wrong, but he was also absolutely right. It was a classic tactic; shift blame to her, to Twilight, away from Rarity and away from Applejack and the other agents who had opened fire. No accident, nor a deliberate act by the State. Her fault.
Twilight shook her head vehemently as she sank into herself on her bed. That wasn't true, it was a lie! A deliberate lie, designed to provoke her, weaken her, open her up for further questions once the mental damage had been done. Oh yes, her brother was a seasoned interrogator, it seemed.
Her brother.
How could he be doing this to her? Subjecting her to all this, without even a single kind word? Without any explanation? He had a job to do, she understood that. But why him? Why did they send him? And why was he so angry with her? But he had tried to explain, hadn't he? He had talked about a purge, about her name being outlawed. Twilight still did not know who Princess Luna was, but she began to realise that she must have done something very, very wrong. Very wrong indeed.
The Sun Rises, The Sun Never Sets
More empty days. More bland prison meals. More drugs and injections in the interrogation room, even when nopony showed up to actually interrogate her. More hard nights on a thin, firm mattress, more aches in her heart and soul every time she thought of Rarity, Spike, her mother. What would her mother say? What would she say about her daughter?
What would she say about her son?
Twilight had grown up with Shining Armor. They had done everything together, played ball, watched the VR movies, been to the Autodrome. He had looked out for her, guided her, shown her a path to follow, and she had followed him happily. Once they were old enough and the State wished their time for things other than school, Shining had joined the military, an easy option for a good, strong, disciplined unicorn, straight into the officers' academy, to take command of others, and guide them in the same way he had guided his sister, and to help keep Equestria safe and secure, which had always been Shining's desire. Twilight had taken a different path, branching away from her brother and pursuing a scientific career instead, for that was her speciality and her dream. Science had given Equestria so, so much- the joy-pills, the VR movies, delivery drones, spaceplanes, the microwave power grid, automats and a million other things. She wanted to make her contribution, however small it might be. Technology and the power of military might would keep Equestria safe and healthy. Science and Strength, together. Science and the Sun.
But not, curiously, Science and Magic. Magic was permitted, of course, for it was a natural function of unicorn biology, in just the same way as respiration, excretion or digestion. It could hardly be eliminated, nor would that serve society a useful purpose. But like everything else in Equestria, it was controlled and regulated, with limits on what kind of spells could be taught to what kind of unicorn. Basic magic, things that would be useful in everyday life- telekinesis, illumination spells, breathing bubbles for swimming- was taught to every unicorn in school as part of their education. Other spells, like the mass-stupidity spell Twilight had cast upon the dragon eggs, were taught based on occupation. But some spells- like the one she had learned from her brother and taught to Rarity- were limited only to military and security personnel. Anything offensive, anything that could enable a pony to go on a killing spree, or rob a bank, or commit any other serious crime. They were kept under lock and key, so to speak, away from the general public, for good and sensible reasons. They could be used as weapons. So, apparently, could words.
As Twilight sat in the interrogation chair once more, she pondered over what her brother had said before. The State, and the Sun, too, seemed intent on treating Princess Luna's name in the same manner as those military-grade spells. But why? She would know. She now had to know. She would make her brother tell her, yes, that was it. Even though she was tied up, she would make Shining tell her. Somehow.
Her brother entered the room, closing the door behind him. "Another day begins, Twilight," he smiled. "You will enjoy this one. I promise."
"Are you releasing me, then?" Twilight asked.
"Of course not," he chuckled. "Oh, Twilight...I regret that it is you, but I am glad somepony is in this chair. I have never led an investigation like this before. Not a true case of heresy. There are so few...a good thing, of course, because it means stability. But I have often hoped to be able to deal with a heretic in the appropriate fashion myself. I just never imagined it would be my own sister," he sighed regretfully, looking down at her.
"Well if you don't want to treat me like one of your heretics, then don't," Twilight replied. "Treat me like your sister. That's what I am."
"You can be both a sister and a heretic, Twilight," Shining explained. "You most definitely can. All it takes is for those thoughts to stray, for you to turn against the Sun's light..."
"But I haven't!" Twilight cried out. "I haven't, I haven't, I haven't! Shiny, look at me! You can't really believe all that stuff you're saying about me, can you?"
"Of course I can, when the evidence is clear," he nodded. "Do you deny you were in possession of those illegal letters?"
"No...but I didn't even know they were illegal!" Twilight replied. "And I found them in the observatory. I didn't make them myself!"
"I know, I know," Shining nodded again. "We've already conducted a full search of the observatory, dealt with the staff there too...they claim to know nothing, of course. I was not particularly inclined to believe them, I must say. We also found another letter, which we have burned...where exactly did you find the ones you possessed? In the archives, yes, but where?"
"I don't know, some folder or other," Twilight shrugged. "Does it matter?"
"Potentially, yes," Shining nodded. "The letter we located was in a modern storage box. Now, if it had been tucked away in some dusty old volume, some great tome or pile of notepaper, from ancient times, it might have simply been an oversight during the purge. Some inattentive pony not doing their job properly. But the fact that it was in a modern storage box...that suggests that somepony wanted that letter to survive. It suggests it was put there deliberately. It suggests that somepony transferred it into that box along with the other junk records it was full of. All old sketches of planets and stars and the like. Nothing remarkable, nothing of great interest to anypony other than astronomical scholars. Except for that letter."
Shining moved behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders. "A single letter, I could accept. A mistake. An accident. Incomplete purgation. It happens, sometimes, though thankfully rarely. Some document will show up somewhere, we'll have to send a team to investigate. We'll deal with the ponies involved and that will usually close the case. After all, methods were far less thorough at the time of the first purge. In some ways that made things easier, in others it made them harder. No digitized backups to sort through, no need to examine every microfilm or magnetic tape, no databases to breach, no passwords for NetSec to hack. Nothing like that. Just paper, you see? Just paper. That's all they had back then."
He circled back in front of her. "One letter I could accept. But you had three in your possession which contained heretical material. We found another. That makes four. How many letters, Twilight?"
"I...there are four letters..." Twilight replied. "But I don't know anything about who wrote them, if they're authentic..."
"It hardly matters if they are authentic or if they are forgeries," Shining tutted. "Don't you understand? It's not the veracity of the letters themselves that is concerning. It is the contents. If they were authentic, then somepony has been trying to preserve things which should have been left to wither on the vine centuries ago. If they were forgeries, then somepony has already succeeded in preserving that past, because somepony would have to possess knowledge they should not possess in order to write them."
He leaned down to eye level with her, his unmasked, unconstrained horn contrasting with hers, locked in the protective sheath that prevented her from using her magic. "As it happens, we carbon-dated them just to be sure. They were all authentic letters. Written in the past. Three of them were written by Princess Luna herself. And you still claim not to know who she was?"
"Yes!" Twilight nodded, mentally cursing herself for missing one of the letters. She was sure she had searched every likely box, all the orbital diagrams she could find. What treasures, what secrets had been scrawled on that missing letter, now lost to history? Had she been denied her chance to learn the truth by her own brother's team and their investigation?
"You really do not know?" Shining probed. "You cannot guess, from what you have read? Go on. Make an educated guess, Twilight. I can see your mind working, trying to piece things together even now. Always inquisitive, you were. Always. A shame you stopped asking the right questions and started asking the wrong ones. But please, describe her for me. Who was Princess Luna?"
Twilight paused, looking up at him. He was right; she was still trying to work things out from the tiny, piecemeal answers she had. It was not enough, not in truth, but she could make a guess. "I don't even know for sure if she was a pony, but...alright, she was a pony. A Princess, obviously. A Princess in Equestria, judging by the correspondence she had with Equestrian institutions. But I've never heard of her before, and you said that's because we're not supposed to have heard of her, so...my guess is she was the former ruler of Equestria, and then she was overthrown by the Sun. Or maybe she wasn't a pony...maybe she was a Yak or a Griffon, and invaded Equestria."
