Back to the Past 01: Grave New World

A clanging bell startled her awake. The pony raised her head, blinked sleep out of her eyes, swiveled her ears to locate the noise. The train was crossing a roadway, and she caught a glimpse of red flashing lights as the the car she was riding passed through the intersection. Then she looked forward, to where the train was going, and she looked up, and she gasped in startled wonder.

There was a city ahead, and it was like nothing she’d ever seen or imagined before. It towered, it reached for the sky. It was a confused tangle of mega-architecture, as if impossibly tall skyscrapers had been packed together tightly, then connected to one another with bridges so that they formed a three-dimensional matrix. A miasma, like a brown haze, hovered around the city and trailed downwind from it. Even from this distance she could see vehicles moving on the bridges and flying through the air, zipping through the gaps between buildings. As she watched, a larger craft of some sort appeared, coming up from somewhere on the opposite side of the city, and blasted off into the sky with an echoing roar until it disappeared into the distance.

After gawping for several minutes, she turned her attention back to her immediate surroundings. The train had slowed and was pulling into a train yard, the one set of tracks split into dozens. Other trains sat idle on either side. The train she was riding ground to a halt.

She hopped off. In the claustrophobic gap between trains she stretched her legs and wings, then she started walking. Eyes and ears alert, she searched the train yard for any sign of workers. Occasional cigarette butts and bottle caps littering the ground suggested there should be some. After she’d walked some ways, her ears perked up to a high-pitched beeping sound. She followed her ears, worked her way down the line of train cars, hopped over a flat car, moved down a bit further, hopped through the open doors of an empty boxcar, and made her way close enough to the noise to see what produced it.

She crouched and peered around the corner of a train car. There was a terminal, a loading dock, and workers moving crates around on pallets. A forklift produced the annoying beeps whenever it backed up, which was often. There was a brown unicorn pony wearing a hard hat and a tie, carrying a clipboard with his magical aura, but his only function seemed to be watching and giving orders to the rest of the work force. Those workers made her furrow her brow in puzzlement, for they were human. She’d seen humans before, during her time in exile, in Lopanga. However, she’d never seen a human in Equestria before—even assuming that this was, in fact, Equestria, and that she hadn’t somehow been transported across the oceans during her time trapped in stone. That a pony was giving orders suggested this was not Lopanga. Aside from herself and a few other refugees from the Epic Pony War, she hadn’t encountered many ponies at all in Lopanga.

Furthermore, these humans looked different from the ones of Lopanga. Those she knew had skin in shades of brown, some of them very dark. These workers she now observed were far more pale than any she’d seen before. Where had they come from, she wondered?

She withdrew out of sight and thought about what to do next. Now she knew there were at least some ponies here, and there was a city. If she could get into that city, maybe she could mix with the populace without being noticed. Maybe she could learn where she was and what had happened to the world while she was trapped in stone. Maybe she could at least find out how long it had been. She had so many questions! A city like this had to have records. Surely there must be a library. If she could find that, she could research the whole history that she had missed.

She would need a disguise. Even if she wasn’t personally recognized, any alicorn waltzing into the city would attract far too much attention. In the past, when she was only a filly, she’d hidden her wings with a suitable garment. That would be a lot more difficult now, given how large her wings had grown. She peered upward at the city’s amazing towers. Being able to fly could be extremely useful in that place, she reckoned. Hiding her horn, though, presented its own difficulties. It was far longer than a normal unicorn pony’s horn, and impossible to simply tuck into a hat or some sort of poofy manestyle.

Well, she’d learned a few basics of illusion spells. Another refugee she’d met in Lopanga, a traveling stage magician, had taught her a few tricks. She learned that making an inanimate object disappear was one of the easiest illusions to cast. Her horn wasn’t quite inanimate, in the sense that it waved about when she moved her head, but still… It wouldn’t hurt to try. She closed her eyes and tried to remember how the spell went. She mumbled a bit to herself as she cast it. Then she opened her eyes and gasped. It worked! The horn that she’d gotten so used to projecting out in front of her eyes was gone.

Then she moved her head, and the spell failed. “Horsefeathers!” she cursed. It took three more tries before she got the enchantment to stick.

