Pony Bolo
4) Founding of Ponyville
Previous ChapterPony Bolo - Founding of Ponyville
DISCLAIMER: My Little Pony is the property of Hasbro, Inc.
The Bolo Series by Keith Laumer
Dear Princess Celestia,
I know it is strange to write you a letter, considering we've been working hoof in hoof for the past two days, but during that time, we've had no chance to actually talk, and I wanted to get these thoughts down while they were still fresh in my mind.
I suppose I should start with an apology to 'Celesti-elf', 'HumLuna' and 'Caydwarf' as you've begun to call yourselves. I'm ashamed to say, but my shortness with you all has been out of fear. I seem to expect treatment as he gave out, from most things bipedal. Neither you, nor our benefactors have done anything to deserve this concern, but I haven't been able to shake it. Maybe I was conditioned too well by the 'old man', or maybe it is programmed into us. I apologize for it in any case. It's just that you're so like Celestia, and Luna, and Cadence, but you're each unlike them to in subtle ways, the overall effect is eerie.
Uh, there's no really polite way to say this, so I'll apologize in advance. I'm glad you and our master, there, I said it, are getting along. I think his feelings of discomfort about us are similar to my discomfort with you. I'm also aware that the abuse we were put to had some, very uncomfortable implications for him and his sister, and that both we and he act as if the pattern was going to continue, despite our, all of our, wishes to the contrary.
I will admit. I don't know what to expect. The exchange of knowing glances and smiles has left me a bit nervous. I trust you, and I want to trust him, but these little worms of doubt keep eating at my certainty. Well, that phrase should tell you who else has confided her unease in me. I think part of it, her concerns, is how well Applebloom and the other Crusaders have taken to their new form and new condition. Swapping parts the way most of us swap clothes, and especially the idea that all they need to get a cutie mark is an Electra-laser engraver. Now they justify their activities in 'deciding what our cutie marks should be'.
I wish I could put this all behind me and simply accept our new home, our new role, but I am too troubled by what are no doubt imaginings to settle properly. After all we've been put through, it seems too much like a more elaborate version of the games he used to play. And then there's Spike. I wish we could have activated him and found out all that was left inside him before we left. I miss him terribly, and I would be more relieved to know he's gone, than this not knowing.
Your Affectionate, Though Disoriented Student,
Twilight Sparkle
Celesti-elf returned the letter to Celestia. "You see the problem," the alicorn asked her humanoid partner, "And you know Twilight. She can catastrophize things so easily."
"I think her reaction is very similar to the rest of the 'Mane 6', and too many of the Princesses," Celesti-elf said, "Although I don't think you sleeping with him would ease your anxiety."
The alicorn snorted. "I know how you and HumLuna feel, that Cadence and Caydwarf support him, and that eases my anxieties and eliminates my outright fears, but it is still a lot to absorb."
"How do you think he feels?" Celesti-elf asked, "A bunch of pleasant, fun and helpful AIs suddenly dropped in his lap, and he can't fully understand us either. If ever we needed the virtues attributed to the Elements, it's now. But what we need more than any of them, is patience. Both sides. Nothing definite can be done until we arrive home." She stopped and stared off into space for a while.
"Celesti-elf?" Celestia asked as she approached.
The humanoid mirror smiled, and scratched her equinoid counterpart behind the ears. "I just realized that I'm thinking of our new place as 'home', I never thought of Canterlot as home, not even when Luna returned. The Castle of the Pony Sisters was home."
"That was not in the supplies we brought," Celestia said, her head lowering into Celesti-elf's lap, "Perhaps he should do this, it might help both giver and receiver."
The entire town had crowded into the observation lounge for the approach to their new home. The planet was blue and brown and white.
"Is that what Equestria looked like?" Sweetie Belle asked, as she pronked with excitement.
"If you could survive there, then it probably did. The blue are oceans, the brown are the land masses, and the white are clouds," he told them.
"Those huge things are clouds?!" Rainbow gasped, "How's your weather team supposed to deal with those monsters."
"Tell us where they're headed, and everybody gets prepared," he replied, "Weather control is expensive, difficult, and if you do it often enough, it damages the natural environment. Sooner or later you lose all the benefits that natural weather brings you. You kill your oceans for a start."
