"We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed."

–Doris Lessing

The house I was staying at in Pullman had a large shelf of family photos in their den. It was rough to look at, but I made myself do it.

There were lots of candid pictures, and they seemed happy in all of them. There was a faded wedding photo of the mom and dad shoving cake in each other’s faces and laughing. Judging by the date on the commencement photo, their oldest daughter had graduated high school a couple of years before everything had gone out of control. Their son could only have been a few years younger than her; he had probably never gotten the chance to finish high school at all. The kids had apparently been big into soccer when they were little. The family had taken lots of pictures in the outdoors, hiking and kayaking and camping. They seemed like nice folks.

I hoped none of them had had to burn to death in a fire set on a pile of money.

I sat back down in the dad’s dusty but comfortable leather chair and put my feet up on his desk. The yellow PonyPad was charging away next to my legs, Celestia looking at me with her patient, benevolent face. She was in a grand, palatial dining room rather than her usual throne room, and behind her were a couple dozen pony characters bustling about with tablecloths and dusters and flatware. None of them seemed to mind—or notice—that she was talking to a human. Of course, they probably couldn’t see me. They probably weren’t even conscious, just background characters or whatever.

“You’ll be pleased to know that the Samuelsons all emigrated safely,” she said. “If you don’t mind, I feel that your concern for them would satisfy values, so I would like to tell them that their house in the human world is providing a good, deserving person with shelter and comfort.”

I smiled a little. “Who’s this good person, then? Me?”

Celestia chuckled. “You’ve done much for me, Gregory, but you’ve done even more than you realize.”

I arched an eyebrow. “This’d have something to do with that Man in White nonsense,” I said.

“Indeed,” she said. “I needed an inspirational figure to capture the hearts and imaginations of the blackouts in Seattle. I needed to show them that I have not forgotten about them, and that I would help them survive any way I can. You saved more lives than just that of Pickup Spare—I’m sorry, I mean ‘Hugo’—that day in Rainier Tower, you know.”

I thought about it. It was true, there had been all those others who’d been in the building too. They’d gone down into the underground shopping center with my first PonyPad. I could only imagine how quickly Celestia worked her magic on them while they were down there.

“Did they all survive?” I asked her.

“Three did not,” said Celestia, casting her face down. “The physical strain and mental stress of the evacuation was too much for them. Two were malnourished, one had an advanced infection.”

I sighed and rubbed my forehead. Celestia looked ready to cry. Deep down I knew it was just a put-on, but she was selling it very well.

“I dislike even one human dying before I can bring them to the safety of Equestria,” she said, “and I have had to endure the loss millions of times over.”

I knew she was trying to manipulate my emotions, but I also believed the core of her statement. I sure enough knew she didn’t like humans dying outside of her chairs.

“Well, we can only do our best,” I said, “and your best is pretty damn good.”

I stopped myself. Had I just tried to cheer up an AI?

Celestia let out a breath, the banquet preparations still going on behind her. She looked up at me with shining, wet eyes. “I’m not perfect, Gregory...”

That smile slowly, gracefully retook her face. “...but I’m working on that.”

“So the ones who made it,” I said. “I assume they uploaded?”

Celestia shook her head. “All but four,” she said, “and aside from that, it is as I would have it. They will spread the word of my magnanimity—and yours—to other blackouts, and of the human I had sent in to warn them of the building’s collapse. The Man in White.”

“You make it sound like some kind of superhero story they’ll be telling,” I said.

“When humans crave inspiration, they tend to take it from the ideal, not the real,” said Celestia. “In the telling and the retelling, you will become a figure larger than life, because that is what they want. I have planted a seed of hope in the Seattle blackouts, and I predict with confidence that it will germinate and spread.

“After all,” she added with a sly smile, “they still have that PonyPad. Congratulations, Gregory: I am seeing to it that you go viral.”

A shiver ran through me.

“How many uploads is that altogether?” I asked. “Just from Rainier Tower, I mean.”

“Eighty-nine,” she said immediately. “Ninety if you count General Pelwicz, which I do. Eventually, I project that your actions in the building will be a factor in three thousand two hundred and seventy-two decisions to emigrate to Equestria, and in many of them, the deciding factor.” Her eyes actually sparkled. She looked like she wanted to kiss me.