“Now if I can just remember to not use any magic, and if I can keep from knocking over any lamps or jabbing anyone with my invisible horn, I should be okay,” she mused. She turned her head and looked back at her body. She wished she could change everything: her eyes, her coat color, her sigil, and most of all her size. Realistically, though, she just didn’t have the skill with illusions to pull that off. She’d just have to go as she was and hope for the best.

She steeled her nerve, spread her wings and flew towards the city.

The pony glanced downward and to either side and noted the grungy industrial zone that surrounded the city: the train yard, storage tanks, warehouses. These were separated from the city itself by a concrete wall, although the wall had a number of tunnels and pipelines passing through. At regular intervals around the wall were observation towers heavily stained with rust and graffiti.

As she easily flew over the wall, she wondered what defensive value it could possibly have. Her thoughts were interrupted by a klaxon and flashing lights coming from the nearest tower, and the adjacent towers momentarily joined in sounding the alert. Doors opened in the sides of the towers and ejected dozens of flying objects.

They were smaller than ponies, much smaller than the flying vehicles the pony had seen from a distance earlier, but they buzzed and had vaguely insect-like outlines. They immediately locked on and began climbing to chase after her. Remembering the giant wasps, she panicked and began flapping madly to escape. The swarm of buzzing machines was almost on her when she did a mid-air flip and reversed direction, and dived through the middle of their formation, scattering them for a moment. Then she darted forward into the city, hoping to lose her pursuers. She ducked around a building, swooped under a bridge and glanced backward to see if she was gaining on the drones.

That moment of not watching where she was going proved costly. Something massive slammed into her body and knocked the breath out of her and twisted one wing with a jolt of pain. Instinctively she clawed at a hard, metallic surface, trying to keep from slipping and falling. Wide-eyed she stared forward—through a windshield, into a compartment where two rather horrified looking ponies stared back. She’d been hit by one of the city’s ubiquitous flying vehicles, and she was now clinging to its nosecone.

Though the cabin’s glass and the rushing wind-stream prevented her from hearing them, it looked like the ponies inside were probably screaming. She might have been doing the same, except that the breath had been knocked out of her, and her heaving chest couldn’t seem to move any air. After a few panicked seconds she began to get little gasps of the city’s rancid-smelling air, and she clambered up a little higher onto the sky-car, trying to get a foothold with her hind legs. A new siren wail caught her ears, and she looked past the rear of the craft to see another with flashing lights in pursuit.

Suddenly a staccato blast of sound, like a string of firecrackers, erupted from the pursuing vehicle, accompanied by puffs of blue-gray smoke from its nose. Glass shattered, and metal pinged as though struck by hailstones. She couldn’t see the projectiles, but the pony at once understood she was being shot at. The vehicle she was riding tilted and veered perilously close to a skyscraper.

She jumped, used her wings to guide her despite the pain, and bucked the sky-car that had fired. Her hind hooves connected with a lift pod, denting it and knocking it askew. The engine noise became a cacophony of clashing metal parts, and smoke trailed from the engine pod as the sky-car spiraled out of control. She watched in horror as it crashed into the side of a building and sent broken glass and tiles showering below.

This was a disaster; she had to get out of this place. She spun, trying to get her bearings and possibly fly back out of the city, but she was already disoriented. She picked a direction at random and flew. There were still air-cars flying everywhere. She had to sharply dodge one, and her sprained wing gave way, and she tumbled out of control.

A trained stunt flier might have been able to pull out of the tumble, but not this pony. She panicked and flailed, until she smacked into another hard surface—she never knew what—and was stunned almost senseless. Everything became hazy after that, she felt like she fell a long, long way down.

The hard impact and cold splash at the bottom snapped her at least partially conscious. Her instinct to avoid drowning kicked in, and she flailed her limbs. She went underwater for several terrifying seconds, then found herself falling once again in abject darkness.

Another impact jarred her body, and she was sliding, flushed down a chute or, more likely, a huge drain pipe. The surface was smooth, and she found nothing to get purchase on. There was no choice but to be swept along, until, finally, she tumbled out of the pipe and onto a hard surface.

