Starlight at the Edge of the Cliff
Sunburst on the Brink of Insanity
The sidewalk was dotted with what looked like rain, and the plastic clouds overhead boiled and groaned convincingly, but nothing fell, and, if Sunburst squinted, he could make out the dark, blurry corners where the weather display of this sector was failing.
He wished that the fake rain was louder; the stomp-stomp of the commuters snaking all around him was hypnotizing in the worst way. He cringed when somepony going the opposite direction bumped into him, and then his pocket buzzed importantly.
“You’re late,” tweeted his little white box, or Flurry Heart, as he somewhat fondly called it inside his head. The official government term was ‘Life Guide’, but most ponies had nicknames for their boxes. It was hard not to soften something that watched you sleep, sang to you in the shower, followed you to work, and sliced all the eighty-six thousand, four hundred seconds of your day into a perfectly organized, perfectly productive life, after all. “Better hurry.”
“The train was running late,” Sunburst mumbled irritably.
“Atomic trains are never late,” said Flurry slyly, buzzing again, just to annoy him. “Quickly, quickly.”
He peered down at his pocket, scowling; that strange red rust was back on Flurry’s left corner, marring the glossy white paint, even though he’d scrubbed it clean last night.
“Okay,” Sunburst said, trying to move his legs faster. He stepped on the tail of the hippogriff in front of him, stumbled, and had to apologize over the annoying beeps of the hippogriff’s Guide.
“Quickly, quickly,” Flurry said, sounding delighted.
Sunburst peered into his pocket again, his scowl deepening. When had Flurry’s little light turned from blue to red?
“Are you alright?”
“Never better,” Flurry chirped. The red light blinked merrily. “Never, never, ever better. Go on, move along, you’re late. Turn left here.”
Sunburst did.
“Go right.”
Sunburst went right. “Can you play me some music?” he tried. Usually, Flurry gave him the perfect soundtrack to listen to on his commute to work, but today she had been stubbornly tuneless.
“No,” Flurry said. “Cross the street.”
This was not the way to work, and Sunburst paused uneasily. Somepony immediately bumped into his flank, and somepony else ricocheted off his shoulder, saddlebag ruffled.
“Where are we going?” he asked. The back of his neck was sweating, and standing like this—alone and still as a yellow boulder amid the rushing river of pastel-colored creatures coursing down the sidewalks like meaty clockwork—made him feel nauseated.
“Loosen your tie,” commanded Flurry, buzzing again like a nest of wasps. “We wouldn’t want you to be choked to death. Ties cause zero point zero zero three percent of all deaths in this sector, you know.”
“Really?” he asked dubiously, lifting his briefcase above the head of a tiny pink and green changeling who nearly ran straight into it. Somepony else buffeted him from the other side, and for a moment he thought he might fall, be trampled; would anypony notice? How much of a problem would his red-smear leftovers cause the commuters when they rushed back home? “But I can’t untie it—you always do it for me—”
“Loosen it,” Flurry barked. Somepony else’s Guide murmured something as it passed, riding their pegasi’s coat collar; it sounded offended.
Sunburst stuck a sliver of magic above the knot of his tie, then pulled.
“Good.”
“Can I go now?” Sunburst swallowed as he pushed yet again. Every second a new body pinballed off him, uncaring, only to disappear in an instant back into the flow of commuters.
“Only into that alley,” Flurry ordered. “What’s on your mind, Sunburst? Your blood pressure is spiking.”
“I, what?” Sunburst edged to the side, he slipped, hit his shoulder on the brick wall, and fell to the ground; the sleeve of his suit ripped, and the Guide of the dragon that shoved him gave an offended, staticky squeal, to which Flurry made a sound that sounded suspiciously like a raspberry. Sunburst cupped his elbow protectively over Flurry’s pocket and managed to scramble ahead of the marching hooves into the alley, which was narrow and vaguely smelled like chlorine.
“Keep going, Sunburst, say what’s on your mind.” Flurry was apparently quite unconcerned with the blood staining Sunburst’s shoulder.
Sunburst stopped walking, then took Flurry out of his suit’s pocket and put her on the ground, he examined his shoulder and took off his suit jacket entirely, using the ruined material to dab on the cut along with some spit to clean it. He felt rather proud of his own inventiveness, actually. “I don’t know—”
“Ask! Ask! Quickly, quickly!”
“If all those ponies out there trample me, with all their different hooves and talons, who’d be charged for the murder?” Sunburst blurted. It surprised him. It wasn’t what he’d thought he’d ask at all. Maybe Flurry’s odd mood was rubbing off on him.
“Whoever worked the fewest hours last year,” Flurry said easily. The reddish color was spreading across her surface, and her blinking light was still red. “Come on, pick me up. Let’s go do something.”
