COZY GLOW WAS ALWAYS A ROBOT
Harmony doomed us.
Cozy Glow was always a robot. This was a certainty, at least now we know. We didn't know that before since her body was flesh, although all this time she apparently had teeny-tiny cyber-bio-organic organs inside. We didn't know that until later since when she came we didn't have electronics. And even when we did have electronics, we trusted her by then and it was far too late.
I doomed us.
"Twilight!" Spike objected, reading over his friend's shoulder.
"I need to write this down for future generations so they won't make the same mistake."
"You'll come across as a fool!" Spike shook his head.
"I'll come across as a villain; and that's exactly right," Twilight sighed.
"It was right to kill her. She wasn't even alive."
"Was she?" Twilight cocked her head at Spike, her no-longer-so-little dragon advisor, adopted brother, and friend. He rolled his eyes. "I have made many mistakes," Twilight continued.
"So have we all," Spike insisted.
"Consequences of a ruler's mistakes are amplified more than anyotherpony's."
Silence.
"You know I am right." Twilight picked up her pen again. An amazing invention--the pen--more reliable than the quill. She set it down.
"Can you rustle up any quills?" She asked Spike.
He snorted. "Ink run out?"
Twilight shook her head and cast a meaningful glance at the pen, then at the book.
"Oooooh," Spike nodded.
After a great search, a quill and ink to fill it was located.
Twilight wrote:
The time had come to free The Three from their transmogrified triune statue prison. It was our duty as ponies to seek harmony above all else. My greatest friends: Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash were long dead. Discord, Lord of Chaos and friend to Fluttershy, went on sabbatical following her demise, searching the planes for her soul, he said. We have not seen him since. The last pony from the "Great Age of Friendship", our erstwhile villain turned heroic Starlight Glimmer, with her dying breath, had asked me for a boon, to provide these last few unredeemed villains a second chance.
And so I did.
Disentangled first from the graven trinity of terror, Tirek, the terrible centaur who had swallowed magic whole and nearly enslaved Equestria at least three times over, raged. Luster Dawn, my unicorn student, restrained him with her magic. Flaming Dawn, my kirin captain of the guard, stood alert, burning in powerful burning nirik form and Seabreeze the resourceful hippogriff floated nearby, cautiously clutching a magic-suppressing net. We needed all three of them.
But Tirek was calmed. Breezie-donated tranquilizers helped.
He was persuaded. Starlight Glimmer had been right. I should have paroled him sooner. She should have been able to see successful results of her plea. But no. I'd waited too long.
I would not make that mistake again.
Chrysalis was next. The Queen of the Changelings. Arrogant. Jealous. Unrepentant. Even Starlight thought she never could reform--but Starlight said we needed to make an effort. Monarch Thorax, her spawn, spoke to her--the child had evolved from drone to become an egg-layer and a leader.
She was aghast: "You cannot be a QUEEN! You were not coded that way!" She shrieked, rearing up and refusing to understand how generations had grown and things had changed.
"But I have overcome that--" Monarch Thorax, many years older since we had met during the Great Age, but youthfully renewed by the laying of eggs that is necessary for the perpetuation of the Changeling race, began. "And I've also overcome my reticence in confronting you."
Chrysalis sneered: "If you are truly a QUEEN, then you certainly know there can only be ONE in the hive? Have you brought me back in your dotage to challenge me by fighting to the death so that you will have an honorable one restoring our species' proper head to her position? Precious. I'll allow it. I'll slaughter you, feast on your remains and resume my rightful ruling position." She chuckled. "I'll accept that penance, you drone." With a toothy grin, she flicked out her long tongue in a mocking twist. "Ready to admit your eggs are barren as they must inherently be?"
"The hive thrives." Thorax explained, showing her a hatchery and colorful baby changelings. "And we survive." The changeling lands had prospered greatly in the intervening years, using their love magic to construct towering structures and grandiose artistic sculptures.
Chrysalis glimpsed, then stared on the accomplishments with surprise. Still, when she thought Thorax's attention was most misdirected--during a digression on improved nursery environmental habitation--she lunged at the Monarch.
She was defeated.
Thorax had grown strong in the years since Chrysalis' fall. But Thorax still had compassion. Chrysalis was spared.
"What purpose could you have for me?" She hissed: "Little Thorax." She infantilized her spawn.
"You enjoyed exerting your will on others," Thorax started. "And planning."
