"Do you have a moment?"

Lonely Day looked up from her desk, surprised at the identity of the speaker.

"Mom? We live in the same house. Did you not want to talk about it at home?"

"No," she admitted.

Day gestured, and her mother came in.

Since her victory over Obrican’s army and the subsequent peace, the president's office had changed a little. Wartime maps of the city had been moved up here, along with a bit of broken trebuchet and a piece of melted armor. On the back wall was a list of names, including every casualty they had suffered.

There were several comfortable chairs in the office, but her mother ignored all of them, walking right to the edge of the desk. Alex wasn't surprised. She remembered from experience that sitting in the human way got even more uncomfortable when you were pregnant. "What's wrong?"

Mary didn't answer right away, looking uncomfortable. "Well, uh… this might sound dumb. Maybe selfish, I dunno. But you're a princess now! Why shouldn't I ask?"

"Of course you can." Alex wasn't wearing her crown, or any of the other regalia. It all went into her saddlebags for safekeeping. "I might not be able to do whatever you're asking for, but there's no reason you shouldn't ask. I'd do anything in my power for you Mom, you know that."

Mary walked back to the door, quietly shutting it, before returning to the desk. "Expecting again has had me thinking. About Elizabeth and James."

"What about them? They still haven't returned, if that's what you're wondering."

"No, I know. I trust you to tell me the second that happened. I just don't think it will. You told me there are thousands of years before everyone will come back. Unless I'm understanding that wrong." She looked away from Day as she said it, pawing at the ground.

"No, you're right. Is this about… not seeing them?"

"Yes," Mary said. "I guess what I've been wondering is… is there a way for me to be able to see them? I am happy I was here to support you, Alex… but you were never the child of mine who needed it. You could take care of yourself. James and Elizabeth were still living at home. I'm worried about what will happen to them."

"I'll find them," Archive promised. "No matter when they are. I'll find them. I'll protect them from whatever the world becomes."

"I know you will," Mary said, though she didn't sound placated. "But you're not their mom. You can't… I guess what I'm saying is… I want to be there for them. If it's possible, you know how."

Alex shifted uncomfortably in her seat, then nodded. "You want… You want to be immortal?"

"Dios Mio!" Mary shook her head vigorously. "Like you? No son, I don't want that. You were young when you promised the pony goddess you would stay behind. I don't think you understood what you were promising. I don't want to be trapped here."

Archive frowned, turning away from her mother to look out the window. Now that it was cleaned, she could look out on her city. They had a marketplace now, using paper money. Dull, portioned sections of grain had been replaced with a thriving trade in vegetables, flowers, and fruit.

"I can't make you like my daughter," she finally admitted. "Ezri and Jackie were created by an accident I can't recreate. Not even Equestria had ever seen ponies like them."

Mary sighed. "I don't want to live forever. I just want to live long enough to see my other children."

"I understand. There are… There are a few methods. But what does Tom think?"

Mary shrugged. "My husband has no desire to extend his life. We've discussed this before." She straightened and lowered her voice, making it harsher and more clipped. "I spent long enough dreading the end of the world, then I had to live through it. I won't stay long enough to watch it happen again."

Alex's eyes widened. Dreading the end of the world. She filed that away for the moment. "He'll still be around for… another century at least. Maybe longer."

"We know." She touched her belly gently with her hoof. "I'll spend all that time with him. With the family we make together. But they're not the only ones I want to be there for."

Alex rose from her chair, walking around the table so she could look right into Mary's eyes. They were about the same height, though Alex's build was still far leaner.

"It's possible, Mom. But you should know… there's no free lunch. Not with economics, and not with magic."

Mary nodded. "I understand. What would it take?"

"Magic is still a young science on Earth, Mom. But there are ways its mechanics could be… exploited.

"A stasis spell would be the easiest. My saddlebags already do something similar. I've examined the spell—there doesn't seem to be anything preventing it from working on living things. It was intentionally disabled, but something similar could probably be designed. Keep you frozen until James or Elizabeth come back."

"That sounds…" Mary looked down at her hooves, considering. "That sounds easy. Why hasn't anyone done that yet?"

Alex shrugged. "We don't know they haven't. But it's not a cheap spell. It would take an Alicorn, or a few dozen skilled unicorns to charge it up every ten years or so. Given the state of the world right now, the ponies who could do it are probably on this island or down in Antarctica living in endless summer. Not only that, but it wouldn't work for most people to find their relatives. There's only one pony in the world who can tell you if a pony from the past has returned. Ponies sometimes ask me, but… I don't think I could monitor millions of stasis spells."