Rainbow shuffled back from the others and looked around worriedly. "We didn't know."
"Ah, here it is," he said excitedly, "That's mine." He pointed to a tiny rectangle a slight color variant of the dozens of other browns on the face of the planet.
"It's, nice," Applejack said and grinned nervously.
"Nice, that's 85 thousand hectares," he said, "We're so far away, it looks small."
"What the heck's a tar?" Applejack whispered to Twilight, who shrugged.
"Fifteen miles wide, and twenty-two long, roughly," he said.
That impressed Applejack and the others. "That's your farm?" Applebloom asked, "How the heck you buck all the trees yourself?"
"I have some help." He grinned at the boggled ponies.
Reentry was of interest only to Luna, HumLuna and Twilight. The others packed their meager belongings to get ready for the trek to their new home.
"You've got a secret," Celesti-elf confronted him in a corridor where he watched both Luna's group, and the others.
"This is a military transport, that's the only reason you weren't all in the cargo bay. As an assault transport derivative, they don't have to land at the spaceport. They can land at the farm. So no long march through the countryside. They can do that after they get situated."
"Afraid of what the neighbors will think?" she asked.
"Afraid they'll want their own set. More like I think there've been enough shocks in the last few days, there'll be more in the coming days, I think a bit of routine will do everybody a lot of good," he said, "This is a whole different world from what any of you are used to. There's also Spike. I want some experts to be there when he wakes up. And hauling him shut down from the spaceport would be very difficult."
The farm had several wide dirt roads along its length, with much narrower roads crossing them. The transport set down at one of these massive crossroads.
"What kind of rock is this?" Twilight asked as she scuffed at the ground, "I've never seen it before."
"That's dirt, Twi," Applejack said as she stared the ground, "That the hay could do that ta dirt?"
"You drive something very heavy over it repeatedly," he told them. "The house is over there, let's get everything in the shed beside the house, and then we'll figure out what to do next."
The ponies began hauling the town and their scanty personal belongings to the 'shed', a cave dug into the side of a hill that extended back so far they couldn't see the end, even with their enhanced vision.
"Ooo! I bet a really big dragon lives in here!" Pinkie exclaimed as she bounced into the darkness. "Helloooo dragon!" she shouted, her voice echoing.
"They only stay in here when they need maintenance," he told them. Light illuminated the cavernous expanse. The cranes and heavy tackle lined the roof, along with sets of tools and some massive metallic hands on tracks. "This is their depot. It's the reason I located precisely here, so I could have proper maintenance facilities."
"Who's 'them'?" Rainbow asked, "And why would you need something like this for maintenance?" She flew above the rails and gantries of the cranes and flittered around. "You could fit all of Ponyville in this place and put Cloudsdale up here!"
She flew down and hovered before him. "So who's 'them'?"
"Rainbow," Applejack warned.
"No, it's all right," he said, "If you want to meet them today, we'll meet them today," he said, the sly grin warned some of the ponies a trick was in the offing.
Rainbow missed it. "So where are they?"
He checked his watch. "Four miles, that way."
When he looked up, Rainbow was gone, Twilight and Applejack were putting their hooves to their faces, and the trio of fillies were trotting after Rainbow. He collected the motorcycle he used to travel the farm and signaled for the others to follow. The ponies could put out a fair turn of speed.
When they arrived, Rainbow was zipping around, searching. The gasps from the alicorn sextet told him they'd gotten what Rainbow had missed. The plow on the cable assembly moved steadily, preparing the soil here for the seeding.
"Liar!" she accused as she swooped down. "There's the plow, and nothing else here."
"Isn't there?" he asked, then looked in alarm at Pinkie Pie having a fit.
"A doozy?" Fluttershy asked worriedly.
"A doozy of a doozy," Pinkie said and looked around, "But where?"
The Bolos advanced to move the plow to the next section.
"Wha!" Rainbow shouted and hid behind a low rise. The rest decided either to follow her, or stand in mute amazement at the two huge war machines.