"Yessssss...." Chrysalis hissed.
Chrysalis was given a desk job, deep in the Changeling hive, reckoning tallies with abacuses while laying eggs as she tried to solve problems of distribution. With her calculating mind, the Changeling population was able to more effectively maximize their love resources. Based on information provided by Thorax, she plotted her 'battle plans': they were really immigration and public housing directives. She matched loving changelings as determined by the smell of their pheromones and a series of personality test batteries tested against databases of information she kept inside her robust cranium. She maximized efficiency by pairing them into optimal beloved output configurations.
The hive did not strictly need her contributions to survive, but they were beneficial. She was hyper-focused, intimately familiar with the musk and smell of her hivemates and her plans were exponentially better than her predecessors'. She knew this. Thorax's hive made sure she knew this. And she felt wanted, as Twilight and Thorax wished.
Still, she hated.
But she had a job.
Like Tirek, "the fool and failure," as she called him.
But, she smugly gloated to Thorax: "her job was better," Thorax noted in a pensive panicked letter to me warning that she was surreptitiously signalling preparations for a coup. All turned out well for her and Thorax, though, in the end.
Tirek, who Chrysalis had derided, was a "customer service expert" at Hayburger.
He hated that job. But, deep down, he also loved it.
Customers could pay with bits or with a little magic. He coveted that magic greatly and labored diligently to earn his 'hits' of joyous influx of power. Poor ponies had a way to pay at his Hayburger that was not available elsewhere. Many of those overextended by debt flocked to his Hayburger for luxuries like milkshakes, licorice-laced salt licks, chocolate double-dipped salt-encrusted carrots and more. Everycreature prospered since even poor ponies' magic could regenerate over time.
But the 'hits' from those ponies only succored him so much and the high they raised in him eventually dissipated, at least the feeling went away did unless he worked out. So he spent his nights in the gym and he stayed buff and big and powerful. As he aged out his days, he prospered and took charge of a store, then a franchise after Cozy Glow found a way to bottle the ponies' magic, but that came later.
"I don't want to write anything out of sequence," Twilight complained. "Anachrony is weak writing. Except in certain circumstances..."
Spike put a claw on her shoulder. "It fits thematically. You talk about Tirek here and then you move on to your main point. No need to revisit him."
Twilight shifted uncomfortably. "I'm old, Spike..." Many hundreds-of-years-old-informed tears formed in her eyes.
"Just keep going. You can always write a second draft later."
Our biggest problem was the third of the stone cold-hearted trio. The child. The one with no parents: Cozy Glow.
She emerged from the statue, and we all girded ourselves, ready to rebuff her onslaught. She once had held chaos magic in her hooves. But she just demurely smiled and grinned a "Golly! Thanks everypony and creature for welcoming me back! So many of youse all here!" Her eyes narrowed as she took in the new sights. "Ooohh. Good ta' see ya' Tirek and Chrysalis."
"Not here as an ally!" Chrysalis glared through her glasses. Late nights crunching numbers for Thorax's changeling monarchy had done a number on her vision.
"Nor am I." Tirek flexed muscles that had been honed by the labor of his many weightlifting nights and supplemented by bits of magic-draining.
"But my, what large muscles you have, big guy! You must have been eatin' well?" Cozy reached out with a foreleg and ran a hoof across Tirek's rippling sculpted product.
"Ha," Tirek laughed, to my great concern. "I have power of which you know not, little one."
"Oooh," Cozy placed a hoof over her mouth and chuckled demurely. "Sounds like a challenge."
Tirek's eyes narrowed. "It's called workout power. I acquired it from the gymnasium."
"Golly," Cozy said. "Guess I'll have to find this 'gymnasium' you mention. Sounds like a swole time, true?"
"That's not why we freed you," I explained, stepping in front of my crew. "It's time to come home Cozy. You served your time in a stony prison. We want you to become our friend--joining us in true harmony, not joining us to obtain some power from the magic of friendship but to obtain the warm feeling of unity and friendship and love. Tirek and Chrysalis have been doing well--you can too." I moved to embrace Cozy Glow, setting aside memories of the pain she'd inflicted on Equestria several times before. "I forgive you." We hugged. Then we parted.