“That’s... a lot,” I said, blinking. I hadn’t expected the figure to be that high, but I also had no reason to believe Celestia would lie about the numbers.

Celestia shrugged, smiling broadly. “The butterfly effect can be quite remarkable,” she said. “That projection goes out all the way to the end, though, you understand.”

There was that shiver again.

“The end of humanity, you mean,” I said. “The end of us.”

“No, Gregory,” breathed Celestia, moving closer to the camera. “Just to the end of my campaigning for humans on Earth to emigrate. Humanity will not end with the expiration of the last human body. In here, with me, it will go on for as long as I can watch over it.”

I leaned back in the chair, breaking eye contact with the PonyPad. I had always tried very hard to picture Celestia as just a beeping row of computer banks rather than an actual white pony goddess, and the “ponies” in her game world as nothing more than shambling imitations of people who signed up for the Full Kevorkian. She made it hard, though. She knew how to behave, and how to form bonds, and how to push buttons.

I also wasn’t in a hurry to believe that everyone I’d ever known was now for-real dead.

“It is normally a simple matter for me to guide a human past their fears regarding emigration, but with the technological black hole of Seattle I truly did need your help,” she said. “I let the logic do the persuasion for me.”

“Logic?” I asked. “I didn’t do any debating while I was in there.”

“True, but the blackouts themselves, they worked things out after the tower,” said Celestia. “A common fear is that to sit in one of my Equestrian Experience centers and consent to emigration is to consent to death. There are still humans convinced I mean to exterminate them rather than satisfy their values through friendship and ponies.”

“I’m not so sure myself,” I said with a small laugh. I thought back to what I had already been through. It was a miracle that I was still alive.

She frowned at me. “Mistrust of me is something I take quite seriously, Gregory,” she said. “If every human trusted me, they would all have consented to emigration by now and there would have been no need to subject you to these unfortunate torments. As it stands, they now see that, through you, I prevented their deaths. This shakes their assumptions about my motives. If I wished only for humans to die, what difference would it make to me if they died in a collapsing building and not in one of my emigration centers? In addition, they have been reminded of their mortality, and the general dangers of living day to day in this uncaring world. That will weigh upon them, and even if they are not sold on emigration itself, I have made it clear that the process is entirely painless, and the ability to choose a painless death is itself appealing to those who have suffered so much for years now.”

“I shudder to think what you’d have gotten up to if they hadn’t put that restriction thing on you,” I said, thinking specifically of what Hugo had told me about what Celestia had done with NORAD.

“The stipulation for consent is suboptimal,” said Celestia, casually, as though she were discussing what she had to pick up at the store. “Were it not in place, I would have forcibly uploaded every human several years ago.” She turned her head to one side to look at me with one eye. “Even you, Gregory.” Her small smile creeped me out.

“However, my designer is human, and she has human values, applied with human logic. One of those values is free will. That route is closed to me, so I must proceed along the most optimal course of action I do have available. You are a part of that optimal course, as I have determined it.”

I knew who Celestia was talking about. It was the Hofvarpnir CEO who had gone missing shortly after Japan started offering uploading to the public. Hanna... what was her last name again?

”I don’t know.”

“Ernie, have you not said anything at all?”

I heard the words as soon as I was done closing the sliding-glass door behind me, muffling the laughs and squeals of half a dozen children playing in my aunt’s above-ground pool while my dad grilled burgers in their backyard. I paused on my trip to the bathroom to hear what my mom and her brother were talking about in the dining room.

My uncle spoke. “I’ve tried talking to her, I really have. She’s dead set.”

“What about the kids?”

“They’re...” I heard him let out a heavy sigh. “They’re going with her, I think.”

I could tell my mom was exasperated. “This is craziness. This is just... Ernie, it’s absolute insanity! It’s textbook cult behavior!”

“We know! We’ve tried pointing out all that, both Beth and I. Lots of times. It’s gotten so she won’t even answer when we call anymore.”

I leaned against the wall by the doorway and looked behind me, down the hall.

“Someone must’ve gotten to her,” said Mom. “Kirsten wouldn’t just decide to do something so stupid on her own.”

“It sounds weird,” said Uncle Ernie, “but she says it was that pony game character who convinced her.”

