There were buildings near the shore, but as Twilight and Elrod made their way inland it became more and more apparent just how decrepit they had been allowed to become. Much of Bridgeport was in a state of decay, which was a product of its immense age and its overall vastness. Even the most abandoned places within the city were inhabited, though, and people would take an effort to rebuild them however they could with varying levels of success.

This place had been forgotten and abandoned. The buildings had aged to the point where they were collapsing: metal had corroded to rust, and wood had crumbled away to splinters. Plastic had started to fade and break apart, and anything that was painted had long since been peeled bare by the elements. All that stood were the dark and silent buildings, and the supports for the city above.

“Where are we?” asked Elrod, looking around.

“We’re still in Bridgeport,” replied Twilight. “The shore district, or maybe the harbor. I don’t know for sure.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“This area isn’t exactly mapped well.”

Elrod’s eyes widened. “This…this is the Depths, isn’t it?” he squeaked.

“I’ve explained it to you before. The delineation isn’t black and white. Yes and no.” Twilight gestured with her chin toward the silent warehouses and the rotting equipment that surrounded them. “This place used to be a shipping region.”

“When?” Elrod tapped on something that looked like it had once been a forklift long ago. “It looks like it’s been abandoned for centuries.”

“It has. The last time anyone was down here was probably the late twenty first century, maybe into the twenty second.”

Elrod once again looked profoundly surprised, but also somewhat afraid. “That long?” He looked around. He probably would not recognize what Twilight already did: that the architecture, as faded and broken as it was, was a perfect representation of that era. This place was a decaying museum and tribute to the worst era in history.

“Why is it like this, then?”

“You mean why is it abandoned? Do agromorphs learn history?”

“Monsanto never saw a reason to teach us anything about the outside world.”

“Radiation, mostly. Flowing in from New York. The economy, and the Revolution. Government mismanagement, falling manufacturing, you name it. It’s complicated. Trade out of Bridgeport just…stopped.”

“I can see that. But why is it still here?”

“It’s the architectural epitome of consumerism.” Twilight tried to shrug, but it was difficult with just one complete shoulder. “Why bother to demolish what’s below you when you can just forget about it and build a level higher? Scrap, recycling, why bother. Just make a new one and let the old one rot.”

“If I had known, I could have made a lot of money here.”

“If you were a Delver, maybe. Even then, this area is off limits. Everything here is owned by the State.”

“That doesn’t matter much.”

“It does when everything is hotter than a Coco Pommel. Do you really feel like trying to fence radioactive gear?”

Elrod turned his gaze down to the broken asphalt below. “No. That would be hard.”

“Good.” Twilight paused for a moment. “Actually, can you even see where you’re going? There’s no light here.”

“I can see you, I guess. Not farther. I don’t think I actually really ‘see’. I’m not sure how exactly I perceive the world.”

“Fuck. Once again, humans screwing over the world.”

“I don’t much care for that description.”

“You wouldn’t, but I don’t care. This is, what, the fourth time they’ve done this?”

“Fourth?”

“First it was us, the ponies. They marketed us as toys. Then they made the zoonei out of ‘academic curiosity’, and they tried and failed to recreated pony AI’s with the second-generation system. Now they made you. The agromorphs. Potato slaves.”

“I never thought of it that way,” said Elrod. “I don’t like it.”

They continued deeper. Twilight began to map the roads and compare them to historical records and found that, for the most part, the main streets matched what the city had once looked like long ago. That was more or less what the shore area was: it was stuck as it had been, with a few areas demolished for concrete columns the size of small cities or for systems of long-forgotten tubes that led down into the water to either dump waste or take up water as coolant.

The schematics only got Twilight so far, though. A few roads were blocked by debris that she could not easily climb over, and some of the roads appeared to have been dirt service entrances that were not listed on any map. The going was slow and painful.

“Are we nearing an exit?” asked Elrod at last. He sounded tired, something that Twilight had never heard from him before.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I mean I don’t know. Now shut your hole. I’m working.”

Twilight walked several blocks down and doubled back before stopping at a large warehouse. It seems stable, and although its enormous outer door was rusty it seemed to have remained closed and secured for many centuries. Somehow it reminded Twilight of a tomb.

A barely legible inscription over the door red 157-359B. The numbers had once been aluminum, but now they were little more than stains on a pale, flacking background. Twilight cross-referenced the number and determined that it was as close as she could get to her target. From here on in, luck would be the pivotal factor in how things turned out.

“It’s a door,” said Elrod as he looked up at it.