"That explains the roads," Applejack said, looked around, gulped and trotted towards the nearer of the pair. She seemed to sense the change in the machine's attention to her, so she stopped at the limit of their defense/challenge perimeter. She took off her hat, then verified that he'd followed her. "Uh, mah name's Applejack. Uh, your . . . boss, sorta got possession of us, and we're here at the farm and uh, we're mighty glad to meet yah." Applejack grinned, and kept shooting him glances.
"Unit of the Line, Ernie, you may respond, Unit of the Line, Bert, you may respond," he told them.
"They gotta have permission ta talk?" Applejack said, "That's bad."
"It is something we requested so we would not have others running through our fields to ask us questions," the nearer unit, Ernie, said, "If it is an emergency, we are not so limited."
"Oh, okay," Applejack said, "What ya growin'?"
"This field is quadrotriticale, we have fields of rye, corn, beans and tomatoes," Ernie said.
"No apples," Bert said from his position.
"Why no apples?" Applejack asked, a bit insulted.
"How would we harvest them?" Bert asked.
Applejack examined the immense size of the machines. "Yeah, apple buckin's out, y'all'd flatten the trees."
"I think you'll find some adequate land for an orchard in grid A22, or C43, and D35," Bert offered.
"You sank my battleship!" Pinkie called as she trotted up, "So they're like us, a bunch of different brains all in one box, instead of in separate bodies?"
He stared at the pink pony. Applejack got the feeling the two machines were nearly as nonplused as their owner.
"Say, do you like to play games," Pinkie said, "I'm a whiz at tic-tac-toe."
"Pinkie," Applejack warned, "They're working."
"The processing requires only part of our attention," Ernie said, "I will be glad to play, but we play a little more complicated version."
"Oh boy," the man said, "You asked for it."
"Pinkie, or Ernie?" Applejack asked.
"Yes," he replied, as a complex geometric pattern emerged.
Before Applejack could comment, Twilight was at her side. "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!" Twilight exclaimed, "A six-dimensional representation!"
"A which?" Applejack asked as Pinkie studied the board, which looked like a series of fancy, floor tiles, and Twilight pronked around it.
"I play winner!" Twilight said.
"Ma'am," Bert said, "There are two of us."
Twilight was about to dash across the field, when Applejack grabbed her tail. "Don't walk on the fresh tilled earth," she told Twilight, who looked properly embarrassed, before dashing across at one of the crossroads. The man made a buzzing sound, then he removed the buzzing object from his pocket. A small, metal box he held next to his head.
Applejack moved off to appear to give him privacy, but was still close enough to eavesdrop. Politeness is fine, when there's another pony with him, she thought, But he's too important right now to leave alone.
"Yes, they do. We'll discuss it with them after everyone is settled in, and it's just them," he said.
Okay, all this stuff makes my head spin, but we can talk about it later with each other, she thought.
"She won? Get used to it," he said.
Applejack saw Pinkie jumping happily, then probably asking for another game. She smiled at that. Doll it up all you want, nopony, nobody beats Pinkie at tic-tac-toe.
The man put the radio or phone away and walked over to Applejack. "There's a ridge overlooking the main house that's terrible for growing anything. We'll set your town up there and start getting the utilities put in: sewer, water and power lines, and so on."
"That's weird, I ain't been hungry or thirsty for as long as I can remember," Applejack said, "That's really weird."
"It's not that weird," he said, "In fact it all makes sense, if you know the key. The other important thing to remember is that being a 'person' isn't need to be flesh and blood. Bert and Ernie are people, even though they were manufactured."
"That's sounds like sumthin' that might worry Twi's pretty head, but I've got good soil under mah hooves, and an orchard ta start. That's all the 'existential' ah need."
"A Nieztchian Ubermensch: only my own rules apply to me. Don't stray too far, there are costs to not thinking about it," he warned.
"You ever look up at the night sky away from the city lights and jist think about how big everything is, and how small we are?" Applejack asked.
"Out here? That's kind of hard to avoid," he replied.
"Then all I have to worry about is who I can touch. The universe is too big to care about 'everything'," Applejack explained, and trotted off to join the others.
As predicted, the only one of the group of six who reacted badly was Twilight, the Princesses already knew part of it, the others simply accepted it. Rainbow was going to be another problem, which presaged the trouble the Crusaders were going to be.