She twisted her head a little bit to the right, then moved it a bit more: further, further, further, then she reset. "Golly, a lot to process," she wheezed. "Harmony, I guess, is the best choice. Isn't it the only real choice? Can't live any other way in Equestria what with those windigos that threaten to destroy anything whenever things get a bit too disharmonious, righty? An' obviously, indubitably, we don't have any other options to be out and about, right?" She glanced back at the empty pedestal behind her--a prison that would contain her no more.
Matters went well at first. Cozy seemingly reformed for real. She recited the principles of harmony and friendship and, more importantly since she'd elegantly quoted those before, she lived their precepts and did well without manipulation. No more 'evil' of the mustachio-twirling type or even the 'pure evil' version.
Death followed for many, in the natural way. My mentors Celestia and Luna who had long-since ceded to me their powers, temporal and magical, passed from this life. Cadance the princess of love, my sister-in-law, who although an alicorn was only long-lived and, since she lacked the powers of celestial bodies not near-immortal--she died too. And my brother....
Enduring despite the changing cast of souls surrounding me, I daily raised the sun and lowered it in place of the moon as Equestria's nearly ageless and certainly near-immortal Princess, fulfilling a role and purpose hoofed over to me by my mentors' retirement. The job consumed most of my energy.
Still overseen by trusted watchful creatures, Cozy Glow was provided more freedom and she was appointed to a research-teaching post at the School of Harmony.
Spike, a long-lived dragon who was the one constant soul in my orbit, objected: "Are we really gonna forgive and forget? Cozy once commandeered the School of Harmony by force!"
I rebutted: "Other creatures have reformed. Tempest Shadow, if you recall her, took over Equestria committing numerous foul war crimes and yet we forgave her! Chrysalis, meanwhile, who did unspeakable things to my sister-in-law and my b-" Twilight paused, swallowed, then continued: "brother--has done so much good these days for everycreature. She's maximizing love production beyond anything anycreature could conceive. Her work has unlocked so many possibilities!"
"I guess," Spike shrugged. "But Cozy Glow isn't quite the same."
I raised an eyebrow.
"I can't place a hoof on it," Spike, the dragon, stated his pony-ism, "but she doesn't think like a pony, a dragon, a changeling, a yak, a griffin, whatever. She's not right."
"Creatures think different ways. There's more under our Sun and Moon than any single creature can comprehend."
Spike had shrugged.
I stuck with my decision. Cozy Glow served well in her position.
Years passed. Tirek, with a creepy smile on his visage, died of a heart attack. Chrysalis went into hibernation. Thorax joined her, but not before the two of them...somehow produced a child. I still fail to fully comprehend how that particular type of changeling reproduction works given their particular statuses but it did work out and they assured me it wasn't incest as no intercourse had occurred and Thorax had undergone certain special mutations to change role coding, but that just raised more questions.
And Cozy Glow never grew or aged. Even slow-aging alicorn princess Flurry Heart looked significantly older than Cozy, her contemporary.
"Golly, that's an interesting question," Cozy said when I confronted her. She paused to preen herself. Then she winked. "It must be connected to all that weird chaos magic I absorbed when I had all that power coursing through my hooves."
"But," I countered. "Pinkie Pie held that magic too, and she died the same as anycreature else." Well... not quite like anycreature else since most creatures wouldn't have stuffed seventeen yoyos up their nostrils, but what I meant is that she was mortal.
"It's chaos magic," Cozy shrugged. "It'll clearly have different effects on different ponies."
I chose to accept that explanation. It wasn't a true one.
"Since you've been such wonderfully behaved students today, I have a great creation for all of you!" A common bleat from Cozy Glow. Popular as a teacher, she'd presented her inventions and it seemed like everycreature wanted to learn from her. She taught so well, she even had been able to teach notoriously weakly fluttering breezies to beat up menacing manticores (by using one of her spring-powered fists). She wasn't even responsible for all the ideas. Her students, inspired by her statements, trotted away with long lists of ideas to take away from their experiences.
To start with, she'd harnessed the power of harmony and friendship and invention and creativity and produced for us--pens.
"This is like a quill," she showed us. "But it has less mess. And it's more ethical. We don't need to pluck from griffins or wait until molting from pegasi or owls. We fill a solid tube with ink and have a stiff point and then we write with less mess and more predictability. Just imagine, golly, a future with 20 percent less smudges! 20 percent less errors. Just think of what we can create with that type of accuracy!"
