Dragonfly looked at Mark again and added, "And the last time I used that ability, you were half-unconscious with a badly burned arm, and I was burning magic like, like, like something that burns really fast, to keep you awake and driving and get yourself and Starlight back to the Hab." She stomped another hoof. "If you hadn't wanted to live, deep down, it wouldn't have done a bucking thing. If you'd given up and decided to die, you would have died no matter how hard I tried to bend your mind. So don't expect me to apologize for knowing how to pull your levers when I really need to!"
This silenced the literary discussion so thoroughly that Mark needed a full twenty seconds before he could think of anything to get it going. "So, would you say that you feel sympathy for Gollum?"
"A little," Dragonfly said after some consideration. "When I lost control and drained you, it was because some part of me really wanted to. Have I mentioned lately you're delicious?"
Spitfire put her face in her hoof. This discussion kept finding new and previously unexplored worlds of awkward and uncomfortable.
"So I know exactly what it's like to give in. Except I don't think Smeagol ever really fought it." She sighed. "No, if I understand the word sympathy right, then I feel sympathy for the Ring."
"Explain." Mark only said the one word, but it was one word more than Spitfire could muster.
"Pretty simple: mind-bending monster that wants to get home." Dragonfly shrugged. "And six years ago I could add, `so that it can help destroy or enslave the whole world.' That's how I was raised. That's how I'm made. The only difference is that I can decide that, although I definitely am a monster, I will not act like a monster. I don't know if the Ring has that choice, and I sure don't see any sign that it would choose to be nice if it could, anyway."
More silence, followed by Cherry Berry murmuring, "You know, the only other changeling I can ever remember referring to herself as a monster is Chrysalis. None of the others think of themselves that way, at least not out loud."
Dragonfly shrugged. "Maybe I've been around ponies too long."
Spitfire, having gradually got over her shock, ran through the conversation in her mind, came to a quick decision, and got to her hooves. No one had ever bothered to return the two-meter spare section of Hab support pole to its cabinet back at the Hab, and it lay only a few paces away. She trotted over, picked it up in her teeth, and then walked slowly towards Dragonfly. The others, guessing what was coming, scattered.
"Spitfire," Cherry Berry asked in a warning tone, "what are you doing?"
"That's what I'd like to-"
Dragonfly's comment was interrupted by the swoosh and thwack of plastic against chitin.
"OW!"
"Stop feeling sorry for self," Spitfire grunted out around the stick. English was hard enough; English with your teeth clamped down on something was just annoying.
"I wasn't feeling-"
Thwack.
"OW!!"
"Stop talking about be monster. Not let monster in space."
"Would you like to tell that to my qu-"
Thwack.
"CUT IT OUT!"
"Stop bragging about be evil. Not thing to be proud about."
"I wasn't rooting for the-"
Thwack.
"That's really annoying!"
"Next time you asked what you think about book, say, `I hope Frodo wins.'"
Dragonfly didn't say anything.
Thwack anyway.
"What was THAT for??"
"Am I understand?"
"Yes, I got it!"
"Yes, what?"
"Spitfire," Cherry Berry said, her tone making it clear that the farce was now over, "give me that stick. After you say yes, ma'am."
"Yes, ma'am." Ears drooping, Spitfire let the commander take the plastic pole away. For a moment she'd felt back at home... and forgot where she was.
"Thank you," Dragonfly said, only to get another thwack to the noggin.
"Don't try to out-Chrysalis Chrysalis," Cherry said. "I put up with it from her because she almost never tries to do the stuff she talks about. I don't have to put up with it from you. Understood?"
Dragonfly stood to rigid attention. "Ma'am yes ma'am!" she replied crisply.
"Thank you." Cherry extended the pole to Mark, who grasped it in one hand. "Please put that away somewhere."
"Um... sure." Mark set the pole beside him, then added, "What the hell was all that just now?"
"Percussive medicine," Spitfire replied in Equestrian. She wasn't even going to try to render that into English, and to her relief, Mark didn't press the point.
"Maybe we could read a mystery book when this is done," Dragonfly said, rubbing her head. "Fantasy is hard on the head."
