Memory Collective

As Eddy Current entered the stasis chamber, motion-activated lighting flared on. At the center of the chamber was a glossy white pod, and on the side of the pod was a metallic label with the words Specimen: “Redcap” inscribed in glowing indigo characters. One of the walls glowed with the image of a green unicorn mare’s head. The image smiled at him.

“Eddy!”

“Jade! Everything okay on your end?”

“There was a graveyard shift guard up here in the control center I had to knock out, but he’ll stay under for at least a few hours.”

“Good. Time to break her out of here.”

He waved his left front hoof over the label. The band of beryl-studded fabric he wore on his fetlock flashed, and the label turned orange. The pod opened, its two interlocking half-hemispheres of insulated ceramic parting with a soft hydraulic hiss. The shell halves rolled away underneath, revealing a clean white bed on which lay a young gray filly with an orange-red mane and tail, and an image of a red mushroom emblazoned on her haunch. “Redcap” began breathing softly, her abdomen rising and falling.

“This would be a lot easier if I were a unicorn,” Eddy grumbled.

“Just get her moving; I’ll dim the lights so she doesn’t come out of stasis prematurely.”

Too much light or agitation would wake her, as they had discussed. Awakening from a stasis enchantment under the wrong circumstances could mean a traumatic seizure. Eddy tugged gingerly at Redcap’s hind legs, lifting them over his neck, and stepped slowly to the side to pull her from the bed. As her head and forelegs neared the edge of the bed, he extended his wing to provide a supporting surface and pulled her away. He nudged and shifted about awkwardly, trying to straighten her on his back. Jade began giggling.

“This isn’t funny!” Eddy grunted in protest.

“Sorry,” she replied. “but you’ll need to get better at this, or you’ll wake our daughter whenever you carry her off to bed.”

“We can talk about the future later, dear.”

“Of course. I don’t know how much time we have until someone discovers me.”

Eddy pulled the sheet off the bed with his teeth, tossing it over his back to cover Redcap’s face.

“You know what to do next, I trust.”

“Yes,” said Eddy. “Use the fire escape hall to leave the building. Have you disabled the alarms on the doors?”

“Yes, as well as the motion detectors on the perimeter floodlamps. And before you leave the building?”

“Disable the air circulation and climate control systems.”

“Everything is in order, then. After I’m done up here we’ll rendezvous at the reservoir, and then you can take her from there. Don’t forget to pass through the terrarium on your way out. Driftwood should have left it unlocked.”

“I will.”

The image of Jade faded with a soft click, leaving a blank stone wall.

Eddy moved cautiously out of the chamber and through the halls, forcing himself into an awkward gait in attempt to keep his back level and still. Redcap began slipping off. He paused to readjust her, extending his wings to hold her in place and regretting his lack of a regular exercise regimen. He then noticed that the bedsheet had fallen off, and Redcap was exposed, and he quickened his pace forward. His wing muscles implored him for another pause, burning with a tension that he knew would soon become cramping. Eddy fought against the ache by concentrating on the memory of Jade and her voice.

He paused beneath the emerald glow of the emergency exit and grunted as he readjusted Redcap. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Jade.” After drawing a nervous breath, he punched the door open. No alarm sounded. He entered, and soft amber lights flickered to life in the narrow fire escape hall.

In the bend where the hall made a U-turn and began up a gradual slope to ground level, Eddy stopped and carefully slipped Redcap to the floor. He yawned and flexed his wings, the popping of their joints echoing in the corridor.

“Sorry the floor is cold, but there’s not enough room in there for both of us, kiddo,” he murmured. “I won’t be but a minute.”

Inside a red box painted on the wall, he scratched a series of glyphs. The path his hoof traced in the stone glowed yellow until he had completed each character, after which it turned green and disappeared. After the fifth, the square inside the red box silently receded into the wall, and Eddy crawled into the smooth square shaft that it left behind.

The shaft led into a cramped cavity that hummed with energy and scintillated with thousands of illuminated controls in colored groups. Eddy oriented himself and zig-zagged his eyes through an indigo column until he found what he was looking for. Holding his breath, he toggled fifteen of them to orange. A distant rumbling sound emanated from below the floor, followed by a conspicuous decline in the ambient noise.

He crawled back into the exit corridor and traced three circles around the red box. The block quietly returned to its place in the wall. Redcap was still asleep and remained still as he lifted her cautiously onto his back again. Just before he reached the exit, the screaming of an alarm echoed up the hall.