Shining chuckled. "Valiant guesses, Twilight. You are wrong, but you are right. She was a pony. She was a Princess. She was also the greatest traitor in Equestrian history. She turned her back on the Glorious Sun, Twilight. She was a betrayer, a backstabber, a conniving witch who sought to seize the throne for herself, and do you know the most shameful fact of all?"
He knelt before her.
"She was Celestia's sister."
Twilight felt the blood drain from her face as she tried to process this new, most unexpected, piece of information. Sister...she was...the Sun's sister?
"You did not know that Celestia had any relatives, did you?" Shining stood up again. "A being so divine is born from the heavens themselves. But she had a sister, Twilight. Oh yes. I know. I was shocked when I first learned this, too. Take your time, take it in. Just think about it! Imagine being betrayed by your own flesh and blood! Your own sister, disappointing you. turning away from the path you tread. Abandoning her ideals, her promise, her future...can you imagine that, Twilight? Because I can."
Twilight looked down at the floor. "Shiny...how can you even think about comparing me to a traitor...to somepony like that...?"
"Because when I look at you now, that is what I see," he sneered. "You have been corrupted, Twilight. I am sorry to say it, but it is the truth. You have been corrupted by that name you read in those letters. That is all it takes. Reading that name is enough. That is why it is banned, Twilight."
"Then you're corrupt too!" she cried. "You're saying it, you've said her name..."
"I have," he nodded. "But that is because I have the capacity to say it without being corrupted like you. The ASU needs the tools to fight its wars, and if we cannot even read that name without being corrupted by it, what use would we be? We are conditioned into it, from birth. We have to be. As you know, everypony is conditioned to know and trust certain things. Just like you conditioned those dragon eggs to be stupid, dumb animals. Well, most of them. Imagine that tray of eggs, then imagine those eggs were ponies. Spike, the one dragon you did not cast that spell on? That would be the ASU. The ones who know and see far more than the rest. We are the ones who are entrusted with the knowledge that others cannot possess, because we are the ones who must ensure that nopony else learns it. If we did not know and could not confront that which we seek to suppress, then that name and her evil would seep through society and we would fail. Equestria would fail, as it so nearly fell before."
"The war..." Twilight muttered. "The war that destroyed the observatory...it was a civil war?"
"Yes," Shining nodded. "Princess Luna turned on her sister. Betrayal, of the worst kind. She had soldiers loyal to her, ministers loyal to her. They both did. The country was split in two, a great schism. It was light versus dark, day versus night, Sun versus Moon."
"So...she was the Moon? The Co-Orbital Body?" Twilight questioned, the threads of history beginning to unite in her brain as Shining filled her full of new information. It was all starting to make sense now.
"Yes, she was the Moon, as Celestia is the Sun," Shining replied. "The Princess of the Night, as Celestia is the Princess of the Day. I see the spark in your eyes. Now you understand, don't you Twilight?"
"Yes..." she nodded. At last, it all made sense to her. Now she knew the answers to the questions she was never meant to have asked, to the things that were supposed to have been wiped from history. Night was Even-Day, Moon was the Co-Orbital Body, and yes, Princess Luna was both of those things! She was the Night and the Moon! That was why those words were profane, why her name had been stripped from existence, her memory damned for eternity because of her blood-betrayal.
"What happened to her?" Twilight asked, the one strand left unconnected. "She lost the war?"
"She lost the war," Shining confirmed. "She lost the war, and then the purge began. It was decreed that every mention of her name should be erased, to erase the stain of her treason forever. As you now know, the purge was incomplete, for a few traces will inevitably remain. But it was thorough enough that within a few centuries, there was nothing left of her. No statues, no chapters in the history books speaking of her, nothing. Then came the renaming of the Moon and the Night, for additional security. It was made illegal to speak of her, long ago. Within a few generations there was no oral history to pass on, either."
"What happened to her followers?" Twilight asked. "You said she had ponies loyal to her."
"She did, but once the war was over they found that the situation had developed not necessarily to their advantage," Shining replied euphemistically, without going into more detail. "It was finished, done. She was gone, and that was that. An end to a sordid chapter in Equestrian history, one that must not be repeated."
"How could it be repeated? The Princess only had one sister, unless there are more you have hidden from us," Twilight asked him.
"You do not need to be a relative to commit treason," Shining pointed out. "There has always been the potential for another uprising, Twilight. Surely you can see that. The three pony races...even after the Great Unification War, there was discontent at first. The Pegasi, the Earth Ponies, they were not happy. Nor were the Degenerate Races as they were absorbed, one by one. The Griffons, the Diamond Dogs, the Yaks. All it would take was one spark, one charismatic leader, one rogue general, one upstart politician...a second civil war has always been a possibility. That is why we have stamped out that possibility."
"How?" Twilight asked. "Surely those conditions could still be met today..."
"Not at all, Twilight. Not at all," Shining smiled. "Not only has the name of the arch-traitor been erased, all evidence of her crimes, her followers and her betrayal have vanished too. Any disgruntled citizen today would have to search and search for any evidence of any former uprising against the Glorious Sun even getting off the ground, and still they would not find it. The fact that it appears no successful uprising had ever taken place before would act as something of a deterrent, don't you think?"
"Maybe, but that wouldn't be enough!" Twilight replied. "Ponies who thought like that...they wouldn't need evidence of it being attempted before. If they were angry enough, they would want to be the first to try it."
"Exactly. Which is why we make sure they never get angry enough," Shining nodded. "Think of those eggs again, Twilight, and the one egg you spared from your stupidity spell. Spike could control those others quite simply. He is a dragon, but he is a dragon that knows far more than they do. He can communicate with them, he could mould them if he so chose. A kind of Alpha-Dragon, if you will, because he has a sapient mind. If we allowed him, he could whip those dumb dragons into a frenzy of anger against ponykind. Why would he do that? Perhaps because you taught him the truth about their existence, let us pretend. Say you told him that dragons are deliberately rendered dumb and mute, unable to communicate with ponies on purpose, trained to be obedient pets and nothing more, instead of the intelligent, proud, fiercely independent creatures they used to be. Imagine if they learned the truth, assuming they could comprehend it. They would be furious, no? Furious against us."
"I suppose..." Twilight nodded along, unsure where her brother was leading her with his analogy, but not much liking the path it seemed to be taking.
"Now imagine again that those eggs are ponies. Imagine that they learned the truth. Not just about Princess Luna, not just about how some of their history has been wiped away, but about the fact that it was done so deliberately and with the sole purpose of keeping the Sun in power. Of exercising State control over their lives, every aspect of their lives, before they were even born. Keeping them docile, pacified with joy-pills and entertainment of all kinds, well-fed and watered, good living conditions, deliberately engineering them to follow orders, to do what the State wants because they cannot physically conceive of their being an alternative. Can you imagine what might happen if they found out there was an alternative, Twilight?"
"I...I suppose so, yes..." Twilight replied. She was beginning to feel a bit of that herself; Shining seemed to be telling her that everything was a lie, that she, and everypony else, did not follow the Glorious Sun because they wanted to, but because they were bred to do so.
"Anarchy! Mass hysteria, panic, riots, civil war!" Shining finished her thoughts for her. "Ponies might be filled with rage if they knew, Twilight, and that...that could let somepony else succeed where Luna failed. That might bring down the State and the Sun along with it. And as I'm sure you realise, we cannot possibly allow that to happen, can we?"
"I...no, you can't..." she nodded, her programming, unconscious, deep within her brain, coming flooding back. "The Sun rises..." she muttered.
"The Sun never sets," Shining completed the aphorism. "The Sun never sets because we will not allow it to."