"I said, no feel sorry for self."
Dragonfly, for a changeling, could do a very good disgusted pony snort.
Author's Notes:
Let's talk about evil for a minute. Evil is, of course, in the news and discussions of late, but I am not going to bring in any current events into this. (I have very strong opinions about said events, but this is a refuge from the rage, not a platform for it.)
One of the common phrases used in the wake of World War II was "the banality of evil." This is a useless phrase to most Americans, because for most Americans "banal" is not a word. Nobody uses it in ordinary conversation. It means: "something so ordinary as to be obvious or boring; unimaginative."
Evil is not always banal, although it tends to repeat itself— greed, hate, fear, self-love can only be expressed so many ways. But evil is very, very ordinary.
Consider frontier Americans, especially pre-Civil War, when settlers were still clearing out land east of the Mississippi. A typical letter from a militia soldier home would go something like this:
"Camped under the stars, saw some beautiful fireflies. Night before last some boys with instruments played music and sang songs, it was so beautiful. I miss everyone at home. How's the baby? Are you taking care of my dog? I can't wait until I tell you where my land claim is so you can come join me. By the way, I saved you a couple of baby Indian scalps from today's battle as a memento of our glorious victory. Yours sincerely, etc."
It was just that simple. Here were men, most of whom you'd all think were quite nice people if you met them on the street, friendly, courteous, charming... if you were white. If you were black, you better not make eye contact. And if you were a native American, you were in deadly peril of your life— even if you were a woman or child. (To be blunt, especially if you were a woman or child.)
Because at that time the consensus was, Indians didn't really count as people, so it was okay to kill them. In fact, it was better than okay; it was a duty to kill them or drive them out, to fulfill Manifest Destiny. And almost nobody questioned this, much less recognized it as evil.
I could go on in detail, but my point is this: a person can be nine-tenths good and decent and one-tenth horrible, and often that person will not recognize it in themselves. Usually they can't, because nobody wants to think of themselves as a monster, so we humans will justify away any monstrous conduct by finding some kind of excuse.
Evil is ordinary. We all have it. We all have the potential for it. And most of the time we don't know we're doing evil at the time.
Hence Dragonfly, who allowed herself the changeling (and other cartoon baddies) flaw of blabbermouth. She has a definition of monster in her head, and under certain conditions she recognizes she qualifies. But, at the same time, she refuses to admit that the really sketchy things she did on Chrysalis's orders back Before Space were wrong, because she also thinks of herself as a good and dutiful drone and subject. She is highly unusual— not just among changelings, but among people— in that she's actually tried to look at herself and see the evil. It's a work in progress at best.
That's why Spitfire violates several items in the Code of Conduct to apply corporal punishment percussive medicine on Dragonfly. For all that it's not the right way to do it, it has the advantage of closing the issue and making everyone else see that it is closed. They can (mostly) pretend Dragonfly didn't admit these things, move on, and continue to work together.
So the next time you're talking to someone, and they let slip that they've done some horrible thing and don't particularly regret it— or even recognize there's anything to regret— don't ask how they could do that. They do it because they're people. People are like that.
But don't hit them over the head with anything, because Cherry Berry isn't going to back you up, and your target might not be as forgiving as Dragonfly.
Jump to top
Sols 309-310
View Online
AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE — MISSION DAY 313
ARES III SOL 309
[08:03] JPL: Daily check. Solar activity subsided a bit, so maybe comms will be better today. We estimate Sol 318 will be LOS day, after which Hermes will attempt to acquire Pathfinder's signal every day until it works. With luck that'll be Sol 328. Hope all of you are all right.
[08:42] WATNEY: We're fine, but it's bugging me why you told us not to build the engine carriage mounts on Rover 2. You have a reason. If data loss is the problem, just keep resending until it gets through. In the meantime, we're staying busy doing science to magic, or magic to science, whatever. Waiting on your answer. — Mark
[09:41] SYSTEM: ERROR — Destination reports Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold — Message Not Sent
[09:42] WATNEY: system_command: REPEAT
[09:42] SYSTEM: Last message resent.