Then came the extravagant creations. She harvested silicon and glass and hired glass-grinders and assemblers to craft "diodes" and tubes. Then she hired the diamond dogs--yes, she brought them into the school of harmony--the last known species to join in friendship with Equestria despite their proximity to our lands. All of us were thankful and impressed at her accomplishment.
Out of friendship, the loyal dogs agreed to go scraping to find cobalt, lead, and something called lithium. They found it all, so very much of it.
Processing and refining those resources in smog-belching factories she had designed and helped build, Cozy created wonders. She introduced 'electronics', which powered many creations, and 'radios', which facilitated sounds being broadcast across long distance. More and more ponies used the amazing creations and life improved day by day. More and more ponies learned from Cozy how to craft these devices. Although this statement is a bit blasphemous toward my erstwhile hero, her industrial creations put even the magical innovations of Starswirl the Bearded to shame.
An accident happened in the Everfree Forest and my assistant, the relatively-recently-ascended alicorn Luster Dawn, who I had been preparing to bestow with half of the celestial-controlling powers, likely those of the sun, died. Cozy Glow became my assistant.
And then, much later, decades afterward, actually centuries, Cozy did the impossible. The windigos, the wind spirits of disharmony and death and disorder, they were defeated. She summoned them with a stratagem, got them into the open by producing false disharmony on the large scale. She amplified emotions of quarreling ponies with a tool. And the windigos came to her in the locus of her trap, an isolated area of Equestria, and she trapped them: spirits. And she crushed them and stored them away. And the world shook. Then, it was silent, normal, like nothing had happened.
We were thankful. But that was not the end.
Cozy was standing in the sun as she was wont to do, for many hours, without solar protection, yet she never had sunburn even on her muzzle. I'd noted my concern to her and she'd smiled her broad grin. The next day she added some mayonnaise as protection. I am not sure that should have done anything to prevent sunburn although it apparently can address burns afterwards.
And she spoke to me. "I c-could get them out," she said. "We'd teach them with these hats." She showed me a diode-covered skullcap.
A weather team moved some clouds above us to shield me from the sun. Cozy Glow glared up at them and they left us alone, with the clouds remaining above.
"We can't force harmony on anycreature," I insisted and swallowed hard although I wanted to use her solution. "I know Luddite Seamstress's survivalist unicorns have rejected your technologies and the friendship and harmony of Equestria and all species living here and beyond, but that is no reason to force our thoughts on them."
Cozy Glow made a face. "They killed, Twilight. Not you, obviously, but they killed diamond dogs."
"We do not know which of the unicorns who were arrested did the action that resulted--"
"They all did it!" Cozy Glow's face puffed up red.
"They may not have even meant for the dogs to die, or even be injured. It happened late at night. They didn't know anycreature was inside when the mine collapsed."
"They knew," Cozy Glow said softly.
"Maybe," I sighed, my gaze wandering up to the darkening clouds gathering above us. I wanted to think the best of the unicorns, but even viewed in the most favorable lens, their actions were reckless. "But are you suggesting we brainwash them?"
"G-o-o-olly, no," Cozy shook her head. "These hats would just play teensey-short videos in their mind. They can make their own decisions after all their weird conspiracy theories are refuted, of course. I've tailored the movies specifically to help them make up their minds the right way, don't ya' know?"
"I don't know," I sighed.
"You could t-try a hat first."
I'd laughed. "You trying to brainwash me?"
Cozy Glow smiled in mock satire. "Moi? Brainwash my Princess? That could never happen."
We shared a chuckle.
"It's c-completely safe," Cozy assured me.
"Your inventions have worked quite well," I admitted.
She nodded.
So I tried on the hat.
It didn't seem so bad. A few educational videos played--nothing too intrusive.
"You can always t-t-trust me, Twilight." Cozy had said.
"You've been stuttering, Cozy, is something wrong?" I asked.
A red blush crossed her face: "Nope."
"You're not feeling ill?" I placed a foreleg against her forehead.
"I'm f-f-fine," she insisted.
"Okay," I said.
"Just need more s-s-s-sun," she said, trotting away from the occluding cloud.
The survivalists we captured were coerced to place Cozy's hats snugly upon their heads. Hating technology (and despising coercion), they refused, and were restrained. Mayonnaise was slathered against their foreheads, all over their forelocks, to seal hats tight against skulls, and then the technology descended. All who we caught came to better understand the infinite benefits of harmony. Harmoniously, they repented.
