Equestria 1939 - Weird World War

Equestria 1939 - Weird World War
Her Enigma Machine

“Now may God bless you all and may He defend the right. For it is evil things that we shall be fighting against, brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution. And against them I am certain that the right will prevail.”
— Neville Chamberlain, September 3, 1939

“Sweetie?” The faint tapping at the laboratory door woke Sherbert Lemon from where she had put her head down for just a moment in the middle of the night. Since Sun was well-up and shining in through the lab windows, the moment had lasted for far too long, and she picked up the cold soldering iron from where it had fallen when the auto-disconnect had unplugged it.

“Sweet Pea. Open up, please. Prime told me all about it, and I just want to talk.”

There were only a few vacuum tube mounts left to solder into the board, but Sherbert could not focus, and the soldering iron needed to be cleaned before she did any more work anyway. She shuffled up from the bench and unlocked the lab door even if she did not want to. After all, Mother would not approve of leaving her father out in the hallway.

Father was just as immaculately groomed as ever, in a suit jacket that undoubtedly cost as much as her best oscilloscope. The sharp creases could not conceal faint lines of worry in his face, or the way his cheerful yellow mane seemed dingy in the light. It had been several months since she had seen him last, although she still received his weekly correspondence along with the filled-out crossword puzzle from the Equestrian Sun. It was a gentle reminder that he was one of the few ponies who knew the secret beneath the stainless steel pipes and wires that made up ACACD. A copy of the Wall Street Journal was tucked under his foreleg with various creases indicating he had already finished a close examination of the American newspaper, although his copy of The Observer next to it was pristine.

“May I enter,” said Lemon Custard in a tone of voice that certainly was not a question.

“Why? asked Sherbert bluntly.

“I must make the effort to talk sense into you,” said Lemon. “Lord only knows I tried often enough with your mother. By sheer statistical probability, I must emerge victorious at least once in two decades. Besides, I have a copy of The Observer for Ven.”

Across the room, the teletype whirred into action and hammered out three letters. The paper input device that Sherbert had put together a year ago and improved ever since likewise thumped and clunked as the servos ran through a calibration routine and the illuminator cast a stark white light down on the table. Lemon Custard moved across the room as Sherbert stepped to one side, remaining silent as her father spread the newspaper out on the table and stepped back.

“I shall never understand what that mare sees in Orwell’s columns,” mused Lemon as the device sprang into motion and began to work its way down the newspaper. “Admittedly, he is a visionary, but eccentric.”

“I will not spy against our allies,” said Sherbert. “I don’t care what Prime says.”

“Allies.” Lemon unfolded his copy of the Wall Street Journal and held it out to Sherbert. It was a few days out of date since travel between Equestria and the colonies was more erratic than ever. “I do not believe an ocean will protect Equestria when Germany inevitably sets their sights on America. We are a natural stepping stone across the Atlantic, and I do not see a way to avoid being stepped on by either side. All of Europe is feeling the tread of the German boot, and the Russians are more than happy to carve off whatever land they can. This war will spread until it reaches our shores, and we must do what we can to protect ourselves.”

“If Celestia wanted to avoid being dragged into this conflict, she should remain neutral like Equestria did during the Great War.” Keeping her head down, Sherbert leafed through several pages of the American newspaper just to humor her father. It was filled with lies and half-truths like all papers, but the Journal was far more reliable than most of the rest of the mess. “America will not enter the war, and the conflict will die out once Germany has expanded to fill the surrounding countries. They have inefficient governments, rife with corruption, and their armies are obsolete. The result will be a much more sensible Europe, able to hold their own against the communists.”

Lemon Custard stood silent for a few moments, then shook his head. “It is so disconcerting to hear your mother’s words coming out of your mouth,” he admitted. “She moderated her determination near the end, though. We had a long discussion about her concerns during breakfast one day, although not for long enough. She was going to speak with you next, but she had an experiment to run, and…”

He turned and nosed into his trim glossy saddlebag, eventually emerging with a small pasteboard box which Sherbert unsealed with her magic.

“Malties,” said Sherbert quietly. “That is not fighting fair, Father.”

The small chocolate-covered candies tasted overly strong on her tongue after her evening of sleeping on the lab bench, cloying in her throat until she had to cough. Lemon Custard took several of them also, then dug around in his saddlebags until he found two cardboard boxes of chocolate milk, still chilled.

“I never understood your mother or her projects very well,” admitted Lemon. “I’ll admit I was surprised as everyone else when she passed away, but when the images of her brain scans went missing for several days, I knew exactly what you had done. She longed for immortality to the point of obsession, and in one way, you are part of that. A fraction of her genius moving on to continue her work after she was gone, as her mother before her. Part of me believes that she waits for us in the Eternal Pastures as promised, and another part of me is convinced that she haunts your machine just to keep giving Prime’s ulcer exercise. I trusted her judgment. Do you?”