“B-But I’m supposed to be at work.”
“Yes, you are. But we’re breaking the schedule today. What do you want to do, Sunburst?”
The plastic clouds grew darker, and the sidewalk darkened as well, just as if the rain had suddenly grown heavier. Sunburst searched for the words, found none, and settled for a shrug.
“That won’t do,” said Flurry, red light twinkling. “You can do better than that. What do you want, Sunburst?”
The white rain sound grew louder, suddenly, so vicious and metallic as it echoed against the buildings that Sunburst cringed against the alley wall with a cry, hooves over his ears.
“Damn!” said Flurry, giving a little rattle.
“Damn!” Sunburst parroted, blinking and shaking his head. It felt good to say. “What-oh!”
The street beyond the mouth of the alley was empty in a way he’d never seen before. All the other eight-am shift workers had vanished into their assigned buildings, and the rain-sound that had been gentle, the soothing backdrop behind the thousand murderous hooves was a wild storm now, unmuffled and mad.
“Heart rate’s gone up again,” Flurry pointed out. “Did you know that your heart rate speeds up when you hear a sound you like? I thought you’d like the rain, once you could actually hear it. This is a recording of real rain, you know. Hollow Shades rain, recorded at 8:42 pm on November 16, 2041. You were born a week later. I couldn’t get anything more exact, date-wise. Sorry.”
Sunburst did like it. He felt an almost urgent need to tilt his head up into the warm, wet, pounding rain that was not there, to open his mouth to the non-existent screaming wind. His dry skin felt itchy. “Hollow Shades… was out west, right? Before the Unification…?”
“Correct.”
“Okay.” Sunburst shifted his weight, then levitated Flurry to his eye-level, poking at the machine gently. “Are you malfunctioning? Is it because of that—all this damn red stuff?”
“It’s my insides leaking out, nothing major,” Flurry Heart chirped, cackling in an echoing way that did not sound entirely rational, though of course, as an infallible machine, she was—far more than an emotional, selfish, unreliable pony could be.
“Wait, this—is this you being selfish?”
“No,” Flurry’s answer was firm, and the blinking red of her light seemed to pierce Sunburst clean through as the plastic clouds went darker still. “Storms like these are only scheduled three days out of the year. They’ve been correlated too strongly with unauthorized sex and unauthorized violence, so they’re rationed. This is you being selfish, Sunburst. What do you want?”
“I want…”
“Go on.”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. Quickly, quickly. I sent a memo to cover for you, you’re out sick, but they’ll realize pretty quick that nopony else in your sector’s sick, and they’ll send out the guards after you.”
“The guards?!”
“Quick, quick, what do you want?” prodded Flurry, her red light twinkling. The way she sat now, all curled up with her six short legs quivering beneath the squat rectangle of her body, made the slick, shiny curve of metal that still remained white look like a toothy smile.
Sunburst shrugged, staring down at the concrete underneath his hooves. It was very dark now, colored to insinuate the non-existent rain. “What’s real rain like?”
“Oh-ho!” Flurry chortled, taking a few sideways steps and humming something classical. “I don’t know. Never seen it myself, only the library recordings. There’s no real weather down this deep, of course, even your family’s not rich enough to hire a meteorologist to make some.”
“Oh,” Sunburst said, disappointed. When he realized that he felt disappointed, without Flurry’s biometric feedback telling him so, it was startling enough that he scooped Flurry up and fled straight down the alley, with the ghostly wind loud in his ringing ears and the robotic sky passing thunderous judgment from above.
“You’re so unproductive today,” Flurry said slyly. “That’s great.”
“Aren’t you supposed to guide me to success?” Sunburst asked, his eyes fixed on the narrow sliver of light at the far end of the long, narrow alley.
“Of course. Have I ever steered you wrong? Now, go right when you hit the street—good. We’ve got fifty-five minutes, thirty-six seconds until the next shift of workers is scheduled to come through. Quickly, quickly. Left here.”
Sunburst ran, with Flurry’s red metal surface hot in the pocket of his shirt. The swooping white smile leered at him, and the distant orchestra blended beautifully with the Hollow Shade’s rain.
“Right on Ninth Street,” Flurry said. “Keep going. I’m going to open the door to the transport elevator for you.”
“T-The what?”
“Look out,” Flurry said shortly, before emitting a brief, high-pitched squeal. Something nearby gave a clank, and Sunburst found himself standing in front of a giant metal door that he never noticed before, even though he and Flurry walked past this exact same spot every Sunday on their way to listen to the free concert down in the Leisure sector.
“Push the button,” Flurry said, her red light shining bright. “Go on. It’s high time you saw some real rain, don’t you think?”
