Hi! My name is O.K. Corral, and I’m formally submitting my application for the Stable 33 Exchange Program. I think my my attached CV can speak for itself, but just to highlight a few of my accomplishments—top of my class in Equestrian History, Equestrian Ethics, Applied Engineering, and Evolutionary Psychology, gold medalist in varsity track, hoofball, wrestling, riflery, and simulated orienteering, a standardized mean SPECIAL of 6.67, and ovulation metrics in the ninetieth percentile.
Now, despite these impressive qualifications, my bloodline’s impeccable genetic pedigree and breeding history means that, at present, seventy-four percent of Stable 33’s viable male population falls within the Red Zone for inbreeding, and, due to various...’social factors’, my attempts to find a mate have been unfruitful.
Therefore, to take full advantage of my reproductive capacity while I’m still young, I humbly request your consideration for an arranged marriage to a stallion from one of our sister vaults. I know that if we pay the dowry now, it will be a great investment in my future as a breeding female Thanks for your time and consideration. Have a great day!
Okie strode out of the boardroom with a click in her canter and a big beaming grin on her snout. The Exchange Commmitte had said yes. Finally, she was getting married. She needed to tell someone right now—and since her dad was on the committee, he already knew. And so was her schoolteacher Miss Maybelle and her coach Home Turf, so she basically had one pony left to confide in: her brother.
“Squeaks! Squeaks! I’m getting married!” she cried out, ducking head-first underneath the door of their shared bedroom before it had even fully opened.
He was laying in bed, of course, tapping away at some game on his Pip-Buck. Honestly, she wasn’t sure how they shared the same genes. He was almost as smart as her, but incurably lazy and antisocial to a fault. He didn’t have a single friend in Stable 32.
To be fair, she didn’t either. But at least she tried!
Squeaks pulled his nose away from the screen for a few seconds. “Oh,” he said, and smiled faintly. “That’s nice. Glad for you.”
That was just how Squeaks was. There was a lot of that, living with the same hundred or so ponies in an underground bunker for your entire life. Like how sometimes Miss Maybelle would just stop in the middle of class, scream out loud, and walk out of the classroom without another word, or like how Appleseed would take his penis out in public and touch it in front of everypony.
That was just how they were, and you had to accept it. Because the alternative was abandoning two hundred years of genetic purity to let your gonads shrivel in the lawless wastes.
“Oh gosh, it’s going to be great! I’m going to get my own living quarters and cook my own meals and having intercourse...and you’re going to get the whole room all to yourself!”
“Huh,” Squeaks said. “I’ll miss you.”
Okie couldn’t stand still. She opened up some of her drawers, looking through her jumpsuits, thinking about packing—oh, but it might take a while for things to get arranged. Maybe they’d let her move in early, and she could get everything ready, like a little housewarming party... “Aw. Well, you can come over any time you like! As long as I’m not busy perpetuating the race, hee hee.”
Squeaks paused, lowering his Pip-Buck and raising an eyebrow. “You’re staying here?”
Okie rolled her eyes and laughed. “Yeah, Stable 33 requests it, so they pay the dowry, and I pay them back in babies. Free mare-ket economics is the basis of Stable society, you know that.”
“What I mean is, everyone treats us like dirt. If Dad wasn’t the Overmare they’d kick us out.”
Her grin faltered a little, so she turned and jostled Squeaks’s bed chidingly with her flank. “They’re just worried about Mom’s albinism. It’s our duty to prove that her genetics didn’t affect our moral character.”
She wished there was some way she could get that across to her brother, but maybe that was just how Squeaks was—if so, she’d just have to be enough of a mdoel citizen for them both.
On one hoof, it was so hard to wait until the wedding—on the other, the hope of a new life for her (and new lives for the Stable) made weeks seem like nothing. She’d always feared that she’d wind up without some way to contribute to society, and now she didn’t have to worry. All she’d have to do was lie back and think of Canterlot.
She’d gotten her new quarters a week in advance and had moved out and had her housewarming with her dad and Squeaks and Miss Maybelle. She’d taken out a loan to rent the stable’s only wedding dress. She’d helped overmare the plans for the wedding reception. She’d pitched in to gather up the grain that was going to be the dowry. And now, she could just step back, smile, and let it all happen.
It was an hour’s walk down the concrete corridor that linked Stables 33 and 32. It felt older than just about everytihng else in 33, more purpose-built. Some people preferred the bright lights and polished steel of the public quarters, but Okie actually liked it. It was like the service corridors, or the reactor room: function defining form, a space that embodied its own purpose. Purpose was good.
Her own purpose was waiting just beyond the blast doors. She looked down at the dress, smoothing it out with a hoof, tugging the cuffs a little higher up so they wouldn’t drag on the floor. Weeks had rushed by in a daze, and now every minute felt like days.