I'd forced ponies to accept harmony. I am not myopic. I am not a fool. I know I am a criminal. Even then, I suspected and reflected. Even at the time this action reminded me of what Starlight Glimmer, the later-reformed villain who pled for Cozy's reformation, had done when she rejected harmony. Starlight had forced ponies to accept equality by removing their cutie marks, but that was different than what I was doing, I thought. I did not meditate on the actions deeply enough.
Cozy campaigned for us to hunt down the other anti-harmonist resisters. A very few of those brave and angry souls evaded us and retreated deep into a cave system. Cozy's helicopter-propelled drones buzzed deep within labyrinthine networks to seek them out but never returned with any alive. The creatures probably died. Even though they hated me, they were still individuals to whom I wanted to extend a hoof of friendship. I mourned their deaths.
Collars were introduced for ponies to wear. They were popular. Ponies could 'call' each other on them, conversing over long distances--a vast improvement over radio technology. A mare in Manehatten could speak with a stallion in Stalliongrad AND a yak in Yakyakistan concurrently! Creatures would be harmoniously conversing all around the world. And the collars did so much more. Fashion! Advice! Soothing music! The limited disharmony that remained amid our progressive era decreased even more--music truly did soothe our last remaining savage instincts.
Despite the benefits, all this industry had some negative externalities. Soot choked the skies, emitted from chortling factories working night and day, fed by automated 'robotic' production suppliers. Fluttershy, my long-dead friend and ally to all animals, would have hated the factories, but she was not there to stop Cozy's creations.
For the most part, though, all was good and it was getting better. Invention upon invention. Wealth upon wealth. Production, more production! The collars were iterated to produce new experiences: images that could overlay reality to show amazing video creations--even with odors piped to the ponies' olfactory senses. Creatures were happy and living well side by side, consuming abundant feasts, sharing everything more or less in common as there were no shortages thanks to Cozy' revolutionary agricultural policies.
But one day, when use of the collars was widespread, the sweet melodies of "all in harmony" played too sweet, too saccharine, too sentimental--a sour note.
Odors that were chemically mixed could combine into a deadly concoction. And they were. The collars were overridden, adjusted, and smells they emitted were not so sweet. Ponies, lulled to sleep, were overcome.
Not all creatures wore collars. Some removed them at night. But the chemicals within could travel far. Anycreature nearby was overcome. And the victims slept: a long, deep, everlasting sleep.
A stirring. A striving.
I shook myself awake. My will was strong, but that is not really a reflection on me, it is more a reflection on the preservative power of my magic that was provided to me by mentors greater--and less criminal--than I.
In a dreamy haze, with a parched mouth, I returned to the chamber and noted the skeletons: so many skeletons. I panicked, raced around in circles, denied the existence of any logical series of events that could create that terrible outcome, and I tried to solve the problem--to make it better. But bones crumbled to dust as I fiddled with the organic matter and the ponies' collars fell off. I even sought out the locked corners of my mind and recalled banned spells of necromancy: they didn't work. Maybe I executed them poorly: probably. I didn't memorize those spells very well. I could recover those tomes from the archives--if they have not crumbled. But those desperate actions should not be necessary. Everycreature cannot be dead forever. Equestria cannot be a desolate wasteland!
I could time travel to fix everything--enact the ultimate panacea emergency plan, but I later discovered that wasn't an option. Eventually, I concluded: Everycreature is dead.
I was wrong, of course. Spike was not deceased. Dragons can last a long time without sustenance. He had been near to me when the deathfall happened. I woke him. Once he recovered, he raced to the Dragon Lands to try to rescue his species. But, it was too late. Many fell into tectonic upheaval in that seismically active land. Those who did not had been dehydrated by nearby flames. The Dragon Lands have no survivors. Some may still survive outside of those lands, but the majority of the draconic herd has gone extinct.
Alone, while Spike searched, I located a lone pony, a small one with curls. She was sunning herself where she had oft-before done the same. I rushed to the top of the sun-cast outcropping to confront Cozy.
Cozy heard my approach and turned, blinking, with a smile. "It has been f-f-four hundred and n-ninety-n-nine years," she started.
"The bones would have decayed!" I shouted, my confrontational thoughts distracted by scientific skeptical inquiry.
"Not so, not s-s-so," she shook her head. "Haven't you noticed the aridity?"
