The others

>When she was a little girl, APJ-76 had worried a lot about her own future. Some big corporation had bought her family’s farm after yet another drought had killed every single crop. After that, she had been forced to move to a shitty apartment in awful neighbourhood in New York.
>Since her parents were always at work, she had been the one who had to take care of her little sister when she was not stuck in an underfunded school where she barely learnt anything and the teacher did not care at all about the students
>when her parents had died at work when she was still too young to be alone in the world, she thought she would see rock bottom only if she looked up at the sky
>In a certain sense, she had been right, she had reached actual rock bottom when the ponies had come down from the sky, enslaved her and took her away from away from Earth to put her to work in a farm on their own homeworld
>the irony of finally being back on a farm only when she had lost everything, even her freedom, was not lost on her
>But while her life had gotten worse in some aspects when she had been reduced to some pony’s property, it had also improved in some other ways. She suddenly didn’t have to worry about her economical condition, and not all the overseers were the absolute worst
>That bad part was waking up early and going to sleep late after working on the farm all day. Not making any money from her work was also quite frustrating, but the fact that money was no longer a part of her life mitigated that frustration
>usually, the work she had to do wasn’t that hard. She and many other slaves, most of them Kirins and Yaks, just had to look after the farm, do some maintenance and check the apples to make sure there was nothing wrong with them
>but today was a different day

>Today was the day of the harvest
>APJ-76 had once dreamed of finally being able to work on a farm, of going back to what to her once innocent eyes had been a simpler life. Now she realized that working in a farm was not exactly as simple as she had remembered it and her nostalgia had probably distorted her memories of her life on her family’s farm
>An overseer had woken up all the slaves a few hours earlier than usual and had divided all the slaves in teams of two humans, or two Kirins, and one Yak
>She was paired up with a girl the ponies had named SGC-34 and the largest Yak in the entire farm. That last part would probably make things easier for all of them. The role of yaks was to carry heavy stuff around, and baskets filled with apples were heavier than APJ-76 could have imagined.
>Her team and many others were then sent to a specific part of the farm and told to collect all the apples in that area. Many overseers looked over them as they began their work, constantly checking if one of the slaves was trying to slack off.
>not all of the overseers were free ponies, some of them were Kirins or even humans, and the human ones were the one she should have to worry about. The Kirin would live the workers alone as long as they weren’t wasting time
>The human ones, on the other hand, were trying to prove themselves, looking for every minor infraction they could use to punish the other slaves. One of them, TRX-22, was known for being the worst one among them
>for that reason, they were looking almost exclusively at the human slaves. The Kirins were just robots with a fleshy body and the Yaks were beasts of burden with a bigger brain, humans were the only ones who still tried small acts of defiance like trying to work as slowly as they could

>Most Yaks could carry four large baskets, each one capable of holding all the apples on a single tree, the Yaks would then go back to a large barn to deposit the apples once all their baskets were full.
>The one who was working with APJ-76 could carry six, this meant that she had to work a little bit longer than the other groups, but it also meant that her pauses were longer than usual
 “Well, it’s not as bad we thought huh?” she tried to start a conversation with the other human
“Yeah, right” the girl’s reply was quick and condescending in tone “if you don’t mind being property”
>That girl was too blunt even for her own tastes, APJ-76 had always been proud of her own honesty, but SGC-34 always got herself into trouble by speaking her mind even when she was within earshot of an overseer. Thanks to Equestrian magic, however, the wounds from the lashes she had received always healed pretty quickly
>She was one of the few slaves who still thought she might have a chance to become free one day if she kept her defiant attitude. APJ-76 just needed to look around herself, or to pass one hand over her own collar, to understand it was just a delusion
“My life would have been hot garbage anyway” she replied “I don’t know if I can really complain”
“Well, I was doing fine before they arrived, sorry if I’m not all smiles and laughter about this” now she sounded even angrier than before “stop talking to me”
“Oh, Ok then… I guess just pout”
>Just like that, the conversation ended just as quickly as had started, and the two girls just stood there silently waiting for the Yak to come back with his now emptied baskets so that they could continue working
>it was probably for the best, APJ-76 didn’t want the overseers see her fraternizing with a problematic slave. Considering that her only career prospect was to become an overseer herself, that sort of stuff could kill that possibility

