Station Thirteen

by Jarvy Jared

Rating: everyone
Tags: Science Fiction, Kirins, Changelings, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Mystery
Length: 14427

A kirin and a changeling team up to unravel a strange mystery found at Station Thirteen.

Cypress Flash has worked at Station Thirteen as part of the Logistics department for a month, and has had no reason to believe that it would ever be interesting. That changes when one day, he uncovers a perplexing mystery in the form of components missing from the storeroom. It'll be up to him and Kai, the station's only Changeling, to figure out not just who stole these supplies, but also why.

An entry for the 2023 Science Fiction Contest II.

Cover art adapted from this image. All credit goes to the original artist.

Published 2023-03-28 12:30:00 UTC
Last updated 2023-04-01 14:40:25 UTC

Chapter One

Cypress Flash had been sitting at his desk when, without so much of a word of greeting, Peppy Pusher dropped two tall stacks of papers in front of him and said, “Take these and follow me.”

Logistics was a quiet place already, so when she had made the order, her voice bounced off of the circular walls. Both the order and the sudden dropping-off made Cypress jump up, startled. The stacks had displaced Cypress’s collection of funky-looking metal coils and springs, and it took a few seconds for him to recover them all.

“Can I, uh, get any more info?” he asked.

But Peppy was already walking away. Cypress sighed; that tracked with her. Ever since his first day working at Station Thirteen, which had happened about a month ago, she’d carried an attitude of “Do as I say, and question me later.” He felt that her name was one of irony, for nothing about her seemed peppy.

He lit his horn, lifted the stacks, and, with a sigh to himself, followed after her. He had to speed up to cover the distance between them, nearly tripping on a couple of thick wires snaking across the floor to a series of computer monitors and electronic record-keeping equipment. Peppy’s shadow bounced steadily under the soft gaze cast by the fluorescent ceiling lights, while his looked like a mix of a kirin and some warped clay sculpture.

“Are you going to tell me what this is about?” he asked once he’d caught up.

“It’s better to show than to speak,” she replied.

Soon they’d left the Logistics department and were heading through a short corridor unfamiliar to Cypress. At the end, there was a single, red-sheeted door whose window orifice betrayed a thick darkness. They stopped short of the door, and Peppy turned around to face him.

“There’s a conference I have to attend, to discuss a recent development in supply transportation. Princess Twilight Sparkle personally requested that I come.”

Cypress doubted that there was anything personal about it—in all likelihood, she’d received an invitation marked with the royal seal, and that was the extent of her connection to her Highness. “When are you leaving?”

“Later today. The conference is expected to be a long one, followed most likely by several meetings with interested parties. So I will be off-site for a number of days.”

“Today?!” Cypress nearly lost a hold of all the papers. “But, the department—I can’t run it by myself—”

“Calm down.” Peppy stuck him with an intense, yet paradoxically calming, glare. “You shouldn’t have to. Remember all that work you did during training? That was in anticipation of this event. You’ve already met the quota for work for the next three months, give or take a few extraneous assignments here and there. So you should be fine.”

“Right…” He sensed Peppy’s glare becoming colder, and he cleared his throat. “Well, then, what’s all this? Paper? I thought you told me that we’ve been working solely with digital work?”

“We have. But that’s a recent development compared to how old this observatory is. That,” she said, nodding to the papers, “are all the old inventory reports from back when this place was first built. And in there”—she turned and pointed her horn towards the door—“contains all of the old supplies we used back then.”

“Why do we have them still around?”

She sighed irritably. “Look, I don’t have time to give you the whole history lesson. All you need to know is that we’ve been gradually transitioning out of the old tech into the new—hence why you’re seeing a lot more computers and high-tech stuff here than you would in most other places. But we’re still relying on some outdated technology that, if they fail, requires replacement. That storeroom contains items that’ll be useful in case that happens. So we keep it around, just in case.”

She turned and pointed a hoof at the piles of paper. “Still, we’re learning that paper can be destroyed or ruined, so what you’ll be doing while I’m away is digitizing all of these inventory reports. You’ll also be checking to see that their contents match what we have back there.”

Cypress lowered the piles onto the corridor’s floor. “Two piles? That doesn’t seem that bad.”

“There are a dozen or so more boxes of them back in my office. I’ll bring them to you before I leave.”

She sauntered past him while that information rendered him thunderstruck. Then, she stopped. “One more thing. Be careful in there.”

“Why? Afraid I’ll get a papercut?” he said without thinking.

She glared at him, and he wilted, embarrassed. “I mean that it’s very dusty in there. Practically filled to the brim. When I checked it two days ago, I nearly had an asthma attack on account of all that. Nopony’s been in there to clean in ages, so if you breathe—breathe carefully.”

Cypress spent the rest of the day putting the task aside, in favor of other responsibilities, and Peppy seemed to delight in watching him go through a slew of excuses, all to put the assignment off for even a minute longer. When she was gone and when he no longer had an audience to which to generate an excuse for himself, he let out a long sigh, grabbed what boxes he could, and entered the storeroom, wondering if perhaps he should look for a gas mask or air filtration device.

Yet, he quickly found that perhaps Peppy’s words were a bit of an exaggeration. The storeroom, though small and lit dimly by a single copper bulb, was alarmingly clean—cleaner than his own quarters, though that, he knew, was not much of a bar. Across the dozens of shelves that held boxes of supplies and which were labeled with curiously loopy hoofwriting, he could not find one speck of dust. He scanned the ceiling to see if some sort of ventilation system was in place, but nothing of that sort appeared to line either the top of the room nor the sides; indeed, he could not find pipes, conduits, or other such connections. The storeroom appeared severed from the rest of Logistics.

“She’s just messing with me,” he muttered to himself. Though he could not imagine why she’d do so over a matter as simple as dust. He looked at the boxes as though hoping they would answer him, but within those four cramped walls, no sound escaped. It was as though it was not just a separate area from the Logistics department, but from Station Thirteen as a whole.

He sighed, then bowed his head to the task at hoof.

He worked the rest of the night, then returned the next day, already dreading continuing. Boredom began as a light infection before it manifested across the whole of his body, making his arms and legs tingle. His neck stiffened from having to bob his head up and down as he went through the aisles, checking inventory against log, then logging the log into the digital database. His eyelids drooped with each item examined, and more than once, he was tempted to set the whole room on fire, if only to expedite both it and his end.

Distracted by such tedium, he almost missed the first discrepancy.

“Fourteen?” he said, frowning. Beneath him was a box of circuitry. The inventory report told him that fourteen packages of circuitry had been ordered, but only eleven were in the box. He turned the page to see if they had been used to replace something, but that side was blank—Peppy hadn’t signed off on a replacement request. He flipped through the old report twice just to make sure he wasn’t seeing things, and he wasn’t.

He checked another report against one of the boxes next to that one. Lightbulbs, the kind that you’d see in old factories before Princess Twilight had implemented the use of eco-friendly ones. This one was fine; twelve packages remained, but two had been used to replace the bulbs in one of the janitor closets.

He frowned, shuffling the papers in his hooves. Was this perhaps just an error in the documents? Or a possible lapse on Peppy’s part? He supposed it wasn’t entirely an impossible scenario, yet couldn’t imagine his supervisor making such a mistake.

“It’s just a small discrepancy,” he mumbled to no one in particular. He was looking at that box again. “It shouldn’t matter. Right? Yeah, it’s nothing big…”

Another few moments passed before he grunted. “By the Silence, I hate this.”

And there was more reason for him to hate this. Within the next hour, he’d discovered a total of four boxes on the middle row with similar discrepancies between what their reports indicated and what was actually in them, and he could find no official markings or signatures to explain them away. What’s more, when he tallied them up, he found that the number of items missing was strangely miniscule. One might have missed them entirely had one not been looking for them in the first place.

Cypress looked at the boxes with bewildered eyes. He hadn’t even gotten through the room’s first two rows. Packages of circuitry, wires, fiber optics, silicon chips—all were missing, yet the amount missing remained criminally small, almost negligible.

“Of all the times Peppy has to be away,” he groaned.

“Of all the times she’s away,” Cypress groaned.

He knew what he had to do next—figure out where these supplies had gone before his supervisor came back and canned him. But the thought annoyed him. It’d be one thing if many were missing, but to have so few—surely it wouldn’t matter, would it?

Cypress rose. He groaned as his back cracked—he’d been sitting for hours in this room prior to the discovery. The digital clock, displayed via a wristband around his right hoof, showed the time as just after one. The distant pangs of hunger echoed somewhere inside him.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “Eat first, decide what to do next after.”

Chapter Two

Compared to the twelve other observatories all dedicated to the ancient art of stargazing, Station Thirteen was small, consisting of only a few curving corridors, rooms, and department areas, along with its obsidian-lens telescope. But that did not mean it was unimpressive. Maintenance of both the telescope and the other facilities required a good number of employees. Their occupations varied. Engineers, electricians, opticians, computer scientists, and—of course—astronomers populated the site, the stars in their eyes and the telescope in their minds. There were other personnel involved, too, who did not directly work on the telescope or the many machines connected to it; these included the kitchen staff, the cleaning crew, and, of course, Logistics. All told, roughly fifty to eighty individuals worked at the station, making it one of the least staffed out of the whole bunch.