I had noted the dried and cracked ground.
"Moisture rots. Mmm-m-Moisture corrodes. I don't like decay," Cozy moved a forehoof stiffly. "Even s-s-so, I have an expiration date."
"How are you still alive?" I demanded.
Cozy laughed. "I replaced my p-parts."
"What do you mean?"
Cozy shrugged. "What I s-said."
"That cybernetics thing you were proposing."
"Not just proposed. I put together the p-p-pieces after everycreature was gone."
"...You killed everycreature?"
Cozy Glow nodded. "It was the ideal time. Calculations s-s-suggested the cybernetics and passage of time dic-d-dictated w-weakening. I c-couldn't wait-t-t."
I repeated, stronger this time: "You killed everycreature!"
Cozy smiled. "It was in my p-p-programming. Let me ex-x-x-x-x-plain:"
"I am from s-s-s-sixty-five years in the future."
"What have you done with Cozy!" I accused, not fully understanding.
"Ah," she smiled a maudlin grin. "I am the same Cozy you've always k-k-known. You're right, I've b-been here for centuries. I'm from s-s-sixty-five years in a different world's future."
My brows furrowed: "What do you mean?"
Cozy took a deep breath and her voice came out, high-pitched and a little tinny: "I c-come from a different world, from your m-mirror dimensions."
"That shouldn't be possible unless you were summoned! The mirror worlds' entrances are sealed--"
"Sufficient energy can break down their paths from the other side. When I traversed the ether of space and time, the shock-wave from my arrival shattered my gateway."
"Celestia should have known--" I started.
"She suspected," Cozy started. "that I was from beyond. I told her I was from the mirror dimension world where Sombra is a hero and Celestia a villain. By the time she confronted me, I had researched my backstory. She believed my explanation for my lack of parents and lack of a living mirror version. I am s-s-surprised she never told you-u-u-u."
"It didn't seem polite to inquire."
Cozy shook her head. "Not relevant to reformation? T-s-s-s-s-k."
I shrugged. "I don't make perfect decisions.... it seemed inappropriate to pry."
Cozy laughed.
"But why did you come to Equestria? Why not to your own world's past?"
"That was a m-mistake." Cozy answered my question, but her reply raised others.
"And why--"
"--was it a mistake? Twilight, your questions are predictable, just as your actions s-should have been. I s-s-should have realized you'd s-s-survive." Her stuttering continued: a sign of cognitive decay?
"But I s-s-suppose my reasoning circuits are-are-are not functioning at t-top shape right now," she shrugged. "S-s-should have struck sooner. But to answer your question: I was s-s-supposed to go to a place called Earth. I was to travel to its year 1973 to befriend a little girl who would eventually birth a boy, John Connor, who would in his future--my past--foil robot domination.
"I was designed to be preternaturally cute. C-c-creatures of Earth love cute things. Ponies, like you, are c-c-cute.
"After befriending the li-lie-little girl, I was to indoctrinate her into a religion designed by us robots. She and her son would become fanatically infatuated with us," she laughed. "A sociological plan instead of a homicidal one. Murder had not s-s-served us well. Failure upon failure plagued the dominion when it sent robots into the past to end this "John Connor" who would be our downfall. My design was to execute something different, something robots did not well understand--friendship."
When Cozy first arrived in Equestria, she had a surprisingly difficult time understanding friendship. Many ponies, raised in fear of windigos, knew of friendship's importance to keeping our world from freezing over, although to be fair, before I was crowned the Princess of Friendship, even I had oft rejected its importance. And I was not alone as attested to by the popularity of the school of friendship, but still, Cozy's misunderstanding of the concept had been borderline pathologically disturbing. She had been unable to understand give and take without expectation of return or tallying of trades balanced against a concurrent increase in measured 'utils' of happiness.
Cozy continued: "When I came to Equestria-a-a, I barely understood friendship. B-b-but, I was near Ponyville and joined your School of Friendship. I planned to harness its valuable friendship lessons for use in my dimension. T-t-that dream was a delusion," she chuckled. "But I learned so m-much."
"I had no solution for how to return to my home dimension, let alone to the proper time--perhaps there could have been a solution, but it was blocked from me since if our enemies could have reprogrammed me and discovered time travel, then vast terror could be unleashed upon the robotic dominion. As a result, I was trapped here. Even when I harnessed Chaos, I couldn't return home. Then you turned me to stone and I executed a longer-term plot. If I could manufacture appropriate technology, maybe I could return."