[10:41] SYSTEM: ERROR — Destination reports Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold — Message Not Sent
[13:19] WATNEY: system_command: REPEAT
[13:20] SYSTEM: Last message resent.
[14:18] SYSTEM: ERROR — Destination reports Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold — Message Not Sent
[14:19] WATNEY: system_command: REPEAT
[14:19] SYSTEM: Last message resent.
[15:30] WATNEY: About fucking time.
[16:28] SYSTEM: ERROR — Destination reports Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold — Message Not Sent
AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE — MISSION DAY 314
ARES III SOL 310
Starlight Glimmer shut off the field projector, looking with pride at the six new ordinary-sized mana batteries she'd made. With Mark's people not explaining why carrying the three Amicitas main engines to Schiaparelli was no longer a priority, she'd decided not to make the four jumbo batteries originally scheduled for today. Besides, skipping those meant she could spare a little juice for experiments on the rainbow crystals.
Over the past few sols she and Mark had devised and carried out several experiments with the accidental enchantments in the crystals. The results both comforted and baffled her, for various reasons.
Experiment #1: Did the rainbow crystals store mana? According to Dragonfly's thaumometer, yes, though even the ones in the center of the cluster, those which couldn't infect other crystals anymore, didn't store much. They were vastly less efficient than the purpose-enchanted batteries, if the average readout was an indicator.
Experiment #2: Did a crystal have to be growing out of the wall to be infected? Answer: no. Five crystal chunks cut from Lunch Buffet had been set in places where they could sit on top of certain rainbow crystals; all but the smallest had been enchanted within two days of being put there.
Experiment #3: Did a crystal have to be touching an infected crystal to be infected? Answer: too soon to be conclusive about it, but the crystals set a ponylength away, out in the open, hadn't been infected in four sols of sitting there.
Experiment #4: Was there a size limit for the enchantment? Answer, based on observation: yes. Crystals smaller than Mark's thumb remained in the field of rainbow crystals which hadn't been altered. Possibly the enchantment couldn't all fit. With careful examination (squinting) Starlight could make out a few random-looking traces of magic, but not the strange random patterns of the full enchantment.
Experiment #5: Would an already enchanted crystal be infected? Answer: apparently not. Starlight had laid the battery enchantment on a hoof-sized crystal and stuck it between two larger rainbow crystals. It still sat there, unaffected, three days later. More observation was warranted, but it looked like the batteries and the solar relays were safe. (It had occurred to her that she could probably think of ways to make a viral enchantment that would attack the batteries and sun crystals. It also occurred to her that Mars was not the place to even consider trying it.)
Experiment #6 (today): Would a rainbow crystal take an enchantment? Answer: surprisingly, yes, though with difficulty and with much reduced efficacy. Starlight had enchanted two of the rainbow crystals with a standard lighting enchantment. Now they glowed, if only feebly.
Experiment #7 (also today, using one of the infected crystals from Experiment #2): Could a rainbow crystal be dis-enchanted? Answer: not completely. As with any enchantment, bits of it tended to persist. But the portion of the random tangle of enchantments Starlight had broken had apparently broken the whole thing; the crystal was still a rainbow of colors, but the pattern hadn't shifted.
Experiment #8 (begun today, incomplete): Would the enchantment affect non-crystalline rocks?
Experiment #9 (also begun today): If you enchant a rainbow crystal, would the added enchantment propagate along with the random one?
For this experiment the remaining three cut crystals Starlight had allowed to be infected were placed in small sample boxes Mark provided. One was filled with other cut crystals; this would be the control. One was also filled with cut crystals, but the infected crystal had the light-producing added enchantment. The last infected crystal was placed in a box of random non-crystalline surface rocks collected midway through the rover drive out to the cave that morning. In two or three days, they'd know the results.
Mark took the last photo of the post-magic round for today, charting the continued expansion of the rainbow crystal field and documenting the start of the three experiment boxes. "Do you want to write up the results?" he asked. "Or should I?"
"I'd better do it," Starlight said. "I'm the one who's been translating our concepts into English for your scientists. And I also have to send reports home."
"Suit yourself," Mark said. "Just let me know when you're done so we can do the reading for today. It's the last chapter of The Two Towers."