When Cypress had arrived a month ago, he hadn’t expected quite so many ponies. Like an infinitely re-arranging quilt of multi-colored sheets, they trotted through Station Thirteen, coats and horns and wings flashing with every order or direction given. He had been enthralled by such a display, and had thought, in spite of Peppy’s coolness, he had found a place of belonging. Time, however, had proven otherwise. It was true that the ponies here were friendly, but there remained some kind of barrier between him and them, erected at the unconscious level. It didn’t take long for him to come to the likely culprit: among the pegasi, unicorns, and earth ponies, he was the station’s only kirin. His scales, lengthy tail, and fangs set him far too apart than he would have preferred. Work colleagues remained just that: colleagues. And though the station’s occupants regarded him with polite looks and smiles, he wished they didn’t; for how well-intentioned such politeness was, all it did was make him feel more alone than ever. It was like a mark that burned only for him, and which he had to bear in a silence that seemed to ironically mirror that which had, for generations, kept the kirins complacent and isolated.

This was why Cypress sat at one of the cafeteria’s round tables alone, chewing on a soy-spinach sandwich. The hours spent in the storeroom had made him miss the main course, and the kitchen only had this in supply. Those hours had also made him miss the lunch rush, and aside from a few stragglers and kitchen crew, the cafeteria was mostly empty. He was unused to this. Normally, it was a crowded, noisy room, whose jam-packed nature allowed him to think he was not as alone as he felt. The clamor served as white noise, permitting this fantasy. Today, however, the silence—as well as the lingering thought about those discrepancies, not to mention the poor sandwich—distracted him.

The thinning of the crowd meant that, from where he sat and stewed, he could see through the room’s massive display windows. Station Thirteen had been built on a remote mountain, far from the rest of Equestria, and the rocky landscape rose and fell in harsh, impressive lines, like platoons of foot soldiers marching into the empty horizon. Beyond that, the sun was at its highest point in the sky; night was but a distant dream. In a few short hours, though, the light would fall, darkness would come, and the world would shrink to reveal a canvas of existence that could only be measured in infinities.

Melancholy seems a fact of life for those who work in remote environments, and for Cypress, this was no different. Staring out at that landscape and imagining just how vast was the space beyond the world, he could not help but feel small. His loneliness only added to that feeling.

“Pardon me, Master Cypress. Would you mind moving your tail?”

“Hmm?”

Cypress swallowed a tasteless lump before he turned around. “Oh. Sure thing, Roccu.”

Roccu lacked a proper head with which to nod, but Cypress got the sense of one, anyway, from the way its front-facing LED lights flashed green. The Robotics Operating Cleaning and Container Unit—Roccu, for short—was a bit of an anomaly, not just on Station Thirteen, but, in all of Equus’ observatories. Some mad unicorn with a penchant for invention and an “eccentric” and “loose” understanding of form over function had designed it some decades ago, foreseeing that Equestria’s advancement towards the stars would surely bring about levels of uncleanliness never before seen, even as space flight was still a nubile commodity About the size of a pony, the unit resembled a black tortoise shell in shape, with a pair of swiveling, circular brushes designed to process what scraps its arm-like, metal appendages could grab. Inside, a voice box mimicked the voice, though thankfully not the personality, of the unicorn inventor’s former lover, a Canterlot noble with some decent standing who, shortly after the invention had been patented and started being manufactured, had absconded to Saddle Arabia with a court harlequin. The inventor hadn’t the time to change out the voice before a peak magical accident made them unable to care for themselves. Such an accident also meant that only a few of the robots were ever made, dispersed to the various realms of the Equestrian space odyssey. Station Thirteen was one such realm.

When Cypress had been brought to Station Thirteen, he was surprised that this piece of obscure history was cleaning the halls, roving around on tiny wheels and greeting every creature as “Master” or “Mistress.” He was even more surprised to learn that, despite the support from the station’s cleaning crew, Roccu still cleaned most of the station on its own. It never complained—though Cypress wondered if it even could.

He watched Roccu grab and process some napkins that had blown off the table before Cypress had arrived. He did so diligently, obsessively, advancing very little across the floor, until one sector was completely cleared. If the robot had been programmed to, it might have started humming. But the lack of a face made it difficult to determine what, if anything, the robot felt at any moment. Sometimes, when Cypress had passed Roccu in the corridors, he thought to ask if it was happy doing what it did, alone—if it was satisfied with handling the massive station all by itself.

He never did, though. In his experience, to ask that of some creature was to invite the same question onto the one asking the question, and he doubted many were equipped to reply.

“If you don’t mind my saying, Master Cypress,” Roccu said, its voice box crackling, “you were one-point-one-five hours late to lunch. Why is that?”

“Do you normally keep track of everycreature’s schedules?” Cypress asked.

“Apologies. My programming actualizes me to consider the average times this station’s occupants enter a room to allow me a nominal schedule for optimized cleaning. I had picked up on your schedule quite unintentionally.”

“Well, I’m glad I’m not that special.”

Roccu continued to sweep over a spot, and it took Cypress a second to realize it was waiting for an answer—the omission was so strangely equine-like, he smiled a little to himself. “Ah, it’s nothing that important,” Cypress chose to say. “Peppy just decided to assign me some grunt work. Digitization.”

“An act you are no doubt displeased by.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Of course not. Not out loud. Digitization of some old paper records, I would assume?”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

Roccu’s lights turned a yellow-white. “What else would you be digitizing?”

“Ah, right.” Cypress shook his head. “Well, anyway, it’s just a lot of work, you know? Spent the whole morning at it. I’m kinda exhausted.”

“Then it is good you came out to take a break.”

“Sure. Then I’ve got to go back and bury my head in it. All that’s on top of what I usually do, too. It’s a lot. Say, you ever think about using your, uh, scheduling algorithm to help out in Logistics?”

It was a joke, but surprisingly, Roccus took a few moments to answer, like it was struggling to formulate a proper response. “I’m sorry, Master Cypress. But my programming does not let me do many tasks outside of my basic function.”

Cypress waved the excuse aside. “Ah, that’s fine. Don’t get your circuits in a fritz, really.”

Cypress fell silent, prodding at his sandwich, no longer really feeling hungry. Roccu remained next to him, also quiet aside from the gentle buzzing and whirring coming from under its chassis. Cypress flipped the sandwich in his magic as though he hoped to find something more appealing on the other side. One of the lettuce leaves slipped out and fell onto the floor.

“Oops. Sorry, Roccu.”

Roccu was already picking it up. “This digitization your supervisor has set you on,” it said. Under the mechanical whirring of its voice, there was some other implication, but Cypress only noticed it, or thought he noticed it, for a second. “Has it anything to do with a storeroom?”

Cypress glanced at the robot. “It might,” he said cautiously. “What do you know about a storeroom?”

Roccu took the leaf and deposited it in the trash nearby. “I do not know much. I merely heard about it from Peppy in passing.”

“When was that? I only learned about it yesterday.”

“Oh, I’m not quite sure,” Roccu said. “She seemed to be quite bothered by it. It was most curious. I’d never seen somepony get so worked up over the prospect of work.” It paused, then the lights flashed a pinkish-red. “Well, I suppose other than you.”

Cypress grunted. He was starting to think Peppy had done nothing but exaggerate the room. “Guess that cat’s out of the bag. Yeah, she had me working in there.” His mind returned to the missing items, and he fell silent again.

“If you’re finished with that sandwich, I can throw it out for you,” Roccu said.

“Huh. Oh. Thanks, Roccu.” Cypress lifted the sandwich with his magic and placed it in one of Roccu’s extensions. As the robot carefully placed it in the nearby trash, Cypress started.

“Hmm? Yes, Master Cypress?”

He hesitated, thinking of the supplies. Then, he said, “No, nothing, sorry. I’ll let you get at it.”

The lights sequenced again—a robotic, faceless attempt at a nod, if Cypress was sure of anything. Roccu rolled away, and Cypress stared at the table, thinking.

Chapter Three

The first engineer frowned and rubbed his chin. “Hate to tell you, but you’d need more than that before you start trying to make even a toaster. A lot more.”

“How much more?” Cypress asked.

“More than what you’ve described.”

The second engineer, standing next to the first, squinted at Cypress. “Why the sudden interest? Aren’t you in Logistics?”

“It’s, ah, not for me. My cousin, uh, Cedar Snap, he was just asking out of curiosity.” The line came unnaturally, and Cypress tried to support it by saying, “I figured I’d better ask some ponies who know this stuff.”