"Who is we, Shiny?" Twilight asked. "The ASU? You can't be seriously trying to tell me you and your gang of thugs run the world."
"Of course not," he shook his head. "The Princess runs the world. You know this to be true. We are merely her servants. There is the ASU, but there are others, chosen and bred into their roles, like everypony else. The Council and their Chairpony know, for instance, as do some of their junior government ministers, for they must work directly with the Sun herself. Those roles entitle them to more information than the rest of the public will ever know. Some of it I have explained to you already. Some, I do not know myself. But imagine if we were to allow that knowledge slip through the cracks and it made its way into the hands of, say, the chief inspector of the microwave power net, and he became filled with rage as a result. He could shut down the grid, plunge Equestria into darkness save for those lucky enough to live near an atomic plant. Kill thousands, ruin the economy. Deprive everypony of their entertainment, make them infinitely restless. We cannot possibly let that happen, can we? Or imagine that the information was fed to the commander of an orbital battle platform. Rage, again. Nuclear missiles and kinetic bombardment weapons at his fingertips. Untold damage, tens of millions dead. We cannot possibly let that happen, can we?"
"But...surely the generals must be aware of..."
"No, Twilight! The generals are the most dangerous ponies of all, for they are the ones in control of the military," Shining pointed out. "And the military is the most powerful force besides the Sun herself. If the soldiers and their commanders knew the truth, well...their first targets would be the State and the Sun. So we keep them as docile as all the rest, because it is in their best interests, our best interests...everybody's best interests."
"So why do we even still have a military?" Twilight demanded. "What's the point of their existence? Are they just another cog in the machinery of oppression you've set up?"
"Oppression? Hardly. Enlightenment, Twilight," Shining smiled. "Do you feel oppressed? Perhaps now, because you are shackled to a chair. But in your whole life, have you ever felt oppressed before? Have you ever noticed any sign of oppression? Seen somepony beaten for begging on the street? Been confined to your home? Deprived of necessities? Kept away from your family or friends? Have you ever been denied any opportunity to better yourself?"
She had not. She could not bring herself to lie and say that she had, either.
"No, but..."
"But what, Twilight? You lived a perfect life. Everypony does. We have a military so that the world you know, the life you know, is kept safe. Not just against internal threats, but external threats, also. The Degenerate Zones are wild and lawless, and who knows? Maybe one day some other race will come from beyond the stars to kill us all."
"Aliens?" Twilight scoffed. "You expect me to believe that we have a military to stop aliens invading?"
"Of course not," Shining chuckled. "The military is partly a holdover from the Great Unification War, and partly a tool of modern security. Would you rather have old stallions with sticks and stones to stop the Degenerate Zones from spilling out into Equestria?"
"No, I want Equestria to be safe as much as you do," Twilight replied. "But...why do they need nuclear weapons? Is that really necessary now, against, what...Changelings, dragons, whatever else lurks out there? Isn't it the radiation from them that caused some of that stuff in the first place?"
"Perhaps, perhaps not. It is hard to say for certain. Not many scientists want to venture out there along with their instruments, for obvious reasons," Shining smiled. "But as to why they might be necessary again? I cannot say, for I do not truly know. But..." he turned to face the door, stepping aside. "I believe you have a visitor who does."
The door slid open, and heavy booted footfalls could be heard approaching. A figure entered the chamber. Twilight gasped out loud in astonishment.
The Sun Rises, The Sun Never Sets
The Past Is Another Country
"Her Royal Highness, Princess Celestia!" Shining announced, bowing deeply before the figure. Twilight lowered her head instinctively, despite her restraints, but the brief glimpse she had managed left her mind reeling, overwhelmed.
It was really her!
Celestia stood taller than anypony, clad not in the bright, airy robes of purest dove-white silk that she wore in most of her official portraits, but rather in militaristic garb. Heavy leather boots, creamy cotton trousers, a dark grey tunic with gold piping and rows of glittering medals, a white sash across her ample chest, peaked cap upon her head, sword in its scabbard hanging at her side, looking for all the world like she was out on campaign somewhere. Though her outfit was less traditional than in her portraits, her figure was no less divinely proportioned, and her mane and tail glowed with their own inner light, twinkling like the stars Twilight spent so long studying, an undulating kaleidoscope of colour that would have drawn the eye away every time had they not been connected to a goddess in physical form.
"Twilight Sparkle." The Princess mentioned her name casually, and Twilight felt her heart flutter, for to be directly addressed by one so divine and perfect was like taking five joy-pills in one session, practically enough to make one's heart explode with ecstasy. "Look at your Princess," she demanded. Twilight looked up at her slowly.
"Now tell your Princess why you have forsaken her."
Twilight looked around for Shining in a brief panic, but he seemed to have disappeared, or else he was drowned out by the radiant light of the Sun. "I...I..." Twilight stumbled, searching for forgotten words, her brain blank on how to correctly address the Princess, for she had never expected to meet her in the flesh. "I have not forsaken you, Your Highness!" she managed after a pause that she hoped did not make her seem suspicious.
"You have turned your mind from the path I illuminated for you," Celestia responded.
Her voice- so rich and sonorous, just like the speech-broadcasts!
The portraits- they lied, for they struggle to capture her true beauty!
"No!" Twilight gasped. "I follow you still, Your Highness...I-i made a mistake. A mistake I did not know I was making!"
"If ignorance was sufficient excuse, then this land would have crumbled long ago," the Princess answered. "You learned of the existence of Princess Luna, a name I hope to forget, yet a name which continues to plague me, even to this day. What do you know of her?"
"Nothing!" Twilight lied, before realising it was probably a very, very bad idea to lie to the Sun, especially since she had probably been listening to her conversation with her brother from an observation room somewhere. "O-only what my bro...what, uh, your agent has told me, Your Highness. I swear I know nothing more."
"Then you do not quite know the whole truth, do you, Twilight Sparkle?" Celestia took a step forward, towering over the seated, terrified mare. "Though your brother was quite right. You know enough to be condemned."
"I don't want to know any more!" Twilight cried. "I don't want to know the truth, Your Highness!"
"It is too late for that, Twilight. You already know a half-truth, and a half-truth can be as dangerous as the whole," Celestia replied, her stern gaze fixed upon her lowly, mewling subject. "I shall tell you that which you were so keen to learn."
Her horn glowed and a small, blurry, floating image appeared in front of Twilight's eyes, like a VR movie projector displaying its contents. "A long time ago, my sister and I ruled together," Celestia began. The image coalesced like a school of swirling fish into a picture of the Sun Princess. By her side, there stood a deep blue mare with a similarly ethereal mane and tail. Both were clad in the traditional robes of their office. "Sun and Moon, side by side. Luna and I overthrew Discord together. That is the truth that I keep from you all. Together, we threw down the banners of chaos, and replaced them with the banners of peace, progress, unity. I was not strong enough to defeat Discord alone, believe it or not. Your schoolbooks tell otherwise, of course, because that is how it must be today. But Luna was at my side the whole time."
The image changed to show the two sisters in battle-plate, ancient armour replete with helmets. Luna carried a spear and shield, Celestia a sword and axe, one in each hand. "A long time ago, Twilight. This was not war as you know it today. There were no nuclear weapons, no heli-jets or spaceplanes, no guns. Just sword, spear, shield and magic."
"Magic..." Twilight mumbled the word. "But..."
"But magic is controlled, limited, sanctioned by the State," Celestia nodded from behind the projected image she was showing. "Indeed it is, today. But it was not always thus. Today, there are no unicorns alive who have unfettered access to their magic. That would be dangerous. Even my soldiers, even ASU agents, must be limited. Why do you think that is, Twilight?"
"I...because...Discord's magic was so strong that you did not want anypony to pose the same threat he did?" Twilight suggested.