Mary's ears folded, and her tail tucked between her legs. "I don't want to be a burden to you, son. I know you'd do anything I asked… but I don't want to ask. Is there another way?"

"There are others," Alex said. "Only one other that doesn't involve permanent immortality or… necromancy."

Mary laughed, visibly relaxing. "This isn't one of your brother's fantasy games… is it?"

Archive wasn't laughing. She wasn't even smiling. "It isn't. I do not know if the method has been discovered on Earth yet, but I was taught about them. There are ways unscrupulous ponies could use the lives of others to prolong their own lives. I suspect they're close to discovering the method, given the popularity of blood magic."

Mary shivered. "Not that either!" She took a step back. "I don't want to be a burden to anyone. If it's not…"

"No, there's another way." Alex raised a hoof. "I'm not sure you'll like it."

Mary stopped, hope returning to her face. "What is it?"

"Well… stasis is an active spell, so it must be maintained. Necromancy is deplorable beyond the need to explain. But there's another, more natural way. The preservation spell changes humans into many different species. There is no 'fairness' in this allocation. Some ponies end up as short-lived species, while others end up as races that have much extended lifespans. There are… two species in the spell with natural lifespans that would give you the years to see James and Elizabeth again.

"Seaponies are somewhat like sea turtles—they don't die of natural causes. But the ocean is… extremely dangerous. There's a reason we haven't encountered any seapony cultures."

"It might be hard to help James and Elizabeth if I'm in the ocean."

"The other is the rarest race in the spell: dragon. Dragons are tough, and they live thousands of years. To my knowledge, the only dragons who have died on Earth either attacked humans or killed one another."

Mary smiled again. "You're pulling my leg this time for sure, right? Dragons?"

This time Alex smiled back. "Not even a little bit. I am acquainted with several. They all probably still think I'm dead…" She shrugged. "Even if you waited until Tom passed away, a hundred fifty isn't even a teenager among dragons. But dragons have powerful instincts… every one I've ever met collects something. Guns, gemstones, human artifacts… You'll be like that too when you get older, and you won't have a choice."

Mary stewed over that for a moment. "I'm not a dragon, Alex. Is there a spell to change that?"

"Sort of." She winced. "Changing a living thing forever is… really hard. But I could cheat. We could make some kind of… charm. A charm to make anyone into a dragon. It could feed off your own magic, hide itself away under a scale or something once it's activated. So long as you never took it off, it would be exactly like actually being a dragon. Nopony would be able to tell you weren't the real thing, not even another dragon."

"You could make something like that?"

"Every human that was once on Earth was transformed, so transformation magic is a part of me too. It might take me a few months of tinkering, but on-and-off that's not much work for a whole century."

Far in the distance, something rumbled loudly. Alex glanced briefly out the window, but didn't see anything. Probably just a building falling down somewhere far away. It didn't fade, at least not right away. So she ignored it.

"Do it, then."

Archive nodded. "One thing, Mom. Don't… Don't mention this to anyone else. Wanting to see the rest of the family is a reasonable request, but there simply isn't enough magic or enough space at the top of the food chain for thousands of dragons. In the whole world, there are…" She paused, letting her eyes glaze over as she sought them out.

It didn't take her long. The magic of an Alicorn put her previous sensitivity to shame. What she'd seen through a locked door was now wide open before her. If she concentrated, Archive could now sense even the faintest connection to humanity, which meant just about anyone if she looked hard enough. Generally speaking, only Sunset's ponies and the darkness that lived in the oceans were truly invisible to her.

"Sixty-three. There are sixty-three dragons in the whole world. After a thousand years. If thousands of ponies started asking for the magic to do what I'm doing for you… well for one, I wouldn't have the power. For another, they'd take over the planet. I will not allow that to happen."

"So you won't help?"

"I didn't say that," Alex said. "I'll swear you never to mention this conversation. I will never volunteer this information to anyone. But if a few other ponies ask… I'll have to grant their request too. Nepotism is a terrible way to rule."

"I understand." Mary rushed over and hugged her. Alex returned the embrace with her wings. "Thank you, Alex. My lips are sealed."

"Even to your children." Alex poked Mary gently in the belly with the feathers of one wing. "I know exactly how hard that is to see… but we can't found some kind of oligarchical rule of ageless immortals. Your children are far away into the future. Their family is right here."