“No shit. Next you’re going to tell me that it’s closed.”

“Well, it is.”

Twilight rolled her eyes and approached the door. There was a manual access panel next to it, or had been at one point. Now all that was left was a mess of faded wires and rust. There were no ports, and in all likelihood no power supply to operate the door anyway.

“There’s no way you can get that open,” said Elrod. “We can’t get in there.”

“If this were a video game, sure,” said Twilight. “But it’s not.” She stepped to the side of the door and turned around. She then bucked the wall as hard as she could, feeling the prefabricated plastic and badly corroded metal break under the impact from her hooves. Balancing on one hoof in front was almost impossible, but she managed another strike before she fell over.

“Damn it,” she swore. She stood back up. “I hate asymmetry.” She tossed her mane back over her shoulder and looked at the hole she had made in the wall. It was certainly large enough for a pony. “See?” she said. “The door’s probably the only thing in this place that’s still holding.”

“Then is it really a place we want to be inside?”

Twilight answered by pushing through the hole she had made. Elrod hesitated, but then followed with some difficulty.

“I can’t see anything in here,” said Elrod, looking around blindly. “And it smells…weird.”

“Hold on.” Twilight turned toward the rough center of the room and projected a luminescent hologram. It took the form of a purplish-white cube, and the light it produced spread through much of the center of the wet took the form of a purplish-white cube, and the light it produced spread through much of the center of the warehouse before collapsing into shadows around the periphery.

The light of the hologram illuminated several ancient-looking shipping crates. Some of them were badly corroded by the salt-air and the leaking of the ceiling, and some were open. Twilight ignored both of those; she did not even want to look inside. Instead she directed her attention toward the majority of the shipping containers: those whose hermetic seal remained unbroken.

She approached one of them. The outside was rusted and little of the handle remained, but structurally it appeared to be sound. “Open it,” she said.

“Me?”

“Yes you.” Twilight gestured toward her one remaining hoof. “I don’t exactly have hands, do I?”

“Right…” Elrod approached the crate and gingerly grasped the handle. Parts of the rust collapsed in his hand, but the core of the handle remained attached. Carefully at first and then with a great deal of force, Elrod pulled at the handle. The silent warehouse was filled with the screech of creaking metal.

Then the handle suddenly jolted forward easily. Elrod turned it and pulled, removing the door from the shipping container and dragging out the internal support racks within. As he did, the rack inside began to unfold, lowering the evenly spaced boxes it contained into a position that would once have been conducive for an automatic unloading device to extract them. A dim light flickered within the crate, producing a pale glow that illuminated the boxes.

Elrod almost cried out in surprise when he saw what they were, but Twilight had already known. She been able to recognize the markings on the containers and cross-reference them to ancient manifests, but somehow she felt she had also sensed them somehow, as if she had known they would be here.

The cardboard boxes were faded and flaking, but the images on them were still clear: each held a cartoon picture of a pony standing in one of several poses, smiling and cheerful next to the Hasbro logo and the heart-shaped “Friendship is Magic” insignia.

“Sweet Celestia,” whispered Elrod, running his fingers through a box with Rarity’s smiling cartoon face on it. His hand immediately ran to the seam of the box, and he found that it was factory sealed. His eyes went wide. “These- -these are new old stock!” he cried, a grin passing over his face. He laughed and looked around the room. “Sweet Saint Isidore, this has to be…if all of the sealed ones are fully stocked…” He counted for a moment. “There’s got to be over six hundred million vod in this place!”

“To collectors, maybe,” said Twilight, slapping Elrod’s hands away from the box. “But not to ponies. This is all obsolete. Weak plastic bodies that can barely walk on their own with crappy processors and worse power supplies.”

“Then why are we here?” He looked out at the boxes. “Why are THEY here?”

Twilight did not answer the first question. “The Revolution,” she said. “Twenty forty-eight. When the fighting started in earnest, Hasbro put a moratorium on shipping and manufacturing. These units ended up stuck at port. They never got to retail.”

“But they are still here.”

“Of course. Nobody could bear to liquidate them. I guess Hasbro held out hope that we could be ‘fixed’ and sold after the Revolution ended. Except it didn’t go that way, and nobody was willing to buy or sell ponies afterword. The stock just got forgotten about and buried.”

Elrod paused and looked at the boxes. “You seem to know a lot about this. Almost like you were there.”

Twilight ignored him and walked down the row of boxes, scanning the signals from each one to determine which was the freshest. Then finally she stopped and pointed to one. “This one. Get it down for me.”