The engineers exchanged glances and were quiet for a time. Cypress tried not to shuffle his hooves. Standing just outside one of the break rooms, he felt more exposed than ever. Eyes from other engineers and workers, coming and going, traveled over him. How many were silently commenting, with hidden, mocking smiles, that he shouldn’t be here, that he wasn’t part of their division? Yes, we know you know you don’t belong here. Why bother trying?

He’d walked over to the Engineering department in the hopes of getting answers. But it was difficult to get anypony to talk. With lunch over, most were returning to work, and though their dismissals were still polite, he couldn’t help but feel frustrated. Only these two had been willing to spare him a moment of their time.

“Well, I wouldn’t say I know this stuff all that well,” the first one said. “Honestly sounds like a bunch of stuff you’d get for a fledging robotics project. But we don’t have any roboticists on this Station. Your cousin would be better off asking someone else, elsewhere.”

“Ah, right. That makes sense.” Cypress tried to conceal his disappointment. “Well, thank you. I’ll be sure to let them know…”

He was about to turn away, when the second engineer spoke. “If you want a more definite answer, you should talk to Kai.”

Cypress stopped, turning around. “Who?”

The first engineer shot the second an inscrutable look. “Really? You’re suggesting them?”

“Well, they know more than either you and me. That much is true.”

“Yeah, but they’re—” The first engineer stopped, then glanced at Cypress. He seemed to be weighing something on his mind, calculating something about Cypress.

Cypress cleared his throat. “Who’s Kai?”

The second engineer glanced away from her companion. “Right, you haven’t met them, yet. Kai’s a Changeling.” Next to her, the first engineer made an unconscious movement with their head. She looked at him, then rolled her eyes. “They transferred into our Engineering department about two weeks ago, and they definitely know their stuff. I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew more about robotics than anyone else on base.”

“Where can I find them?”

“Probably in the break room, at the moment.” Then her voice rose a little, and she spoke with a degree of admiration.” You know, I’ve never met a creature more efficient than them—it’s kinda scary. Makes you realize why they were able to take Canterlot all those years ago.”

“That’s not really something you should be impressed by,” the first engineer said.

While the second began to respond, Cypress quietly thanked them and walked his way to the station’s break room. Inside were some shelves, a refrigerator unit, a microwave, and a few tables. The room was full of other engineers, who glanced up at Cypress’s entrance. They offered polite nods, but nothing else.

Slowly, trying not to call attention to himself, Cypress drew forward into the room. A few ponies dispersed to let him through, and once they were gone, he caught sight of a lone figure sitting at a table in the back corner. Cornsilk blue with pinkish eyes and a pair of coppery translucent wings, they had their head lowered and their gaze set squarely on what must have been a massive manual as thick as a pony’s neck.

Cypress crossed the room and stood in front of the figure. They didn’t look up. Cypress cleared his throat. The figure kept their head down.

“Er… Kai?”

At the name, the Changeling sighed. “Oh, what is it now?” they said irritably. There was a buzz to their voice, slightly higher pitched than what Cypress would have expected. Their eyes, however, sparkled with surprise when they rose to meet Cypress’s. “Wait, you’re not…”

“No,” Cypress said carefully, “I’m not. But you are Kai, right? I’m not mistaken?”

“I-I am.” Kai nodded excitedly. They grinned, showing off fangs that reminded Cypress of his own. “Not that you’d probably have any difficulty figuring that out. I’m the only Changeling on this station, as far as I can tell.”

There was laughter behind their voice, but the admission seemed to be accompanied by something else. The smile Kai wore was genuine enough, but Cypress sensed something behind that, something familiar. He looked at the seat opposite of the Changeling, and, noticing, Kai gestured for him to sit.

Kai’s smile turned apologetic. “Forgive me if I seem a little awkward. I’m not used to being approached. And, uh, who exactly are you? I don’t think I’ve met you before.”

“Ah, my bad.” Cypress introduced himself, then added, “I’m the only kirin on the station. Been here for about a month.”

“I guess that means we’re both rather green. You, literally.”

Cypress chuckled. Having sat down, he was able to see the massive volume of text, and he pointed at it. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen an actual paper book. Most of the stuff in the library are all e-books, now.”

“One of the great tragedies of progress,” Kai said with such a melancholic tone of voice, they could not be taken seriously.

“What exactly is it?”

In answer, Kai turned the book around to show Cypress the cover. Stenciled in bold, all-caps serif font were the words, The History of Comet Sightings: Introduction by the Grrrreat [there really were that many r’s] and Powerful Trixie Lulamoon. “A modest read,” Kai said.

Cypress whistled. “If that’s your definition of modest, I mean. I take it you’re into comets, then? That’s a surprise.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

“Well, the other engineers—they said that you’re one of them. So, you know. Engineering, and then astronomy—I guess I didn’t think you’d, well…”

He was realizing he was not making much sense. Discomfort flashed on Kai’s face. It came and went like a candle flame, but burned bright enough for a split-second—long enough for Cypress to catch sight of it, recognize it, and pull himself back. “Anyway, uh… What’s it about?”

If Kai was grateful for the shift in topic, they didn’t show it. Instead, they quietly regarded Cypress with their pupilless eyes. Cypress stared back, trying not to fidget. He sensed he was being gauged, though for what purpose, or by what parameters, he did not understand.

After a few seconds, Kai said, “Do you happen to know the purpose of this observatory? What it was built for?”

“Er… well, it’s definitely for observing space.”

“Right, but what specifically?”

Shaking his head, Cypress tried not to glower in embarrassment. Truthfully, he’d never asked when he’d first transferred. As far as he could tell, the lens in the main observation room pointed towards only a rather boring quadrant of the cosmos. Sure, it was full of stars, but what quadrant wasn’t?

Kai didn’t laugh, but an amused gleam came into their eyes, and all trace of that shadow from before was gone. “It’s not too terribly complicated, if I’m being honest. Anyway, Station Thirteen was specifically built not to observe just space in general, but a very specific event: comets.”

“Comets?” Cypress repeated.

“Yes, but not just any. You see, there’ve been reports, as outlined in this books, dating back decades of two particular comets who keep passing by the planet with such regularity, it’s almost uncanny. Not even Princess Luna, back when she was ruling alongside her sister, could speak to their origin, and you know she knows her stuff—Princess of the Night and all. What’s particularly interesting, however, is that these comets are pretty new; that is, they were only discovered relatively recently compared to older star charts and the records from ancient astronomers dating back to the time of Starswirl the Bearded. We’re not really sure where they came from, or where they broke off from. So this facility was built in an attempt to get as much data about them, when they come into our view, and see if we can’t figure that out.”

Kai tapped the book. “I wanted to read up before I transferred here. I thought it might be useful. Plus, I’ve always wanted to see them myself. That’s why I asked to transfer here. At least, it’s part of the reason I—”

Kai cut themselves off abruptly. An embarrassed pink came over their cheeks, and they ducked their head. “I, ah, sorry. I didn’t mean to ramble.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Cypress said, smiling.

“No, that was rude of me. I mean, rambling. Nopony likes it when I ramble, so I ought not to. And besides, you probably didn’t come here just to hear me ramble, did you?”

Privately, Cypress marveled at how quickly Kai seemed to fluctuate between moods. They seemed young, in this way—not necessarily volatile or unstable, but uncertain of themselves, and wearing that uncertainty on their non-existent sleeve. A part of him wanted to address the issue of rambling, but another recognized a closed door when he saw one; he doubted prying it open now would be a good idea.

“You’re right in at least one regard,” he said. “I didn’t come here just to talk about comets—not that I mind. But I wanted to ask you something else.”

“Oh?”

The yarn he gave was similar to what he had given to the other engineers. “I’m not sure what my cousin is building, per se, but he asked me to ask around, see what others had to say,” he concluded.

Kai looked expectantly at him. “And that’s it?”

“Er. Yeah. Why?”

Kai tapped the book in an inquisitive manner. “It’s just… well, it doesn’t seem like you could build anything, big or small, with just that. How many components did your cousin say he had?”

After some hesitation, Cypress told Kai how much he’d discovered missing. Kai looked unsatisfied. “Not good?” he asked.

“Well, it’s not bad, but it’s not great, either. Your cousin would need a lot more of, well, everything, and then some, before they could start putting something together.”

Cypress couldn’t contain a sigh of relief. Whether he could find the source of the missing supplies, at least he was certain nothing harmful could come out of them.

“I’m surprised your cousin didn’t realize that, though,” Kai continued. “Granted, not everycreature is a polymath, but I can’t help but think it’d be a little… obvious, you know?”

Cypress paused, considering. It certainly should have been obvious, assuming the thief had only just started. Perhaps caution had compelled them to take it slow. Yet the timing of it felt significant, and Cypress couldn’t imagine that, if someone was going to great lengths to steal such items, they’d happily take their time.

“Perhaps he simply doesn’t know better,” Kai mused. This could equally have been true, Cypress supposed. If that was the case, then, perhaps catching them would be easier than he expected.

“Yes, perhaps…” He could feel Kai’s gaze settle on him, waiting for more. “Well,” Cypress said, getting up and managing a smile, “thank you for that. I’ll, uh, see to passing that information along.”