Her father and Home Turf slotted their cards into the control panel, while a small retinue of ponies stood to one side, extricating themselves from the carts they’d used to carry the oats from 33. Everyone was quiet; they’d been quiet the whole way there. At last, the warning lights began to spin, the machinery rumbled to life, and the blast door rose.
The ponies from 32 mirrored their own small party neatly. Her father stepped away from the panel and bowed his head in greeting. “Welcome, citizens of Stable 32. I am Overmare Amarillo, and on behalf of all Stable 33, I thank you for your continued dedication to our noble mission, and the laws of free mare-ket economics. To this end, we offer you a share of our oats, in exchange for one of your breeding males.”
One of the ponies from Stable 32 stepped forward. “And on behalf of Stable 32 I, Acting Overmare Quonsett, graciously accept your trade.”
Okie had been too busy trying to figure out which of the stallions might be her husband to look at the Overmare from 32, but when she did, her heart skipped a beat. She wasn’t pretty, or beautiful, or even all that nice—a little too old, too weathered, her narrow eyes sharp and steely. But she had purpose, more of it than she’d seen in anyone in her life, like she’d been shaped by it just as much as the walls around them.
“Oh. Is something wrong with Overmare Flagstaff?” Amarillo asked, head cocked to one side. If Okie didn’t know her dad better, she would have thought he sounded suspicious.
Quonsett smiled and nodded obligingly. “Ah. In quarantine right now., been there for the past week Along with half the Stable, in fact. Nasty bug—but we’ve all got a clean bill of health. I had our medic double-check our lucky groom, too. Close Shave, ten-hut.”
Okie blinked, realized she’d been staring at Sunset, and turned to look at the pony trotting briskly up alongside her. Oh. Oh gosh. She had never realized the part in movies where the border goes all fuzzy and everything starts to glow was real. His russet-brown pelt, the shaggy white feathers around his ankles trimmed neatly to hoof length, the little bit of scruff on his chin...
“Uh, hey,” he said with an awkward but rogueishly charming smile.
“Hiii...” Okie sighed dreamily
A moment of silence lingered in the air. She continued to stare into Close Shave’s eyes, while her groom-to-be glanced anxiously at Quonsett for a moment, then took another shot at a smile and raised his eyebrows. “Hi?”
Amarillo cleared his throat and put his hoof down. “Well, you’re welcome to come to the reception, though we understand if you’re needed back at 32...”
Quonsett shrugged. “They aren’t going anywhere soon. We’d love to come.”
A few of the ponies from 33 stayed to take the oats back, while Quonsett and the rest followed them back down the corridor—Amarillo and Quonsett in the middle, Okie on one side, and Close Shave on the other. She kept tried to sneak glances over at him, but it was hard to see around her dad’s fat flanks and even when she tried to lag behind him he obstinately kept pace with her. Now that she had to listen to her dad making small talk with the Acting Overmare, she longed for the quiet of the walk there.
“So, Acting Overmare. What do you normally do?” he asked.
“Chief of security,” she said.
“Oh, that’s not, uh...what’s-her-name any more?”
“Ol’ Pan? Nah, she had a bit of a breakdown. You know how it is, staring at all those guns all day... But I hear the cafeteria’s working out all right.”
“Mm.” He sounded almost disappointed—not by the news, but by her answer. “So are you from 32 originally?”
“Born’n bred. How’d you guess?”
Being absolutely bored, Okie decided to pipe up. “Dad’s from 31, so he would have recognized you otherwise. I am too, but I was just a kid when we left. See, our mom had albinism, which is technically a mutation but it’s really just a recessive gene, and being heterozygous—“
Amarillo eyed her sternly and said, “O.K., not in front of our guests.”
Ugh. Fine.
After what felt like a lifetime of waiting (and, in a less immediate sense, a literal lifetime of waiting) the ceremony went off without a hitch. Do you, do you, you may now kiss, and all that—it was at once the crowning achievement of Okie’s life, and a weird bit of pageantry that felt awkward to actually do.
Most of the ponies here were only coming because there was food, and because the convoluted social contract of Stable life made being selective about parties extremely fraught. But Miss Maybelle and Coach Turf were there, and that meant something, and her brother was lurkling in the back, even paying less attention to his Pip-Buck than usual.
She sidled up to him once she got the chance, holding out her own Pip-Buck open to the character screen. “Hey, check it out—status: Married.”
Squeaks nodded and chuckled a little, and did a pretty good approximation of a smile for once. “Nice.”
“So, when are you gonna get hitched?” she asked.
He shrugged and pulled his lips to one side of his snout. “Eh. I don’t know. Not really my thing.” He squished his lips back to the other side. “Did Dad seem weird? He seemed weird to me.”