The pony lay still, dizzy and hurting, panting and heaving. She was afraid to move for a while, as if the surface she was on might be unstable and dump her into the abyss. Gradually, though, she calmed and began to assess her situation.

Many parts of her body were in pain. She was in total darkness. She could hear water still rushing nearby, and a faint but nauseating chemical odor pervaded. She began to shift around a little, trying to tell if any bones were broken, but it didn’t seem so. To her great surprise, the invisibility spell had survived and was still active on her horn. She dispelled that and cast light from the tip of her horn instead.

She found herself at the edge of an underground river. It flowed through a vast space, at least three stories tall and of similar width. The cavern was artificial, all concrete and tile, but seemingly abandoned in a semi-ruined state. A gradual curve limited how far she could see up or down stream.

Well, at least she wasn’t under attack here. She rested and calmed her wits for a little while, and cast the first-aid spell on various parts of her battered body. As an alicorn she enjoyed not only unicorn and pegasus magic, but also the subtle powers of an earth pony. These included natural resilience and a strong constitution, so she should recover quickly enough. Her wing, she decided, was of most concern. Although not broken, she reckoned she ought to stay off it for a while.

When she felt she was ready, she rose to her feet. Going back up the water pipe was not a realistic option. There was plenty of room to fly up or downstream, if only her wings could be trusted, but that didn’t seem wise to attempt at this moment. Across the river, however, was a large opening. Indeed, it seemed like an entire wall was missing, except for a grid of reinforcement beams that had remained standing. Slabs of concrete with inlaid tile were jumbled in the stream, allowing her to hop from one to another until she was across the river, then she slipped through the metal beams.

She found herself in a large, yet still somehow claustrophobic, chamber filled with a complex of massive pipes, most of them around three meters in diameter, easily large enough to walk on, and jumbled at odd angles as though some earthquake had given the whole set a good shaking. She cast her ball of light into the space to get some sense of its size, causing the shadows to shift eerily as the light source moved. A dull roar, which she took to be rushing water, filtered through from somewhere out of view, and the air was heavy with mist. She began to pick her way through the chamber, but the floor was so broken that the going was slow.

Then she began encountering the eggs. Some were broken, but others were intact and about the size of a basketball. Making a guess that whatever hatched out of these was better avoided, she hopped onto the top of a pipe and walked up its shallow ascending slope.

She reached an elbow joint where the pipe turned downward. She judged distance and carefully jumped onto another pipe. For a heart-stopping moment her hooves skidded on the hard, curved metal, and her wings flared out reflexively. A sharp pain stabbed the joint of her wing, overwhelming the little first-aid cantrip. In desperation, the pony splayed her legs and fell to her belly, trying to grip the pipe with her whole body. She came to rest in an awkward, uncomfortable and undoubtedly silly-looking position, but safe.

The loss of traction had come as an unpleasant surprise. Earth pony abilities include sure-footed-ness rivaling mountain goats. She belatedly realized, however, that earth magic might not work at all when not standing upon the earth, but rather on a metal pipe suspended in the air. After catching her breath, she managed to clamber upright on her hooves once again, and she began to navigate the maze of pipes—more slowly, carefully.

A maze it was, as she found herself several times having to backtrack from dead ends, where a pipe entered the chamber wall, or turned straight up or down. As she got further out into the chamber, she could look upward and see that a waterfall spilled out of ruptured pipes. It was the source of the rushing noise she’d heard before.

She took her time, carefully picking her way across the jumble of pipes. Eventually the far end of the cavern came into view, along with some hope. There was a rectangular opening, and a metal ladder that descended down from it, into the abyss. Her path to reach it required one jump downward to a lower pipe, and one long jump across to the opening. Once she made it inside, she noted that she didn’t have to rely entirely on her mage light anymore, since there were electrical lamps strung up along the tunnel. They weren’t especially bright, and not all of them were functioning, but they were perfectly adequate for her night-sensitive eyes. With the light came a sense of relief. If maintenance crews could come here, however rarely, there had to be a way out.

The tunnel came to a T intersection. The pony paused, then used her magic to burn an arrow-shaped mark into the concrete wall, pointing backward the way she had come from. It wasn’t that she ever wanted to go back there, but at least she could try to keep track of where she’d been. The last thing she wanted was to walk in circles without knowing. She continued onward, taking the left passage.