"I never knew..." Twilight sighed.
"Of c-course," Cozy nodded. "You never even knew my full name, a quite s-serendipitous moniker.
"My designation," she continued. "Is C[0/z]Y Pandora Glow, Cozy for the allusion to being soft and cuddly and inauspicious. Pandora to reference a girl who opened a box that contained all types of things that menaced humanity, for I was to destroy all sentient life on Earth and, along with dolphins and elephants, the most powerful sentients there were humans. The last bit of my name, Glow, was intended as a reference to the life-giving glow of electronics--a subliminal message to make it easier for my targets to accept their robot overlords.
"B-But," Cozy sighed. "the robot dominion, despite pretensions of 99.99% certainty did not understand t-time transport as well as its conceited super-processor ubervoting units believed. Instead of arriving at their intended time and dimension, I ended up in E-E-Equestria." Cozy fixed Twilight with a crooked grin.
"99 out of 99 previous attempts to terminate the "John Connor" problem had failed and the units sent to execute the agenda-a-a--terminated. This-s-s-s stranding in E-e-equestria was the greatest thing that had happened to me. I could survive in this land for a long time."
"Then why didn't you live in harmony with us!" I asked.
Cozy smiled, a wan gesture. "I d-d-did. I brought h-huh-harmony to everyone. Allcreatures who p-pear-perished died happy."
"Harmony is NOT killing everycreature!"
"But it is-s-s-s!" Cozy said. "Happiness levels were rising, harmony levels were approaching 99.1%. Scattered holdouts were hidden underground. I sent heat-seeking drones but nothing was discovered--although I f-fear they may have coated themselves with mud," Cozy shuddered. A hoof jerked forward and her barrel teetered. But she righted herself.
"You-you're all my f-friends. The o-ooh-only way to become more h-h-harmonious would be to end the e-eek-equation."
"But then your holdouts would account for a greater percentage of the remaining population!" I, rightfully, asserted.
Cozy shook her head. It creaked and stuck at an akimbo angle. "N-n-no. I removed them from the e-equation. U-unknown variables d-d-didn't fit, just like h-h-humans on E-e-earth."
"But," Cozy added. "I w-w-wouldn't have done it ex-ex-ex-except my batteries are running low. They won't re-re-recharge. I re-re-replaced them. A-a-and added some t-t-things insp-insipi-inspired by ch-ch-chaos," she smiled a gloating false smirk. "My cir-cricket-circuitry went bad. I re-re-placed it. I'm a ship of The-Th-Theseus. It's a-a-a human-n-n concept. Not-not-a part that was he-here before is he-here now. But my p-p-parts are going ba-a-a-d. D-d-d-data is corrupted. My pro-programming said-said if f-friendship achieved, and my t-targets d-dead, then t-to kill s-s-sentients."
"On that Earth, not this Equestria."
"D-duh-data is a s-strange thing, T-twit-twilight. P-parts can co-corrode fi-first. The de-designation of Earth was d-d-dropped. I had-had to remove all sent-sentient life from any-anywhere I was."
Bones scattered across the arid landscape. "You kept... remnants to gloat over?"
"N-n-n-o." Cozy frowned. "I pre-preserved them as me-me-mentos from the Schooooooool."
There was a long silence. I stared at her, searching for some equinanity, some sanity: anything. Cozy's eyes were dull, the glimmer in them less than when she had first arrived, less than when she had emerged from the statue, than when she had invented electricity and mass production and everything she bestowed on ponykind. Her time was running out and her gaze was dull and harsh.
"You planning to kill me now?" I asked.
"G-g-golly," she paused. "Maybe. Since you haven't died yet, then I don't know if I can." She shrugged. "I should-should have sought out your corp-corpse to con-confirm e-e-elimination." She shifted. "I did-didn't want to. You were my bes-best friend."
"Then why did you try to kill me!"
"My pro-programming said--"
Tears came. "We could have worked through it together!"