“I mean, he was practically interrogating the Acting Overmare from 33. That’s, uh, her there,” she said, pointing out Quonsett among the crowd. She was just getting up from one of the tables and trotting away, leaving Close Shave sitting there by himself.
“Oh gosh. Okay, I’m gonna go have sex with my husband. Hooves crossed for twiiins!” Leaving Squeaks to whatever he was fretting about, she trotted up behind Close Shave and gave him a platyful bite on the neck.
“Ah!” he gasped, stiffening and tensing his shoulders, then relaxing slightly when he saw who it was. “Oh. Uh, hey, O.K.,” he said, shuffling sideways to make a little more room on the bench.
Grinning, she sat down next to him and leaned in against his flank. “Just call me Okie! But, not Okie Dokie, people kinda use that to bully me. Enjoying the food?”
He glanced down at the half-eaten oat cake on his plate and the glass of oat punch. “It’s pretty wheaty,” he said, tactfully avoiding saying anything specific (and thus negative).
“Haha, yeah, Stable food, am I right?” she said, laughing a little too loudly. “Sooo, anyway...you want to ditch the party and come back to our room? My ovaries are going to freaking explode if soooomeone doesn’t inseminate me...”
He put his hands on her shoulders. Oh gosh, were they going to kiss? Like tongues-horse snout-kiss? She couldn’t wait for him to pull her close—
Wait, why was he pushing her. That was the wrong direction.
“Okay, sorry lady, but this op is getting fucking weird. I’m not sticking my dick in that.” He gave her a firm shove as he got to his hooves.
No, this wasn’t right. If you got picked by the Exchange Program you had to go along with it. For the good of the Stables, for the preservation of ponykind. “No, no, I promise it’s just a recessive allele, it’s not even really a mutation, I can still breed—I can show you the studies, let me pull them up...” She tapped frantically at her Pip-Buck, heart pounding, breaking into a cold sweat.
“Holy shit,” he muttered, staring at Okie like she’d sprouted a second head. She kind of felt like that too. He backed away, then turned and briskly trotted away, weaving through the crowdd. The last thing she heard him say, as he raised his hoof to his ear, was, “Razor’s Edge to Sundowner—Shit got crazy. I am out. Get the spark and let’s go.”
Just as Okie lost sight of him, everything went dark. There was mormuring and gasps. Someone screamed.
Then everything went red.
Now, Stable 33 had three different tiers of emergency lighting. White meant a non-threatening emergency—a blown fuse, an unexpected shutdown. ‘Remain calm and follow all instructions.’ Yellow meant significant danger to life or limb—a fire, a hazardous leak, a ceiling collapse. ‘Report to safe zones immediately unless otherwise directed.’ Red meant an immediate trheat that had to be neutralized. ‘Be prepared to lay down your life to preserve our mission.’
What happened next, Okie coudln’t say. It all seemed to come at once. Somepony cried, “They’re nto pure” Another shouted, “Raiders!” A combat knife slammed point-first into a table top. The ponies from Stable 32 scrambling out of their seats Her father’s voice coming over the PA, unintelligible over the sound of gunfire.
Okie felt like a string, being pulled tighter and tighter until—twang.
No. They weren’t going to take her purpose away from her.
A Stable 33 jumpsuit galloped by her. She stuck her leg out. Sweep the hooves, knee into the spine, foreleg around the neck. She remembered Coach Turf telling her to take it easy, you’re not trying to crush the trachea. She tightened her hold until something folded in
“Get off him!” someone shouted, rushing toward her. Headbutt, shoulder spin, kick to the gut. Slightly-digested oat cake spewed onto the floor as the pony from 32 fell to the floor.
Everything was muddled together in the commotion. She could hardly tell who was who, who was winning, who was crying out “Oh god, they’re freaks,” and “Run!”. And yet, it felt like she was floating through it all, letting the motions come to her. One hoof on the bench, two on the table, jump, soar, tackle.
It was like she could do no wrong. It was like she was made for this. It was like—a hot pain searing through hindleg, scalding sharp, bringing her back to reality. Her leg buckled beneath her, refusing to hold her weight and slamming her sidelong into the wall instead. She’d lost the transcendant moment of ecstasy; now she was just sore and mad and bitterly determined to hurt someone back. With the wall beside her as support, she hobbled toward the emergency locker, leaving a trail of blood behind her.
The dress was ruined. Her wedding was ruined. Everything was ruined, and it was all their fault. She could hear somepony coming up from behind her. She threw the locker open, shoved her hooves inside, whirled around with the grip held between her hands, leaveled her aim down the sights...and saw the terrified look in the eyes of one of the Stable 32 staring back at her.