"No." Celestia shook her head this time. "Not Discord. His magic was of an entirely different kind to ours, something we had no control over and even less understanding of. No, it was not because of him. It was because of Luna."
Another image, this time depicting Luna, but not as she had been before. She was no longer the elegant Alicorn companion of her sister, but a twisted, darkly beautiful monster, fangs bared, her colours changed, burning deeply with darkness, jet-black, her slitted pupils staring angrily out through the veil, through time, to bore into Twilight's heart. She looked more like a devilish Changeling Queen than a divine Alicorn, her robes tattered and shredded, her armour painted black to match her body.
"This is what she became," Celestia stated bluntly. "My sister, consumed by rage and jealousy. Paranoia ate away at her mind. She imagined I was plotting against her, when in fact all I was doing was reacting warily to her increasingly threatening behaviour. She became convinced beyond all doubt that I was plotting to have her killed, to seize power all for my own. All I wanted was for her to rule beside me, as we had since we overthrew Discord."
Twilight stared back at those hateful eyes. She did not see a loving sister. Now all she saw was the monster Celestia had described her as becoming, a creature worthy of being removed from history. Not some lost hero to be reclaimed from the mists of the past, but the traitor Shining had compared his own sister to.
"I thought I could correct her, heal her. Show her the truth," Celestia continued. "I was certain she would understand. We would embrace once more and continue to rule. But she turned against me. I had told myself that the one thing I would not, could not, ever tolerate, was treason. Treason against myself and my sister, and what we stood for. When Luna herself betrayed those principles, betrayed my love and betrayed Equestria...it almost broke my will, and my heart. But I knew I had no choice."
"What...what did you do, Your Highness...?" Twilight asked in a tremulous voice.
"I fought her," Celestia replied. "My armies clashed with her armies, my mages struggled with her mages. But my sister was the only one who had any hope of matching me in single combat. She was the only one with magic strong enough to defeat me, and I was the only one with magic strong enough to defeat her."
"So...you...killed her...?" Twilight whispered.
"No, Twilight," Celestia shook her head. "I banished her." The image changed to a shot of the Co-Orbital Body- the Moon. "I fought her in the ruins of the palace. Our swords, our magic and our minds all clashed at once. It was torture, to raise my blade against my own sister, until I convinced myself of the truth I now know. She was not my sister any longer."
A brief flash of the twisted, warped Luna from moments earlier reappeared before Twilight's eyes.
"She fought with her own truth filling her mind, convinced I was the one who had betrayed her, not the other way around. She cornered me, overpowered me. Her sword clattered against my shield time and time again. I could barely hold her magic at bay with my own, and I knew that she could kill me at any moment. That was when a rage gripped me. The same rage, I think, that had filled Luna when she suspected I was plotting against her. The difference was, I knew she had turned on me. There was no suspicion, only fact, for there we were, fighting like barbarians in the ruins we had once both called home. In that rage, I regained my footing, pushed her back. In that rage, I struck her down, readied my magic to destroy her completely. But at that moment, she looked at me with her own eyes once more. Not the eyes of a devil, but of a sister."
Another flash, this time showing the first image Celestia had revealed, of the two Alicorns together.
"But it was too late. She had already shown her true colours," the Princess continued. "I could not spare her...but I could not bring myself to kill her, either. Instead, torn between two choices, I howled with anger and banished her for all eternity, to live inside her Moon which she held so dear. Far dearer and closer to her bosom than she held me. Once the battle was over and the war was won, I decided that if I could not kill my sister, then I would do the next best thing, and kill her name instead."
The images vanished, the hazy magic field dissipating, showing Celestia in her true majesty once again. "All mention of my sister was to be forbidden, lest it stir up some other nascent rebellion in the future, for she still had followers, even after the war. Those who were convinced I was the one at fault. I could not ever allow her name to be used in anger against me again. Equestria would crumble beneath my feet if I did."
She took a step back. "I did not fear for my own safety, for nopony could hope to defeat me. But my sister and I had brought peace to Equestria. Peace, unity, prosperity. That all fell away after the civil war, and it took years to regain. I wanted nothing more than stability for all ponykind, and if I were left to rule over the broken remains of a kingdom torn apart by a second civil war, then I would have failed myself. I would have let my sister's betrayal be the downfall of Equestria. I could not allow that to happen. Peace at any price, Twilight Sparkle. Peace at any price."
Twilight felt her pain. She could feel it almost palpably on her skin as Celestia spoke of her sister's betrayal. How awful it must have been.
How awful.
She found herself almost brought to tears, despite being a prisoner of the Sun and State, for Celestia's testimony had been so heartfelt and genuine that she could easily imagine herself in the same position, forced to fight her brother...the same brother who had been the one to lock her up in this chair and assault her physically and verbally over something she, for the most part, had not even done.
I hadn't, had I? I didn't really do what he claimed...
Celestia did not do what Luna claimed...
Am I Celestia, or am I Luna? Oh, dear Sun, please...let me not be Luna...
"Now perhaps you understand a little better," Celestia spoke again. "Some modicum of knowledge, that which you sought to uncover by your own endeavours. I believe you asked your brother why we still have our nuclear weaponry, also? Well, now you have the answer."
"I...I do?" Twilight blinked. "I don't understand..."
"Insurance," Celestia replied. "Even I am not convinced I could survive a nuclear blast. The same applies to my sister. I banished her for eternity, but...just in case my magic was not strong enough...there is a reason we have our nuclear weaponry in orbit and not in missile silos like we used to. Much better range, since the fuel is not depleted having to drive the missile through the atmosphere. That means a single missile can reach anywhere on the entire planet, and it also means they can get up to sufficient speed to leave orbit entirely. You see, our orbital stations can be rotated to fire away from the planet as well as toward it."
Twilight slowly nodded. "I-i see, yes..."
"I trust that they will never be used, but if they are needed..." Celestia drew her sword from its sheath, a finely balanced weapon, almost like a fencing foil, not like the broadsword she wielded in the magical imagery she had shown to Twilight, but no less lethal if used properly. "The same can be said of many things. We hope for the best and prepare for the worst, do we not?" she smiled grimly, looking down at the captive mare. "So now you know the truth. You know of my sister, of her foul deeds, her betrayal, of the war that followed. You know of her imprisonment, of the reasons why her name has vanished."
She extended the sword, bringing it almost to the tip of Twilight's snout.
"That is why I must pass this sentence. You know too much, but you already knew too much before you came to this place. Twilight Sparkle, in the name of the Glorious Sun, I sentence you to death by firing squad for the crimes of high treason and heresy."
"No...no, what...?" Twilight gasped, her voice coming in ragged, panicky breaths. "Please, you can't! Your Highness, please! I am not a traitor! I'm not a heretic! I love you! I love Equestria! Please!"
Celestia turned, sheathed her sword, and left the room, her boots clanging on the metal floor outside, the only other sound being Twilight's soft, pathetic sobs.
"Magnificent, isn't she?"
Shining Armor appeared in front of her again. "Truly divine to behold in the flesh, our Princess, our Glorious Sun."
Twilight looked up at him through a veil of stinging tears. "Didn't you hear what she said...?"
"Yes, Twilight, she sentenced you to death," Shining nodded. "A fitting punishment for treason and heresy. Only the Sun itself can issue such an order." He patted her shoulder.
Now, what would you say if I told you that Princess Celestia was dead?"
The Sun Rises, The Sun Never Sets
Twilight blinked away some of the tears. "What the hell are you talking about? Shiny...you just heard what she said! You just repeated it yourself! She sentenced me to death!"
"Or did she?" Shining chuckled. "I'll say it again. What would you say if I told you Princess Celestia was dead?"
"I'd say you're a babbling fool, Shiny!" Twilight sighed, still trembling with fear from Celestia's words. "Why are you doing this? Just...take me and shoot me if that's what she wants."