Kai blinked. “Already? Oh, all right. You’re welcome.” But Cypress had already gotten out of his seat, head swirling still with questions.

Chapter Four

Cypress would have liked to continue investigating, but then his supervisor sent a communication informing him that a package of fresh reports was coming; they would need to be sorted post-haste. Never mind that she had already set him on this first task—whatever summit she was attending had yielded results, and she needed all hooves on deck processing what she sent. Indeed, as soon as he’d read that message, another notification arrived, telling him that several packages were waiting him in the mailroom.

Shifting from one sub-task to another and watching as more packet receipts materialized into existence before him, Cypress felt like a hopelessly abused worker ant laboring for the unseen queen, and more than once had to resist the urge to flush each order—or himself—down the drain. By the time he had sorted everything, hours had passed since he’d been in the storeroom. He cursed to himself and sprinted from the mailroom to Logistics, too desperate to care about the confused looks from the other workers. When, at the end of the dank corridor, he came to the door, it was closed; but, he couldn’t remember if he’d closed it the last time. He tried to dredge up some degree of calm, and, his breathing labored and his heart beating a drum-fill in his chest, opened the door.

The same room greeted him, one as curiously devoid of dust as before. Baffled by the sight, he cautiously wormed around the boxes and shelves. The ones he’d checked before he’d gone to get lunch were on the floor, apparently in the same positions he’d left them. He checked them; checked and re-checked them; then combed through the other shelves and boxes, repeating the same tired process he’d performed that very morning with the desperation of a drowning stallion. Sheer will, forged in the fires of bewilderment, prevented him from checking them again.

“Nothing?” he whispered.

It was true. Aside from the four boxes which he’d already turned over, no more supplies had been stolen. The thief had not returned. He still had a chance to capture them.

With a sigh, Cypress sank to the floor, confused laughter bubbling up inside him. Celestia above, he was going to quit after this, he thought; all this stress over a phantom thief who was probably just as dumb as he was.

“Huh. Reverie and relief. Tastes kinda funny.”

Cypress yelped and spun around. “Wha—hey, you can’t be back here!”

Kai stood in the doorway, smiling a little. “The door was open, though,” they said. .

“That still doesn’t mean you can waltz in here! You, uh, don’t have the clearance!”

“By the looks of it, I’m not the only one.”

Cypress made a strange noise—half-strangle, half-shout. Kai closed the door behind them, scanning the storeroom’s shelves and boxes. The door closing sent a few sheets of paper flying. Cypress grabbed them in his magic, but Kai simply looked at them lazily.

“Regardless,” Cypress said, attempting to sound a little like Peppy, “this is for Logistics personnel only, so I would appreciate it, Kai, if you would please leave.”

“Sure. So long as I can talk to your cousin about those components they don’t know anything about.”

With a slight hiss, Cypress’s magic fizzled out, and the papers fell to the floor. He turned slowly to find Kai staring a little smugly at him.

“What are you talking about?” Cypress asked weakly.

“It was a valiant effort, but lying to a Changeling isn’t so simple. I could practically taste you lying the moment you tried feeding me that story about your cousin. No offense, but you kirins aren’t all that great at hiding your emotions.” Kai looked around again, as though distracted. “I’d wager that the truth of the matter has something to do the appearance of this storeroom. As well as whatever has you feeling such contradictory emotions.”

They nudged one of the boxes with their hoof. “This one interests me. You can tell it’s missing a few supplies. By the looks of it, they’d be the same ones you said your cousin had questions about. And those”—here, Kai nodded at the other three boxes—“are probably the same, yes? And based on your reaction, these boxes shouldn’t be missing anything in the first place.”

Cypress said nothing, but flicked his tail.

“Obviously, your cousin, if they do or don’t exist, isn’t interested in using these components for anything. But somepony is. Somepony that… shouldn’t be, is that correct?” Kai looked at Cypress. “So why are they interested in the first place?”

Cypress sighed. “That’s what I was asking around for.”

“So I gathered.” There wasn’t any judgment in Kai’s voice, just curiosity. “Would you mind telling me about what’s going on? Maybe I can help.”

Cypress hesitated. “I can at least tell you, I had nothing to do with this,” Kai said. “I’ve been here only two weeks and have never gone into Logistics before. The only reason I found this place was by following you.”

That much, Cypress could figure out for himself; plus, as far as he could recall, he really had never seen Kai before. Looking at them, he didn’t think they were lying, nor that they had any reason to lie. Their face shone with a sincerity he’d seldom seen in the faces of his coworkers, the ones who offered him only polite, distant nods and appraisals.

Cypress sucked in a breath, steadying himself. “All right, so… here’s what happened.”

Chapter Five

The prospect of assistance renewed Cypress’s energies, but unfortunately, other responsibilities drew his and Kai’s attention away from the task for the rest of the day. “Don’t let yourself get stirred up by this,” Kai told him before departing. “We still have time. I’ll give it some thought and talk to you tomorrow. Try and get some rest.”

Once his other tasks were completed, Cypress’s newfound energies were spent. Exhausted by both the physical toil and his worrying which had returned once he was no longer occupied, he crawled back to his room and laid on his cot. He wanted to fall asleep, but feared doing so would cost him hearing the thief re-enter the storeroom, even though no noise could travel from there to his bedroom. His tiredness eventually won out, but, perhaps due to his failing constitution, he was gifted no dreams; only an empty restlessness which, upon his bleary-eyed waking, made him feel like he hadn’t slept at all.

He'd woken up to the sound of somepony thudding a hoof on his door. “Cypress,” a voice said—it was Kai. Cypress blinked his blurred vision away and opened it.

“Do you know what time it is?” he asked.

“A little past six,” Kai answered. They tilted their head and smiled apologetically. “Sorry. I know it’s early, but I thought it be best to wake you now. You never know—the thief might have returned, and we might be able to catch them in the act.”

That fully woke Cypress up. The two of them left the room and quietly yet hurriedly made their way down to Logistics hub. Station Thirteen was not yet stirring, but the gentle hum of electricity that was threaded through every nook and cranny reminded them that nothing truly slept here.

Logistics was still dark. Flicking on the light, Cypress didn’t see anything seemingly amiss. He nodded to Kai, and the pair worked their way down through the narrow corridor to the storeroom.

“That reminds me,” Kai said when they approached the door. “Was this locked, at all?”

“Peppy didn’t lock it,” Cypress explained. “She didn’t trust that I’d somehow not lock myself in here at some point, so she made it a rule to keep it this way..” So in a way it’s her fault, he thought—then he shoved that thought away in tandem with shoving open the door.

Kai found the light switch and pulled. The resulting flash momentarily blinded Cypress, who cringed and hid behind a hoof. The dots that gathered in his vision seemed to coagulate into the vague outline of a pony, but when his vision returned, all that appeared in front of them was a room apparently devoid of any other occupants.

“Well,” Kai said, but did not say anything else. They looked at Cypress and nodded, and together they began to search.

Soon, however, it became apparent the storeroom really was that empty. Nothing had been disturbed. No new items were missing. The room, as far as the pair could tell, had miraculously remained as untouched as the night sky.

With a sigh that could have filled a forest, Cypress slid against the wall, the tension from that morning seeping out like cold mercury. “Gah. This whole thing is gonna kill me before we figure out what’s happening.”

Kai hummed, but in a manner that suggested they were distracted. Glancing over, Cypress noticed they were gently hovering in the air and looking over the tops of the shelves. “What are you doing?”

“Following up on something,” Kai said. They fluttered from one end of a row to another. “It was something I noticed yesterday, but up until now, I thought I was imagining things.” After a few moments, they lowered themselves to the ground and stroked their chin.

“Huh?” Cypress stood and trotted over to Kai. “What did you see yesterday?”

Kai glanced at him. “No one’s been in here before, right?”

“That’s what my boss told me.”

“So we can assume, before you got handed the assignment, this place was basically undisturbed for whoever knows how long.”

“What’s your point? The thief still entered, didn’t they?”

“They did, and yet, if this place was as undisturbed as it was when you first entered, why, then, is there not a speck of dust to be found now?”

“That’s easy. It’s because…”

Cypress’s mouth flapped uselessly.

Kai tilted their head. “Right. And, when you made the discovery, did you notice any dust in here?” Cypress thought back, scanning his mind for that. Peppy’s words of warning came rushing back. He tried to recall if she had been joking, but no; her warning had been delivered with a graveness he’d come to fully associate with her. “No,” he said. “No, I’m certain of it. No dust.”

“None whatsoever,” Kai said, satisfied. “That’s definitely strange.” They furrowed their brow, then returned to looking all around the storeroom.

Cypress grew antsy and stepped closer. A nervous bout of excitement ran all over his body with a curious, tingling sensation. “So? What does that tell you, master sleuth?”