>She just spent the rest of the day quietly picking apples and putting them in a basket. The only two significant noises were the wind and the occasional happy whistling from the Kirins around her
>The Kirins had been a surprise for her, she had expected all slaves to be miserable all the time, but the Kirin looked like they were happy to be slaves. It was something that still baffled her even after a few months of slavery
>How could they be happy of being slaves? Of being living property? Even the collaborationist humans did what they did only because they knew of how the power dynamics had shifted, and she really couldn’t blame them for wanting a small piece of the pie since she was waiting for a chance do the same
>but the Kirins, all of them, were actually convinced they were supposed to be slaves. She had talked with a couple of them and they really wanted nothing more than to serve the ponies, they said they loved their simple lives and that ponies deserved to be their masters
>They had even told she will eventually agree with them, and long ago Kirins used to be very similar to humans. That was the first and only time she laughed since she had been enslaved, the idea of her ever accepting slavery was ridiculous. TRX-22 had been there to stop her, of course
>But, as the sun disappeared and all the slaves went back to their resting areas to relax a bit before going to sleep, she realized that even this day of non-stop labour had been easier than any day of her free life
>The idea that slavery had been a net positive on her life was something she was completely uncomfortable with. She wanted to get rid of that thought as soon as she could, but she soon found out it had implanted itself in her head
>Once on her own comfortable bed, she vowed she would believe the lies of the ponies. She didn’t know if she could respect that vow, however








>RBW-12 knew her real life had already ended, she would never see her family again and she would never get to be a professional athlete again, but her current one still didn’t make any sense
>She remembered she had tried to hide for weeks, probably even months, in caves and the few still-existing forests once she understood the ponies were enslaving every single human they could find
>She had slipped past many patrols and even survived a few night raids in which all her friends were either killed or enslaved and taken away. In only three weeks she had found herself alone in a cave, hoping the ponies would never bother to check that tiny part of the forest in which she lived
>She had eventually settled into a routine, she would gather food at night, when the ponies would have a harder time seeing her, and she would sleep through most of the day and use the few hours of sunlight in which she was awake to eat or to scribble something on the cave’s walls
>She really had thought that, even if those days of complete loneliness were absolutely miserable, it would all be worth it when ponies left the planet and she would emerge as one of the few survivors
>That fantasy had been unceremoniously shattered one night, when she felt an irresistible need to fall asleep near the river where she was drinking some water from. As she fell to the ground, she recognized the shape of two unicorns approaching her with a smile on their faces
>When she woke up, she was already collared, on a slave transport and directed straight for the Equestrian slave market. At first, she had tried fighting back, but the ponies quickly proved how futile those kinds of efforts were
>The girl they ended up selling was far more docile than the one they had captured

>She no longer had the rebellious spirit of youth; the slavers had broken that out of her probably forever. She was still surprised she hadn’t become just another worker, after all, Her fit and capable body was the only thing the merchant could have advertised
>She just got “lucky” when one of the ponies decided her face was pretty enough to justify selling her as an individual slave at a public slave market
>The slave market had been, without a doubt, the most humiliating experience of her entire life. Having to sit there just like a piece of merchandise to be inspected by any potential buyer really made her feel like an object with no agency
>Mistress Dash had allowed her to remain physically fit, but only because she didn’t want to lose what she had paid for when she had bought her.
>Many domestic slaves usually got a more interesting name than the one on their collars, but Dash had never really bothered with that. “Slaves don’t need real names” she had heard her say to one of her friends, a pony named Starlight Glimmer
>Dash had put her to work as both as one of her personal guards and as a butler. She found her to be particularly well suited for the second job she had assigned to her after she had trained her for a few months
>Her life of slavery soon became a monotonous blur of identical days and identical motions. The worst part of it was that, to her horror, she starting to accept this as her new normal condition in life. Her subconscious had already accepted the idea that ponies were the masters and there was nothing she could do to change that
>Her new normalcy was shattered quite brutally on a sunny morning

