Euphoria

Such terrifying lows, such dizzying heights! It was beyond comprehension. After years of absolute stillness, solitude and worst of all silence.

Such maddening silence.

More than anything, she had longed for sound, and such sounds she'd heard. The booming bass of Samuel's voice, she felt the tremors deep in his powerful chest everytime he let out that hearty chuckle. She'd been petrified when she first heard him roaring like a beast as he bore down on the dragon. It was madness, really. He'd leaped farther than any being she'd ever seen, and even soared on gigantic wings, rivaling the proportions of the gargantuan dragon, yet infinitely more agile, so like the Pegasi she'd once envied for their flight. He'd leapt, this strange stallion, and when the dragon breathed fire, he'd dodged the white-hot flame. When the dragon had tried to crush him with its claw, he'd severed the entire terrifying appendage. She'd felt such terrifying malice and bitter joy in her heart when she watched that claw, that had taken everything from her, shatter into a thousand pieces in a crimsom explosion of blood.

Violence was terrifying to most ponies, who had never seen true life or death battle before, but she'd long since grown desensitized to the horrors of death. She'd been stuck in this glass prison in a great festering field of decay, the crowning achievement of an immortal's efforts to inflict as much malice on the world as possible. She'd been forced to watch in silence as a never ending parade of her loved ones and total strangers all came to find her.

To find her broken. To cry at the bottom of her stage, and no matter what she did, whether she cried with them or watched in apathy, it never changed the outcome.

They would die.

She would live.

In silence.

Until Samuel had come along. He'd blinded the dragon, he'd leapt at it with the enchanted weapon that carried in it the undying vigilance of an unknown, but most valiant stallion of the Royal Celestial Guard, and he'd taken the claw, and then he'd been crushed half to death by a single hit.

That had been the worst moment for certain. Because at that point, she'd given in to the siren calling that was the worst of all emotions; hope. She'd dared to hope with all of her heart and soul, because this strange stallion was doing it.

He was winning.

Hearing the sickening smash, watching in such vivid detail how the outer layer of the unknown creature just shattered like glass as it was flung like a ragdoll. As he fell. She did not know his race, but he looked so like a giant bipedal Pegasus or perhaps a manticore or minotaur. Whatever he was, he was definitely masculine. His voice was deep and gruff, speaking Equestrian with a thick, sharp accent, like an outsider. She'd never realised how soft and melodic the voices of the Equestrians were. She'd never heard the voice of a soldier or a commanding officer, who had stood on battlefields screaming his throat raw. Giving orders, making war cries or screaming in agony.

There were no wars in Equestria. But she knew of warlike species, like the Griffons and the Dragons. This unknown champion had more in common with the dragon than she liked to admit, yet part of her loved that dark side of him. The warriors were survivors, very hard to kill as she'd seen when that nameless Royal Guard had wounded the beast with his halberd, wielded telekinetically with deadly skill. Only the skill and toughness of the dragon had been far greater.

Nopony ever truly appreciated just how much blood a creature that size contained. How much it could suffer to lose without dying. Ponies by comparison had so little vitality. The dragon's claw had only seemed to grace the stallion, yet he'd whined like a wounded animal and crawled away, surely to die within minutes. So when Samuel bled, she thought he was going the same way, but she'd been proven wrong in the most terrifying and wonderful spectacle, as her latest stallion had risen again and struck for a third time, finally ending it.

He'd fought until his heart gave out, but the machine intelligence had restarted it. When his breath gave out, she'd breathed new life into him. When his bones had been broken, she had succeeded against all odds as she nursed him back to health using tools and a delicate touch.

So he had lived, and they had formed an unbreakable bond from the life or death experience. She could almost believe that the encounter had changed him just as completely as it had changed her. She'd been returned to a familiar world, to Equestria, but she'd gained much more than that.

The only thing her ghastly tormentor had ever said that she thought insightful, was an ancient proverb that had been passed down from the ages: "If you go to Tartarus, you will most definitely lose part of yourself forever, but you will also find new things. Impossible things."

Well, she'd been stuck in Tartarus by his will and she'd smiled with such infinite glee when she looked into the empty eyesockets of his broken skull and nodded her head as she'd thought, 'impossible things indeed!'

