May 28, 8:00 AM

Deal with the Prison 58%

Wayfinder’s impossible task did not begin that day, of course. She was needed for the initial expansion into the new areas. More than once she had to instruct the city’s boots on the ground in how to resolve disputes. What about earth ponies who wanted to help but hadn’t known? What about cases where someone had nothing to contribute yet, but their current housing was very, very poor? Agree to too many, and the policy would mean nothing. Refuse too often, and she might well have a riot on her hooves.

She visited the new agricultural areas, and watched her own partially-trained earth ponies each now leading teams of their own volunteers. Not all did equally well, and she tried to make note of those who would make for good promotions, compared to those who still clearly had no faith in the “magic” they performed.

Their labor transformed where it touched. Parks, riverside, empty lots—anywhere they thought they could plausibly grow anything useful. With the help of pony magic, anywhere even remotely habitable could be nurtured and made fertile. Though the better the land they started with, the less magic would be required. Not to mention water and irrigation, which would have to rely on human techniques until the so-called “weather control” Sunburst talked about finally manifested among the infected.

Wayfinder spent much of the day pacing from one side of her glass office to the other, waiting to hear that the feds had seen her expansion and were going to bomb the place, or that the city’s population had broken into uncontrolled rioting. The radio scanned over frequencies from each team, and each little flicker of static became another surge of nervous energy and sent her heartbeat racing.

She should be reading over the textbooks of more advanced magical theory that Sunburst had assigned in preparation for their big spell with the Overgrowth. But she gave up any attempt at concentrating on it. She was just too anxious to get anything done, so would have to settle for watching out the window.

The sun waned in the sky, and no torch-wielding rioters appeared. The city’s peacekeepers arrived at the end of their shift, murmured loudly from the mess downstairs, then went off to the barracks. Nothing exploded, nothing burned. The sun set, and Denver was still standing.

Hazel scurried in with a tray of food around nine. She bounced over to the desk, and somehow deposited it without spilling a single drop from the bowl of soup or a leaf from the salad.

“Where’s Sunburst?” she asked, hopping up so her forelegs braced up against the table. “Did he not like your date?”

She groaned, but pulled the tray over with magic and forced herself to take a few spoonfuls of soup. The taste was more or less the same as most nights; food that would sustain as many ponies as possible. “Sunburst has to catch up on a few items back home. The Overgrowth ponies are going to start working with us more. They’re already doing things basically the same way that Denver will, so it makes sense to use their expertise. But they’re going to have a vote, and… lots of them will probably keep living out there.”

“And after? Are you gonna get him his own quarters, or…” Her ears flicked to the side, and a sly smile spread over her face. “He’s the one who came up with all your big plans, right? So… he should live somewhere nice.”

“He does.” She floated the salad-plate up, then scooped at it with a large spoon. “With us. I haven’t heard him complain yet.”

Hazel’s body flashed faintly green. She changed in a wave, and suddenly she was—Wayfinder. Albeit a smaller, filly-sized version, like a little action figure with the exact same style of her mane and patches of messy fur from her anxious brushing against the same spots over and over. “Look at me, I’m Wayfinder! I think that no one can tell how much I like that yellow pony.”

She hopped up onto the chair, which slid on its wheels closer to the desk. “I won’t just admit how much I like him!”

Wayfinder caught the rolling chair in her magic, stopping the filly a short distance away. “You’re about a week late for that meaning anything, bug. I’m sure by now half the barracks knows. But Command is happy with my performance, so no one cares.”

Hazel’s body flickered again, and the bug was back to her usual self. “I care, Way. I want you to be happy. Everyone I know is happier when they’re with someone, and I could always tell how you felt for each other. I’m just… glad someone was finally brave enough!”

Wayfinder rose from her desk. “I just hope I get to live long enough to find out where it could go. We might get attacked, city could tear itself apart, or maybe I’ll piss off enough of the old guard that they come for my head. If that happens, don’t stay. Get as far away from here as you can, Hazel. Use those powers of yours, hide however you need.”

She crossed the distance between them in a few steps, then rested one hoof over her shoulder in a familiar pony-shape hug. “If your parents were still here, they’d want the same thing. You have to live, sweetheart. Even if I don’t make it.”

Hazel whimpered, melting into the hug like something made of slime. She held still here for a few seconds, her voice transformed to little pained, childish sounds. She managed to nod once. “Yeah, Way. I k-know. But… but that won’t happen. If people try to hurt you, I’ll warn you before they even know what they’re planning. No one is gonna sneak up on you.”

She pulled away, her wings opening and buzzing loudly as she took off, hovering in the air. Her hooves actually left the ground this time, dangling beneath her body as she circled once around Wayfinder’s head, then settled in front of her, and touched down again, panting. “You’re… gonna save the city, Way. I know you will.”