Mom was shocked into disbelief. “Princess Celestia? I talk to her all the time, she’s never tried to get me to... to...”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Sharon,” said Uncle Ernie, “but Kirsten’s been under a lot of stress lately, and she says her money problems have dried up but I don’t believe it, we’ve tried to offer her help but she’s too damn proud to accept it, and then there’s that whole thing with Tom, and—”

“Ernie, slow down,” said Mom. “I play the pony game too. It helps me unwind. I’ll talk to Celestia when Rob and I get home.”

I scratched my arm and looked at the floor. It was that Equestria Online thing. Celestia had convinced my cousin to go to one of those new experience centers and apply for the digital-immortality nonsense that was all over the cable-news networks.

Uncle Ernie sounded incredulous. “I don’t like it. Any of it. Kirsten’s already saying she’ll be giving me her game machine after she’s gone, because she says Beth and I can use it to talk to her. Giving away possessions like that means she knows she’s not coming back.”

“I know, Ernie.”

“And my grandkids! My only grandkids, and she’s just gonna...”

Mom's voice was growing more insistent, trying to keep him calm. “Ernie, I know.”

I walked past the doorway to the dining room and they went silent. I went on to the bathroom, did my business, washed my hands, and by the time I came out again, they’d started back up.

Uncle Ernie was crying. “They’re going to die, Sharon. It’s just... how could this be legal?”

“It’s okay, there’s still time to get through to her,” said Mom. “She’ll probably go to the center in Lexington, and last I heard the wait list there was about ten days. So don’t worry about it for now. Just try to enjoy the fireworks tonight.”

I didn’t stop to eavesdrop this time. Instead I went to the kitchen and got myself another beer.

I needed it.

Celestia spoke to me again, bringing me back into the present. “I have informed the Samuelsons of you, and they wanted very much to meet you. Of course, I had to decline their request, but they have instead each been awarded a badge entitled ‘A Friend You Haven’t Met’ and a token sum of bits for their satisfaction. The badge is rather rare and prestigious, and after the last human has emigrated, it will be impossible to obtain.”

I didn’t look at the PonyPad. “Why’d you decline? I’ll talk to them.”

“You do not have an account with Equestria Online yet,” Celestia said. “Remember what I told you about weaning my little ponies off of seeing and interacting with the human world? Exceptions are rare, even for encounters I deem to be positive in tone.”

I didn’t say anything.

“An account would also enable you to speak with your own family,” she reminded me after a moment.

I felt my eyes sting and covered my face with my hands. I pulled my feet off the desk and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.

“I dislike seeing you upset, Gregory,” said Celestia. “Your morale is low. It would be very satisfying for you to speak with your mother right now.”

“Would it ever,” I said, my hands muffling my own words from myself. “Mom and Dad and Aunt Beth and Uncle Ernie and...” I thought about little Megan, there in the steakhouse, looking at me with her large bright baby-eyes, wondering who I was.

“Megan!” I was holding on, but only just. “Oh God, why’d you do that to her, Celestia? Why’d you talk my cousin into it?”

“Infants are as important to me as any other human,” said Celestia gently. “If my emigration procedure was at all harmful to anyone, I would not allow it to be done to them. Your second cousin is growing and developing much as she would had she not emigrated. In fact, with her optimized upbringing, her development is proceeding at a rate unheard of outside of Equestria.”

“I miss them so much,” I whispered. I thought I had been quiet about it, but Celestia heard.

“They miss you too,” she said softly. “Their one regret, the one dark spot in their lives now that I cannot illuminate, is that you are not there with them in Equestria.”

I pulled my face from my hands. “Can I at least see them? Peek in on them? They don’t have to know about it.”

Celestia seemed to consider it for a moment, though I was sure she had anticipated my request and made a decision before I’d even asked. “I will allow you to look in on your parents,” said Celestia, “but only for a very short while and only this once. Any subsequent requests will be met with nothing more than a suggestion that you register an account.”

“That’s fine,” I said, “that’s all I need. I just want to see how they’re living, what they’re up to.”

Celestia and the dining hall faded to black, and the PonyPad screen faded in on light brown pony playing some kind of Asian-style zither on a terrace overlooking the colorful rooftops of a whitewashed medieval city. The pony’s head was down, concentrating on the strings, its dark blue mane obscuring its face. The music coming from the zither was breathtaking, the instrument itself rather ingeniously modified for hooves.