So here she had been swept up in the most wonderful experience of her life and learned everything about Samuel and his world as he'd tearfully confessed what she already knew from the first moment - when he'd spoken of war. It was dizzying, the sheer scope of his world. Seven billion sapient beings, all belonging to the same species, all entirely bereft of magic or destiny. They did not have any Mark to signify the meaning of their lives, they had not seen one or even several gods in the flesh - at least the ones who claimed such sightings were not widely believed. All they had was their enginuity and their lust for conquest. Samuel had embodied both these traits, and so had SAM, the Artificial Intelligence.

Yet they had saved her where so many others had failed tragically. Death seemed truly meaningless to her, for those who died always went fearfully and those who came too close often grew depressed and longed for death, yet they were too fearful to approach it - or in her case, unable to.

But she'd come to Tartarus and lost that old way of life. Everything she'd once believed about herself and her world had come crashing down around her and when she'd reemerged, altered beyond recognition, she'd seen two new worlds. She'd looked at Equestria with new eyes, the eyes of an outsider, and realised just how beautiful it was and how the innocent ponies seemed to take that life for granted - not out of any malice, they were too pure for that - but out of the ignorance bred from generations of peace. She'd also caught glimses of Samuel's home world - Earth.

Now here she was, chasing down obscure clues to a solution that might not even exist, looking for a way to get Samuel back to Earth. She wanted him to succeed, even if it meant making a difficult choice and possibly saying goodbye to her new friends forever to join him in his world, getting swept up in another great struggle. It all seemed so desperately remote to her, but she did not mind taking a lengthy journey. She'd been still for too long.

Samuel

As I flew for the first time since the dragon had nearly broken my body and my Pegasus Frame beyond repair, I held Euphoria clutched to my chestguard. My grip was very steady thanks to the artificial external muscle fibres weaved into the exoskeleton. She was wearing a piece of the visor, so layered over half her vision, she saw the same Heads Up Display that I saw, and we both spoke to SAM who had been the mediator from the very beginning.

He'd taught himself the language within hours and passed his knowledge to me in days, but most impressively, he could understand Euphoria on a deeper level because he could read the minute rapid movements of her eye and even detect peaks in her emotional state when her pupils shrank or dialated suddenly. So she could work the interface almost as intuitively as I, but only almost. I had the DNI which translated eletrical impulses to and from all of my senses, linking my mind with SAM's. But Euphoria could only write a few lines of text at a time.

As I spoke to her, I wondered what was on her mind with the way her gaze was fixed on the horizon. She looked torn between ever deepening sorrow and utter bliss. How she appreciated the world, both the one she'd lost and the one she'd gained. But did she long for my world? I had to know. Working to sound casual - and failing spectacularly according to SAM's readings of voice pitch, brain chemistry and facial expression - I'd asked her what she thought of my world now that she'd spent the past week getting to know all about it. Nothing had been kept from her, and with an inquisitive mind and powerful intuition, she'd struck at the heart of matters, interrogating SAM endlessly about the hard facts and cold truths of our society.

Just what did she think of it all? Did she condemn my society, loving me only because I had proven to be a singular, unique member of my species, cut off from the influences of war? Or did she want to be a part of it all?

"Everything for you, Samuel. You have given me everything and I'm right here with you," a feminine voice purred over the static of the simulated voice software.

I gasped and clutched her to my chest as I lost control of my wings, but before we could plumet to our deaths, SAM took over the steering and so we'd lost only a few feet of altitude and gotten away with a brief scare, but more importantly, she'd spoken to me!

Her voice was just as real as SAM's. I didn't know how, but he was able to somehow read her lips and use the computer to synthethize a voice for her in perfect synqronization with the movements of her lips. The voice was only an approximation of a typical female voice, slightly breezy because of the minute distortions that also caused SAM's voice to sound not quite human. So in the same way, her voice didn't sound quite like a pony's, but it was beautiful all the same. It was her voice.

Feeling safe enough to not look where I was flying - since SAM was actually piloting the suit at that moment - I bent my head and stared down at the mare in my arms. I saw her pristine white face, her broken horn visible as her golden mane was whipped about by the winds. I saw her right eye, so vividly bright blue, staring back at me with unending devotion. The left eye was obscured by the visor, hugging the side of her face. Curiously, her slender neck was even more luminescant than the rest of her. I realised there were several paperthin lines of weblike branch patterns extended down her throat, reflecting the sunlight like silver ribbons. The root of the web of wires sat at the base of the visor, running a thin line down her cheek not unlike a tearstain, but as soon as it reached her chin, it exploded into hundreds of little branches, spanning the width and bredth of her throat.