Wayfinder didn’t save the city that day, but she didn’t burn it down either. When morning came, there were as many buildings in Denver as there had been the day before, with only a short list of incidents. Strangely, most hadn’t happened in front of the checkpoint into her new “Market District” either, but outside the building.

Nearly a dozen ponies, all pressing in around the prison guardpost. They were still there the next morning, the crowd larger and better supplied than the night before. She stayed behind the line, rather than emerging from the fence and getting too close to the angry-looking masses. A familiar mare put down her levitated shield and scampered back to join her on the steps.

“Captain. Good morning! Didn’t expect you out here so early.”

Wayfinder’s tail flicked to either side. “Yeah, not my first choice either. Usually like the sun to be up before I start work.” She stared out at the assembled masses, ears twitching as she strained to listen. A simple chant about freeing people. The kind she would’ve expected to hear at a protest after a high profile criminal trial. Her ears flattened, and she tucked her tail between both legs. “Why is this happening now? I didn’t change anything with the prison.”

The tiny unicorn shrugged one shoulder, twirling the heavy plastic baton through the air. “Couldn’t say, captain. That’s why you’ve got the fancy office, and I’m here keeping them from getting into the prison.”

She approached the line from behind, lifting her ear to the chanting voices. They’d noticed she was here, and the voices had changed. Several were yelling her name, different voices, demanding and angry.

“When were you going to do something about it?”

“Hey asshole, my kid is in there!”

“New face, same old shit.”

“He didn’t even do anything!”

Approaching the barricade told her something else: these were a very specific type of person: not the kind that got to live in the hotels hosting members of congress, or even the ones who had bought their way into the apartments and homes lining the rest of the Isolation Zone. These were the sorts who smelled like they bathed in the river, who had fur that hadn’t seen shampoo and any clothing they wore was dirty.

“I wouldn’t get too close,” Lance called, from just behind her. “Sir, they’re not exactly in a talking mood. Don’t get so close they can reach you, yeah?”

Wayfinder lit her horn with a simple spell, though she didn’t cast it yet. It took a little of her concentration to keep it nearly ready like that—but that was still easier than summoning something right before she needed it to save her life. “You want the prison dealt with?” she asked, the first face she saw.

A portly-looking earth pony, so short and squat that Wayfinder had to peer over the fence to look down on her. Yet what the mare lacked in height she more than made up for in sheer determination. “Yeah! Keeping people locked up since the early days of the pandemic! Anyone who can buy their families out gets bail, we wait! Month after month after month!”

“I haven’t been in charge for months, miss,” she said. “Give me a chance, please. I’ve been trying to make sure we all don’t starve, including your families in there. Now that’s in hand, I’ll see what I can find out about the prison.”

She retreated from the barricade, a few steps at a time. The crowd wasn’t chanting anymore. The mare she’d spoken with didn’t start yelling to get them all going.

Lance fell into step beside her on the steps, her weapon levitated just beside her. “Standard practice for these sorts of events, Way: find out who their leaders are, call them in, and find out what it will cost to buy them out. Usually—one or two people, and their word to shut up. There’s the vinegar way too, if you’d like, but I never saw that side.”

“No,” she shuddered involuntarily at whatever the “vinegar way” might be. She could imagine, and trying to figure it out would probably make it even worse. “I think I’m going to try the way where I actually solve it, this time. Those people are right, Lance. That’s the problem here.”

Despite her size, the unicorn managed to get her hoof around Wayfinder’s foreleg and yank her down, voice low and dangerous under her breath. “Careful where you walk, Princess. I know how badly you want to live in a perfect beautiful world where everything runs like we’re some perfect precinct. But we’re at the end of the world, the feds bailed and we’re overpopulated. The prison is the only thing paying the people who enforce all your new rules. Be careful with the hand that feeds, alright?”

She nodded without a word, then turned back to the station. By the time she was back inside, the chanting was back again, loud enough for her to hear through the wall. Several off-duty officers lingered near the entrance, some wearing their belts already. Including Peter, whose armor suggested he might be about to join Lance over at the jail. These people obviously knew how to do their jobs. Her position as their nominal captain wouldn’t change that.

“You want riot called in to disperse them?” Peter asked. “Sounds pretty calm now, but that might not stay that way. Crowds tend to build.”

“If they stay peaceful, no,” she flicked her tail to the side. “If this starts escalating, then do it. I’m going to try to stop this from another angle first.”

She reached her office a few minutes later, and found it empty. Sunburst still wasn’t back, and wouldn’t be until tomorrow. Tempting as it was to go to him the instant she had the first issue, what kind of leader would she be if she couldn’t solve any problem on her own?

She had all the files he’d created, organized into plastic binders with a mix of printed sections and magically scribbled ones. The pony really seemed to enjoy the variety of human stationery.