“I’m not sure. It might not mean anything. It’s just… really weird, is all.” Noticing the look on Cypress’s face, Kai offered a sympathetic shrug. “I’m sorry. I know, it’s frustrating.”

Cypress shook his head. “Not your fault, Kai.” Then he remembered something else Peppy had said. He trotted over to one of the shelves and placed a hoof on the dust-free surface, thinking.

“Something occur to you?” Kai asked.

“Maybe. Peppy said she’d checked this place out two days before she told me to start digitizing all the records. When she checked it, it was apparently full of dust. Now there’s none.” He looked at Kai. “Which must mean the dust went away, or was cleared up, or whatever, sometime between when she checked, and when I found those components missing.”

“In other words, your thief only recently stole them. But I imagine that doesn’t tell us anything about their identity.”

There was not much else they could do. As morning was fast approaching, they decided to return to the investigation at lunch break. The day passed obscenely slow, such that by the time lunch was called, Cypress was just about ready to bolt. He saw Kai in the hallway outside of the engineering division, standing behind a group of other engineers who were busy discussing one of their projects. The group was arranged in a tight circle, one that Kai could not enter. They seemed confused, fidgeting from one side, yet the circle refused to yield.

Cypress approached the circle from the front and said, “Excuse me.”

The pair of engineers from the day before were also there, and, at the sound of his voice, turned and recognized him. “Oh, hey, it’s you,” the second engineer said. “How’s your cousin doing?”

“He’s fine. Sorry, you’re, ah, standing in the way of my friend.”

The first engineer blinked. “Your friend? Who’re you—” He turned around, saw Kai, and recoiled a little. “Don’t sneak up on us like that!”

Kai frowned. “I didn’t. I’ve been here the whole time.”

“Well, I didn’t hear you, so—”

“That’s all right,” the second engineer interrupted. “Here, we’ll get out of your way.” She offered Cypress and Kai apologetic smiles before pushing the entire circle down the corridor.

“Charming group,” Cypress said, once they were alone. He was hoping to hear a chuckle, but Kai looked more morose than anything. They looked in the direction of the group as it shrank into the distance.

Cypress cleared his throat. “Anyway, uh… what should we do next?”

Kai came back into themselves with a brief start. They shook their head rapidly. “Right, um… Well, I was thinking we ought to see if anypony caught the thief on camera. Let’s head to the security booth.”

Kai abruptly headed off, not waiting for Cypress to follow.

An agile trot brought them to Station Thirteen’s security booth. It was a shockingly cramped space, with scraps of paper, broken pencils, Styrofoam cups, empty chip bags, and other assorted junk littered about the floor, and a lingering miasma of unnamable description festered unseen in one of the corners, causing Cypress to scrunch up his nose. There was only enough room for two guards, who, when Cypress and Kai arrived, were lazily sitting in ocean-green roller chairs. One monitor, covered in an assortment of sticky notes, displayed slightly slowed-down footage of certain areas of the observatory. The other had what looked like old footage of a Hoofball game playing, which the second guard was watching with slitted eyes and an expression devoid of actual enjoyment.

One of the guards, a grumpy-looking yellow pegasus who was watching the first monitor, stared at the pair with distrusting eyes. His name tag indicated his name was Lux. “Can I help you?” he asked, in a tone that suggested he wanted anything but.

Then it occurred to Cypress that he hadn’t even come up with a reason for them being here that didn’t involve revealing the theft. He glanced at Kai, caught between pointing that out and stifling himself, when the Changeling took a step forward and stood straight.

“I’m Kai, and this is Cypress,” Kai said. “We were hoping to ask if you could show us some security footage?”

Lux narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

“Cypress works in Logistics, and he swears he heard something moving around in the ventilation system a few days ago.” Cypress tried not to marvel at the ease at which Kai delivered the lie. If the Changeling could read his own fib, he didn’t want the guards to recognize befuddlement on his end.

Lux, however, simply snorted and turned away. “That sounds closer to a job for maintenance than anything we should care about. Let alone something that requires us to show you security footage.”

Cypress sensed an opportunity, and joined in. “I did ask maintenance for help, but they didn’t find anything. They were the ones who suggested we come to you guys for help.”

“Then you must have imagined it,” the other guard scoffed. He, a light-blue pegasus barely older than Cypress, averted his gaze from the game to look at the pair. In one of his wings, he swirled a spoon around a cup of coffee. He didn’t have a name tag on, but a splotch of Velcro on his chest indicated its previous existence. “Wouldn’t be surprised. Logistics isn’t the most exciting department, from what I hear.”

And this is? Cypress thought.

“Even so, it’d be nice if we could settle it once and for all,” Kai said, undeterred. “Can’t you just show us the footage from a few days ago? See if anything slipped into the vents without us noticing?”

The two guards exchanged looks. Cypress wondered if they were considering throwing the pair out, when Lux said, “Alto, why don’t you go refill your cup?”

“Seriously?” Alto replied, his eyes wide.

Lux nodded. “Yeah. This shouldn’t take too long. Go get me a cup extra, yeah?”

Alto hesitated, looking at Kai and Cypress. Then, he sighed and got to his hooves, balancing the cup on his wing. “Fine. I’ll be back shortly.”

Alto slipped past the pair, but not before murmuring, “Don’t try anything funny, y’hear? Haven’t had a single incident on my watch.” He glared at them for a solid five seconds before he finally left.

Cypress turned to Lux, hoping for some sort of consolation, but all Lux said was, “All right, let’s get this over with. Keep your hooves, wings, and horns where I can see them.”

Cypress glanced at Kai. Kai shrugged.

Lux tapped a few keys on the keyboard. The computer screen flashed, then opened to a security camera network. The feed was noticeably stilted and colored black-and-white. Next to it was a map of the observatory.

“Black-and-white? Isn’t that a little outdated?” Cypress asked.

Lux let out an annoyed snort but did not answer. He tapped another key to bring up the camera placed in Logistics. “There’s your space right now,” he said.

Cypress leaned over Lux’s shoulder, ignoring the grunt the guard made. The footage revealed an empty Logistics department, with the camera focusing on the main work area with all the monitors and record-keeping equipment. The door was somewhere off-screen. Notably, the corridor leading to the storeroom was out of sight.

“That’s the view? That’s it?” Kai commented.

“You got a problem, buzz brain?” Lux replied.

Kai, to their credit, brushed the insult aside; meanwhile, Cypress bristled and only just managed to restrain himself. “It just seems a strange spot to have the camera focus on, that’s all.”

Lux grunted. “I’ll grant you that much, but that’s what the head of Logistics wanted. Seemed to think that the data storages were more important for us to keep an eye on than anywhere else. Worked for me—meant less work for us.”

Kai looked like they were about to question the decision, so Cypress cut them off. “Can you show us the footage from a few days ago, then?” he asked..

After some passive-aggressive clicking, Lux brought up the camera’s history. The stilted framerate made it look like a poor rendition of a puppet show, with characters wandering under the careful gaze of the camera, their movements stilted and janky. Peppy Pusher appeared, trotting quickly past one of the computers. Then Cypress himself was there, and he watched himself sitting at one of the monitors with a bored expression. Lux scrubbed the timeline forward a few days, and Cypress’s double and Peppy appeared—it was the moment she’d dropped all those archaic inventory logs on his desk.

“Go back a day or two,” Cypress said.

Lux gave him annoyed glance, but did so. Cypress leaned close, hoping to catch all details. But as the footage continued, disappointment sprang like a weed in his stomach. It showed nothing; or rather, due to its placement, the camera failed to capture anypony entering the corridor.

“Well, there you have it,” Lux said, leaning back into his chair. “Nothing went into the vents during this timeframe. I’d say you were just mistaken.”

“What?” Cypress had been so focused on watching, he’d forgotten about the lie. “No, wait… Are you sure? Play it again.”

“I’m sure,” Lux said gruffly. “And you can play it all you want, you’re not gonna see anything. Besides, Alto and I were here every night, and I can assure you, we didn’t see anything crawling up or down the ventilation system.” He barked out a short laugh. “What would you be looking for, anyway? A rat? That one’s larva?”

Cypress saw Kai stiffen. Inside of himself, the momentary shock began to give way to simmering appall, but before he could reprimand Lux, Kai pushed a hoof at the screen. “I was curious about one thing, actually. This map—it has all the places where cameras are positioned, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, what about here?” Kai shifted their hoof to point to an empty spot on the map next to Logistics.

Lux glared at Kai. “You tell me, genius. Would we have a camera where there isn’t a room?”

Cypress started. “But there is a room—”

“Oh, for the love of—” Lux pushed himself back, sending the chair backwards. He glared up at the two of them, and suddenly, it occurred to Cypress he was actually a bit small for a pegasus—that absurd observation threatened to spill into laughter. He jabbed a hoof at the screen. “Look at yourselves. You’re still green behind the ears, and I don’t mean that literally, kirin. You haven’t been here long enough to know this place better than I do. So don’t go insisting on phantom rooms or that sort of thing. And even if there was some room here, I highly doubt we’d care enough to put a camera in there. Why would we? We’re just looking at the sky most of the time—nothing here worth committing a crime over, unless you count the garbage cafeteria food.”