"A fool? A fool I may be, perhaps, but that does not mean I am a liar," he wiped away her tears with his hand, making her snatch herself away from him by instinct, lest he slap her again. "The Princess is dead, Twilight."
"Don't be ridiculous! She was here! You saw her," Twilight spat. "Stop playing these madpony's games with me, Shiny! Please..."
"No games, Twilight. Just the truth." Shining patted her on the shoulder again. There was another sharp stab in her neck as Shining injected her with something. She still didn't know what they kept giving her. Maybe some kind of sedative...though she still felt alert, and her mind was febrile with thoughts of death and fear.
"How can it be the truth? The Princess is not dead! She cannot die! The Sun Never Sets!"
"She cannot be killed by mortal means, no. Age cannot wither her, nor bullets pierce her. No fire can touch her."
"But she just said...the nuclear weapons, she said..."
"Yes, Twilight. Yes, she did seem to say that. But Twilight, she was not certain, was she? After all, nuclear weapons had not been invented hundreds of years ago."
"But they have been now...so...Shiny, I don't understand..."
"Nothing we make could harm her, Twilight," Shining explained. "No guns, no bombs, no lasers, nothing like that. But magic? Oh, magic is something very different indeed. Magic, powerful enough, can destroy anything. Including the Sun."
"But...nopony has magic like that!" Twilight shouted. "How, Shiny, how, how? What are you talking about? She's alive!"
"No, Twilight. Luna killed her."
"But...no! There's no way..." Twilight shook her head vehemently. "That's impossible. She was just here! How can she be dead? Luna...Luna lost the war!"
"She did. But she killed Celestia first," Shining replied. "They killed each other in that battle, Twilight. In the palace. If I could be allowed to take you there, I could show you the exact spot where each of them died. I can't, of course. No ordinaries allowed inside the palace, even unicorns. Did you know there's not actually anything in there anyway? Of course you didn't. It's a sham, Twilight. An empty shell, a facade for the city. Canterlot sleeps under the watchful eye of the palace and the benevolent Sun who dwells within its walls. Except nopony lives there. Nopony has lived there for a long, long time."
"What are you saying...?" Twilight blinked repeatedly, her eyes still red from her tears. "How could they have killed each other? Celestia was here...she was right here, Shiny..."
"Was she?" Shining asked. "Are you certain?"
"Of course I'm fucking certain!" Twilight shouted, profaning the silent vault of the interrogation room. Why not? We've already spoken all of the blasphemous words aloud here. Might as well swear, too.
"No, Twilight. You think. You believe. But you do not know," Shining retorted sharply. "Just like everything else you have ever believed."
"She was standing right there!" Twilight wailed. "You saw her, you talked to her, you..."
"I did not talk to her, Twilight. Cast your mind back, think. Did you see me interact with her? No," Shining replied. "I bowed my head to an invisible goddess that only you could see, and then I was gone. Twilight, you're confused. I see you, sinking back into the pit of questions from whence you came. But you don't need to be confused. You have all the answers now, don't you? You know so much more than all your friends. So much more than everypony out there in the streets..." He knelt before her once more. "You've learned all those things you wished to learn, all those things you were not meant to know. Do you feel any more enlightened for it? Do you feel...better? Or do you wish you could just go back to a time when you were happy in your ignorance?"
"I don't know!" she cried. "I don't understand anything anymore!" She strained at her cuffs, tugged at the chains that bound her. "Let me go, Shiny, please! Let me go, let me go...please...let me go..." She slumped forward and found his warm embrace greeting her, holding her tightly and close to his chest, like when they were foals, so long ago, back when everything was simple.
"It's alright Twilight. It's alright. It won't be long until you're free, I promise," he whispered. "Not long."
She sobbed into his jacket, letting her emotions run free and wild, all the grief from Rarity's death, the confusion, the fear and anger and disbelief, all pouring out in salty rivers, soaking into the fabric. At least for a moment, here was the brother she once knew, here to comfort her again, like he used to. Always used to. Always.
Then all at once it was over, and she was dragged back to the present. He pushed her away, stood. "You are still confused, aren't you?" he chided. "A confused pony is not good, because a confused pony can ask awkward questions. Don't you think you've asked enough by now, Twilight? Don't you think you should go back to being calm and rational, and understanding your place?"
"But I don't understand that anymore," Twilight snuffled. "I don't understand...what is real and what isn't."
"It's simple, Twilight," Shining replied. "Luna killed Celestia, and Celestia killed Luna. The followers of the Sun were stronger, and they won the war. It was the collective decision of the leaders of the new government to perpetuate the myth that Celestia lived, for they feared another uprising or a war with other powers. If the Griffons or the Zebras had learned of her death, they would have seen a prime opportunity to invade. Followers of the Moon might have tried to install their own leaders, rebel against the weak government since they no longer had the might of the Sun herself backing them. No, it had to be kept quiet. The facade was erected to shield ponies from the truth. That their goddesses, both of them, were no longer with them. One was a traitor, banished forever from history. The other died a hero, to save her followers and the whole world from eternal night."
"But her voice...the vid-recordings, the speeches..." Twilight blinked away her slowly drying tears. "She is everywhere..."
"And nowhere," Shining clasped his hands firmly together. "How would anypony today know the difference? She died centuries ago, Twilight. No creature alive today ever met her. Do you know anypony who has met her in the flesh? Of course you don't. You know her through her deeds, through her words. You know her through her portraits and the synth-voice recordings. It's quite amazing what computer graphics can do these days. So real...any artifacts around the image or blurred edges, well, flaws in the viewscreen. Interference, technical problems with the network. Easily explainable."
"So...you're telling me she's just a...a simulacrum?" Twilight asked, disbelievingly. "A manufactured entity? She's truly...not here?"
"She is not manufactured," Shining retorted. "She is very much real, Twilight. Very much real. Though she may be dead, she is still our goddess, our leader, our Glorious Sun. Her will must be obeyed, and you, despite your obstinacy, know this."
"But you don't know what her will is if she's dead!" Twilight cried.
"Her will was always for her subjects to be happy, safe, secure. For Equestria to be prosperous. Is that not what we have achieved?" her brother asked.
"Maybe...but why not just tell ponies the truth from the start? Why not raise them to know and understand instead of...of...twisting their souls to believe what you want them to believe?" she demanded. "You don't let them live. It's not natural for them to be fed a falsehood from before they're even born!"
"Not natural..." Shining chuckled. "Of course it's natural. In every society, at every point in history, ponies, Zebras, Changelings, whoever you wish to cite as an example, have been indoctrinated in their culture from the moment of their birth. Zebras shamans would wave bones over the foal to ward off curses, Griffons would gift each child with colourful stitched blankets, unicorns of old would bring the child to a window and let them see a magic flash-firework bursting in the sky above to signal their birth. All of those things were indoctrinating the foal into a specific culture. This is no different. Besides, if we did not do this, we would not achieve Celestia's dream. We would not have a safe, happy and prosperous Equestria. We would have the same old division, the same conflict between species, the same friction, the same anger and hatred and violence as we had in the past. Why? Because we would lack the guiding hand of the Glorious Sun, for she is the only thing that unites us all. The only similarity we all possess. Belief in the Sun, Twilight. That is all that holds us together."
"It sounds like you've made all of Equestria live a lie..." Twilight replied, looking up at him.
"Perhaps we have. But is it immoral to lie to shield somepony from a greater harm?" Shining smiled. "If somepony was about to hang themselves in despair, would you lie to save them? Tell them their life had great value, even if it did not?"
"I...I'm not the one in charge of a country!" Twilight responded. "It's not my job to..."
"it's not your job to ask questions, either, yet you did."
"Yes, but..."