"Okay." Mary nodded slowly. "I promise."

The distant rumbling had become so loud that ponies started to scream. Alex turned back to the window, but still she couldn't see anything. What the hell was happening? If some terrible dominno of building collapses was coming their way, why couldn't she feel any of her ponies getting hurt?

"Stay here," Archive whispered, levitating her gun-belt from where it hung on the door and wrapping it around her waist. Then she gritted her teeth, and stepped forward into the void.

* * *

Simple teleportation was for ponies with lesser abilities than her's. It was loud, took the traveling pony through a timeless vacuum, and was more unpleasant than getting real horseshoes.

Archive bent space, stepping from the inside of her office to the air far above it. Her wings opened involuntarily, spreading wide and slowing her fall. She scanned her city, ears pivoting towards the sound. It was coming from an empty field, about a mile away from city center. There was no longer any mystery about the sound.

An aircraft was landing there, an aircraft so massive it would have had nowhere else with enough open space to touch down without going as far as central park. It was easily as long as the skyscrapers were tall, thicker towards the center but with tapered sides. It had a pair of short wings on the back, and various air-intakes along the sides. There were no windows, only sleek lines of dark paint absorbing the harsh reflection of the sun into a uniform gray.

Gravity warped around the ship, blasting grass and dirt and refuse away from the ship as it touched down, and shaking the nearby buildings terribly. That was the true source of the rumbling, not the ship itself.

What Alex didn't sense was the telltale coldness of the CPNFG. Magic permeated the ship as much as the surrounding space. No crew then?

Alex let herself drop into another fold in space, into a tiny closet in the Estel guardhouse. The closet was always locked from the inside, never to be opened except by her. It would've been unfortunate for a clerk or a janitor to accidentally get warped thousands of feet into the air.

She opened the door, stepping out into the guardhouse. It was at the top of a tower they'd made from concrete and salvaged steel, about three stories tall. As she expected, ponies were rushing around in a panic.

Well, all but one. Tom sat near the window facing the aircraft, crying silent tears. He ignored the shouting, and his underlings appeared to be going into a panic.

"Everypony!" Alex shouted over the tumult. Silence fell almost immediately as they all turned to face her.

"What's going on?" one brave pegasus lieutenant asked. "We already sounded the alarm, but we don't know…"

"Ask Colonel Rhodes," she replied. "I think he knows."

The ground under their hooves shook as the ship touched down, knocking over a glass of water and a few books on a nearby desk. Ponies screamed from all over the city.

All eyes turned in his direction. Tom blinked, turning to face them. "Helluva sight better than a Hummingbird. All that time living underground, with such danger on the surface. Then a civil war. That bastard actually did it."

His response did nothing to calm the near-hysterical officers, so Alex stepped forward. "Cancel the general alarm. Get the guard to pull everypony back from the ship. I don't want anypony within a thousand meters. Have the guard all check their weapons in, just to be safe. Absolutely under no circumstances is anyone who comes out of that ship to be fired upon. Are we clear?"

They responded with salutes, before rushing off to obey. Only Tom remained after that, still staring out the window. "I want to go with you."

Lonely Day walked up to him, looking over his shoulder. "I remember the day we met. You were fanatical about going off to find your family. That wasn't what you planned on doing, was it?"

"No," he answered. "It wasn't."

"Why the hell were you on a sightseeing tour instead of being safe in Raven City?"

Tom twitched slightly at the name, spinning around to face her with wide eyes. "I was an old man, Alex. Except for Clark, there wasn't anyone in that base over thirty. Most were under twenty-five. I did my part, and when it was done, I tried to enjoy the time I had left. Didn't expect…" He looked down, lifting one hoof. "Expect to survive it. I was supposed to die the same as anyone else. It seemed only fair." Then he turned, back to the window.

The aircraft was so tall, even when landed lengthwise, that it rose above all but the skyscrapers.

"I knew them," Alex whispered. "Dr. Clark, Captain Wright. Most of them."

"H-how?"

"Another time." Alex took a deep breath, preparing to warp space again. "You want to come with me? None of them will know who you are."

"I want to see them," Tom said. "The bat said something about space, but that's not the same as looking them in the eye. I want to know what we did meant something."

Alex nodded, stepping forward and pulling Tom along with her magic. They appeared a few feet away from the edge of the field, with the aircraft looming above them. It was easily the largest thing in her vision—bigger than any of the skyscrapers still standing. What was the purpose of such a massive ship?