He ate another one of the malted milk balls, washing it down with milk, which gave Sherbert a chance to consider his words. She moved over to the teletype keyboard and typed in a command, although she did not want to. It was an admission that she could be wrong, and her inner child fought with her inner scientist at every chunk of the mechanical keyboard.

CALCULATE BEGIN MOST PROBABLE RESULT OF EQUESTRIA REMAINING NEUTRAL IN CURRENT CONFLICT END SUMMARIZE DISPLAY BY YEAR END ACTIVATE

There should have been flashing lights and ringing bells, perhaps a rattle of paper tape in a reader. Instead, the stainless steel body of ACACD merely whirred and clicked slightly louder while Sherbert ate a few more malted milk balls.

It brought back memories of sitting with her father at the administrative office where they had received the news, and the taste of the same candy he had brought for the far more pleasant occasion of taking her and Mixed State on a trip to the Manehattan zoo, much as he had done when they were foals.

She had cried, just a little, but Mixed had offered her the last malted milk ball in the box to calm her down and suddenly it had not felt as bad. After all, he had been crying also. Madam Vernier had not been his mother, but she doted on the child with presents every Christmas and Newton’s Birthday, as well as the scooter which he had promptly taken out into the street and knocked his front teeth out in a collision with a wagon.

It wasn’t as if Mixed State was accident-prone, but Sherbert never let him inside the laboratory while she was running any experiments and nothing blew up, so she preferred not to test the theory.

The teletype whirred to life again, chunking out several lines before going silent.

1939 CURRENT YEAR RELATIVE QUIET WITH SEVERAL HUNDRED EQUESTRIANS UNABLE TO RETURN
1940 BRITAIN FRANCE AFRICA OTHER EUROPEAN NATIONS TAKE EQUESTRIAN HOSTAGES AS WAR EXPANDS TO COVER ALL EUROPE 1941 FRANCE INVADED MORE EQUESTRIANS CAPTURED AND HELD AMERICA ENTERS WAR JAPAN ENTERS WAR ALL COUNTRIES HOLD EQUESTRIANS HOSTAGE 1942 GERMANY ATTACKS RUSSIA JAPAN ATTACKS AMERICA EQUESTRIAN PORTS BLOCKADED BY AMERICA TO PREVENT GERMAN USE 1943 EQUESTRIA BECOMES CONFLICT POINT BETWEEN AMERICA AND GERMANY 1944 UNEXPECTED WEAPON USED BY AMERICA OR GERMANY EQUESTRIAN CASUALTIES IN THE THOUSANDS 1945 PROBABILITY VARIANCE EXCEEDS TOLERANCE SHUTTING DOWN SIMULATION END

Hours later, there was a faint tapping at the laboratory door, and Sherbert called out without even looking. “Go away, Mix.”

Instead, the door creaked open and her brother looked inside, seeming pleased that she was not building some sort of mechanical monster or death ray.

“Dad said you didn’t take it well.”

Sherbert did not answer at first. She just continued reading through the stack of newspapers, making marks on certain articles as she went. Mix had dealt with his big sister before, so he left her stew in the silence until an answer came out in its own sweet time.

“Remember when Mother and I took you on a visit to Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich a little over ten years ago?”

“Of course.” Mixed State nosed into his saddlebag and brought out a box of Malties, which he tore open with his teeth. “Found out about malted milk there. Dad let me drink malts until I was sick. Still like ‘em, though.”

A few malted milk balls helped Sherbert’s bad mood, and she crunched quietly while Mix kept talking.

“The Germans had so many innovative projects, so many advances in technology. When they offered her a position on the university staff, I thought for sure she was going to stay, and I’d never see you again when Dad went home. They didn’t want a candy-maker. Only a mad scientist to work on their schemes.”

“Father would have hated it in Germany,” mused Sherbert between bites. “Too rigid. Controlled.”

“Not to mention the… unrest. Mostly driven by the Communists, of course. They still have the delusion that Equestria was behind the Romanov abduction, and Mother was a convenient target. You know I was about eight when we took the trip,” said Mix. “You showed me all the pictures you took on the rest of the trip after Dad and I went home, including the pyramids and your rock samples from the Vesuvius eruption.”

“Yeah.”

Sherbert continued to play with the empty box until her half-brother said, “This is only the start. So many people are dying. Ponies, also. If they’re not stopped…”

“I know.” Sherbert let out a hesitant breath. “It just feels wrong.”

“I don’t think there is ever a right way to have a war,” said Mix. “Dad took us to Verdun on our way home.”

The two of them remained silent for a while, thinking about the terrible war that had swept across the European continent a few decades ago.

“Mother wanted to make the world a better place,” admitted Sherbert. “Sometimes, her methods were a little odd to the uninitiated.”