"But nothing, Twilight!" Shining snapped. "Equestria has prospered behind its shield of comforting lies, has it not? You need only look around when you are next outside. You will see it. Skyscrapers of glass and steel, clean energy, endless water and food, bountiful harvests, entertainment of all kinds at your fingertips. If all that is not enough for you, the blissful escape of a joy-pill or two, to let you take a mental break high in the clouds. Ponies are happy, Twilight. There is peace, there is plenty. What more could anypony want, Twilight? If it took a lie to maintain that dream, or to build it in the first place, would you dare be the one to turn their dreams into nightmares?"
Twilight knew he spoke total sense. No...she thought he did. Only thought it, and only then because that was what she had been raised to believe. But now that she knew what lay behind the curtain...did that really change her mind? Or did she still feel the same way as she always had?
No, it's just the conditioning! They wanted me to think this way!
I've always thought this way...because I've been forced to think this way!
Twilight had always wanted to make a difference, though through science and not through revolution. This could be her chance, if she could only escape somehow, or be freed...change ponies' minds! Tell them the truth! Their Princess was dead, it was all a lie! She could be a hero to the masses, the one who broke through the fourth wall of this false reality and grabbed the audience by the scruff of the neck, screaming at them, shaking them from their illusion.
It's a lie! She's dead! They make you love her! They make you all love each other! Listen to me, I know the truth now! I have seen the light, and the light no longer comes from the Sun!
But she couldn't. She wouldn't. Even if Shining released her from her bonds and sent her home right now, she could not. He was right. This truth, this disturbing, concerning, painful truth? It was not the answer.
These ponies were happy. Everypony was happy. They were forced to be happy, unconsciously; they did not know why, and they did not know the reality of it all. They did not know about the Princess, yet they lent their unthinking obedience and love to a goddess whose dusty bones lay in some unmarked, unknown grave, buried long ago but kept alive in a collective mental life-support machine, hundreds of millions of ponies all lending their souls to power it. Keeping her name circulating like blood, keeping her voice and her words filling the air like breath, keeping her truth and her teachings burning like synapses in the brain, and she in turn lent them strength, wisdom, determination, courage. All the virtues she embodied in life, and now embraced in death.
Her body may have been cold in the ground, but her spirit flared brighter than ever, through the vision that her followers had achieved despite her absence. Equestria was safe, happy, prosperous. That was what she wanted for her subjects. That was what they had done, in her holy name. If it took a lie, a monumental lie, to keep that truth intact, it was worth it. It had to be. The alternative was the brief light of understanding and knowledge, followed by a long, cold darkness as everything began to fall apart, unravel. If the truth came out, there would be riots, uprisings, probably a civil war. Earth Ponies and Pegasi, who made up the bulk of the armed forces and police, would soon come to resent their apparent domination by the Unicorn elite if their mental conditioning was broken. The Degenerate Races would quickly have the blinkers removed from their eyes to witness their own oppression at the hands of ponykind. Even if some of the army remained loyal, pulling units from the borders with the Degenerate Zones would open up the possibility, unthinkable for generations, of an outside invasion, perhaps by Changelings or Dragons, however many of those there were left alive out there. And the examples Shining had used, of power grid failure or nuclear attack from orbit, well, it was hardly outside of the realms of possibility that they could come to pass too. Anger and resentment, especially against something that had once given you deep and everlasting comfort, were powerful emotions. Happiness, however artificial a construct it might have been, was the only thing keeping the whole shaky, creaking edifice of Equestria from collapsing. Twilight could see that now. In fact, it was the clearest thing in her mind, singing out like a clarion call. Now she understood. Now she understood.
"No," Twilight said, at long last, her single word echoing around the small chamber like a gunshot.
"No, I couldn't do that."
"Good girl," Shining smiled. "Now you see. Imagine living with that burden every day. Knowing you could reveal the truth, even by accident, and destroy everything. Now imagine somepony coming across that truth by mistake. Unburned letters, perhaps. A lost drawing, a scribbled note. Imagine. Now you know why we have to act the way we do, Twilight. Now you know why we have you here, chained up to that chair."
Twilight nodded slowly. "I understand, Shiny..."
"It does not matter which truth or which lie you believe, so long as you believe in the Sun, and only the Sun. That is the only constant we have in life, the only reality, Twilight. The Sun controls us, shapes us, guides us. Some ponies are raised to believe the truth, others are raised to believe a lie, because that is the way things must be done, but so long as you follow and trust in the Sun, which version of that reality you believe in does not matter. Do you understand that, too?" he asked.
"Yes..." she nodded again.
"Then we are done here," he replied. "I shall see you again in three days."
"Why? What happens then?" Twilight asked. Her brother's reply turned her blood to ice once more.
"In three days? Your execution."
"What...? But...but she...the Princess...she's not real, you said! She can't..."
"She didn't," Shining explained. "The State ordered it, Twilight, and the ASU signed it. For the crimes of heresy and treason."
"But Shiny! No...y-you said only the Sun can sign an order of...of...e-execution..."
"That is true," he replied. "In the Sun's name, Twilight, the order must be signed, and with no Princess, it must be signed by the State instead." He produced a scroll from his jacket's breast pocket, the corner of the document stained from Twilight's tears where they had soaked through the fabric. "Would you like to read it?"
"Shiny...!" Twilight began to shake with fear again. "Please...t-tear it up...!"
"Oh, I can hardly do that now, can I? It hasn't even been signed yet. See?" He showed her the document, complete with royal seal. There was an empty space at the bottom for a signature.
"No, no, no...let me go!" she screamed. "Let me go, Shiny! Please! Tear it up! You said only the Sun can sign it! Only the Sun can order it!"
Shining produced a pen from another pocket and began to scribble his name at the bottom of the scroll.
"For this brief moment, Twilight? I am the Sun."
He stepped out of the room, and the door slammed shut behind him.
The Sun Rises, The Sun Never Sets
What a lovely day it was!
The Sun was shining down brightly, the city looked like a paradise with its glowing spires illuminated by the light from the heavens. What a wonderful place Canterlot was, truly.
Everything was perfect.
Was.
A lively parade, floats and banners and music, and there was Rarity, alive and well, smiling, laughing gaily at some joke or other. How beautiful she looked.
Everything was perfect.
Was.
There was her brother, waving happily in greeting, beckoning her over, drawing her into a tight hug. How nice to see him! he had been away for so, so long on deployment with the army. Years, it seemed! So long away in the desolate parts of the planet. How nice to see him again.
Everything was perfect.
Was.
But what was this? A shadow, long and monstrous, cast its pall over the parade. Ponies looked up curiously. Clouds? No, not clouds.
High above, the Sun was disappearing. An unexpected eclipse! This was unusual. There had been no announcements from the space agency about this. No astronomers had predicted it. She hadn't predicted it, seen nothing of it in her work and study. No, this was most bizarre. Most bizarre indeed. Something was very, very wrong.
Now there were screams. Confusion had turned to terror, and the sky had turned blood-red. Ponies were howling. The chatter of gunfire, a most unusual sound. Almost like the patter of raindrops upon a window, or a gently crackling fire. But how peculiar! Everywhere she looked, ponies were lunging at each other, tearing at each other, like feral dogs, wild beasts uncaged beneath the crimson sky. Ah, there was the source of the gunfire, a squad of police farther down the boulevard, their pistols and rail-rifles crackling. What were they shooting at? Why, other ponies of course!
Oh, how awful.
How awful.
A sudden blow to the side of her head. What? She turned. Her own brother, hitting her! Frothing at the mouth, he struck her again, sending her tumbling to the ground, the hard stone slabs, warmed by the rays of the sun. He jumped on top of her, howling, howling, baying like a wolf, screaming unintelligibly at nothing. Oh, stop, stop!
Somepony help!
He clawed at her with his hands, until an explosion of blood erupted from his skull and he slumped over, lifeless, broken. The police squad had reached her, saved her! Oh, but now they were aiming their weapons at her, and...