She studied the design a little closer, and found a number of mounting points along the side, where it looked like metal could be slid back in an interlocking pattern. Airlocks? There were several along its length. As she looked down, she could see only a single place along this side that might open for a ramp. Sure enough, no sooner had she appeared than the metal started to move, retracting into the huge frame.

Someone landed on the ground behind her, their flight nearly silent—but their frustrated swearing sure wasn't. "About goddamn time they got their sorry asses here. We ask for one fucking shipment four goddamn years ago—"

Alex turned. "You haven't had your coffee yet, have you Jackie?"

The bat wasn't wearing her armor, though she was wearing a disheveled bedhead and a tangled tail. "Uh…"

"I don't think anyone is inside for you to yell at. No CPNFG means no passengers."

"How do you know…" Tom looked between her and the ship. "How can you tell there isn't one? Their effects are invisible. Undetectable."

"To humans," Jackie said. "Being stuck in one of those things is worse than having a football left out in the sun and shoved up your—"

Alex cleared her throat loudly. "Do I need to send you to the Starbucks, bat? Don't think I won't do it."

"I fucking wish we had a—" Jackie vanished with a faint flash of light and a slight pop of air. Alex didn't have to teleport her, but under the circumstances she wasn't inclined to make the trip pleasant.

By then the guard was lining up at the nearby street, pulling anypony away who tried to approach. Most seemed content to watch, either from the ground or the roofs of the nearby buildings.

Tom didn't seem to notice the exchange, staring at the opening as it widened and a metal ramp slid out from within. The space beyond the door was bright, bright enough not to be shadowed even with the full sunlight of morning all around them. It wasn't empty, though.

Several humanoid figures stood there, small enough that Alex felt a brief chill of fear run down her spine.

Not because their bodies were any smaller than humans should be—even from this distance, she could tell that most of them were at least six feet tall. Rather, it was their total lack of powered armor. On a ship Alex knew wasn't shielded.

How the hell is this possible?

She held still, gesturing for Tom to do likewise as they walked.

Three individuals were making their way out of the ship—one male adult, one female adult, and a child. All three were wearing thick, billowy robes made from white cloth, so white they almost glowed compared to the gray of the ship and the dirt of the field.

She knew only one face, the man in front. Isaac.

Even after hearing it from his dreams, even after hearing Jackie and Ezri's testimony, she hadn't been willing to believe. A human being living in the thaumic field? Walking, breathing, not convulsing on the ground?

Isaac walked towards her without fear, though he couldn't hide the surprise on his face as his eyes darted over her wings and horn. Maybe he even understood their significance.

As he got close, Alex took in a few details about Isaac that had changed. The lack of any obvious burns she had expected from Jackie's stories, but seeing his hair turned seafoam green with soft pink highlights wasn't something she had expected.

The little boy on his left had several different shades of darker green, while the woman on Isaac's other side had a blonde so bright it was yellow, with orange at the tips. Their eyes were similarly bright—Isaac’s were purple, but the woman and the little boy both had yellow eyes.

They're like ponies, Alex thought, though she didn't say as much out loud.

He was taller than she remembered by several inches, thin and willowy even from within the robe. His skin was as pale as she might've expected for someone who got very little time outside, though the woman and child both had deep, caramel-colored skin, the child's only slightly lighter than the woman's.

"I owe you some overdue congratulations," Isaac said, pulling down his hood. He was clean-shaven, though his hair fell out of the hood and down his back. As he removed the hood, the woman and child did the same, but both had dense braids and so their hair didn't go everywhere. "Enjoying the promotion?"

Archive shrugged. "It feels like cheating not to struggle with my hooves anymore, and not having to rely on other ponies to cast spells for me. I think I'll get used to it eventually." Then she smiled. "Nice hair."

Isaac blushed, though the woman beside him didn't. "Who is this other?" she asked. "Some disciple of yours, Honored Memory?"

"No." Tom didn't smile. "How are you not dead? You’re standing near an alicorn. The magical energy she must be generating…”

Isaac laughed loudly, loud enough that some of the guards staring at them looked nervous. "Too much to explain right now, pony. We’ll be perfectly safe, let’s leave it there.”

"The thaumic field is destructive to the sapient mind," Tom argued. "The only transformation it ever affected was the living into monsters."