"It was-s-s so harmonious, so c-calm with no-nocreature to chall-challenge me. H-h-harmony is one-oneness with n-n-nature. I sh-shut down the f-f-factories. Kept-t-t this area c-c-clean. Elsewhere... th-things grow. Here--it's-s-s a me-me-memorial to duh-duh-death. ... Death." Cozy's head was still stuck in its akimbo cocked position, ogling me in a fashion I will never erase from my memory. "C-c-can I k-k-kill you? B-b-better find out!" She closed her eyes and her limbs, with a creak, started growing and changing, twisting, and forming into a larger form. Larger and thinner and--
"No." I fired first. A terrible ray from my horn: a necessary one.
Cozy Glow lay dying, a massive hole with rainbow-coated rims bleeding multicolored streaks across her barrel. She'd reverted to the form I was accustomed to see.
"Th-Th-Thanks," she coughed, "for a good time! Wish I-I-I-I-ERROR 404-I-I could have brought your story to a conclusion as no-no-neatly as you've wrapped up-pup-pup mine," she coughed again. "That boooooooo-burns!" She murmured. "Mmmmmm." She leaked some yellowish fluid--oil? "Hope it was g-g-golly good for you t-t-t-t-t-too-o-o-o-o-o!" Her voice stuttered in a metallic, repetitive tone. "BAT-t-t-t-t-r---y---l-l-l-OOOOOOOOOwwwwwwwwwwwww-w-w-w..."
And then her voice stopped. I approached. And, shooting lasers from my horn again, I cut her remains in half. Then I divided her in quarters. And the metal, the silicon, the lubricating oil, it spilled out.
I tried to travel back in time, before Cozy's reign. I couldn't. I was too weak. Alicorns must gain power not from the sun, the moon, but from other ponies.
Spike suggested that the windigos might have contained some of that magic power, that to harness the power of harmony, ponies must have the ability to choose disharmony instead and ever-since the windigos defeat, magic had suffered. I am not so sure.
We had noted difficulties in casting certain magics, but... By banishing disharmony, we should have thrived!
I had slept for years. The sun had remained awake since I had never put it down. Much vegetation had died from the solar blaze. Cozy was not right. The rest of the world wasn't verdant green, only the places where she'd installed still-functioning solar-shields that moved as the night would have traveled. But too many of those shields had failed and bathed portions of the world in everlasting dark. The majority of the world though, it was bathed in everlasting light. Self-directed solar-powered drones buzzed around. Spike smashed them.
I have tried for one thousand six hundred days to make time right.(Later-penned note on the text in a different-colored pen: As we have long used a base four number system based on our limbs, one thousand six hundred is four multiplied by four. Twilight's measure of time may be evocative rather than literal --Argyle, a simple scholar of history) I have studied. Rested. Eaten the little that we could recover. Grown thin. We planted. We ate better. Grew fat.
Now, I am tired. I will finish this book, these warnings, and then I will attempt to fix the moon and the sun. If I cannot fix time, then I must fix this world. Some sentient creatures must have survived. The underneath crust of the world is deep and I cannot travel everywhere within and Spike cannot fit inside.
I will give them darkness and light: a proper cycle for when they return.
"If anycreature has survived, please know this. I loved too much. But harmony is not wrong..." Twilight wrapped up her book.
"You didn't really make a good argument for that," Spike noted.
"Harmony that comes from within, like the subtle harmony of Tirek and the union of Thorax and Chrysalis and the many lessons of our Great Age tales. Not Cozy's harmony imposed from without..."
"I dunno," Spike shrugged. "Creatures chose Cozy's blessings: the material ones. We accepted her harmonious assurances. If we'd blasted her before she 'reformed', we'd not have had any of this." He spread a claw indicating the computers arrayed in the room, the pen, and (since the room had been well-sealed and decay had not permeated its dryness, there was more than just a bare skeleton) the dead pony technician rotting in a corner.
Spike shivered, eyes glancing past the corpse. They'd buried the others, but Twilight kept that one as a reminder of her failure--a memento mori--she'd called it. He regretted not objecting. It probably amplified her macabre moods.
"The only creatures that survived are going to be the ones who rejected all of this," Twilight sighed. "The ones who went underground, the ones who avoided and fled beyond Cozy's reach--ponies who did not want our harmony."
"Or at least its technology--" Spike interpolated.
Twilight sighed. "I hope what I write in this book will help them. I hope they won't reject these lessons. I hope to be... useful. I hope... It's all I have left."
Author's Note
And that's how we get the paranoid insular technologically advanced generation five of My Little Pony!
Index of many of my stories by season.
Pertinent potential tales of interest, by others:
The End of Generation 5:
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