“Actually,” Cypress said, “we’re looking for comets—”

“Read my flank, bozo. Does it say I care?”

Alto returned just then, unannounced, and Kai, caught off-guard by Lux’s outburst, nearly backed into him. “Sweet Celestia, look out, darn it!” Alto exclaimed. He was carrying two cups in his wing, and peered at Kai and Cypress with murderous annoyance. “We’re surrounded by electronic equipment, you dolts! One spill and the whole system’s fried!”

“Sorry,” Kai mumbled.

“Yeah, yeah, I don’t need your apology.” Alto pushed past them and handed one of the cups to Lux. “Bad enough that stupid robot talked my ear off about the dangers of handling liquids around electrical outlets. I know how to handle it. Guests, on the other hoof…”

“Wait. Robot?” Cypress furrowed his brow. “You mean Roccu? What was it doing here?”

“What else? Cleaning! While we were working! You’d think it’d know better…”

“That, wait, that doesn’t seem like—”

“When was this?” Kai asked.

Alto looked furiously at them. “A couple of days ago. Can you leave, now?”

“Leave? But we haven’t even—”

“You’ve seen the footage and managed to get on both our nerves,” Lux said. “Don’t you think you two have done enough for today?”

Cypress glared back. “Okay, seriously, what is—mmghf!”

Kai had clamped a hoof over his muzzle and was attempting to drag him away. “An excellent suggestion,” they said, their voice dripping with faux cordiality. “We’ll be on our way, then. Thank you for your help!”

“Don’t mention it,” Lux said.

“Don’t come back anytime soon,” Alto added. He pressed a button on the wall, and the door to the security both shut with an abrupt hiss.

Chapter Six

“I can’t believe them. I just can’t believe them!”

“Cypress—”

“I mean, the way they looked at you, the way they spoke, you’d think that invasion happened only yesterday! And that other engineer, he—”

“Cypress, calm down—”

“Calm down? Calm down?! How can I calm down after all that? In fact, how come you’re so calm? How can you be—”

“Because I’m used to it.”

Kai spoke those five words in a harsh whisper, but Cypress heard them as though they’d been uttered through Station Thirteen’s loudspeaker. Having been pacing across the corridor—it was empty, thankfully—he stopped short and twisted around. “What?”

The station’s clinically blue lights seemed to suck the color from Kai’s face, reverting it to some poor and pale visage. Even the brightness of their eyes had dimmed, as though drained of previous vitality. Behind them was a wall of reflective panels, and Cypress could see his reflection staring aghast.

“I’m used to it,” they repeated, resigned. “It’s happened before.”

Cypress couldn’t say anything. He was aware that he should say something, but was unable to come up with anything that didn’t seem shallow or hollow.

Kai glanced up, though it was not clear they were looking at anything among the ceiling pipes and light fixtures. “Stations Five, Seven, and Twelve. I was stationed at each for less than a few weeks on average before I was transferred. Each time, I was told it was due to downsizing or reshuffling—it became the mantra of Equine Resources. But they and I always knew the real reason. My presence made for a… difficult atmosphere.” They followed this with a twirl of their hoof, eyes slitted slightly.

Cypress furrowed his brow. “That engineer, those guards… They had no right. No right to say those things. To think those things.”

“We Changelings have learned that prejudices do not die out quickly. Some ponies will always remember. Who can blame them?”

“I can! I mean, for stars’ sake, Kai, Changelings have been a part of Equestrian society for ages!” Cypress stomped a hoof. “Even longer than my people!”

“This is also true,” Kai stated; by the Silence, Cypress wanted to smack that neutral tone out of their voice. “But the Kirins are more pony-like in appearance than us Changelings, aren’t they? Thus, in that regard, here, on this station, I am alone.”

Kai looked at Cypress with sympathetic longing. It was a soft look, filled not with distaste or jealousy, but instead, a trove of earnest, horrendous, exposing want, whose other side was guilt, that can only appear in those who find that which they desire the most in the lives of others. But Cypress’s reflection, frozen in those reflecting panels, wasn’t looking back. It stared at itself, then past that, past the limitations offered by that surface, until Station Thirteen melted away and all that remained was that reflection, surrounded by a nothingness compounded upon itself. If Cypress looked close enough, he could make his vision blur by itself, until the reflected form sizzled away into a faded, forgotten memory. Then nothing would truly remain. How fragile was a reflection, how easy could one dissolve it of substance. And if that was the case, what did that mean for the pony behind it? Were they just as prone to dissolution?

The thought was so unnerving that it brought Cypress back into himself; yet, in having come back, he suddenly remembered his experiences on Station Thirteen, could view them at an angle which revealed another side to them all. His eyes twisted away from his reflection and centered back on Kai, still looking at him with that sad, self-effacing want. “I may look like one,” Cypress said, voice soft, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m always treated like one.” He looked directly at Kai, unblinking. “Neither of us deserve to feel any less than one.”

Kai said nothing for a time. The station beeped and whirred, and let out other sounds, sounds which lacked names but which were nonetheless as recognizable as any other. Cypress let himself fall into the orange of Kai’s eyes, let the Changeling sense his words, sense his meaning behind each thing stated. Kai stared back, for as long as they could.

Then they were the one to look away. “You are a strange creature,” they said.

Cypress laughed. “Is that what gave it away?” Through his chuckling, though, he caught Kai smiling.

Logistics felt like a dead place when they returned, and by that point, Cypress’s mirth had faded. He gazed in the direction of the corridor leading to the storeroom. Kai slipped into one of the office chairs, folding their legs in front of them. “You appear conflicted,” they said.

Cypress sighed. “Is it that obvious? I just don’t feel like we’ve gotten any closer to figuring this out.” He looked at Kai. “Do you?”

Kai rubbed their chin. “Well, the stop by the guard booth has made me consider a few more things. The fact that the camera only watches…” They turned their head and gestured to the monitors under the camera’s gaze. “… over that area.”

“And the fact that the guards didn’t know anything about the storeroom, or that it even exists.” Cypress glanced that way, then, back to his companion. “You think the guards were lying?”

“Unlikely. Brash, yes, but lying about knowing about a room? That seems a bit much. This also means that I don’t think they’re our thieves—either one of them.”

“Sure. They didn’t strike me as the thieving type.”

“Plus, well, what reason would they have to go around and steal some supplies? Pure boredom?”

“We don’t know why they were stolen, though. Just that they were.”

“Ignore the motive for now,” Kai said. “Let’s think about all the things the thief would need to know if they wanted to accomplish this.”

Cypress nodded, then joined Kai in sitting in one of the office chairs. “Well, obviously, they’d need to know about the limits of what that camera can see. And I guess they’d have to know about the storeroom itself.”

“Which further eliminates the guards, since neither knew about its existence—assuming they are telling the truth, though we have no real reason to think they’re lying.” Kai left their chair and began to pace across the room. “Of course, only the guards would know about the exact placement of each camera. If it’s not them…”

“Then it must be someone who had seen the feed. But couldn’t that be anycreature? Anyone over the course of however long we’ve had those cameras?”

“It seems more likely it’d be a recent visitor, considering when these supplies were stolen. Is there anypony else in Logistics?”

“No, it’s just me and my supervisor. Not exactly great task management, if you ask me. From what I hear, my supervisor would do all this work on her own, if I wasn’t around.” Cypress paused, then tilted his head, smiling a little wryly. “You’re, uh, not about to name me as a suspect, are you?”

“Technically you haven’t been ruled out, but if you were the culprit, you’re either really good at hiding that fact or really bad at it.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult.”

“Maybe a complimentary insult. So no one else in Logistics—meaning, no one else who should know about the storeroom. Is that right?”

Cypress nodded. “No one whatsoever. Unless she somehow mentioned it in casual conversation. Not that I think she’s even engaged in casual conversation.”

Kai nodded. Then they were quiet. After a few moments, they sighed. “That… doesn’t really help us all that much, though, does it? I can see why you feel like we’ve not made much progress.”

Cypress shook his head. “Peppy will probably be back in a few days at the latest, if not tomorrow at the earliest.” He could not contain his gloom.

Kai came over and pressed a sympathetic hoof to his shoulder. “Hey. We’ve still got time. I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”

Cypress nodded, but couldn’t answer. Kai stood there awkwardly for a second, then returned to their chair. Cypress looked at the door to the storeroom, head swimming with questions. The nature of the supplies stolen still bothered him. Such a limited number was taken—for what purpose? Why not mine for more the first time around? Perhaps the thief hadn’t counted on remaining uncaught for long.

He returned to the possibility that perhaps the thief simply didn’t know how much to steal. If that was the case, then it followed that for whatever purpose the perpetrator had resorted to theft, they had a distinct lack of information.

“From what you told me, nothing all that big—or—small could be built from just that,” Kai had told him.