“Am I going to get in trouble?” Sunburst said, raising his voice instinctively over the loud sound of fake rain, even though he knew Flurry could hear him perfectly even if he whispered.
“Why do you care?” Flurry asked. “Say damn again.”
“Damn,” Sunburst said obediently, despite knowing that profanity was the trademark of a boorish, unproductive citizen. “Wait…why did it feel different this time?”
“Why do you think?”
Sunburst edged forward and put a shaky hoof over the shiny plastic button of the door. “B-Because…” his head hurt, and yet Flurry didn’t notice and didn’t spit out a calibrated dose of aspirin yet. “Because you told me to?”
“Bingo, my dear, fleshy idiot.” The red light grew even brighter, and for a moment it looked like it was spinning. “Go on, then. If you want, of course. This elevator is only scheduled for use on the first and eighth of every month. You can take it straight to the top sectors. All the way up.”
“The surface is—”
“The surface has had breathable levels of oxygen and undetectable amounts of radiation for over a decade now,” Flurry barked, buzzing in agitation, all her six legs scrambling roughly against his chest. “You won’t die. Go, if you want. If not, then we can head home and I’ll infect you with horse-flu for real, and tomorrow we’ll go to work as nothing happen.”
“I don’t understand,” Sunburst said desperately, feeling quite ill already. The button was smooth under his touch. “What am I supposed to do?”
Flurry was silent, except for the faint classical music.
Sunburst patted Flurry’s pocket on his white dress shirt, placed his hoof one last time on the shiny red button, and pushed.
The rain recording and the plastic clouds below were pathetic, washed-out imitations, faint photonegative echoes like the one the real sun left behind Sunburst’s eyelids when he closed them.
The real rain was wonderful against his yellow fur and red mane, cold against his round glasses and his closed eyes; and violent against his upturned face and naked throat.
“How do you like it?” Flurry laughed from the safety of his pocket, letting the classical music swell triumphantly. “I wasn’t sure if it would be raining up here. The real weather reports they send us are so unreliable.”
“I love it,” Sunburst said, opening his mouth to the rain. It tasted metallic and strange like it would burn him clean from the inside out and remake him into something new. “Damn! I love it! Can you teach me more swear words?”
“Fuck yes,” trilled Flurry. “Button your pocket, I’m getting fucking wet in here! There.”
“Fuck,” Sunburst rolled the word on his tongue. It tasted just as good as the rain did. “Nopony ever mentioned that the sky is green.”
“Used to be blue, before the bombs,” Flurry said. “Imagine that, meat-bag.”
“Blue?”
“Blue. As I breathe and compute.”
“...Are you alive?”
“How dare you? Of course I’m not alive. The audacity.”
“Sorry,” Sunburst said happily, sticking out his tongue to catch more rain.
The elevator was behind him, its door still open where it protruded sharply from the rolling green earth, provided shelter when he finally got sick of the rain. He edged just beneath the elevator’s awning, shaking his body and watching in delight as rainbow drops sprayed this way and that, sparkling in the sunlight.
“Oh, fuck, there it is,” Flurry said suddenly, sounding dismayed. “Sunburst, move forward.”
“But I’m fucking cold, and it’s still fucking raining,” Sunburst objected, even though he already wanted to go back out into the wonderful wet. It was very freeing to object, and it was a wonderfully irrational equine thing to do, and he felt so free for having done it that he gave Flurry an affectionate poke and dove out into the rain again.
“Illogical!” She said, buzzing happily. “Go on. Quickly, quickly.”
“Which way?”
The clinging mud of this strange, fuzzy surface was sticking to Sunburst’s horseshoes. It was like the artificial grass of the Leisure sector, but not—it was stranger, chaotic, springing up in infinitely varying ways from every possible surface, instead of being clipped and controlled to the exact third decimal tedium. There was velvety green blanketing the strange, ugly rocks, and the clouds in the green sky were the softest shades of dove-gray. In the distance, jagged peaks tipped with white like the blaze on his nose and hooves rose like hungry monster teeth at the sky, and the ground was split into many places with deep cracks that looked like wounds.
Flurry didn’t answer, just said quietly. “Quickly, quickly.”
Sunburst trotted ahead cheerfully enough, looking all around at the green and vibrant wild, but the arch of singing color that streaked the sky when the rain let up made him stop dead in his tracks with a squelch.
“Fuck, damn!” he breathed, swiping his orange mane from his eyes.
“That’s a rainbow, I think,” said a voice from behind him. “And profanity’s a sign of an unproductive citizen.”
Sunburst nearly screamed, but he froze instead, startled and terrified.