And she awoke, with a terrible start, drenched in sweat, shivering, shaking like a leaf blown on a tremendous breeze. In truth she wasn't even sure how she had gotten to sleep in the first place. Perhaps by focusing on all those happy thoughts, from so long ago now, it seemed. So long ago.
No warmth from the Sun reached her here, nor any light, save for the pale and painful incandescence of the bulb in the ceiling. That never ceased, a kind of torture in itself, burning into her even when she slept. She could almost feel it seeping into her skin. Still, all that would be over soon.
Today was the day.
This would be it, the culmination of all the stupid, dangerous questions she had asked herself, asked the world, and sought the answers to. This was where everything had led. As it must, she knew that now.
The Sun Rises, The Sun Never Sets.
A dead Princess, a corpse-goddess on a hidden throne, ruling over a land of the un-willfully blind.
They served breakfast, but Twilight could not eat. She left the tray untouched upon the serving hatch as her broken mind, half-crazed with fear, clung to the things she knew were real. The bed she sat upon, the endless light that refused to stop shining, the rough, coarse prison garb she wore. That was it. They were the only things she could trust anymore. The rest of her world had collapsed like a house of cards around her, like a simulation where somepony had pulled the plug.
Her own brother had signed her death warrant, because the Princess she worshiped was long since dead. She had seen her in the interrogation room, but that was a hallucination, the drugs they kept sticking in her, probably. The perfection of pony society was a lie, carefully manicured and tended to by the ASU and others who were in the know, the ones who could see both sides of the veil. Equestria was not a paradise won by the might of the Sun and her devout followers, it was a fiction intended to ensure the continued rule of a small minority, those Unicorns who knew the truth.
She presumed it was only Unicorns, anyway. But how much did others know? How much did Applejack know, the leader of the team which had arrested her? Did she know everything, the same as Shining Armor, or was she in the dark too? Was she told simply that Twilight was a subversive, a heretic, and that was reason enough to arrest her, or did Applejack and her team know why she had technically committed heresy? Did they know about Princess Luna, or was that an empty name to them, as it had been to her when she first heard it?
Her brother, too. He acted like he knew the truth, but if those who ran the world -the Council and its Chairpony, presumably, in the absence of a Princess- were keeping so much from the population, might they not also be keeping some things from their agents, too? Shining had admitted as much a few days earlier.
Those roles entitle them to more information than the rest of the public will ever know. Some of it I have explained to you already. Some, I do not know myself.
But how did he know that he didn't know? And what didn't he know? Twilight had thought she had known the truth all her life, and now that truth lay shattered and broken around her. She had never doubted. She had never known that she didn't know.
And now she knew nothing, and everything, all at once.
It was raining, of course. A light drizzle, but enough to convince her that fate was laughing at her, because of course it would be raining for an execution.
Her feet and hands manacled, clad in her dull grey prison uniform, Twilight shuffled slowly out into the courtyard, escorted by two burly guards, and Applejack, as the arresting officer. All wore suitably sombre expressions, for this was no celebration, even for the loyal members of the ASU. A pony was about to die, though a heretic she be. Still a pony. Still a Unicorn.
Twilight instinctively halted as she saw the bare concrete wall across the courtyard, pitted and pock-marked with bullet holes. It looked like the surface of the Moon, dull and barren and lifeless. She recoiled in revulsion, in terror. The strong arms of the guards dragged her onward.
How many have they killed here like this?
Oh sweet Sun, I'm next...
Shining Armor was there, in his uniform, smart and trim and proper, hands clasped behind his back as though he were there to watch a military parade.
Is he really going to just stand there and watch them kill me...?
She trembled, more from fear than from the cold, though the drizzle quickly soaked her through as the guards marched her over the inner courtyard of the ASU building. Rain pooled underfoot, while overhead she could hear the thrumming roar of a spaceplane taking off from the Orbiport.
To New Zebrica, maybe...or Hoofston...oh please, take me with you!
Not that it mattered where it was going, for nowhere was beyond the reach of the ASU, nowhere was out of the watchful gaze of the Sun. That much was abundantly clear to Twilight now. She had not left much of a record of her actions, had used the public terminal instead of her own, concealed herself as best she could, not told anypony about her investigations...
Well, nopony except Rarity.
Oh, but surely...no, no...there's no way. Absolutely no way that Rarity would have...
She shook the thought from her mind. She was not about to die because of Rarity, but Rarity had certainly died because of her. Her inquisitiveness, such an important trait in a scientist, had been put to foul use, poking her snout into things that truly did not concern her. They never had concerned her before, and now, they never would again.
A good scientist is infinitely curious, but only about science.
If only she had heeded the wise words of her university professor when he had spoken them to the lecture hall full of bright young minds at the start of her academic career. Rarity would still be alive. So would the Princess. So would she.
Her curiosity had been sated, but Twilight wished to go back, back to the blissful ignorance she did not even know she had been wallowing in all her life. When the Princess was alive, when Equestria was a paradise and not a paper world of lies and deceit. Back to where everypony else lived, inside their bubble, inside their forced fantasy where their minds were closed and atrophied, but safe. That was where she wanted to be. Not here in this rain-soaked quadrangle that reeked of death, the graveyard of independent thought, where they buried the truth and its unfortunate victims along with it. No joy-pills here to mask pain and sadness and fear. Nothing but reality. Cold, awful, horrifying reality.
Five ponies in ASU uniforms and with rail-rifles slung over their shoulders emerged from another doorway, and Twilight's breath caught in her throat again. There must still be hope, this could still be fake, another layer of falsehood to pile on top of all the others. Maybe the drugs...yes, the drugs they'd given her, although they had not given her an injection that morning. This was all an hallucination, it had to be! Yes, that was it. If you cannot live inside their fantasy, construct your own and make it better.
Shining would not preside over his sister's execution. No chance! It had to all be fake, yes. That was it. Perhaps to scare, to break her mind, maybe even to get her to confess to some other things she hadn't done. Why, at this point, she would gladly confess to killing the Princess with her own hand if it would spare her from death!
Shining approached her, the guards standing her against the wall and stepping away. He looked down at his sister, offering no words of comfort, but simply a choice.
"Blindfold or no blindfold?"
Twilight looked at him aghast. Yes, it had to be fake. Her brother could not possibly act so coldly. He loved her dearly, always had.
"Shiny..."
"Do you want a blindfold or not?" he repeated bluntly, his expression unchanged.
"I...I don't know...please, Shiny...you're my brother..."
He grabbed her by the neck, shoved her against the wall, the rough, pock-marked surface rubbing against her. "Listen to me, Twilight. You're a heretic, you're a traitor, you're nothing. You are not my sister any longer. Not since you found that letter and started searching for answers. What did that get you, hm? All this, that's what it got you." He gestured with his other hand at the grim courtyard, the stone-faced firing squad, the leaden skies. "It got you all this, and it got you nothing. Nothing at all. It destroyed you, because that's what happens when you try to learn things you're not supposed to know. You should have stuck to your job and your studies, Twilight."
She gasped and whimpered, half-choked by her brother's strong hand. Pressed up against the wall where so many others had died after following the same path, she went weak at the knees, fear flooding over her like a torrent like it had at no other point, even when she had heard the Princess sentence her to death, or when Shining signed the warrant.
"P-please..."
Shining released his grip, a look of contempt in his eyes. "You're worthless now, Twilight. Worthless to society, to Equestria, to the Sun. You know things you were not meant to know, and were not conditioned for. You're infected with the poison of the past. You will not be allowed to spread it here in the present."
"Shiny...!" she cried, shaking with fear. "Then...then condition me! Make me one of you! I'm your sister, we must be compatible with...with...whatever they did to you..."
"They did the exact same things with me that they did with you, Twilight," he replied. "Except they fed me the truth and trained me to cope with it, instead of feeding me the lie."