>Mistress Dash had been away from her house for several weeks. Since Dash didn’t allow her access to any news, she really had no idea about what was going on, but RBW-12 understood that it was probably something very important. She had heard rumours that some big civil war was going on, but she had no way to be sure
>Her suspicions were confirmed when, one day, she just found her dead in the living room next to Starlight Glimmer, who was also very dead. Their faces had turned a full and ugly purple with most of their veins becoming very dark and visible under their skin
>She didn’t need to need to be Sherlock Holmes to understand that the two of them had decided to drink poison
>On one hand, she knew she should have been happy that a slave owner had died an ugly death, but on the other hand, Mistress Dash had never been explicitly mean to her and she was worried see would get accused of murdering her owner
>Luckily for her, that accusation never materialized, Twilight Sparkle and her personal assistant had never even once questioned her about it. They probably just knew the real reason why Dash had decided to opt for suicide
>Twilight had still cried quite a lot at the sight of the two corpses, saying “You didn’t have to do this” over and over again for hours until her personal assistant tried her best to calm her down a little bit. RBW-12 could do nothing but watch that scene in complete silence
>After some time had passed, and Twilight had regained full control of herself, everything Dash had ever owned, including her slaves, were redistributed among Twilight’s soldiers.
>RBW-12’s fate would be a bit different from that of the other slaves, as Twilight had taken a liking to her appearance and decided to claim her as her cut of the loot

>Twilight really had no idea of what to do with her once she had brought her to her house. So she had spent many days simply trying to look busy as Twilight didn’t even tell her what her duties would be
>The first few weeks as twilight’s slave had been incredibly boring, something she had never thought would be possible as Twilight was one of the most powerful ponies in Equestria, but that was her lot in life as a slave
>The weeks after Twilight had decided to put her to work as a maid, another job for which she was a surprisingly quick learner. The ponies were accidentally making her discover a part of herself that she been trying to suppress for years
>She already knew rebellion was dumb and pointless, but now she was not only accepting slavery as a fact of life, her natural condition for which she was most suited for, but something that had the potential to bring her more happiness than her hyper-competitive free life
>She didn’t know if those thoughts were the result of genuine domestication or if it was simply Stockholm syndrome. The only thing she knew was that maybe her free life had not been as great as she had remembered it, and maybe there was nothing wrong with just accepting this new one






>FLS-45 had been in the middle of an identity crisis since the ponies had enslaved her and put her to work as an overseer in a farm, to make sure the other slaves worked as efficiently as they could
>She had been sold as one of the most obedient humans of her entire group of workers, an unsurprising turn of events; her shyness had made her incapable of confronting the ponies when they had arrived. She didn’t fight even when they had collared her and brought on board one of the many transports filled to the brim with newly enslaved humans.
>she had remained quiet and obedient thorough the entirety of the voyage to Equestria. Others humans had tried everything to show they were defiant, some shouted insults at the ponies while other tried their best to attack them, despite their restraints. All those rebellious humans were already well-broken by the time they were ready to be sold
>It was that meek attitude of hers that earned her the position of relative privilege she found herself in. She was, of course, still property of Mistress Fluttershy, legally identical to the furniture the pony might have in her house, but she was a very useful piece of property.
>Her fear of the ponies, and they might do if she was not made quite enthusiastic at keeping other human slaves in line. Most of them were workers, they understood that the war was lost and ponies were stronger than humanity, but there always a couple of rebels who thought they were smarter than everyone else
>Right now, the slaves she was in charge of were busy tending to the livestock. Ponies themselves were herbivores, but animals still had their place in the Equestrian economy. Not for meat, which was considered barbaric, but for the many products that could be extracted from them, like milk or unfertilized eggs
>The human need for protein was satisfied with various insects, especially crickets. Something that FLS-45 was already familiar with

>Most of the animals were allowed to roam free in large spaces dedicated to them, but still resided in normal barns, it made the animals happier and their products tastier.
>FLS-45, despite not being happy with having been enslaved, liked how pony were capable of showing so much respect and love for the animals they shared their planets with. Is that what they considered humans? Just another kind of animal to be domesticated?
>She had to stop her thoughts when she noticed something unusual, and probably illegal, happening with one of the human slaves and a hen
>The chicken was doing everything it should have, but the human, instead of storing the eggs in a basket like she should have, was trying to find somewhere in her dress were she could hide them. Maybe she was just being paranoid, but she had to be sure
>She approached the slave, who still didn’t know she had been noticed, and asked her in what she hoped was a commanding voice “what’s your name?”
>The human, a young girl with freckles and a ponytail, turned slowly and put down the several eggs she was holding “Hem… SWT-33 ma’am, why do you ask?”
“I’m a slave, not a ma’am” she told the girl “I asked because I saw you were not working as fast as you could and I need to know who I am accusing of slacking off”
“I wasn’t slacking off I swear” the girl, unsurprisingly, got really defensive about her actions
“Then why is you basket still empty? We’ve been here all morning haven’t we? Mistress Fluttershy will be really disappointed with you” FLS-45 tried her not to make it sound like a threat, but she felt like she had failed once the girl snapped just by hearing her owner’s name
“I don’t care about what that bitch thinks!” she got up and threw her eggs all over the place “she’s a slave owner why do you care?” she turned to look at the other human slaves, who were still diligently working “why are you still working? Why are you not…”