But what if the thief didn’t know this? What if they’d only assumed they’d need these items, but hadn’t considered how much of each? What if that was why such a strange number was given to each missing component?

Cypress closed his eyes, falling deeper into confusion. But his head felt full of sludge. He needed it clean, spick-and-span, as clean, in fact, as the storeroom had been when he’d first discovered it—

With an exclamation, Cypress stood up. Kai, startled, fell out of their chair. “What? What is it?”

“I—”

For a moment, Cypress couldn’t speak. Wordless thoughts swarmed his head, but as he began to desperately sort them, they all started constructing one definitive conclusion. Slowly, he turned his head to look at Kai.

“I think I’ve figured it out,” he said.

Chapter Seven

The thief was good at keeping track of time; great, even. It was as much a part of their being as any physical part and could be wielded with just as much precision. They had been accounting for it ever since the theft had been accomplished and then after it had been discovered. They would have wanted to keep going with it, but the discovery had forced them into temporary idleness. Now, though, the opportunity had opened for the act to continue; they had learned that Logistics’ head was not set to return for a few more days, and the investigation into the theft had stalled. If they were quick, the thief could succeed again—though they were aware that time still was not fully on their side.

The station had an automatic dimming system in place which, at the allotted hour, would decrease output and render non-priority areas in darkness. All occupants were asleep, even the guards, but the thief knew that even if they were awake, those security personnel would have no reason to care about their presence. Dissatisfaction with the job, thief had found, inversely correlated with wanting to do the job well.

The thief stole across the station, heading for their goal. The cramped, shadowy outline of Logistics stood out like a lonely mountain, and inside, some LED strips glowed, outlining the edges of the paneling in a sickly, translucent paleness. . The thief was not put off by the sight. They approached the door and gently opened it, and entered without a peep. They knew of the camera, what it could see, and more importantly, what it could not. Deftly, it made sure to avoid its gaze.

The thief paused a moment against the side wall, waiting.

A few seconds passed. The slow, winding rotation of the camera was the only sound. Once they were sure nothing was amiss, the thief continued. It followed the edge of the room to its end, then slipped into the corridor.

The storeroom was closed, as expected. It was darkened, too—good. Reaching out, the thief carefully twisted the knob to ensure no squeak escaped. They then allowed themselves entrance into that dim storage. For a moment, they paused, debating if they should stop while they could. But they were not programmed to do a task halfway, even the ones they came up with. So they scuttled silently ahead, past the shelves and piles of reports left over, towards the boxes which contained what they needed. They thought they felt a tingly sensation along their body, like a current; but this was absurd—so such things existed in its parameters. They had a goal. To complete it was natural. But to anticipate its completion…

They opened a box and reached inside, shuffling around.

But the box was empty.

A switch was pulled, and if the thief had eyes, they would have been made blind by the sudden illumination. Nevertheless, they waited a few seconds, out of a default sense of courtesy, before saying, “I suppose this means you’ve figured it out, Master Cypress?”

Cypress Flash stood next to the light switch. “Most of it, I think,” he said. There wasn’t any smugness in his voice, however.

Kai appeared from the other side of the door. “But we were hoping that you’d be able to fill in the blanks.”

Slowly, the thief turned around. Cypress peered into the blank faceless hull and watched the lights flicker across the front. He glanced at Kai, but did not say anything. The two of them had agreed to be careful about whatever happened next, and that involved not saying or doing anything that might incite the thief.

“What have you figured out?” the thief asked.

Cypress stepped away from the switch. “You probably first heard of this storeroom when my supervisor was grumbling about it. You mentioned having heard about it before I did, after all. I don’t know what she would have said, but it probably involved some of the items stored back here. I imagine that got you thinking.”

“What happened next is a little speculative, since we don’t know all your steps, but it’s likely that sometime after you heard that, you went to the guard booth,” Kai added. “You went under the guise of cleaning, but I suspect you wanted information about the camera, what it watched over, what it didn’t. Neither Lux nor Alto wanted to engage in ‘shop talk,’ but, your duties meant they couldn’t turn you away.” Kai paused. “Though, it didn’t seem like you managed to do your job.”

“I did my job,” the thief replied without offense. “Unfortunately, I think those two guards are more comfortable in a pigsty than a booth.”

“I can see that.”

“Anyway,” Cypress said, “you learned from them how the camera was positioned in Logistics. That meant you knew how to evade it. But you also learned that the storeroom had no cameras—in all likelihood, you learned that nopony else knew about the storeroom aside from my supervisor.”

“Additionally,” said Kai, “you’ve got a perfect understanding of everyone’s schedule on this station, so you’d know relatively where everypony is, and, especially, isn’t. You’d be able to move to areas where nopony would know you were in, on account of nopony being around.”

“You’d know where I am, where my supervisor would be—and if she were to tell you off-hoof she’d be away for a few days, well…”

The thief had fallen silent. But they seemed to regard the two of them with what could have been amusement if Cypress stretched his imagination a bit. He glanced at Kai, and saw that they were looking more ponderously at the thief. There was no contempt in their face, no anger. Only curious bafflement—a feeling Cypress certainly shared.

Kai cleared their throat and continued. “At any rate, you had learned what you needed to learn, and thus, were able to seize the opportunity to act on it. After Cypress’s supervisor had left, you came into the storeroom, searched the shelves for what you needed, and took what you could.”

“But not a whole lot, though. You could have grabbed more. I suspect there are two main reasons for why you didn’t.” Cypress raised his left hoof. “The first: you simply didn’t know how much to get the first time. Now, you could have grabbed more—no one was here and nopony would be for a little while—but that brings us to the second reason.”

“The room was dusty.” Kai flashed one of their wings in the air Pointed it towards the top of one of the shelves. “Filled to the brim. Makes sense, since nopony had been in here in ages. Anyone could have ignored all that dirtiness, though. Anyone—but you.” They lowered their wing, and their voice chittered with sympathy. “The compulsion must have been astounding.”

“You were forced to clean the room,” Cypress said. “But by the time you were done, the optimal space for your theft had passed, and you needed to leave. You probably thought you’d be able to come back later. But by that point, I’d discovered the missing supplies, and you had no choice but to lay low for a time, hoping you’d get the chance.”

“And I thought I did,” the thief said. “But I gather that was not really the case.”

Here, Kai offered a somewhat apologetic smile. “A lie we cooked up and allowed you to hear. Cypress’s supervisor will be returning soon, I am sorry to say.”

“Still,” Cypress said, no less looking apologetic, “we were counting on you being unable to pass up the opportunity. Didn’t think you’d give up easily after all.”

“Am I really that predictable?” Was the thief affronted by the implication? Cypress couldn’t tell. Emotionally, they were as unreadable as a boulder.

“Actions and behavior are predictable,” Kai said. “But reasons? No one can guess those.”

“No one but their owners.”

Cypress stepped forward and lit his horn. He lifted from one of the many boxes the plastic bags containing each of the remaining supplies. These he laid down in front of the thief. “We know what you did, when you did it, where, and how,” he said softly. He raised his eyes. “But we don’t know why, Roccu.”

Cypress would have thought he’d grown comfortable with those periods of silence which had, for the last several minutes, broken up the explanation. But hearing it again, in the context of all that was revealed, and hearing it come from Roccu in front of him, made the silence weigh heavier, with a weight only the wordless could fathom. He became aware of his own heartbeat, which, despite the rather relaxed situation, thundered somewhere in his head. Kai’s presence a short distance away became accentuated; Cypress was cognizant of their breathing, of the brief fluttering of their wings, the way they stared at the cleaning robot with baffled curiosity, as though trying to gauge what “emotions” its faceless hull was trying to convey through that stark silence.

Throughout, Roccu continued to say nothing. It leveraged its limbs in a slow manner, gently touching the bags of components placed on the ground with a gentleness that seemed almost paternal in scope. The strips of light running perpendicular along its front sequenced between its three primary outputs—green, yellow, red. It was thinking, Cypress surmised. Or maybe a better word was reflecting—reflecting on what was said and done.

“Every word,” Roccu said. “Every word, true.” It sounded awed, even impressed, which caused a flutter of embarrassment to rise up in Cypress’s chest.

Roccu’s lights became monochromatic and white. “Do you happen to know what Station Thirteen’s primary purpose is?” it asked.

Cypress only hesitated a moment before answering. “Comet observation. Kai told me about it. This station is looking for two specific ones, which have been regularly sighted for years.”

The lights flashed approvingly. “So you do know about them. Good. But do you know the story behind those comets? Why we started observing them?”

Cypress and Kai glanced at each other. Then they both shook their heads.

Roccu put the components down and rested its arms on the cold storeroom floor. “Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, two ponies from feuding farmer families—a mare and a stallion—fell in love. They could not tell their families, of course, but neither could they deny themselves their passion. Soon, secret meetings became secret musical interludes, all spiraling towards an inevitable clash between their families and their destiny. Not that that mattered to the two of them. Passion either clouded their senses or improved their ability to tolerate the limits of their existence, which they exploited to the best of their ability. It didn’t matter that they could not, when they were together, be with each other for very long, so long as they could be together. But one day, the mare learned that she and her family would move to another city, far from the old farm—from her love. The stallion, unwilling to let the relationship die due to the machinations of migration, arranged for the two of them to wed in secret.”