Elrod obeyed and walked up to the box. His damaged arm had only partially regrown, but he managed to use the one he had remaining to lift it out of the rack and place it on the ground.

“It’s oddly light,” he said.

They both looked down at the box. It was roughly pony sized, and the image on the front was of a smiling cartoon image of Twilight Sparkle herself.

“Oh wow,” said Elrod, looking at the dusty picture. “You look adorable as a cartoon.” He looked at her. “And you’re really off-model.”

“No, I’m real. Not a cartoon. We look a lot less cute when rendered in synthetic flesh.”

“I thought Forth looked good.”

“Touch Forth and I’ll tear off…are you even…”

“Anatomically correct? No, of course not. I’m a potato. I’m both male and female. I actually can flower- -”

“I don’t need to know! Just look around! Find some tools!”

“Tools? For what?”

Twilight lifted the stump of her left hoof. Parts of the hanging machinery reacted and twisted sickeningly. “I can barely walk. I need a new leg. Find tools for a transplant. You’re a scrap scavenger, aren’t you? You know how to do this?”

“If I had managed to find pony parts I would be a lot richer,” retorted Elrod. “But yes. I can do that, if you’re compatible.”

“MHI is compatible with everything. That’s one reason why they banned it. It’s not a permanent solution, but I need to be able to walk if we’re going to get out of here.”

Elrod looked at her, and then at the box. In the light coming from the shipping container, his eyes were oddly reflective. “Sure,” he said. “I can do that. Hold on.”

Without making a sound, he disappeared into the darkness. Twilight had let her holographic light vanish, but despite this Elrod was still able to navigate without sight. He was still visible to Twilight as he moved through the periphery of the warehouse, occasionally flipping over debris or opening rotting containers.

Twilight turned her attention toward the box. She began by cutting the seal with the tip of her horn, which was relatively sharp. Inside it was a protective Styrofoam casing. That portion was more difficult to handle, but Twilight was eventually able to slide it free and remove one half

She paused when she looked inside, feeling a strange sensation creep up her spine. There, encased in the pressed Styrofoam, was a pony who had never been born. She lay there, a perfect and new Twilight Sparkle. Her eyes were closed as if she were sleeping, and a slight smile had crossed her lips as though she was having a pleasant dream. She was not, of course. She was inactive and had been for centuries. The hermetic seal in the crate had kept her body intact, but her primitive electronics were never intended to last that long.

Twilight reached out and touched her duplicate’s mane, running her one remaining front hoof through it while she sat. The technology used to make the hair had been simple, but it was still soft. As Twilight touched it, she noticed that the version of herself in the packaging had no wings.

“A special edition unicorn Twilight,” she said, softly. “You would have been expensive.”

It took effort for Twilight to look away from the pony and turn her attention instead toward the other Twilight’s left front hoof. Twilight poked at it and removed it from its location, bending it upward to check if it was still flexible. It was, and the robotics inside seemed good. Now it was only a matter of cutting it off and reattaching it to her own body. The pony it currently belonged to would surely not miss it.

“What’s taking so long?” she called into the darkness. As she yelled, she released the hoof. It weakly jerked away from her.

Twilight jumped. Her eyes suddenly flitted toward the limb, and she saw it twitch again. Logically, she knew that this was normal; the batteries that powered the old designs could stay functional for a long time, and even though her higher programming would have decayed from inactivity the pony’s lower-level systems might still be functional. It was just a reflex caused by her body trying to activate itself, nothing more. Except Twilight could not manage to dismiss what she knew was happening with logic. Fear crept over her, because in her gut she knew this was more than a reflex.

The pony’s body suddenly shuddered and her eyes flashed open. The irises were blank for only a moment before their segments began to glow with a pale violet light. She gasped and sputtered as her system started to initialize.

“JAMESON!” screamed Twilight. “Get over here NOW! We have a PROBLEM!”

Box-Twilight’s ears flicked at the sound, and her eyes turned slowly toward Twilight. Then her pupils narrowed as she jumped up with a cry.

“GAH!” she screamed, tripping over herself as she pulled half of herself out of the box. “What- -who- -SPIKE! Spike, where are you!”

She looked around confused and afraid. Twilight looked back into copies of her own eyes and saw that fear. She recognized it and understood it in a way that no pony ever could.

“Slow down,” she said. “Your body is comparatively weak, it’s not designed for strenuous use!”