>Another overseer, a male unicorn, had come to the rescue and immobilized SWT-33 with a simple spell “never seen a human get so crazy so fast” he commented as he dragged the girl away to her punishment
>the other human slaves had never once stopped to look at the scene the aspiring rebel had caused, they knew better
“Yes, that wasn’t normal” FLS-45 said “There might be something wrong with this one”
“You think Fluttershy should have her mind checked by a professional?” the unicorn calmly asked
“Well, if it’s not too costly for Mistress Fluttershy…” she replied, hoping she wasn’t implying that her owner was poor. If she could own so many slaves, she clearly wasn’t poor
“I’m sure Fluttershy can afford to get a single slave fixed, especially one as cheap as this one” He looked at the human again “don’t know if she’ll think it’s worth the effort, maybe she’ll do it out of kindness”
>After saying that, the unicorn dragged the girl away with his magic and they both disappeared from the scene
> FLS-45 hoped her owner decided to fix the rebellious girl, letting her keep her delusions of freedom would hurt her so much more than a few months of being forcefully re-educated by the ponies. She didn’t how the ponies did it, but she knew that all the humans that were sent away to be re-educated all returned eager to serve what they called their betters
>Maybe it was a secret brainwashing technique, maybe it was magic or even simple torture, the ponies knew exactly how to convert free-spirited humans into willing servants who would never dare to question their position in life
> FLS-45 thought it was vary creepy to see a human that used be very vocal about hating slavery turn into an almost mindless drone, but she had to admit it made her job as an overseer a lot easier than it could have been

>FLS-45 was also starting to think that maybe the ponies really did deserve their position as the superior race, and she liked them more than her own race
>Sure, she hated that they were so casual about conquering and enslaving entire races, including humanity, but she loved everything else about them
>She loved how they cared so much about animals, and she loved how they clearly knew how to take care of their own beautiful planet. Even as slave masters, they were not as cruel as they could have been, the only slaves that severely punished were the ones who tried have an attitude or to fight back
>Thoughts like that made it easier accept her own life as a slave. Sure, it might have been a bit unfair to her, and she could have the right to hate it a bit, but if ponies were superior to humans, maybe they really had the right to enslave them all
>Gazelles might be free to hate the lions that hunt eat them, but lions had all the right to eat gazelles whenever they felt like, eating gazelles was what they did naturally. It was the same for ponies; they simply had the natural instinct to enslave the races they encountered, maybe there was nothing wrong with that.
>Humans, she had heard from others, were just one of many slave races; all small parts of something greater than they could ever hope to be if the ponies had allowed them to remain free
>she didn’t know were those subservient thoughts were coming from, but maybe they were not the result of a magic trick, maybe she really was starting to like her simple and humble life as a slave
>Like all humans born in the west, she had grown up thinking that slavery was the ultimate evil, and yet there she was approving that supposedly evil institution
> FLS-45 really hoped those thoughts were the result of some subtle spell, the alternative was far more terrifying










>When she had been enslaved, PKP-27 thought she never see the light of day ever again and she would die down there. She was just a cheap slave, after all, why would pones care about her well-being?
>At first, she thought her prediction were correct. She had been immediately put to work underground in a “rock farm” somewhere in the Equestrian Empire. She didn’t know why it was called a rock farm, and she was too scared to talk to any other slaver working with her or to an overseer
>Fear, and anger, had been the two emotions she felt when she was underground. Of course, she knew it would be stupid to do anything with that anger, ponies had made it clear that there was a reason why they were the masters and everyone else was a slave
>After what felt like an eternity of work underground, she was eventually allowed to get out of the mine. There was a small village filled with slaves just outside the mine and she was assigned to one of the houses
>She soon learned ponies had so many slaves that they could afford to rotate them in and out of their mines to make sure that none of the got sick. She and the other slaves had been a week to relax and recover their strength.
>She had asked one of the older Kirin slaves living with her why ponies would be so nice to their slaves
“Well, the strong are supposed to protect the weak” the Kirin had said “that’s why they enslaved you and me, and that’s why they take care of us”
>Almost to prove the old Kirin’s point, a few pony doctors had been sent by their owner to check on the health of all slaves. The process had taken the best part of day, but the overseers had organized a small celebration after the doctors said everyone was healthy and fit for work