"So train me...!"
"You can't be trained," he replied simply. "Not now. it has to be instilled in you from birth, before, even. In the womb. Magic, gene editing, in-utero injections. Just like you did at the Hatchery, Twilight. Just like you did with those eggs. You made them dumb, most of them. But that one egg, you made smart, intelligent, thoughtful. Just that one egg, out of all the thousands you have ever processed. If Spike had been born dumb and ignorant, you would not have been able to make him smart once he was an adult. That would have been far too late, and it's far too late for you. You've been exposed to information you were not meant to possess and your brain was not prepared for. Not only are you not capable of being trained, you're already broken, Twilight. Spike is still alive, by the way. Would you like to see him?"
"He's...alive?" Twilight quickly nodded. "Y-yes, please...please..." She had imagined her dragon to be long dead, like Rarity. To know he was still alive gave her a tiny warm speck of comfort in her heart. Shining turned to Applejack and nodded, and she moved to the same doorway the firing squad had emerged from. A moment later she stepped outside with Spike in tow. The young dragon's bright eyes lit up as he saw her.
"Mommy Twilight...!" He rushed toward her, his tail wagging from side to side like a dog, a broad, happy grin on his face.
"Spike...!" Twilight's lips twitched and broke into a smile, the first she had felt cross her face in what felt like a lifetime. Spike wrapped himself around her leg tightly. "Mommy Twilight, where have you been...?"
"I'm sorry Spike, I've...been, uh...busy..." Twilight mumbled, unsure how to respond or what the ASU had told the dragon about her. "But it's ok, I'm here now. You're here..."
"They said auntie Rarity died..." Spike looked up at her, his smile now replaced with a sorrowful frown.
"Ah...yes, Spike. Yes, she...she did..." Twilight sighed. Bastards. Why couldn't they have just kept him ignorant...?
Why couldn't I?
"Yes, a real shame," Shining interrupted their reunion. "Spike told us all about auntie Rarity and mommy Twilight and how much he loved you both."
Twilight swallowed hard. "That's nice, Spike. I'm glad you liked her. She was a good mare...she didn't deserve to die." She shot a hard look at Applejack who stood nearby. Her team had been the ones who killed Rarity. Not me.
"The good ones never do," Shining added. "Now, we must be getting along with proceedings. Say goodbye to Spike."
"Goodbye, Spike...I...I love you...mommy Twilight loves you," she told him, unable to pat his little head as her hands were cuffed. "Be good, ok?"
"Ok mommy, I love you...when will I see you again?" Spike asked sadly.
"I don't know, Spike," she told him truthfully. "I really don't know."
"I'll miss you..." he gave her leg another tight squeeze.
"Take good care of him...please..." Twilight implored her brother, who nodded.
"We will. he'll be in good hands for the rest of his life," he assured her, ushering the dragon away, back to Applejack's side. "He's special, you know. Quite remarkably intelligent for his age. You taught him well. There aren't many subverted pets that have the vocabularic depth he possesses. In some ways, it's a shame, I suppose. But it can't be helped."
He nodded to Applejack. She drew her pistol from her holster.
"No...!" Twilight breathed. "Spike! Spike, run! Run away!" she shouted. Spike turned to look at her curiously. Applejack racked the slide of her pistol, pressed it to the back of Spike's head, and pulled the trigger.
"No...!" Twilight screamed. "No, no, no!" He was her baby! Not just her pet, but her surrogate child, her smart, wonderful little...
"I'll kill you!" she shouted in a blind fury, lunging toward Applejack. "You bitch, you fucking..." Shining grabbed her, the two guards who had escorted her tackled her too. "And I'll kill you! You're supposed to be my brother!" she wailed, trying to headbutt Shining with her covered horn, biting at his arm. Maybe this was it. Maybe her mind had finally been broken.
No, it's not me who is broken, it's them.
They're so scared of a name that they would kill a child. They'd kill me. They've killed dozens, hundreds, thousands, who knows how many? Because of a name.
The guards held her down, administering a brief electrical shock-spell to incapacitate her while Shining pressed his wounded arm to his lips, bright red blood leaking from where Twilight's teeth had sunk into his flesh.
They are the broken ones. My brother, Applejack, all the rest of them.
A name. Just a name, that was all. A name more powerful than magic, more terrifying than death, more dangerous than the orbiting nuclear battlestations, a weapon so strong that it must never be uttered, never be spoken of, more potent than nerve gas or radiation or fire. A name they hated. A name they feared above all else.
Luna, Luna! Come and destroy them!
The guards dragged her back against the wall, stood her up. Shining produced the death warrant from his jacket, began reading it aloud.
"On this, the one-hundred and seventeenth day of the one-thousand and tenth year of the reign of the Glorious Sun, I, Senior Agent Shining Armor, do solemnly declare the following sentence, to be read aloud before the suspect, Twilight Sparkle. You have been convicted of the crimes of high treason, heresy, subversive activity, the possession of a deviant creature and the possession of illegal documents. The sentence for these crimes is death by firing squad. That sentence will now be carried out, in the presence of these witnesses, in accordance with protocol and with the laws of Equestria. So sayeth the Princess whom we serve. In Celestia's name. Praise the Sun."
"Praise the Sun," everypony else intoned in unison, all except Twilight, dazed from the shock-magic, anger and fear coursing through her in equal measure. Shining tucked the warrant away in his pocket again as Applejack turned to address the line of armed ponies.
"Firing party! One pace forward!"
Smartly, the ASU officers obeyed her command, in lock-step with one another. Three mares, two stallions, Twilight noted with an almost casual detachedness. Maybe she really had been broken, broken free of her own mind. It was like watching from afar.
"Firing party! Load!"
The officers inserted magazines into their rail-rifles. They would lack the old-fashioned raw sound of a normal gun, as they made use of magnetic acceleration, not unlike the spaceplane launch channels at the Orbiport.
Twilight swallowed, her throat dry. This was it, then. This really was it.
"Make ready!"
A brief glimpse of movement at the other end of the courtyard, a balcony she had barely noticed before. Somewhere for officials to watch proceedings, make note of each execution, perhaps. There was somepony up there now, where there had been nopony before, she was certain, and...
Celestia...!
There was no mistaking it. No mistaking that divine form, ethereal mane, imposing height and stern, beautiful face, especially not after seeing her up close in the interrogation room...or not seeing her at all. But...
It's definitely her...
On the balcony overlooking the death-yard, there she stood, the Sun herself.
But she's dead...
A hallucination, then. All part of the drug-induced confusion and paranoia.
But they didn't give me any injections today...
She remembered the words of her brother from three days earlier. It does not matter which truth or which lie you believe, so long as you believe in the Sun.
"Take aim!" Applejack barked. The five ponies leveled their weapons, aiming at Twilight's chest.
Princess...Princess, I'm sorry...!
"The Sun Rises...!" she wailed, a last, desperate cry, hoping it reached the ears of the Princess, if she were there at all.
"Fire!" Applejack roared. The guns whirred and hissed, hurling their projectiles across the courtyard. White-hot, stabbing pain drove itself through Twilight's body. She contorted, her breath all carried away from her throat by sudden agony. She tumbled in a crumpled heap to the damp stone, her blood leaking out, running in rivulets into the puddles of water beneath her. She twitched, lying on her side, eyes glazed as she stared unseeingly into the abyss, teetering on the brink of eternal Night.
Applejack drew her pistol from its holster once more, but Shining Armor put a hand on her arm, then stepped forward himself. Twilight still had enough life left in her to know her brother, her eyes flickering with a faint glimmer of recognition as she looked up into the barrel of his pistol. Before he squeezed the trigger, he uttered the last words she would ever hear, the only words that mattered, the most important words that could ever be spoken.
"The Sun Never Sets."