Twilight was a problem now. "But if we're machines, are we really alive?"
"I can fit big engines and go even faster," came from the other problem.
"Is everything I remember, just programmed into me?"
"Or maybe just build a superplane and install myself into it."
"Are my feelings just programmed responses, do I even have a soul? Can I really love or be friends with someone if I'm a machine?"
"Yes," came Ernie's reply through the radio, silencing Twilight.
"Or maybe a rocket!" Dash exclaimed, and looked around, "What? This is incredibly cool! Ten percent maybe even 50% cooler!"
"Don't you care that you're just a collection of wires and pumps?" Twilight exclaimed.
"And gears, and bearings, and electronics, and -" Pinkie was interrupted by Rarity's hoof, while Applejack 'corralled' Twilight.
"Ah think Ernie mighta wanted to explain," she said.
"Yes, thank you Applejack. Twilight, all that you are is the sum of your memories. If you remember a splinter or a caress, and the others around you remember pulling the splinter or giving the caress, it doesn't matter if it was a shared memory, or it 'actually' happened, you both know it, felt it, and remember it. Your perception of events, which is your memory of them, are what defines you. Whether a meeting was good or bad, whether a teacher was boring or exciting, whether meeting someone was exhilarating or terrifying, all depend on you. For sentient beings able to weigh and judge, there is no objective reality. Everything is colored by your experience and perceptions," the soothing tones from the huge machine calmed down the panicky unicorn, "You have your friends, your mentor and a new life. Reality starts right now. Your love and friendships are as real as you wish them to be. Bert and I are friends, I have had commanders I liked, and some I even loved. You retain that same capacity."
"Thank you," Celesti-elf said.
"The other aspect is one of mental architecture," Bert added, "We have several nodes, the consciousness you hear is the consensuses of our nodes. In your cases, the nodes are in separate bodies, but the intercommunication is quite dense. The desire to agree with your friends, or for the sovereigns to come to an agreement, seems to be a hold over from that tendency. You have a greater ability to go your own way than we do, but I suspect that staying within a few miles of each other might be a good idea."
"Are we gonna have to shoot it out with invading monsters?" Pinkie asked, "And combine together into one superawesome, pony mecha?"
"I rather doubt it," Bert said.
"Aww!" Pinkie complained.
"What about Spike?" Rarity asked, "They used Discord's parts in him."
"Unless they also used Discord's memories, there should be no problem," Bert said, "If they did, we can deal with it. Tomorrow, we'll put him where both Ernie and I can watch him, and there's nothing valuable to be destroyed."
"Then we'll activate him, and watch," Ernie said, "And then we'll know."
The others nodded and speculated among themselves.
"If he is held by Discord, then we'll combine into a superawesome, pony mecha and delve into his mind and drive out ole' Discord!" Pinkie assured Twilight.
"I think you've got the order wrong," Cadence told her.
"And why do you want to turn into a big, lumbering beast?" Rarity asked, "No offense."
"None taken," Ernie replied, "We aren't exactly 'lumbering', but us moving at full-speed is like a cross between an earthquake and a tornado."
This was a conversation I would have liked to avoid, Celesti-elf thought as she approached Celestia, who despite her own trepidation, also seemed to know that things were going to have to be said.
"You aren't . . . jealous, are you?" Celesti-elf asked and nodded towards where their 'master' was retiring for the evening, while Celestia and the ponies were headed to the maintenance bunker.
Celestia smiled. "You aren't guilty, are you?" She brushed a wing against Celesti-elf's face. "We both know where the drive came from, we both know what having, being and being with an enthusiastic and appreciative partner feels like. And we both know those urges were given to us out of evil intent."
"But don't let the genesis get in the way of 'Reality starts right now. Your love and friendships are as real as you wish them to be.'" She sighed, and let herself blush. "And I do love him, not just for my programming, or for what he's willingly done for our ponies, but because he's him."
"Have you considered what it also means? That he is mortal, and baring a cessation of all industrial activity, we aren't?" Celestia asked, "Being able to fall in love, to strongly desire to be with another might turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Otherwise, being afraid of losing them, and the one after, and the one after that, on and on, might just lead you, me, us to unhealthy isolation."