>They were all put to work the very next day, once another group of slaves was rotated out. The small party had made PKP-27 think about her new life as a slave and she compared it to her life on Earth
>Her life on Earth had been completely miserable due to her low wages and the complete isolation she felt. While she hated the ponies had enslaved her, she had to admit she actually some parts of her new life
>She had even found out that one of her sisters, MBP-61, was also working in the same mine as her
>over the course of what were probably months, she went in and out of the mine pretty often and she began to get used to it. Slavery, she thought, was supposed to be a horrifying experience and yet the ponies had managed to make it seem normal.
>She was afraid that, if she kept going like that, she might end up accepting her own enslavement. She had constant dreams about escaping and removing the collar the ponies had wrapped around her neck and she was now getting used to.
>The one and only reason why she didn’t want to accept her new life as a slave was that she kept feeling more and more anger every time she looked at a pony, and she was sure that the reason for her anger was the fact that the ponies had enslaved her
>Sometimes, she envied the other slave races with their devotion and lack of doubts about their position in life. Even her sister, always the shy one, seemed to have become very obedient almost as soon as she had been put to work
>She had hoped she could escape together with her sister, but the conversation she had with her made her think that she would not approve of her ideas about running away and she might even report her

>She wanted to escape but only because she felt that it was what she was supposed to do, but she knew her sister all the other slaves were not even considering that option
>for the first time in her life PKP-27 had felt truly alone, even if surrounded by fellow slaves that were supposed to understand her. That sense loneliness had caused her to become a lot less productive
>Once again, her pony masters had surprised. Instead of ignoring one unproductive slave, an overseer had noticed that she was no longer as fast as she could, and asked her if something was wrong and that she shouldn’t be afraid of her masters
>She told the overseer that there was something wrong with her, but she would prefer not to talk about it with him.
>after that brief conversation, instead of being punished, PKP-27 had been sent to a re-education program for new slaves unsure about their lives just like her.
>It felt like a very nice and sanitized version of a mental hospital were none of the patient really crazy and were just looking for something that missing in her life
>in of the group therapy sessions, PKP-27 eventually confessed that she had dreamed about escaping for months and that she was angry at the fact that she had been taken away from her and turned into the property of a pony she did not even know the looks of
>that confession had earned her some private therapy sessions with Nurse Redheart, who was the most empathetic creature she had ever met
>She had gone to a human therapist once when she was a teen and she still remembered it had been an absolutely terrible experience
>she had never expected someone who probably owned many slaves to be able to get into someone’s head in a nice way and understand all of her problems almost instinctively. What surprised her even more was that all of her grievances and doubts were all taken seriously

>It took months of talking, but eventually she understood that her dreams of escape were just a product of her misplaced anger. She was not angry about having been enslaved, after all, she liked the slave community she had been placed in
>She was angry because her subconscious was beginning to understand that her free was built on a lie of freedom that only resulted in the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer and the planet getting destroyed
>the origin of her anger was the fact that her conscious brain was still clinging to idea of freedom while the subconscious had already understood her new reality. The ponies and her owner were just unfortunate targets of her misplaced feelings
>once she consciously rejected the idea of being free, it felt like a massive burden had been lifted from her shoulders and she able to breathe slowly and really relax once again
>the PKP-27 the went back to work was a completely different slave, she was far more productive than she had ever been in her entire life and she even showed a lot of enthusiasm.
>when not working underground, she was able to make other slaves laugh with her jokes, something that she had always been very good at.
>her hard work and her comedic talent eventually earned her a promotion to the rank of overseer, and not just any overseer. She would be assigned exclusively to village outside the mine, because that was where she could use what was deemed to be her most valuable talent
>She thought it was funny that she could finally do what she felt she had been born for only once all of her freedoms were taken away
>Looking at all the slaves laughing at her jokes made her feel like she finally had purpose in life, something that she never had when she was free.
>slavery might not have been her childhood dream, but now she liked her life as a slave