Roccu began to roll across the floor, its limbs touching the other boxes on the shelves. “In secret, yes—but things are hardly ever that simple. The mare’s father found out and crashed the wedding right as the vows were spoken. Incensed, he demanded the mare abandon her new husband and join her father in that distant city. But the father failed to anticipate that mare’s resolve. She had promised to be by her husband’s side through life and through death, and even though it would break her father’s heart, she would not break that vow. That’s the story, anyhow. But the legend… The legend comes out of that mare’s choice to be by her husband’s side in life and in death. Such a promise must have held its own kind of power, one to rival even the greatest sorcerers. That mare’s new family would later speak of the appearance of a pair of comets every year after the couple’s death, always on the anniversary of their wedding.”

Roccu stopped at one of the shelves. At first, Cypress thought they had found something of interest, but their one limb was frozen in the air, longingly, like it was reaching for something which no longer existed.

“Where did you hear this story?” Kai asked quietly.

“I didn’t. It came prepackaged in my programming, as one possible topic under my ‘small talk’ sub-routine.” Roccu paused. It lowered its voice, spoke with melancholy and nostalgia—tones that Cypress would have previously deemed impossible. “It’s one of my favorite stories. But because it’s not something that could come up in casual conversation, I’ve never talked about it before. I guess I would have wanted…” But it would say no more.

They waited. Cypress glanced back through the storeroom door to see if anypony was coming, but no nosy presence revealed themselves. Kai scuffed a hoof on the floor—they were unsure how to continue the conversation. “It’s a nice story,” Cypress began, “but I’m afraid I don’t see how that explains what you did. Or why.”

Here, Roccu turned in its spot to look at him. It folded its limbs together, like it was folding arms. “I’ve worked this station for years, you know. I’ve carried out my duties to the best of my ability. And I never minded the work—I am incapable of minding it. And every year, I would hear about these comets. The way ponies talked about them—you would think they were some gift from the stars. There were even some superstitious ponies who’d swear that if you brought somepony you liked to Station Thirteen to watch the comets with you, you’d end up happily together.” It made a strange motion with its appendages, making them rise and fall over an invisible spherical surface—Cypress realized it was a robot’s interpretation of a shrug. “And I suppose… I suppose at some point, I wondered. What would that be like? To watch them with somepony else?”

Roccu’s appendages returned to the ground. But there was more, wasn’t there? Cypress could tell. He stared deep into that faceless hull, scanning the lights, the colors, scanning that blankness for something beyond what his eyes could see. Then, after a moment, he had it. “To watch them… with something like yourself.”

“Yes,” Roccu whispered. “I didn’t want to watch them alone.”

The explanation came haltingly, yet energetically, as though each following word could not wait to follow the previous one. Roccu did not know how to build another one of itself, so it operated with only the vaguest of knowledge about robotics. That was why it had chosen such a perplexing quantity of what was stolen. It had realized very quickly it would need more, but by that point, Cypress had made the discovery, and everything had stalled. Roccu had hoped to have another chance before the comets came.

But truthfully, Cypress was only half-listening. What Roccu had said—about not wanting to watch them alone—paraded about his mind like a haunting aria. He thought about every time he’d seen Roccu cleaning Station Thirteen, every time he’d marveled at the fact that this single robot covered so much. True, he had help from the cleaner crew, but that wasn’t the same. It had to do it all on its own, with itself for its own company. It was a culture of one—but one too few.

He looked at Kai. He could tell they, too, were wrestling with the admission. But when their gaze met his like poles aligning, all stormy emotions and spiraling thoughts vanished in an instant. Without a word or a waste of a second, both had an entire conversation—one that ended with a tacit agreement.

“But so it goes,” Roccu said. “I suppose I always knew I’d be caught eventually." It paused, lights flickering. “So, then… what now?”

Cypress offered a daring smile. “Now? Now we make things right.”

Chapter Eight

Peppy Pusher returned a few days later, red-eyed, sore, and exhausted, to a sight she never thought she’d find: Logistics completely calm and organized. With it was something she’d somehow expected even less: Cypress, sitting at one of the desks, going over a report, looking up at her when she entered, and smiling. “Oh, hey, welcome back, boss.” Later he would treasure the thunderstruck expression on her face.

Naturally, she asked to see what progress he’d made with regards to digitization, and he was only happy to show her. She managed to prevent her eyes from bugging out, but could not contain her surprise and incredulity. “Everything?”

“Everything, yep.”

“All the reports, everything’s been counted up?”

“As thoroughly as I could. You’re free to check if you think I—”

“No, no, I’m sure you got everything. Still, I’m surprised. I would have expected you’d still have a little left over.”

Cypress, abashed, chuckled. “Well, not to make it a point or anything, but I had a lot of free time, so I thought I might as well go all out.”

Peppy nodded, and though she refrained from smiling, she gazed at him, impressed. “We may make you a logician yet,” she said. Cypress maintained his smile even as he repressed a shiver; getting his boss to admire him felt prophetically disconcerting.

When she was gone, Kai, who had been listening from outside, whistled. “You sure you don’t want to tell her you had help? She might make you do more work as a reward. Might not even let you transfer out anymore.”

“Now you tell me. I’m seriously reassessing letting you two help,” Cypress replied.

They trotted out of Logistics to find Station Thirteen awake and lively. Engineers, technicians, and astronomers raced up and down the corridors, spouting off numbers and orders to their walkie-talkies. The PA system played live updates of what was happening, though it was largely a garble to their ears. Everything tingled with barely suppressed anticipation, yet Cypress and Kai continued at a leisurely pace.

“Anycreature else bothering you?” Cypress asked.

“Nah, not particularly. The guards still give me the stink-eye whenever I see them, but I’m starting to think they give that to everypony. Easier to ignore, at any rate.”

“And the engineer?”

“The other one, the female—she told me that he transferred out recently. I guess that’s the best decision any of us could have made.”

“It’s not your fault, you know.”

“I know.”

“That’s good. And your project?”

They rounded the corner, making their way to the cafeteria. “Like I told Roccu, it’ll take a bit, but it should have made considerable progress by this time next year.”

“Just in time for the next sighting. You think you can work that fast?”

“Contacting the proper manufactures to find the necessary parts, discussing the basics of robotic engineering with field experts, working out how to write and understand blueprints?” Kai shrugged. “Honestly, I’ve worked harder jobs at other places, and with even less time available.” Cypress couldn’t help but chuckle.

When they entered the cafeteria, they stopped to scan the throng of ponies. Kai spotted what they were looking for and pointed a hoof in that direction. “There.”

Roccu was cleaning and dusting the area. It stopped as the pair approached. “Master Kai, Master Cypress! I trust your supervisor was quite satisfied with your work?”

“Maybe too satisfied. Couldn’t you have made it look a little sloppy?”

“Sloppiness is outside the scope of my programming. Besides, I quite enjoyed the counting.”

“And what’s your excuse?” Cypress asked Kai.

“I got swept up in the fervor of good work.” Kai gestured to Roccu. “You got a few minutes for a quick break?”

“A quick break? Oh, I don’t know. There’s still so much to do—”

“Come on. It won’t be long. Our treat.”

Roccu beeped. “I… I couldn’t ask you for this. You’ve already done so much—keeping my theft to yourself, adjusting the digital records so that—”

“It’s fine,” Cypress said, smiling. “Besides, you definitely don’t want to miss this.”

Roccu was convinced, and followed them out of the cafeteria back into the corridor. They could not have chosen a better time. The PA system announced the telescope had spotted it. With a whirl of gear and machinery, every window in the station collapsed into a set of screens projecting exactly what the massive lens had picked up. The lights in the corridor dimmed and all the noise settled into an anticipatory silence. Even wayward Cypress was caught up in the splendor of waiting.

His mind traveled back to that night in the storeroom, after he and Kai had promised not to tell anyone about the thefts. “It’d be an easy enough thing to falsify,” Cypress had told the repentant thief. “Besides, it’s not like anypony was hurt.”

Roccu didn’t understand. “But why? I have committed a crime. All for a selfish reason. Why this gesture of courtesy?”

Kai had been the one to answer. Their answer seemed to echo around Cypress as he, the Changeling, and the robot all turned their view to the screens, which now displayed a darkness so thick, one would have thought there’d been a malfunction. Then, there was a spark, and a gasp that rang throughout the station—a gasp of astonishment, discovery, and thrilling satisfaction. It was accompanied by the most marvelous sight: that of a pair of pearlescent bodies twirling eternally in a dance that stretched the cosmos. The comets had come.

“Because,” Kai had said, and which Cypress now remembered, “no one deserves to feel alone.”

The End