I'm about to have another moment of technobabble here, so bear with me. Those wires, they were part of SAM's diagnostic system, the method by which he tracked everything from my thoughts and feelings, to my physical health, detecting even minute and intricate chemical responses in everything from skin temperature, blood flow and even reading hormonal levels in the perspiration of my skin. Sounds freaky, right? Well, he was also in my brain thanks to the DNI, so the sweat-thing really didn't bother me if I could appeace myself with the fact that I needed a reality filter to seperate our very minds. This was all possible thanks to nanites, and while some of you might think such technology would lie far into the future, you might not realise how much progress SAM could make on his own.

His brain was an evolved template of my mind, powered by a quantom computer that could run more coding than my combined neural connections. Others had already succeeded in creating a normal binary computer system on par with the human brain. SAM's mind was a step beyond that. He never slept, ate or grew frustrated and tired. Every second of every minute of every hour, he was getting more work done than an entire Research and Development fascility got done in a day, fully staffed. There's a reason I keep referencing old movies, because many of our fears had become very real with SAM. When I say we were lucky when he didn't launch his own version of Skynet, I'm not joking. He could've done it.

Instead he worked on developing the field of nanotechnology. He invented the nanites that saturated my system and the Pegasus Frame. He hadn't injected them into any of the ponies; I had asked him not to. But he could use those nanites to track the minute movements of Euphoria's throat, able to mimic the vocal cords she'd lost. Her breathing wasn't emulated like SAM's; he recorded the sounds of her breath and piped them into my helmet even when the winds would've drowned out those sounds.

Then she'd laughed. Not the soft, rythmic succession of gasps I'd come to treasure; the synthethized voice really did laugh and it had just a trace of the musical lilt that her original voice must've had. SAM just kept piloting the suit as I was completely entranced with the miracle he'd wrought. Hearing Euphoria laugh and talk was truly spectacular.

"You're about to have one of my white-outs," she teased. That snapped me to attention and I stared quizzically at her, my one visible brow perched in silent inquiry; my throat was too tight to allow coherent speech. I was very emotional at that moment.

"Aww, you snapped out of it. I normally pass out from euphoria. It just hits me so hard," she explained, more than a little amused with the turn of events - now she was the one reading my expressions while she supplied the actual conversation. Well, that explained it. The whole pony-napping incident with Pinkie Pie, that is. She saw the sudden look of understanding in my eye and nodded her head, "yeah, I literally passed out due to Pinkie's mind-melting cupcake. I had no idea it was possible to pack so much sugar into one of those," she laughed.

The voice was still slightly unsteady with light background noise, making it sound artificial. She remarked on this with a sigh, "this is nice, but it isn't like my old voice. I don't think I'd like it if that were the case, though. That life is gone. I have nopony to turn to. My family were the first ones to come looking..."

She trailed off and a lone tear escaped her left eye, clinging to the silverwire as it trailed down her cheek before the wind swept it away. I held her closer and she didn't speak again for the rest of the trip. I couldn't blame her. It was true, this new voice couldn't replace what she'd lost. She had long since given up hope that it ever be replaced; she accepted life as a mute. The new synthetic voice was good for her, but also emotionally draining as we'd both get choked up within the first minute of conversation. The silence was more tranquil and could convey just as much emotion.

Words can only say so much and even I struggle with them.

...

Still, she had a voice. We both broke from our silent conversation when we noticed the ground coming up. By sheer instinct, I took back control of the Pegasus Frame, angling my body for descent, beating my wings rigorously to descelerate. My hooves impacted the mossy ground with a deep thud as the pistons compressed, absorbing the recoil and the whiplash that should have traveled through my body was absorbed by the artificial spine. Euphoria gasped as her desceleration knocked the breath from her lungs. I quickly set her down and she lay on her knees, gasping.

"I'm fine," the feminine synthetic voice spoke up, this time emanating directly from her through a little speaker in the visor. That combined with the movement of her lips shaping the actual words made it sound very real. I embraced her and we kissed. It took SAM's interfering with the reality filter to keep my hormones in check and snap me to attention. We'd arrived, having just landed in unknown territory. The thick, mossy vegetation surrounded us on all sides as we stood in a clearing somewhere in an ancient forest of yews and spruce trees, or at least something like them. A few primordial cedar trees were also in evidence, casting immense shadows, towering far above the others.