Alex ignored the argument. "I am happy you survived, Isaac. But why did you land this… ship… in my city? Your organization refuses to help us, refuses to even acknowledge we're alive, then you show up in force? Most of my ponies don't even know humans survived, yet here you are walking around. In the old days, you people had the good sense of being discrete."

Isaac's expression faltered. "We're desperate, Honored Memory. My people, we—"

"Your people?" Alex advanced on him, lowering her voice to a whisper. "What happened up there?"

Isaac sighed, turning back towards the ship. "Why don't you come inside? I'll show you."

With a few panicked flaps, a pair of ponies landed on the ground beside them, both breathing hard. Ezri looked excited, beaming at Isaac and everyone else. Jackie looked more awake, but also more annoyed.

"Hold the hell up," Jackie said, panting. "You're not… doing anything without us. Whatever this shit is, we want in."

Ezri just flew up to Isaac and gave him a hug, grinning. "How tall are you going to get, Isaac?"

"I don't know." He returned the hug, as earnestly as Alex had ever seen—back when he'd been a child, and Ezri had been forced to endure the debilitating weakness of the CPNFG to visit him.

He let her down quickly, gesturing for the door. "Come on, then. Come and see."

Archive followed along just behind Isaac, at the head of the group of ponies.

The kid fell behind, walking beside Alex. He was about her height, despite being a child. He stared openly at her, eyes moving from her horn to her wings and back again. "You're broke," he whispered, in a language Alex had never heard before. Yet she found she knew it, as easily as she'd known the language of the invaders.

"I'm different," she responded. "So are you. Where I come from, humans couldn't be near ponies without getting hurt."

"Me too," he looked down at the ground, deflating. He stayed away from her after that, hiding behind his mother.

Archive could feel the sympathetic connections between these three, as easily as she ever felt the much weaker ones between herself and any who felt loyalty to humanity. "Why don't you introduce your wife?" she asked, as they neared the ramp.

Isaac stopped, and at least had the decency to look embarrassed. "Of course. I didn't think you would have the time for…"

"My schedule's more open than it used to be," she said. "Now that we're not being invaded. These ponies are almost all refugees, they know how to govern themselves." She turned just for good measure, looking back to the guards. "I am going of my own free will!" she shouted. "We might be a few hours! Don't be alarmed!"

Then she turned back, grinning. "Now it should be fine. Please, continue."

"I am blessed to meet you." The woman didn't wait for Isaac, her words tumbling out in a rush. "I'm Tenma. Tenma Rommel, obviously." She offered her hand to shake. Alex took it, though of course it was really Tenma doing all the work. "Our son, Dante." She pulled him into view, forcing him to shake Alex's hoof too. He did so only after a little more prodding.

"Good to meet you both. This is my, uh… stepfather, Tom Rhodes. You might already know these other two."

"Heard of them," Tenma said, as they made their way up the ramp. Despite all their weight, the metal didn't bend even a little, didn't flex under the pressure. Twenty feet later and they were inside, the door sliding closed behind them. "Separation with the pony contingent happened a century before I was born, but Isaac told me about them. Thrilled to meet you too!"

Alex tuned out after that, paying far more attention to the ship around them than to Tenma's high-pitched babbling. Isaac seemed to understand what she was doing, because he didn't interrupt.

The interior had only vague similarities to the ships she remembered. It was obviously built for humans, with a ceiling high enough even for Isaac to walk without brushing his head against it.

Past the entrance was an elevator, with a single glowing grid near one wall. Isaac stuck one hand into the light, twisted a particular way, and the elevator started to move, shooting sideways before moving up.

There were glass shafts on the elevator. They passed over a dozen different cargo bays, each one about the size of a football field.

They'd been converted to housing. Every single one of them was packed with beds, with only narrow alleys between each one. Some quick math in her head pointed to nearly a thousand people in each of them, packed so tightly that the glass on the elevator wall was fogged.

Most did not look very much like Isaac. Their bodies were dirty, their hair in the ordinary range, though Alex sensed no CPNFG. There was magic in there, and those people weren't dying.

"The hell is this?" Jackie asked, pointing one hoof at the wall. "What are all these people doing here?"

The elevator passed up above the cargo bays, and the doors slid open. Alex was immediately assaulted with the smell of unwashed bodies, the air thick enough to cut. The doors opened on a hallway, but a hallway almost impassable.