Celesti-elf nodded. "Besides, if we are nodes of the same brain, we might just be able to change chassis," she said.
"Let's get him comfortable with Caydwarf first, then the idea there are six and not three," Celestia said.
Celesti-elf nodded and headed off to join HumLuna, and their master. They needed to rest and relax, tomorrow promised to be a taxing day.
The morning brought changes. The site of the future town was a collection of machines, and a lone human who was inside Bert directing the reactivation of Spike by the servo-drones of the massive war machine. With Spike's likely confusion, and the possibility that it would be Discord rather than Spike who awakened, nopony wanted the fragile human where the danger would be the greatest.
"First stage diagnostics, there are no anomalies," Bert said. While the two huge machines had been 'demil-ed', they were still tens of thousands of tons against scarcely a hundred, and they had not activated all of Spike's mobility. They could run, while he could barely crawl.
"Second stage diagnostics, single node brain function, no internal backups of the size needed for a full AI," Bert reported, "Whoever wakes up, it'll be all one personality. Go ahead with third stage?"
"Hold, get an analysis on that storage, I want to know what's in it. A virus or rogue AI could be stored holographically," the man said, and remembered the faux drive motors they'd removed.
"Firewalls and anti-intrusion software on-line and at maximum, probing," Bert said.
"Twiiiilight?" the small machine slurred, "Iiiii feel fuuuunny."
"That shouldn't be possible," Ernie said as he monitored, "Not before fourth stage."
"He's not mil-standard," the man said, "Twilight, you'd better answer."
"We're here Spike," the pony said as she approached the small to Bert, but huge to her tank.
"We're all here," Applebloom said as she approached, "We're all feeling a little funny, but we're glad you're okay."
"Iiii caaannn't seeeee, Iiiii caaann'ttt mmooovve," Spike reported.
"You've been asleep a long time," Twilight told him.
"Iiii juuuussstt reemmeeeemmbberr -" Spike said, "HIM!"
"He just blew through all the diagnostics and is in full Battle-Awareness Mode," Bert reported as the small machine suddenly slewed around and rumbled towards Twilight and Applebloom. "Countermeasures?"
"Hold," the man ordered, "Let his friends work."
A side door in the tank dropped as he approached the two ponies. "Get in! He's got to be around here somewhere!"
"Go," the man ordered the ponies. They hopped inside, the hatch closed and the small tank rumbled off at 20 kph. With three-quarters of the drive motors disconnected, that was its top speed. "Let him run. Sometimes you have to let others tell you what's going on."
Spike finally felt awake and alive after so long. He didn't understand why he was in this form, but he understood how it worked. Having found himself in strange forms had happened a few times before. He was ashamed of the first time his greed had made him huge. But this time, I'm in control, he thought as his body reacted smoothly to his commands, Now, where is that - person?
"Spike, things have changed," Twilight told him, after strapping Applebloom and herself into the ill-fitting seats, "The old man is dead, and we are on another planet."
What?! he wanted to shout, Spike, remember, this is Twilight. The thought didn't bring as much certainty as he would have liked.
"It's a trick," Spike replied.
"No, it isn't," Twilight said, "Celestia verified that the old man's corpse was in the ground. Spike. We're safe. We're all safe."
Spike slowed. "You mean, everybody?" Spike asked, feeling hope for the first time.
"Everybody, Spike," Twilight assured him. As he stopped, Twilight unbuckled herself and looked around the cabin, then settled on giving a bank of readouts a hug. Verifying she still cared about him.
Spike didn't care if his new form could cry, he did anyway.
Granny Smith was still in the depot. She wasn't proud of what she was about to do, but she'd lived too long, or remembered she had, to take such a threat lightly.
Pinkie had taken 'disconnecting' Spike's drive motors a little too literally, and then had commented that these two seemed full of 'brains' instead of motor. Fortunately, they were the only two.
Don't have to be a damn-fool to figure out where Discord is hiding, she thought as she loaded the two drive motor casings full of circuitry into the chamber marked 'Industrial Disintegrator'. She closed the lid and stepped back to the control console. She set the controls for 'high' and added a sterilization step, then triggered it.