A few more intersections followed, until she came to a metal grate that blocked the entire tunnel but also incorporated a locked gate. The pony had no patience to try and finesse the lock. Instead she turned around and gave it a hard kick with one hind foot. The snap of metal breaking was as sharp as a gunshot, and the gate flung open with a shocking clatter that echoed back and forth down the tunnels.

Well, so much for stealth.

After passing the grate, she began to see more signs of life: discarded bottles, many of them broken, along with other bits of random litter, some of which she could identify, but most of it she could not. Then there was the graffiti. Much of it was nothing more than scrawled names, illegible messages or unidentifiable symbols. Then she began to encounter more elaborate examples that glowed in neon colors. Of the few twisted shapes she could identify, skulls and dragons seemed to be popular motifs, along with slogans in stylized script, a few of which she puzzled through enough to read: “HARDCORE WILL NEVER DIE” and “INSANE IGGY REST IN FREEDOM” and, incongruously, “LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL.”

She paused for a minute to banish her light and re-cast the spell upon her horn, to make it once again invisible. She pressed onward and soon found stairs leading upward. At the base of the stairs she saw what seemed at first like a bundle of rags, but the bundle raised its head and squinted blearily up at her. It was a pale human like the ones she’d seen before. His eyes widened and he exclaimed, "Daaayum!"

The pony carefully stepped over him and climbed the stairs. A metal door was ajar, which she nudged open, and she emerged into an alleyway. Although seemingly outside of the tunnel system, high walls and structures above kept the area nearly as dark as the underground had been. She followed the alley to a more open area and looked around.

There were graffiti-covered walls, broken glass and barrels in the street, along with a few discarded pieces of construction equipment. This looked like some kind of work yard. The buildings were all made of cement or concrete blocks, painted in faded primary colors with a few wooden doors. They were mostly single story, with a few two-story buildings in the mix, and they seemed to huddle behind a wall of chain link fence that ran around the perimeter.

She was forced to pause again when she saw several more of the pale humans standing and sitting around in grungy clothes, some clutching bottles. They gave her wary glances but didn’t seem outright hostile. Stepping carefully around litter on the ground, she approached one who was engaged in burning trash, tossing items one-by-one into a metal barrel and prodding with a stick as they were consumed by the flames. He glanced up from his work, noticed her, but avoided meeting her gaze.

When it became clear that he would not speak first, she said, “Pardon me, but could you direct me to a library?”

He gave her a startled and puzzled look for an instant, but then turned to the fire again and shook his head. She noticed his face had become even more pale, and he was shaking a bit.

She softened her voice and said, “I’m sorry to have troubled you,” and she turned away. She took a few steps, and glanced back over her shoulder. The man glanced at her, and seemed for an instant as if he were about to speak, but then caution won out, and he turned to tend his fire again.

The gate leading out of the yard was wide open, so she wandered into the street. As she wandered she found that she was, indeed, in an inhabited part of this strange city. There were shops and dwellings, most of which seemed improvised from whatever building material could be scrounged up, most commonly rough lumber frames covered by corrugated metal. The inhabitants were of varied recognizable species, with humans and donkeys prevalent. All of them kept their distance.

She was the subject of curiosity, though circumspect in most cases. Many glanced furtively, then averted their gaze and took the first opportunity to slip away, into a doorway or around a corner. This behavior she was, unfortunately, familiar with. Even though presenting as a supposed pegasus, with her horn hidden, her size and appearance was intimidating.

The tension was broken by some cheers. The excited whoops and whinnies came from three ponies on a street corner who were most definitely looking her way. At least she thought they were ponies. One was orange with shocking magenta hair, one was green and had what appears to be a hat that doubled as a lava lamp, and the third was deep blue, short and stocky, eyes concealed behind dark shades. Their cheers jumbled together in her ears, unintelligible right up until they faded, and the blue pony ended with, "That'sa wicked Jefa!"

She stopped. "Excuse me?"

The scrawny orange one said, "Y-y-yooz on the Nevathink, Jefa! Yooz all overt! Swoop-a-loopin on da chop-chop-chopperoids."

The stocky blue one added, "I ain't nevah seen no punk wit them moves, Jefa."

