Twilight Sparkle and the Stupid Original Pony

The next morning, Isha and I woke to the sound of the settlement coming alive for its second day. Before we could draw aside to talk, a messenger interrupted. Instead, the three of us met President Howe for breakfast. I say three, but in point of fact, Gloam stuffed a nutri-bar –the twenty fourth century predecessor of today’s almost palatable FSB– in her mouth and darted away. Her dart turned to a trot and then a gallop as she transformed for a morning run, grey magic fading around her horn as she accelerated.

Diane was already hard at work, planning, directing, and currently taking a damage report from one of her technicians.

“All four of the fabbers are busted up,” he was telling her, “and most of the spare parts are missing. The hull was holed there, and FabLab was open to space. I think I can get one working, but it could take a few years. I should be able to get the others online once I can fab the parts for them.

“Understood. I think your priority right now is to build a house and get that pretty wife of yours pregnant. A few months delay for a multi year project won’t hurt us, but I don’t want you to go waiting for years to start a family.”

“Yes, ma’am!” he said with a grin. “I’ll go find her.”

“I see her now. Debby! Debby!”

Howe waved down a woman in overalls carrying a long handled mallet over her shoulder. She jogged over and grounded the mallet, leaning on it as her unbound breasts spilled out from behind the bib of her overalls.

“What can I do for ya, prez?” she asked cheerfully.

Both their smiles grew wider as Howe explained exactly what she wanted them to do and how they would accomplish their task.

In the mean time I had conclusively proven that dunking improved neither a nutri-bar nor the cup of brown liquid I had been mistaken to accept at the breakfast station. Isha saw me shudder and wisely did not repeat my experiment.

“Some results don´t need to be duplicated,” she muttered.

A moment later Debby and her fab-tech husband hurried happily away to check her basal body temperature and practice.

—

“Ok, while we’ve got a minute, let me tell you the reason I asked you to meet me this morning. I’ve discussed this with my cabinet, and we have decided not to accept your resignation. We don’t expect (or want) you to rule us, but we’d like you to stay Queen.”

I frowned.

“Please?”

“I have but one condition to demand.”

“Yes, your Highness?”

“I reserve the royal prerogative to—” here I pounced “—noogie anyone who calls me ‘your Highness’!”

As I ground my knuckles into her scalp her ankle hooked behind mine and we both landed atangle.

“It’s just a title!” she insisted as best she could – I hadn’t lost my grip on her head and now her face was pressed against me as I continued to abuse her scalp. Her hands were free and she started to tickle.

“Break it up, you two,” Isha said. “Before I get jealous. Or join in!”

I released the president and rolled to the side before sitting. I had no illusions of winning a wrestling match against Isha. And I'd definitely want some privacy for losing that bout.

“Okay. But try not to make a big deal about it?”

“Thank you,” she panted. “Can we make you a crown?”

“That’s pushing it…”

But a group of engineers needed her attention and I’d have to argue the point later.

—

As another group finished a consultation with President Howe, Isha caught my eye and mouthed a name. I turned back to the President.

“Diane, We’re wondering something. We know a band of itinerant artists, engineers, craftsmen. They are living illegally in empty, condemned arcologies. Can—”

“Yes,” Howe broke in, “unless they are violent hoodlums, we want them.”

I ignored Isha’s side-eye. Tackle one President and suddenly you’re a hoodlum.

“We lost almost a hundred of our number, and more to the point we all went through the same screenings and the same training. We’d love to get some outsiders. You, and your daughter, and you too, Isha, are welcome too, please join us. If you’re in danger on Terra, stay with us. You are our heroes.”

For a moment my heart leapt at the notion of migrating permanently to Gallop. But my despite weakness and failure, my husband would surely come for me some day. Whether I deserved it or not, I knew she would never give up as long as she lived. The thought of Twilight searching Terra, in vain, for me was too much to bear and the tears started.

“I can’t stay, I just can’t. There’s somepony I have to wait for, even if it kills me.”

Howe stood and threw her arms around me. “It’s okay, it’s okay, do what you need to. But if you ever need it, there will always be a place for you on Gallop.”

Isha was holding me too, and for a moment I just floated in the double embrace.

Without disentangling, or bothering to dry my eyes, I murmured, “Isha, you should stay here where it’s safe. You—”

“I’m sticking it out on Terra,” she said, and I knew there was no arguing with her.

“Thank you,” I said to Diane, pulling myself together after the burst of emotion, “I’ll try to check in when I can. What’s on the slate for today?

“My physics team is down to one, so if Isha can help set up her equipment, I’m sure Dr. Smith’d appreciate that. Maybe you could grab Debby’s hammer and take over driving anchoring stakes so that the pop up shelters can’t blow away if the weather changes before we build more solid housing. I’ll try to find something grubby enough to warrant your daughter’s attention.”

—

After a morning anchoring all the shelters, I broke for lunch and went looking for my daughter.

I found Gloam down by the crick. Somehow she was directing the effort of a team of adults who were completing the trenchwork she had started. A half dozen workers with two small excavators had nearly completed the task after only a couple of hours, already the hose and power cable were buried and ready for the team who would connect the ends.