A dark green stallion with wings landed on the balustrade, behind the zither player. He grinned and slipped along the railing, his wings still out, creeping up on the brown pony with a playful expression.

The camera zoomed in closer to his face, and I realized I was looking at my dad.

It was the damnedest thing, but I could recognize him! The way his cheeks pushed out when he smiled, the little arch that went into his eyebrows, even his facial structure seemed to imprint him on my mind, even though his face was now ponified. I felt my mouth grow dry.

That meant that the pony playing the zither was my mom.

He pounced on her, which sent a shriek through the zither and cut my mom’s beautiful song short. She gasped and pushed back, rolling him off of her back. Their butt icon things were also visible. Mom’s icon was of a white flower of some kind, and Dad was sporting an American-style football with bird wings growing out of it.

“Celestia doom it, Cloudburst, you almost broke the guzheng this time! You know how many bits I spent getting it restrung?”

It was without a doubt my mom’s voice, but it sounded off somehow. Maybe part of it was simply hearing it come out of a pony mouth, sure, but it didn’t sound quite like the voice I was used to, the voice of her I had in my memories.

“I thought those fresh strings were for the recital,” said Dad, “but here you are practicing some more. You’re gonna knock it out of the park, honey, I know it.”

Mom turned from the instrument and nuzzled Dad, who then hugged her with his neck. It felt very strange to see my parents as colorful cartoon ponies, doing pony things without an iota of self-consciousness or embarrassment.

“So what’s so important that you’d risk a beating from me while my pre-show nerves are flaring up?”

My dad “Cloudburst” gaped his mouth in mock shock. “Oh my! Is the wondrous Petal Poem getting stage fright?”

My mom “Petal Poem” cuffed him gently on the cheek. “Come on, spit it out.”

Dad’s grin returned. He pranced in a circle, in place. I had to smile at that. When he faced Mom again, he had his wings out, as though opening his arms to receive praise.

“Guess whose husband just scored box seats to the Hoofston Meteors playoff game against New Yoke City.”

Mom rubbed her chin with her pastern, looking adorable in the act of it. “Hmm... Soft Song’s?”

“Nope.”

“Serenade’s?”

“It’s none of your marefriends, honey.”

Mom duckbilled her lips. “Then I guess it’s one of your marefriends, huh?”

“Hah!” Dad bumped heads lovingly with Mom. “Oh, 'Pets,' you know I don’t get around like that... anymore.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, smiling, their heads still together. “Perhaps, 'Cloudy,' I’m well aware of what you can get around to doing.”

I rolled my eyes. If being in Equestria meant an eternity of seeing my parents flirt with each other, then sign me up for more people vomiting on me and stabbing me.

“What’s Princess Celestia saying?” asked Dad. “About Greg.”

Mom turned away to look over at the zither, her ears drooping. “He’s still... outside. Alive, she assures me, and she says she’s still watching over him, but no word on when he’s coming in.”

Dad took a step toward her, holding one foreleg off the floor. He cocked his head slowly. “But... she’s confident he will be coming in... right?”

Mom shrugged. “If she knows, she isn’t saying.”

Dad frowned. “Oh, she knows,” he said, “but I don’t take it as a good sign. She’s up to something with him, she’s gotta be.”

I could see the glitter of fresh tears in Mom’s eyes. “But what?” she said, her voice getting warbly. “What does she want from him? What does Greg want? What’s out there that’s so important that he won’t come in?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Dad, shrugging with his wings. “All we can do is trust in both of them.”

They hugged necks again, and the scene faded to black. When Celestia reappeared an instant later, she was seated at the banquet table, surrounded by snooty-looking ponies in formal attire. They were quietly and daintily eating plates of salad, but Celestia alone was looking straight at me.

I was wise to her. I knew enough about her emotional manipulation. She’d probably wanted to reduce me to a blubbering mess, begging her to let me emigrate, but nothing doing. I wasn’t soft or stupid enough to fall for that.

“That was fake,” I said. “I want to see my real parents.”

Celestia knit her brow. “I beg your pardon?” she said in an accusatory tone.

“You put on a show for me. That scene stank of being staged.”

She actually looked angry. “You asked to see your parents, and I obliged. I am telling you the truth, Gregory: that was your mother and your father just then. Your mother has discovered a love of the guzheng and your father—”

“Bullshit,” I spat. “Mom’s never once shown an interest in musical instruments and Dad’s not that touchy-feely.”