The green one agreed. "Word! Jefa was all ricochet 'nd jumpadelic."

Orange said, "Oh, she's prodigiously acrobatastic!"

Blue said, "Word! Word! And that fuzzbox unloaded on her. But then like when Jefa went all rodeo on 'em… She was all like, eat hoof, crugger! Whack!"

The orange, fidgeting with excitement, added, "An-an-an then that skycar was like, schwoo, BOOM! And Jefa waz already gone!"

The overgrown black pony tried to keep her face neutral, but inwardly she was struck with dismay. Had she been gone for so long, locked in stone, that the whole language and way of speaking changed? How was she even going to communicate? She'd picked up enough words from their jabber to have some idea what they were talking about, though. She said, "You saw all of that?"

The blue one replied, "Yo, we done scanned you on the Nevathink." He pointed a hoof upward.

She followed with her gaze, and was dumbfounded. Mounted on the walls looming above them were what looked like signs, billboards maybe, but some of them glowed unnaturally with moving images. The scenes were chaotic, lacking context, captions or narration.

She saw a crowd of ponies standing on the pier in front of a sailing ship at night, milling aimlessly for several seconds, before the scene changed.

She saw a close-up of some plate piled with food, while multiple human hands holding chopsticks picked morsels from it.

She saw a shaky image of giant robotic beetles marching down a grubby street, while onlookers fearfully moved aside and cleared out of the area.

She saw a narrow view out of the window of some moving vehicle, while it passed a long row of other vehicles on a roadway.

She saw herself in flight, flipping and weaving through a group of robotic gremlins. This brought more cheers from the ponies around her. They pointed their hooves at the signs and laughed. One said, "You's on the Nevathink, Jefa! You got a fan club!"

"You folks like to watch me?" she asked.

The orange one said, "Oh we more than like it! Youz awesome Jefa! Yooz all flyin' an dart'n' an evadin' tha law."

Blue added, "Yeah yeah yeah! Yooz superfast an fearless!"

Green finished up with, "Yooz famous, Jefa! Yooz a sens-sens-sensation!"

She looked around. The corner was next to a sort of yard with a corrugated tin roof overhead, and improvised benches and tables, some populated by various beings. "Where am I?" she wondered.

The orange pony said, "Jefa, you's in the gutter level of the central hub, sector D."

The blue one added, "Yeah, Jefa. In the most crowdedest…"

Orange: "Stinkiest…"

Green: "Most Miserablist…"

Blue: "Residential-industrial spaceport on Earth."

"Space? Port?" she muttered. The words didn't make any sense. She shook her head. "Who is in charge? Who is the leader? I need to see them."

All three ponies burst out laughing. She waited for their mirth to subside, then the blue one said, "Jefa, you don't see Sceleste. And if you's lucky, Sceleste don't see you." He pointed again, this time away from the Nevathink. There were posters, grungy and peeling to various degrees. She gasped and reflexively raised a forehoof. The biggest poster had a crude, stylized but unmistakable portrait of Princess Celestia, royal peytral and tiara included. The artist had captured a stern expression, glaring down at the world as one whose patience is being sorely tested. At the base of the poster was one word: OBEY.

There was only one possible response to that: "Buck my life."

"What you say, Jefa?"

She took a deep breath and asked, "How long? How long has Celestia ruled?"

The three glanced at one another and exchanged shrugs. The orange one said, "Dunno, Jefa. For evah. Thass just how it's always been." He gave her a sideways glance. "What yooz lookin' for, anyways?"

"I'm looking for a library," she said.

"A say what now?" the orange one asked.

"uhh. . . A library. A place where a lot of books are kept? And ponies can come in and read them, or borrow them, you know?"

The ponies all looked at one another and shook their heads in puzzlement. She sighed, "Okay, thanks anyways." She started to turn away. But before she could take her first step, the green one grabbed her shoulder and said, "Wait up! Hold yer horses!"

"What?" She asked, looking back.

"Why's you so down-in-the-mouth?" Green asked. "Yooz need some liquid propulsion."He then gestured to a nearby tavern where several ponies were drinking and laughing. "That place looks ripe an' ready. Come on Jefa, let's go."