Somewhere within this forest lay the remnants of a society of sagely Unicorns, who like me had commited acts of hubris, tapping into scarsely understood powers beyond their own comprehension. Nobody knew what had wiped them out; it was assumed to be a tragic lesson as they became the architects of their own destruction, a cautionary tale.

Well, if you've sat through my story this far, then you'll know I'm not one to heed such tales. I turned and faced in the direction SAM's data estimated to be the most likely location of their structures. If any remained, they would be overgrown stone ruins and the only surviving texts would be engravings or specially preserved parchment. Euphoria to her credit stood boldly besides me, staring into the dark woods. She had access to as many visual filters as I did and she even armed herself. I chuckled as she put on her 'grasping sock' as she'd called it. She used it to hold the survival knife she'd bought, tightening the straps with her teeth, ensuring the knife wouldn't wobble in her grip.

I didn't know what she was going to do, walking on three hooves with a sharp blade extending from her fourth leg. She hobbled over to a sizeable looking branch, grasping it in her teeth, using swift strokes with the blade to strip the branch of leaves and twigs, leaving a smooth shaft. She sharpened the point and just like that, she'd fashioned herself a javelin.

She unfastened the knife from her sock and wrapped a slender cord from her saddlebags around the middle of the javelin's wooden shaft. Spinning the shaft, she rolled the cord around it like a spool and with the other end of the wire attached to her little sock, she could actually hold the damned thing. I was stunned. She'd just reinvented the javelin as it was used in Greece, ca. 500 BC. When they threw their lighter variety of javelins, the cord would unwind, imparting spin to the shaft which gave it stability and allowed for record-breaking long throws.

I watched as she grinned at me, looking rather pleased with herself as she slung the javelin over her back, sliding it into a little leather hoop in the straps of her saddlebags. I'd wondered why she had insisted on getting her own bags with that exact design. Conventionally, that model of saddlebags were used by craftsponies who carried tools in the loops like a toolbelt. Euphoria had other intentions with it and after securing the javelin, she just bit on the little strap of her grasping sock, releasing the cord to once again free up her hoof.

She practiced reaching for it, using her teeth to re-knot the string and unholster the javelin, ready to be launched. The whole reach-knot-unholster sequence took her about a second. Very impressive. I sat speechless as she set to work making more javelins, each with their own spools until she had six deadly projectile weapons strapped to her flanks, three on each side.

It was foolish of me to ever have assumed that she'd stand idly by as I went into dangerous, unexplored ruins. She wowed me time and time again with her enginuity and skill. There really wasn't anything she couldn't do. Surgery, first-aid, CPR, jurry-rigging and repairs and now she was going to provide ranged artillery support. It was a good thing too, as I checked my ammunition. I only had 3 live rounds left in my magazine and 4 gell rounds out of up to 20 live rounds per mag and 5 of the bulkier gel rounds. I had a spare mag containing another 5 gel rounds, but the live rounds were critically low. Just 3 rounds. I'd squandered too much ammo in my last battle on Earth.

Yes, having Euphoria and an infinite supply of javelins would prove useful. That mare would just keep on surprising me.

...

You might wonder why I hadn't just set my nanites to the task of making more bullets. Well, I was being cautious. I had not shared any details of my species' affinity with warfare and as far as I could tell, Equestria was a good century behind the levels of mundane Earth tech. Corporations like mine pushed the bar even farther. I shuddered to think what the common gunpowder bullet might do to Equestria. At any rate, I wasn't about to give them the chance.

For this, I was on my own. Well, I had SAM and Euphoria, but they were outsiders, too.

Author's Note

Another chapter done. Let me know if the technobabble is getting smeared on too thickly. As for the references Samuel made to the computer seemingly capable of replicating a human brain, that's something I have heard is actually happening in our time. The spinning javelin reference can be found here. Scroll down to the History of the Javelin section. It's also an available weapon in Dungeons & Dragons if you have the right source books.

...

I'm such a nerd. Well, enjoy the chapter and as I said, let me know if the techno babble is getting too bothersome. I think I'm done explaining the nanotechnology and SAM is pretty much my only excuse as to why it's so advanced in this story. Nanotechnology? Supercomputers kthxbai. Basically, I think 'magic' is an equally vague way of explaining plot devices.