Eddy burst out the door and ran into the dark. He felt he had gone blind and deaf once the door shut behind him, sealing away the lights and sirens. One of his hooves landed on the edge of the paved path, and he stumbled to a halt. Between muttered curses he drew breaths through gritted teeth, taking a moment to recover and readjust Redcap on his back. Looking up, he saw a generous swath of constellations and a soft pillar of springtime’s false dawn, but no moon. A cricket purred.

As his eyes finally adjusted to the dark enough to see the path, he began a half-limping gait. To take his mind from the pain in his leg, he thought of Jade and the cryptic instructions which she had promised to explain after they had all been followed.

The glass and metal structure of the terrarium loomed before him like a fragile mountain. Eddy steadied his pace.

“Then you can take her from there?” he asked himself. For all he knew, he would be trekking or flying across Northern Equestria with the gray filly on his back. Perhaps Jade would spell-dye her mane and tail a new color and find a way to conceal the fly agaric mark on her haunches. She’s young enough to pass for a blank flank, after all, he thought.

Eddy reached the entrance and opened the airtight door, thinking of Jade’s other accomplice as he hurried inside the vestibule. Driftwood. The mycologist with whom Redcap had spent more time in tutoring than any other researcher. Eddy had even heard his colleagues joking about how she’d been switched at birth with his natural daughter. Then, other rumors had circulated: Driftwood had asked suspicious questions to the principal investigators, suggesting he had knowledge of classified material. When that happened, they had abruptly taken her away from Driftwood “to expedite further research.”

Eddy’s nose wrinkled as he passed through the vestibule’s air curtain to the cavernous interior of the terrarium; the air was ripe with the humours of decaying plant matter. Eddy strained his eyes to navigate through.

“Well, here we are,” said a young female voice.

Eddy froze in his tracks, holding his breath. Redcap began to squirm on his back. “Oh, please not here.”

“Why not? And can you put me down, please?”

Eddy obliged, slipping her gently to the ground. “Are you okay?” He felt her for tremors.

Redcap yawned. “I’m sleepy, obviously, but fine. So, who are you?”

“My name’s Eddy,” he replied, “and I’m the one who’s getting you safely out—”

“Oh, so you’re Jade’s sweetheart!” That brought a rush of blood to Eddy’s face faster than Jade herself had ever managed. “Nice to meet you. Also, I feel just fine, thank you. Do you know why we’re fleeing the Fount of Creation Research Institute?”

Eddy stared at her, incredulous. “How did you know—” he stammered. “Jade told me what the researchers were about to do to you.”

“I already know. Disembodiment and doomsday. I was just asking to see if you understood.”

Eddy shook his head. “The whole place is waking up, and the night shift guards are out looking for us, so we need to move quickly. First thing’s first, though: Jade told me you might suffer some magic-induced trauma. Mind explaining—”

“I said I’m fine.”

“Okay... But you were under a stasis spell, so I need to ping Jade for help.” He raised his fetlock and prepared to speak into the band.

“I wouldn’t use that if I were you. It’s a stolen communicator, unlike the one on Jade’s left front leg, so using it would broadcast our position.”

Eddy lowered his hoof. “How would you know something like that?”

Very easily, said a voice that sounded like her but seemed to come from within Eddy’s mind.

He jumped. “Okay, filly Einhuf, I didn’t know you were a telepath. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Just know I have some boundaries I don’t want crossed.”

“I’ll try to respect them, if you don’t use that pejorative. As for why I’m not seizing: basically, the mushrooms here woke me up.”

“...Mushrooms?”

“I’ll explain while we’re running.”

“Couldn’t we just fly from outside—”

Follow me!

Redcap sprinted off into the foliage. Eddy hesitated, gaping incredulously, and then ran after her.  Grotesquely disfigured branches slapped and scratched at his face and forelegs as he plowed his way through the foliage.

What in Tartarus are you doing?

Driftwood said I might be properly come out of stasis in the terrarium because my ‘affinity for for fungi’ would ‘guide my mind back to temporal reality’. The scholars call the fungal collective the ‘cortex mycelia,’ came Redcap’s thought-voice. I’m their eyes and ears. They’re my second brain.

What has gotten into these plants? thought Eddy as he nearly swallowed a leaf.

Twisted by experiments, of course. They’re dying now because their only friend around here has been taken away, disembodied, and imprisoned. Thanks to you and Jade, I won’t be joining him.