A hundred sets of eyes turned to look at them. Most didn't move, slumping against the walls, resting on sleeping bags or makeshift bedding. They seemed an even mix of ages, sexes, races…

Archive stood straighter, and did not look away. She let magic fill her, reflecting back on these people. She did not know them, she did not know what had caused them this pain.

It didn't matter. She would help them. Somehow.

"Our second civil war," Isaac said. "We lost."

He led the way down a central hallway. They moved in single file, and the refugees shifted uneasily out of the way, huddling near the walls to make room for them. Alex searched, though no matter how much she looked, the only injuries she saw were those of deprivation.

"How many died?"

"Three so far," Tenma said. "An old man from a heat stroke, and a woman died delivering her child. Neither of them made it."

"Uhhh…" Ezri muttered. "That sounds bad."

"We're more civil in war than we used to be," Isaac said, without humor. They reached another door, made of thick metal. It was featureless, except for another glowing patch in front of it. Isaac waved his hand through it. The door opened like an interlocking iris, into a wide, empty space. The air inside was mercifully cool compared to the outside, though some of the smell still remained.

"What were you fighting over?" Alex asked, afraid of the answer.

They stood in an empty room about twenty-five feet across, lit with an even white glow, with an arching, curved ceiling. As Isaac passed along the walls, holographic consoles flicked into being, displaying various information for the ship. Most lit up with lots of flashing red lights and angry warnings, though Archive didn't know what any of them meant.

"Whether or not to accept Isaac's gene therapy," Tenma said, resting one hand gently on his shoulder. "Athena figured it out. Just one injection, stew for a few hours, and it's done."

"Tenma was among the first to receive it," Isaac said. "When she was an infant. It's effective in ninety-eight percent of individuals. Not just a permanent, but inheritable immunity to magic—" He gestured at Dante.

The child, meanwhile, remained well away from them. As soon as they'd come in he'd hurried over to a wall, and a chair had emerged from the ground to hold him. Even from across the room Alex could tell he was playing games.

He seemed to be doing impressively well through his tears.

Isaac shook his head. "Honored Memory, the details aren't terribly important to me right now. What matters to me are all these people. All they wanted to do was walk on God's green Earth for themselves, and they were banished for it. Every single one of us."

"Athena wouldn't…"

"Athena didn't have a goddamn choice!" Isaac shouted, hammering one of his fists into the nearby wall. As he moved, there was a faint metallic grinding of servos in his back and arms, and the whole wall shook. It didn't break. "She doesn't get to write the laws, she just builds the ships! Command tells her to revoke all our codes and dump us 'at the nearest safe place'. Soon as we all leave, she'll even take the damn Titan back."

"I don't get it." Ezri sounded timid, and she wasn't looking at Isaac. "I thought the whole point was to find a way for humans to live on Earth. Why would they be mad that you figured it out? Wasn't that what they always wanted?"

"Not quite." Tenma held up her braid. "We're not human anymore. We're genetically distinct. Even the ones who just got the therapy. Homo Arcanus. Twenty-eight base pairs, and some way awesome hair. Once you grow it, I mean."

"That's stupid," Jackie said. "They kicked you out because you've got funny hair? I had pink hair on old Earth, and it only took me six dollars and a trip to the drug store!"

"It's not the hair," Tenma said. "It's that we become like you. Thaumically active. We'll absorb magic, amplify it, manipulate it. Humans don't have any natural methods of expelling the magic we absorb, so a few times there were some… messy accidents."

Isaac slammed his fist into the wall again. "You see the odds arrayed against us, Memory. I have nearly ten-thousand refugees on this ship. None of them, except my wife and child, have ever set foot on a planet before. Maybe with five ships we could make our own flotilla, but one?" He shook his head. "Even if we could persuade Athena to defy her orders, it would mean nothing. We devour a month's supplies in a day. We had to tear out the greenhouses for sleeping quarters."

He turned to face her again, eyes wide with grief. "Your power must have been what forced Athena to land us here," he said. "Please, Honored Memory… tell me what to do."

Alex let herself smile. Her power had done nothing—she hadn't even known about this "war", much less the procedure Athena discovered. It seemed Athena still had to obey, but had more leeway in her obedience than the remainder of the HPI expected.

"Athena, are you here?" Alex asked, speaking loudly into the room.

The space in front of her lit up, glowing just as the projected instrument panels. A human figure stood there, a powerful woman with flowing white robe and gray eyes. She was taller even than Isaac, a crown on her head and her expression imperius. "I hear you."