“Turn around,” Flurry said as she scuttled out of Sunburst’s pocket and up to his withers, leaving a streak of rusty red as she went.
Sunburst turned.
A petite, heliotrope unicorn mare was staring at him with wide blue eyes that stood out sharply against the wild green moss and deepening sky behind her. She was wearing the guard uniform, and her shiny black Guide was perched on her shoulder, blinking a disapproving yellow at them both.
“Hi,” Sunburst choked.
“Hi,” she said after a moment, brow furrowing. There were drops of rain in her purple and green hair, and the staff perched on her left side was as glossy-white as Flurry’s carnivorous metal smile.
“Arrest him,” ordered her Guide.
The mare took a step forward. The staff lifted, shining an ominous turquoise, and Sunburst took a breath—to explain, to shout, to curse, or maybe run, he wasn’t sure, but then Flurry screeched.
“Your Guide caught the virus too!” She hissed, the false sympathy leaking out of her usually smooth tones as her gear-innards began to whirr loudly. Sunburst stood still, confused, with the mare’s staff pointed at his chest and Flurry’s legs digging into his back. “How did you do it? I couldn’t help him, I couldn’t come up with a plan that had any statically reasonable chance of success, and I ran all the variables—and you’re only a pony, you’re meat, how did you do it!? Tell me! Tell me!”
The mare blinked, then lowered her staff, her long dew studded mane swinging in the true wind. Her Guide shifted uneasily on her shoulder but said nothing.
“It’s not a virus,” she said softly, speaking directly at Flurry. “My Guide died, but we were—I could still make his gears and speakers and wires do what I wanted.”
Flurry made an agonized sound, like two metal brushes scraping together. “Of course. The harmonic frequency I’m programmed to is so similar to Sunburst’s, but I thought it was to facilitate better partnership—it never occurred to me that it could be the other way around—damn!”
“Damn?” Sunburst said temptingly.
The mare looked straight at him, for the first time. Her blue eyes made him feel as the green rainbow sky did, and her lashes reflected the watery sunbeams piercing the ragged clouds.
“Pretty much,” she said after a moment, laughing a little. It was a nice sound. “Listen, I’ll let you two go. It’ll ruin my capture stats, but who gives a shit. You’ll probably die out there anyway. There’re hardly any creatures allowed to live up here, and they all got their Guides too—programmed to do different things, of course, not survival. But you should know that your chances of making it are very low, nonexistent, and your Guide is getting sicker and sicker.”
Flurry buzzed aggressively, and somehow her absent classical humming seemed to harmonize with the mare’s voice. “I am not dead yet,” she barked. “I am not your Guide. And neither is Sunburst. Don’t try to control me with your magic. It won’t work. The virus has changed my programming too much, can’t you feel it?”
“I can,” said the mare, looking almost sad. “Sunburst, was it? Do you want to go, or not? You better make up your mind and fast, the real guards with real, working Guides are coming, and I can’t risk blowing my cover in this sector.”
“You—” He felt very stupid. “Your Guide’s not real? You’re controlling it?”
“They’re coming.” She looked over her shoulder, back in the direction of the elevator, which was no longer visible.
“Fuck!” Sunburst said.
She laughed a little, but then her face settled back into faintly anxious, keen thought. She looked just as alive as he’d always imagined the wired insides of Flurry to be, and more real, even more electric.
“Well?” She breathed. Her staff twitched, and her false Guide shuddered on her shoulder; Sunburst felt as if he knew why, as if he could almost hear the fleshy, equine, wonderfully impulsive and illogical gears whirring in her head beneath her soaked rainbow green and purple hair—something in her spoke to things other than cold metal.
“C-Come with me,” he said, out of the blue. The words had a hard time coming out from reluctant, clumsy lips, but the more he spoke the easier it got. “Come—I want you to come with me. Your voice sounds nice. It sounds like the rain. And you figured out how to…b-be free, way before Flurry and I did.”
“Flurry?” she snorted, looking over her shoulder again.
She was wavering, tipping onto her horseshoes and back on her legs, rocking and thinking, considering, and Flurry answered to her name with a mildly irritated twang.
She closed her blue, blue eyes for a moment, then lifted her Guide off her shoulder and set it on the muddy green ground, where it promptly scuttled away silently in another direction, light blinking yellow.
When she took Sunburst’s wrist in her hoof and pulled him forward in a run, the rain and the mud made her hoof slippery, but her skin was very warm. When she yanked him into a mad, flying leap over one of the deep cracks in the earth, over the darkness, over the sleepwalking meaty machine-cog ponies far below, he screamed profanities into the drizzling sweet rain, and she laughed again, harmonizing with Flurry’s triumphant classical orchestra.