Eddy emerged in a square clearing at the center, disheveled and panting. At the center of the clearing before a stout, boxy structure, sat Redcap.

“What in...?” Eddy gasped.

“We need to get some light in here, now that we’re lost in the middle. Could you open this for me?”

Eddy looked at the box. “You’re psychotic.”

Oh, wait, nevermind...thanks Eddy!

She quickly scratched a few luminous patterns in the side of the box with her hoof. The panel fell off, exposing several buttons, one of them large and glowing an ominous red.

“Oh no. What do you think you’re doing?”

“Putting this place out of its misery and destroying the seeds of pony hubris.” She punched the red button with her hoof.

Brilliant lights flared on throughout the terrarium and a piercing alarm sounded. A monotonous male voice echoed across the PA system: “Evacuate immediately. Two minutes to emergency specimen immolation.”

“Fastest way out is with your wings,” she said, winking at him. She reached into the box and hit a different button.

A second, lower-pitched alarm sounded. It was followed by a whine of hydraulic pistons high above and an immense roaring of fans in a far corner that heralded the opening of a massive ceiling panel.

Eddy plucked Redcap off the ground with his forelegs and flew for the opening. His wing muscles ached as he flapped, but the pain was one more familiar and welcome to him. He pushed against the air rushing to equalize pressure, and the black square of empty sky accepted him. Eddy flew out into the night, momentarily blinded once more from the terrarium floodlamps. As he circled in his ascent he surveyed the ground, and noticed the lights at the research center had come on as well. The whole area was alight: the vast clearing in the forest enclosed by a tall fence that met at the sides of the terrarium; the broad, green garden with neatly-trimmed hedges; the enormous, horseshoe-shaped gray structure of stone in the middle wherein hundreds of Equestrian researchers quietly devised ways of stopping a natural disaster — and, secretly, of turning it into a horrific weapon, according to what Jade had said.

A glowing rod shot past them at high velocity. The mana-bullet traced a glowing path off into the sky.

We’ve been spotted! Eddy thought.

Don’t think. Fly. Get us out of the unicorns’ range and leave the rest to me.

He stopped ascending and poured all of his effort into flying out horizontally over the forest. The research center disappeared behind them and the forest’s dark treetops raked invisibly at them from beneath.

I have to be quiet for a moment. Keep flying and we’ll escape.

How? I’m no match for a pegasus guard, and I’m carrying you.

She gave no response.

Redcap?

A howl like an immense hurricane resounded in Eddy’s mind, and his vision turned white for an instant. He came to his senses as fast as he had lost them, but had nearly dropped Redcap. He cinched her up in his grasp and flew dizzily onward, wondering if he was still going in the same direction.

Redcap! What just happened?

Redcap remained silent. He flew harder. If Jade escapes, she’s our only hope, he thought. Something happened to Redcap.

The sound of branches breaking violently came from behind. He looked behind him and saw only darkness. A thin branch grazed his wingtip feathers, and he winced, wobbling in flight. Choking on his own gasps of surprised pain, he pushed against the air, ascending shakily into the safe openness of the night sky. The forest stretched out like a vast black carpet below, and the mountains of the forest basin stood like massive black teeth against the dimly-glowing horizon. Now, to the rendezvous point, Eddy thought.

No, Redcap thought.

Oh, you’re awake. What was that just a minute ago?

It’s something I’m too tired to do again, that’s what it was. Please, just fly as fast as you can. They’ll recover and be back on our trail soon.

Right then. To the reservoir.

We’re not meeting Jade just so you can do... things... with her one last time.

“Yes we are meeting her,” Eddy shouted above the rush of cold air to make a gesture of effort. “And didn’t I say ‘barriers’?” Short of breath, he couldn’t keep it up. And why shouldn’t we follow through with her plans?

Eddy, I made her plans. This whole escape was my design. You think I was looking forward to being a brain in a jar, soul tethered to a crystal? You know Jade is a sworn member of the Stained Glass Order, and can’t tell a lie if questioned. That’s why we can no longer do what she told you. It’s too risky.

“Just what are you suggesting?” That we abandon her? That she’ll betray us?

“Listen in your head,” Redcap shouted. I’m our best chance of getting away now. No one knows my plans except you and me, but there’s a good chance that soon everyone will know hers.

Why should I trust you?