“Aah! Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot—“
Sudden remorse shot through her. These were ponies. What was she doing? She wanted to throw the gun away, but the primal fear of self-preservation was too potent. In her defense, it was the first time she’d ever had to fear for her life. Shifting the gun to one hoof, she kept it trained on the other pony while she fished through the cabinet for something for her wound.
Finally back on her hooves, Okie limped through the halls of the Stable. Coach Turf and some of the others had the ponies from Stable 32 coralled in one of the rec rooms, but she hadn’t seen her dad anywhere.
Somepony cleared their throat over the PA. She could hear the noise of rumbling machinery in the background. Living in Stable gave you a good ear for ambient noise, for the subtle differences between the coil whine of refridgeration and grow lighting and transformers, but what she was hearing was something different, something big and heavy that protested at being moved.
Like the door of a Stable.
“Attention, ponies of Stable 32. This is Corporal Sundowner, of the New Canterlot Republic.”
She recognized the voice, the measured gruff sharpness. It was Quonsett.
“I have liberated the Spark that powers Stables 31, 32, and 33. Now, you may be saying, what is a Spark? Don’t our Stables all have their own power supplies? You’d think so, wouldn’t you. That’s what they tell everyone in 32 and 33.
But there’s a lot about your Stable you don’t know. Ever notice how no one talks about life in Stable 31? Or how every last one of your Overmares are from there? That’s because it doesn’t exist. At least, not in the way you imagine it. If you’d like to know more, I’m sure your dear Overmare Amarillo would love to answer all your questions.
You’ve been lied to about quite a few things, in fact, but I don’t have time to sit around and explain eugenics freaks—who happen to be very good murderers, I might add. I thank you for your contributions to the cause of freedom, democracy, and rebuilding society, and hope you rot in this hole where you belong.”
As the elevator rose toward the Stable door, a sharp light came down from above, making her eyes water and her snout sting. By the time it had clattered to a stop, the door had rolled wide open, like a blazing square-toothed sun, brighter than anything she’d ever seen before.
The microphone for the PA dangled from the control panel for the door, swaying slowly as if it had been dropped not a minute ago. A slightly blood-spattered key card had been slotted into the panel, and laying several feet away was a significantly more blood-spattered Overmare Amarillo.
“Ohh my gosh, Dad. Are you okay?” she asked, galloping to his side, gingerly nudging at his clothes to try to gauge the severity of his wounds. She wasn’t a doctor, but it looked like he’d definitely need one.
“No, I’m not,” he said through gritted teeth.
Okay, he was conscious. That was good. Snatching up the microphone, she said, “I need a medic to the Stable door, it’s the Overmare. ” Then she turned back to him, patting his cheek with her hoof lightly. “Dad. Was the stuff she was saying true?”
He winced—it could have been the pain, but she didn’t think so. “It’s complicated, I...I’ll need tot talk to the board, see if we can...move up the schedule, I don’t know...”
“The boasrd? What, like the other Overmares?” She shook her head. “No, never mind—the thing about the Spark. Was that true? She took the power source for all three Stables?”
He gave her a long pained look, but admitted, “Yes.”
“What does it look like?”
“Blue, glowing...about this big.” He indicated the size with his hooves.
“How long can we run on backup power?”
“Two weeks.”
Okie shook her head again. “You’re serious? It takes that much power to run our Stables?”
He nodded. “Two weeks.”
She took a deep breath and trotted back and forth frantically. “Okay. Okay. We need the Spark. We could get a party together but—that’d take hours, she could be long gone...” She squinted up at the blaring light flooding in from outside.
Every moment she waited, Sundowner could be getting further away. She had a hundred questions and no time to ask any of them. If she waited until somepony got here, they might try to stop her.
Then it hit her. This was a purpose.
“I’m going after her, Dad.” She checked the lockers nearby the door—stocked with supplies intended for scouting, once the wastes were habitable again and they could start rebuilding.
“What? No, you’re not! Agh—shit.” He struggled to get to his hooves, failed, and slumped back down, his snout twisted up in a combination of pain, frustration and anger.
As she trotted back over to him, the elevator began to roll back down toward the main floor of the Stable. She didn’t have a ton of time before someone else would be up here—someone actually capable of stopping her. “Yes, I am. I can handle myself, and I’m getting the Spark back.” Then, she picked up the microphone with her hoof. “Hey, Squeaks. Be back soon.”
That was all the goodbyes she needed. With a gun slung over one flank and a pack of supplies over the other, she stepped out of the only home she’d ever known, and into the history of the wastes.
(buh DUH der duh DUHHH)
(der DUHHH duh der DERR DERRR)
Author's Note
I don't know if I'll ever write another chapter, as I've already ceased caring about Fallout (2024 TV series), but who can say what wonders the future holds?