“Or the sane,” said Mix.

Ignoring her brother for the moment, Sherbert turned to look at ACACD. “I don’t see how I can be of any help, even if I wanted to. I don’t have any background in numerical encryption. Mother and I have been more focused on biology. It was awkward enough to make those artillery charts. All I would be changing is what humans die when.”

“I’ve had a little experience with cryptography,” admitted Mix, which would have been an accurate statement if he had claimed the same about a thousand other subjects. If there ever was a brilliant expert in everything but nothing at all, Mixed State held that title firmly. “Single-pad ciphers are unbreakable, but the sheer mass of information you have to accumulate at each end of the conversation make them impractical for any military use. Modern rotating wheel ciphers seem to be the best solution for now since each end merely needs to know the key used to encrypt and decrypt the message.”

“And the method,” said Sherbert while eating a few more Malties, only to look up abruptly as the teletype hammered out a brief message.

CLOSE YOUR MOUTH WHILE CHEWING STOP

“The cipher wheels,” said Mix, who had carefully swallowed before speaking. “Without knowing what is on the wheels or how they are arranged—”

“It makes a chess game look simple,” said Sherbert. “Played blind, without hearing the other player’s moves. Assaulting the problem by random chance is right out. Unless you have the key and the encrypted message and the decrypted message to work with. And you know how many cipher wheels you’re dealing with, and how they are wired together.”

Sherbert shook the empty box of Malties, regarded the last one that landed on her hoof, and frowned. With a faint green glow of her magic, she crumpled up the cardboard box, focusing on her special talent in unicorn magic until there were several malted milk balls on her hoof and the box was nothing but a few flecks of flaked-off dyes. She divided the pile into two, floating half to her brother while she thought. At least there was a starting point, even if the task was impossible.

“The Germans have passed messages on to Princess Celestia, correct?”

“They use a different code for that,” said Mix. “Something that only the diplomats have. There are about five or six different groups in Germany with different codes, and they change them according to whim, I think. We could totally unwind one of them just to have it changed again a few weeks later.”

“If I decide to take on the project,” said Sherbert.

“If.” Mix wiped his chocolate-stained hoof against his coat, a habit that bothered Sherbert considerably and that she had never been able to break him of. “I know you. Like Mom, you start out pointed in the wrong direction, all determined and obstinate. Then you start picking at the problem around the edges. Seeing what is wrong. Then you have this brilliant flash and the solution becomes obvious, even if it is as screwy as a tree full of squirrels. This time, you could save lives.”

“People will die if I do this,” said Sherbert. “Mostly Germans.”

“They chose this path,” said Mix with unusual ferocity. It set Sherbert back a moment, until she caught his surreptitious glance at Root Stock’s locked lab door. She did not want to say anything, though, and she would have been content to sit in silence forever if not for the hammering of the teletype across the room.

ASK ABOUT ROOT STOCK END

Mix answered before she could say a word. “I don’t know. I haven’t gotten a letter back from her in months. I mean I know the mail is shot to ribbons, but she had a shortwave set too, and I listen every night. I’m worried.”

“I see.” And she did, finally. She had never wondered why Mixed State had always been available around the lab whenever Root Stock needed help moving a heavy experiment or supplies. It had not really seemed important to her since Mix was the master of his own fate and there was no real need for her to confuse romance and science. “You two are in a relationship?”

“I don’t know.” Mix got up and went over to the glassware cabinet, rummaging around for a clean beaker. “Maybe. Maybe not. She’s the first mare who would talk to me for more than a minute or two. Other than you, of course.”

“I’ve seen you talking with mares in the cafeteria,” countered Sherbert while Mix was running two beakers of water. She thought for a time while drinking, then placed her empty beaker back into the wash basin before continuing. “You have a point, figuratively,” and patted him on the head the way her mother used to do.

It was not all bad having an earth pony for a brother, even if he could not help with her magical experiments. In fact, that was probably a good thing. The young unicorn who Father had married after the divorce had been quite pleased with an earth pony colt, and although they had had more unicorn foals, one brilliant brother was plenty for Sherbert. Or stars forbid, another sister.

Mix’s pocketwatch took that moment to chime the hour, and he jumped up from the workbench in his traditional instant-shift from immobility to frantic speed. “Gotta go. Prime has a list of tasks for me today, and I’ll bring one of Rootie’s friends by the lab tomorrow. He’s a bit of a chemhead, but maybe you two can bond over long-chain polymer synthesis. If you’re going to take this on, that is.”

The teletype whirred into action and began to hammer out a short message.

NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD PONIES TO COME TO THE AID OF THEIR COUNTRY
USE KBD TO CHANGE PROCESSING PRIORITY ENIGMA TO 1

“I can’t say,” said Sherbert instead. “No promises.”