Redcap’s mind-voice turned to childlike, placatory smoothness. I know how you feel about each other. I knew that when I met her, without looking at her mind. You trusted and loved her enough to keep your peace when she asked you not to question her, and that’s what made you a good accomplice.  But that means there’s a lot she held back from you.

Like what?

Think about the terrarium and the air circulation. If you’d been caught, you would have had no knowledge of the instructions Jade gave to her sister. Thanks to your faithful work, another one of the “gifted youths” will escape the Fount of Creation.

What sort of escape plan is this? Eddy asked.

The “who” is a colt named Snails I met before I started work with Driftwood. The “how” is reduced to the size of mites, on the backs of insects.

Eddy marveled at the prospect of a skilled unicorn shrunk to a minuscule size and riding a fly. Is there anything else I haven’t been told?

We’re being tracked. The communicator, silly.

Eddy choked back surprise, making effort to maintain stable flight. Why didn’t you tell me earlier? You lied to me, said it would only do that if I used it!

Easy now. It’s exactly what we want. Everyone knows we’re headed in this direction. The reservoir will be a false lead. I didn’t have time to explain and didn’t want you tearing it off early.

Eddy finally understood Redcap’s plans in their entirety. A slip of the reservoir was visible ahead; he saw the reflection of two stars shimmering in it. And then “you can take her from there”?

Yes. We’ll be flying into the Northeast hinterlands.

So then, how are we going to survive out there in the wilderness, Einhuf?

Please, I asked you not to call me that!

I asked you not to look at the parts of my brain that are inappropriate for foals.

Fair enough, she ceded. We’ll be meeting a group of ponies that Driftwood told me about, and I’ll convince them to help us. I know what and who they are, and how to persuade them.

Truly?

I persuaded you easily enough.

He snorted in anger, but soon heard the soft giggle of a filly lingering in his mind like the flurry of white feathers following the impact of a thrown pillow.

That is *not funny.*

Redcap’s mirth gradually died off.

So, which way out of the basin once we’ve dropped this thing?

Naturally, Northeast. That way has the tallest peaks and the most turbulent air about it, and so it’s incidentally the last direction we’d be expected to fly.

Well, fantastic. How convenient. Eddy looked to the east, where the range jutted up black and forbidding. Their last snows haven’t been gone more than a week. You sure we shouldn’t go back to the research center or wait for Auntie Jade so we can get a sweater on you?

I’ll be fine.

The reservoir swelled into view, its cold water shimmering with starlight.

And now, for the final part of our feint. I’ll help you jettison this thing... Redcap tucked her chin in and pulled at the communicator band with her teeth. The pressure between Eddy’s hoof and her abdomen held it tightly so it chafed at them both.

We could land to take it off.

No time. Keep flying.

As she worked at the communicator, Eddy thought of how Jade had told him to keep the band on him until the rendezvous. Redcap slipped it off the end of his hoof with one final yank and spat it out. It drifted silently into the darkness below.

And now what, “specimen” Redcap?

Fly Northeast. Fly faster than you’ve ever flown before.

I’m already doing one of those two things, Eddy thought wearily as he banked through the night.

We need to cover a lot of distance before sunrise. If dawn catches us airborne, we’ll be easily spotted. Also, since you’ve stolen classified information, and I helped you, we’ve both committed treason...In case you hadn’t already figured that out.

And?

And that makes us fugitives, of course.

Eddy Current climbed towards the sky above the dark peaks with the filly in his grasp. Despite discomforting awareness that Redcap could hear his every thought, he could only think of Jade, all of their times together, and whether he would ever see her again.

On the forest floor, a raccoon chanced upon an ornate band of fabric, decided it would be useful for her nest, and grasped it in her teeth. Suddenly, its matrix of beryl beads glowed, and she dropped it in surprise. The beads hummed with a feminine voice.

“Eddy, it’s Jade! Eddy?”

The raccoon eyed the alien garment apprehensively.

“Eddy, if you can hear me: mission failed. I can’t teleport out of here. The security barriers in the control center... Please, stay where you are, and keep the communicator on you... I’m so sorry. You need to give Redcap back so the doctors can help her wake up without brain damage. If we come clean, they might go easier on us—”

Sounds of distant shouting came out of the beads.

“I love you.”

The glow died out and the fabric fell silent. The raccoon attacked it, snarling and clawing and biting it. It refused to tear. She paused, giving it a sniff. It lay deathly still, defeated. She carried it off to her den.