Soon there would be something like a beginning of civic infrastructure. Primitive outhouses had been set up as a temporary convenience, but there another team extracting the Seven’s water recyc for repair and re-purposing as a small sewage plant beyond the outskirts of town. A self contained purification plant was already supplying drinkable water, hauled in buckets from the crick. By tomorrow it would draw from the water line Gloam and her team had prepared.

Looking for Isha, we headed back uphill together, trekking to the far side of my initial campsite where the observatory would be located. The plan was to move it further away once the city grew too large and bright but for now their instruments, as well as my relocated telescope, were set up just beyond the circle of fruit trees.

Loren Smith, the one remaining physicist on the mission, chose to stay and calibrate the equipment they had set up while Isha joined us for lunch.

The three of us sat together with bowls of reconstituted stew that had traveled light years. I needed to talk to Isha after my emotional outburst after breakfast but Gloam was sticking like her infamous glue despite having spent her morning being totally independent.At first I thought she was trying to block Isha and me apart – and then I realized that what she was doing, she was trying to be close to both of us. She couldn't possibly realize what was at play, only that she sought stability. I nodded subliminally to Isha. Conversation could wait – we both scooted closer to Gloam and let her take what comfort she could. Almost like a real family.

“Do you Garny’s people will want to come here?” I asked.

The topic of potential emigres was alright for a family discussion.

“Uh, yeah. I know you haven’t met him, but he used to work in maintenance at the lab. Hardcore fantasy reader. If I tell him that you have a one way door to another world wild, eh, ponies won’t be able to hold him back.”

“What about the rest of the group?”

“I think they’ll follow where he leads. He’s kept them alive this long, they trust him.”

“Will there be more kids?” Gloam bust in to the conversation.

“About ten or a dozen. There are several family groups in the band.”

“Yay! More minions for Princess Gloam!”

Somepony needed to teach that girl a thing or two about what princessing was all about.
—

After lunch, Isha went back to work doing more physics stuff. Meanwhile Gloam and I turned pony and headed out to deploy more security nodes at the security guy’s request. Having unexpectedly benefited from the gear that I brought, Eric Choi was getting additional coverage with his own equipment. He wanted eight nodes in a ring five kilometers across surrounding heart of the colony, which meant that we had about thirty kilometers of trotting ahead of us. It would be good exercise, and we could do the work faster than humans afoot could. The warning system would give the colony time to react if anything hostile appeared. The possibility still seemed vanishingly unlikely, but I approved of the care they were taking.

“Mom,” Gloam asked as we set up the third of the tripods, using our hooves to drive the anchors into the ground, “are you really okay after flying that spaceship? Something seems different.”

I had mostly recovered from the magic overload, but how much had she seen? Could she see how the power had affected me?

“I think so.” I smiled – physically, my words were quite true. “It was a very close thing—” with a twinge of guilt I realized that there was more than one way to interpret my words “—but I pulled it off.”

“I thought you might die.”

“I had my worries, too, but it takes a lot to kill your ma, sweetie. I’ll try to be more careful.”

“It was real right? It kinda seems like a dream.”

“Let’s just call it a dream, baby.”

It would be easier that way.

I raised a hoof to the sensor head and tried to wiggle it. Rock solid.

“Time to go, we got five more of these to set up before din-din.”

By the time the last node was anchored in position, hoof was already setting. After a hot afternoon of work, and the cool of the coming evening, the promise of supper inspired us to gallop.

—

“I suppose, if it’s been two hundred years, the reports from all the other Longshots are public record back home,” Guy asked over dinner.

Isha and I sat with him and Diva to eat. All the children, Gloam with them, ate together. Maybe a quarter of the young colonists had been swayed, so far, by Gloam’s naturism. Adults were slower to adjust, but Isha and I were not the only nudes in the crowd.

“Yep, and its taught in History at school. Any kid in the Solar Worlds can recite the Longshot series, ask Gloamie, they have a song about it. Of course, you being alive is going to change the lesson plan. Terra presumed that there was no hope for the Seven after you lost your flight crew and shot off the ecliptic. The image of the lost starship flying forever… very poetic.”

“What happened? The companionway to the main bridge was sealed off and I could see stars through the window. We’ve all seen how beat up the Seven is now, but some of that happened during the landing.”

“The fricken miraculous landing,” Diva said as an aside.

“You hit a rock on the way out of Sol system,” Isha explained. “Apparently it didn’t show up on the radar. Which should be impossible. From the amount of damage done, there is no way it was small enough for radar to miss. Meanwhile, every man, woman, and child in the world held their breath as the damage report came in. Your main antenna was destroyed, a strut in the backup antenna array was failing. Then we lost the signal,” her voice dropped to a whisper, “and you were gone.”

I stood to go see if the mess crew would suffer me to help them with the cleanup.

“Haunting,” said Guy, “I wonder if my sister made it? She was on the Longshot 9.”

I sat precipitously again, nearly dropping my plate, but at least I didn’t black all the way out.

“What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

“Guy, I think I just heard a ghost. Go ask my daughter to sing you the Longshot song.”

Rather than question me, he stood and walked towards the area where the children congregated. In a few minutes he was back.

“The song only goes up to seven. What gives?”

“I don’t know. Everybody on Terra knows that there were seven Longshot flights.”

Close at my side after my near faint Isha nodded her agreement.

“And now you tell me there were nine.”