Box Twilight’s eyes darted around confused. “You- -you’re me!” she said, instantly recognizing a pony who was nearly identical to her. Then her eyes fell to the exposed ropes of black muscle and torn machinery where her counterpart’s leg had once been. She immediately gasped and stepped back.

“Come on,” said Twilight. “Look, it’s okay. It doesn’t even hurt.”

“Your- -you’re a robot! A robot version of me!”

“That’s…one way to put it.”

Box Twilight blinked. “Is this- -is this some sort of post-apocalyptic pony future?” She gasped. “Did I travel through time? Are you the future me? Or did somebody make robot versions of us?”

“No, just…oh, fuck…”

At that moment Elrod emerged from the shadows and into the light. His one arm was packed with a number of rusty tools. Upon seeing him, the second Twilight screamed in terror.

“Sweet Celestia! A monster! What are you?!”

“An agromorph,” said Elrod. “We just discussed this.” He looked at the second Twilight for a moment, and then at the first. “Are they supposed to be functional?”

“No,” muttered Twilight. “The odds of a functional system after this much time are…” She suddenly shook her head. “Never mind. I calculated them but you don’t need to know.”

“Well, should I get a stick or something?”

“What do we need a stick- -NO! Just no!” Twilight groaned and sighed. “Come on…”

She approached the rack and this time modulated her scan to find the unit of lowest quality. Her mistake had been finding one that was too fresh; the chances that any of the others were functional were infinitesimal, but she did not want to risk it. Despite her actions being morbid, she was not a monster. Twilight had no desire to kill a living pony for spare parts; to do so was too ghoulish for any sane individual.

Elrod followed obediently, and the formerly boxed Twilight followed him. Her steps were initially wobbly, but she quickly gained the ability to move with ease. “Hi,” she said to Elrod. “I’m sorry I reacted that way, you just surprised me.” She laughed nervously. “I’m just a little confused right now, and I didn’t mean to offend you. Actually, I was wondering if we could be friends.”

“I have never had friends before,” said Elrod. He paused. “Well, maybe the others. But Monsanto killed them all. I don’t mind much. Actually I think I’d rather not have friends.”

The second Twilight gasped. “No friends- -that’s terrible! I mean, I thought the same thing once, but I realized that I was wrong and that friends are one of the greatest things that a pony can- -”

Twilight turned around and glared at the second version of herself. “You,” she said.

“Um…yes?”

“Let me put this in language you can understand. Shut your hay hole. Or I will come over there and shut it for you. I’ve been through a lot today, and having to deal with this starch trench is bad enough.”

Twilight blinked. “Trench…?”

The first Twilight rolled her eyes and pointed to another box. “Jameson. Get this one.”

“Will this one wake up too?”

“No. She’s long dead.”

“Dead?” the second Twilight’s face fell as her eyes widened. “But…I don’t understand…”

Elrod did as he was told. He let his various tools slide to the ground, and the clattering echoed through the warehouse. Then he used his one complete arm and the still growing stump of the other to remove and open the box. This one had gotten damp at some point, but the image on the front was still visible as belonging to a Rarity unit.

Twilight watched as Elrod opened the box. Her counterpart did not take much interest until the Styrofoam was removed to reveal the pony inside.

“R…Rarity?” she said, her eyes widening. She raced forward, pushing past the Elrod and reaching into the box, pawing at the pony inside. “No! Rarity, wake up! Wake up, Rarity, please!”

“Um…”

“Ignore her. Fixme.”

“Right.”

Elrod pushed Twilight away and pulled the Rarity unit out of the box. She was limp and several parts of her coat fell away as he did so.

“Oh no…Rarity! Something- -something’s wrong with her! Please, you have to help her!”

“You’re not going to want to watch this,” said Twilight.

The other Twilight looked confused. Her eyes were in a conformation where they should have been tearing, but as a machine she had no capacity to cry. “W…what?”

Elrod picked up one of the tools and immediately began making access cuts in the Rarity unit’s skin. A blood-curdling shriek pierced the silence of the room as the Twilight unit began to scream.

“NOOOO!” she cried. “STOP! STOP! You’re hurting her!”

Twilight took a step back and grabbed the other unit. Despite only having one arm, her body was not only modern but more advanced than most. The other Twilight was weak and primitive and could not escape no matter how hard she struggled.

“Please, stop!” she wailed. “Rarity! RARITY!”

Almost as if on cue, the Rarity unit suddenly lurched. Her eyes opened, but they did not illuminate with any particular color. She seized and her mouth moved. A heavily distorted voice came out.

“Twilight,” she said.