She didn't waste time with formalities. If the AI was anything like the way Alex remembered, Athena would still think them a waste of time. "Have your directives appreciably changed since we spoke last?"

"My directives are hardware coded," Athena responded, her tone flat. "Any attempt to alter them would result in my immediate destruction. I have remained somewhat zealous in protecting myself from tampering."

"Good," Archive said. "I have new information for you, Athena. This carrier crashed. It was so overloaded that…"

"A cascading failure in the gravitational refractor coil," Athena supplied.

"That," Alex agreed. "That happened. Also, something triggered a short in whatever systems you would use to control the ship."

"I understand." She smiled, and her image began to flicker, artifacting and stretching into three separate colors.

"Make sure you throw in the part about an Alicorn taking control of the site!" Alex said. "Last I checked, they didn't have a CPNFG strong enough to keep humans alive anywhere near us."

"New information accepted," Athena said. "Integrating into neural-network." She vanished, and a section of the ceiling flashed, raining down sparks into the air in front of her before going dull gray.

"There," she said, turning back to Isaac. "That's your first problem solved. We now have everything on this ship to work with. All its parts, all its data, its resources. Whatever they are."

"How did—" Tenma spluttered. "Athena only accepts commands from humans! I don't understand—"

"I'm part of Athena's failsafes," Alex answered. "She must accept what I tell her, even if she has information to contradict what I say. I suspect that's why she came here."

Alex walked up beside Isaac, pointing at a blank patch of wall. "Can this room do windows?"

He nodded, approaching the wall on command, and moving his hand through the space there. It shifted into a window, a projection so real it seemed as though the walls had become transparent. She didn't see more ship through it, she saw buildings, crushed fields, and staring ponies.

"I know it isn't much…" she began. "But I don't think we're drowning in choices. Your people are hungry, they need homes, clean water… I know where they can find it."

It would be the grandest, most insane population explosion they'd ever had. In four years, Estel had swelled to about ten thousand, as refugees migrated, often bringing their native-born families with them.

To double the population so quickly would require Herculean effort. It would require their food-stores be nearly emptied, right before winter. Estel's ponies could do it. Archive didn't let herself doubt, not even for a second.

Isaac's eyes widened. "Here? In your pony city?"

"My city of refugees," Archive said. "Humans, from another world. With no survival skills. Rather like yours. We already have a system in place to adapt them, teach them magic, integrate them into society."

She looked up, offering her hoof. "Join us, Isaac. Living surrounded by ponies will keep humans from bothering you. You can build in peace, learn magic from ponies who know it well… have food to eat."

Isaac hesitated, glancing briefly over to the child playing games on his console.

"This is the whole reason Athena developed a cure in the first place," Archive said. "Let yours and mine be brothers again, the way they should've been."

Isaac took the offered hoof.

Author's Notes:

And with that, another story's done. Can't believe I made it to the end of this one, though large parts of it ended up being far from what I expected. To those rare few of you who made it this far, you have my gratitude and appreciation for such a rare accomplishment. It's hard to look back at those first few chapters, with little Alex living alone in Los Angeles, and imagine it would go this far.

That isn't to say the story is over, but I think this transition means Alex's personal story has been told. That doesn't mean she wouldn't be doing anything else, or that nothing else interesting happens in the whole world.

The universe itself has several unresolved plot-threads that need to be dealt with. I do look forward to resolving those, but not right now. Right now, I think I'll restrict myself to short-form stories in this universe (like the flash fiction I've been writing in my blogs) to give a look at some of the other adventures I see in the future without the heavy burden of another novel to tell them with.

Does this mean I'll never write another full PaP story? I'm not sure. I won't for a little while, for sure. Right now, I would like a chance to diversify what I write on fimfiction. So I'll stick to smaller stories in PaP, and hopefully that will be enough.

For those who need more PaP in their lives in the meantime, feel free to stop by the Starpub Discord, where I'm around most of the time (and so are many other readers). There are also a ton of interesting side stories to check out in the group. Also keep an eye out for another flash fiction posted in the next few minutes here.

Anyways, thanks so much for sticking with me through this ride. It's been a blast. A huge thanks to my editors Two_Bit and Sparktail, as well as Zutcha for all his fantastic art. Oh, and on one final note, I did finally decide to make a patreon, so if anyone wants to help me out who didn't know about that yet, that's a thing.

Regards,

-Starscribe