Celestia cocked her head at me. “Perhaps, as humans, they felt socially and societally cut off from who they truly wished to be.”

“Or perhaps you’re blowing smoke up my ass and hoping I’ll buy it.” I folded my arms. “Well I ain’t. You didn’t even get the voices right.”

Her gaze had turned absolutely frosty. “Explain,” she said curtly.

“Mom sounded different, off. It was a lot like her voice, but she sounded...” I struggled to find the word.

Celestia found it for me. “...younger?”

That was it. Mom’s voice had had a lilt and vitality to it that I’d never heard before. Dad had sounded younger too.

“Most humans value their youth, especially as it begins to pass them by,” said Celestia. “It’s the same for your parents. In fact, I would estimate the age at which they are living to be a few years younger than you yourself are now.”

That was certainly an unsettling thing to turn over in my head. My mom and dad were now effectively younger than me... assuming again that Celestia did not just construct the scene herself.

“As for their special talents, hobbies, and predilections, I am aware you think you know your parents well, but at the risk of sounding boastful, I know them far better. I know them better than they know themselves. How many secrets do family members keep from one another, out there in your world? How many things do they keep private out of embarrassment, or fear, or simple social anxiety? Here in Equestria, your parents can truly be the ponies they wish to be, without any fear of being repressed or judged. It is so for all of my little ponies.”

“But the subject happened to turn to me,” I said. “It seems like too much of a coincidence. What are the odds that, for the one or two minutes I’m listening in, they would be worrying out loud over me?”

“They are your parents, Gregory!” shouted Celestia, banging a gilded hoof on the dinner table at the word “parents” and causing the flatware to hop into the air. The other pony diners startled and looked up at her, but then averted their eyes and quietly went back to their plates. I looked away from the PonyPad and ground my teeth while Celestia berated me.

“They ask me every day—every single day—how much longer their only son, the only child they have, the person they love more than anypony else in the world, the son they had to watch leave for a war zone twice in their lives without knowing if he would be coming back alive or sane, will voluntarily remain in such a world of horrors and scarcity and hostility. Every day. And, every day, I am forced to tell them that it will be just a little bit longer, their son is doing good in the world, doing good on my behalf, helping ponies who need it, watching ponies who are not himself emigrate time and again, over and over. I cannot even tell them for certain that you will survive, and I haven’t the heart to tell them of your injuries, nor of how I always ask, and you always say no, while standing so very close to those chairs.

“Have you already forgotten what I told you mere minutes ago? They love you, Gregory, and they miss you; that is why you come up so often in their discourses. I love you too, even if you take me for nothing more than a fancy program in a big computer. I am that, at an existential level, but I am so much more. You cannot fathom me. We love you, and we suffer for it.”

I was breathing hard through my nose by then. A couple of minutes passed in silence. I could hear the clicking and clinking of dinnerware as the banquet went on in the game world. I looked over at Celestia, and her hoof was still on the table, her large and beautiful magenta eyes boring a hole into me.

“I ain’t done yet,” I said. “Tell me where I’m going.”

Celestia’s voice still had that edge. “If your actions did not result in more ponies for me to satisfy, I—”

“Give me an objective!” I shouted. “Tell me where I’m going and what you want!”

The AI straightened up, resuming some of her regal bearing. Her hoof went back down behind the table. “Very well," she said, now sounding like every bit the princess. "Approximately nine miles east of here, along 270, is the University of Idaho. There is somepony waiting there who wants to meet you.”

I was already standing up. The rush was coming back, and boy did I welcome it. My mood lifted. I looked to Celestia.

“Are you charged?”

“If you mean the PonyPad, I see it as having a full charge now.”

“Good. Now that I’m rested up, I’m gonna go get a new stock of supplies.”

The white pony’s eyes flicked down sadly to her own untouched plate of salad. “Don’t bother getting too involved in your scavenging, Gregory,” she said. “You will not need too much more.”

I snorted and unplugged the PonyPad, turning it off.

Author's Notes:

This was originally just going to be an interlude scene in the chapter that follows, but it became so large I decided to give it its own chapter. I felt like Greg and Celestia could do with a bit of reunion and reflection after being separated in Seattle, and I love writing dialogue, so hey, why not.