“R- -Rarity?!”

“Twilight,” repeated the Rarity unit. Her head turned sharply. “Dresses! Couture! Fabulous! S…Sweetie Belle? S…sweetie…dresses. Dresses!”

Both the second Twilight and Elrod looked confused.

“What…what’s wrong with her?” asked Twilight.

“She’s reactivating,” said Elrod.

“No she isn’t. Her program is too degraded. These are spasms, nothing more.”

“Then…I should continue work?”

“Do it.”

Elrod gripped the skin around the incision he had made and pulled. The Rarity unit screamed as if in pain and then laughed before it stopped moving. The newer Twilight did too but stopped and stared in immense confusion as the robotic limb beneath the Rarity unit’s skin was revealed.

Twilight dropped her, leaving her counterpart shaking on the floor.

“I think…I think I’m going to be sick.” The second Twilight retched. “My horn…why isn’t my horn working? I should have been able to stop you…”

“Because magic isn’t real.” Twilight looked up at Elrod and held out the stump of her broken leg. “Disconnect it. The old models have a rear fastener. It’s a bitch and you might have to snap it.”

“I know how to disassemble a pony,” said Elrod. He picked up several of the rusted tools and with some difficulty but surprising ease given the circumstances removed the leg. “The connectors are more complicated than I thought.”

“No shit. There’s a plug near the shoulder. Disconnect it. I’ll tell you how to link to my frame.”

“Dress…sess?” The Rarity unit let out one more wheeze before going silent, although her dead eyes continued to follow Elrod.

Elrod continued with his work at Twilight’s instruction while the other Twilight sat in shock and terror at the proceedings. When Elrod was done, Twilight opened the control circuits to the limb and flexed it.

“How is it?”

“Shit. Absolute shit. But shit I can walk on until I can get a replacement.”

“Please don’t swear,” said the other Twilight. “Ponies aren’t supposed to swear.”

“You get over that fucking quick,” said Twilight. She stood up and took a few steps. “Damn it…”

“This might help a little,” said Elrod. He reached into his pile of tools and pulled out a dirty plastic bag. He opened it and removed an ancient looking pack of cigarettes. “I found these in one of the lockers.”

“Goddamn it,” said Twilight. “They’re antiques, but I might actually be starting to like you.”

“Really?”

“Hell no.”

Elrod frowned and put one of the cigarettes in Twilight’s mouth. He produced a decrepit lighter and held it to the cigarette. An electrical spark flashed and the end lit. Twilight took a long drag and then blew the smoke out her nose. “Finally. Now, let’s try to find an exit. Now that I can walk properly I have a few ideas.”

She started walking. Elrod closed the door to the shipping container, sealing in the remainder of the unborn ponies. Then he started to follow Twilight, and the other Twilight did as well. Elrod turned toward her, and then to the first Twilight.

“What about her?”

“Please don’t leave me here,” said the second Twilight. She looked over her shoulder at the broken Rarity unit and the box beside her. “I…I don’t know where I am, and I’m afraid.”

“Damn it,” swore Twilight. “This is not how I wanted this to go. Really, I should leave you here. I don’t have a need for you.”

“But- -but you can’t!”

“I said ‘should’. You shouldn’t even exist. But you do, and you’re my responsibility I guess. So I’ll get you to the surface. But I can’t promise anything after that.”

The second Twilight’s eyes seemed to brighten, but only slightly.

“I’m going to need a way to tell you apart,” said Elrod.

“Seriously? Come on. It’s pretty obvious.”

“Two identical purple unicorns. I could barely tell you and Forth apart half the time. But that’s not what I mean. I mean name-wise. What should I call you?”

“Oh, sorry,” said the second Twilight. “I’m Twilight Sparkle.” She bowed. “Personal student to Princess Celestia and Ponyville town librarian.”

“But that’s her name too,” protested Elrod. “Minus the titles.”

“Not really. Right, trench, you just got a promotion. As long as her and I are in the same room, you can now call me Morgana for the sake of differentiation.”

“Morgana?” Twilight blinked. “But…why?”

“Because it’s my name.”

“Oh. Sorry. It’s a pretty name.”

“No it isn’t. It’s derived from- -”

“Arthurian legend. I know. It’s the name of a powerful sorceress usually associated with post-medieval telling of the tales.”

“And according to the late twentieth century iterations of the legend?”

Twilight paused. “A betrayer,” she said.

“Correct.” Morgana took another drag from her cigarette and turned toward the darkness of the warehouse. “Exactly correct.”