She didn’t have to dig around for long: the civic section’s very second heading was about budget.

Sunburst’s handwriting might come from a magically levitated pen, but his writing was so precise she could’ve mistaken it for printed.

“The Denver Isolation Zone’s current authority has lost all but the pretense of rule of law. It presently sustains itself on a system of informal graft and extortion driven by enforcement of a legal framework based on indefinite suspension of trial and unlimited parole periods. This creates perverse incentives towards enforcement and bribery at all levels, and fosters growing resentment from the populace.

The gradual decay of records indicate that in the initial days and weeks, the zone relied on federal support instead, using the material goods and access to services it controlled. This source should not be considered reliable based on the trend in delivery size and frequency. What solution does this leave?

Graft cannot sustain a government of any size, which transforms its own agents into its own destabilizing factors. Denver must transition to a system based on state ownership or taxation, or face collapse. Recommendations:”

What followed were at least thirty pages of information about economic reconstruction, which resources should be nationalized and which were vital to preserving the necessary incentives to individual production. Sunburst wasn’t just a wizard, he was also an economist.

Unfortunately, it would also take much too long. Minting their own currency, formalizing the housing and food provided into a systemic UBI and other measures that used terms she’d never even read before—It didn’t matter if that incredibly detailed plan with all its steps and reforms would be the best for Denver if she couldn’t stay in charge long enough to do any of it.

She stared at her laptop and its master inventory of the city’s stockpiles, searching for some truth hidden in those numbers. If she tried to take away the system of incarceration and “bail” bribes, then the very organization providing her authority would either collapse or depose her. If she did nothing, hundreds of ponies would remain unjustly confined while her own police continued to exploit them. A circle of self-reinforcing misery.

But what cards did she have to play beyond the city’s expansion? They were already building their new organization as fast as they could. But they still needed to keep it from collapsing long enough to get a real foundation.

I could break up the protests, but I’m no better than the ones who were in charge before me.

Wayfinder slumped into her desk, with the blaring white spreadsheet glaring back at her. No currency, no help. Except—maybe there was one direction she hadn’t explored.

I don’t need to sustain us for long. Once the first harvest comes in, we’ll have more than enough to back our new currency with food. We can use Sunburst’s UBI plan. Getting there seemed insurmountable, but—maybe it wouldn’t be.

Wayfinder dug around in the storage crates at the back of her office until she found what she was looking for: the laptop she’d brought along to all her magic classes during her first two months in the Isolation Zone. She plugged it in, extended the antenna, and waited for a connection.

It only took a few minutes. Though the person on the screen wasn’t one she recognized.

This was a man, older, with lines on his face and thick glasses. The space behind him was very different, with no natural light, just pure concrete. “Denver, this is CDC representative. Please explain your message. We weren’t expecting new communication.”

She shrugged into the camera. “Can you put me in touch with someone with appropriations power?” she asked, as confident as she could. “This is the current appointed… governor of the Denver Isolation Zone. I have an offer, but I’m not sure who to share it with. Perhaps you could assist me.”

The man rubbed at his temples with two fingers, muttering to himself. He reached for the screen, then caught himself and shifted the view. “Suppose that’s true. There’s not much left you can offer. Even if you had pallets of gold bars, miss horse. Contamination doesn’t even require living things anymore. The flow is trapped in one way: out towards you. You see why it’s pointless to talk?”

Pointless, yet—more meaningful information than she’d heard from Senator Gardner The fish who appointed her no longer had anything behind her cute songs. The ones living in luxury with staff protecting them in penthouses no longer represented meaningful authority over anything. Vestiges of a power that couldn’t extend beyond whatever isolated territory it controlled.

Still, she had to try something. “You might not know this, but Denver is the original source of this outbreak. We have significantly more information about it than you do. Including, I believe, a powerful lead on a potential vaccine. But I need someone to help me keep the lights on for the next… two months or so, so that research can progress.”

The man nearly fell out of his chair. He lurched forward towards the camera, steadying himself on the desk. “That first claim is something we could verify. The second… what do you have? Because I can already tell you: there’s not much we can do for you anymore. Barely keeping the lights on up here as it is. But the European Coalition would probably be very interested in your research. Frankly they’d send someone in to rip out every beaker and test tube you’ve got, except—they’d never be able to see their families again.”

Wayfinder practically felt the ground shifting beneath her as she stared back at that screen. This was dangerous territory. But if she didn’t give them something, they’d have no reason to trust her. Denver might come apart before their first harvest.

Wayfinder had to give them something.

1. We have an expert sent from the plague’s original source. Their strongest possible claim, but it puts Sunburst at risk.

2. We have domain documents from the plague’s original source. Not quite as strong, but something they can easily prove.

3. We’ve used rigorous experimentation and know more about magic than anyone else. Their weakest claim, but doesn’t risk anything.