Neet Exodus - SymphonyAnon


                                            >It's been 40 years since the magi-tech revolution. Unknown sciences, math, developments of all kinds happened in a few years.

                                            >The house where my dad grew up didn't even have water, he had to go to the village well.

                                            >I grew up in that same house, with computers, televisions and advanced commodities that were once considered impossible hallucinations of craftsponies.

                                            >There was an unease in the air and everyone felt it, but we powered through with smiles like we usually do.

                                            >Righteous Charge, the Chief Magi-Technician, announced "impossibly important" news to be revealed on the next magi-tech symposium.

                                            >Having wanted to meet the legend himself for years now I decided to leave the NEET lifestyle for a few days so I could at least shake his hoof.

                                            >I showered and even cleaned up my room! It's been what, 5 months since I last vacuumed this place? Perhaps I could take him here to share an evening?

                                            >The day arrived and I arrived early to the conventi- I mean symposium. I expected a massive queue to enter but it seems there were barely 2000 ponies wanting in.

                                            >Are magi-tech symposiums that unpopular? Or maybe they were just busy.

                                            >Either way, I made my way in, bee-lined for the conference room and waited.

                                            >About 30 minutes later Righteous Charge came out with a stylish black suit and a solemn yet dark look on his face.

                                            >Oh my Celestia I can almost smell him! Thank the stars this seat was empty!

                                            >Then he spoke. Two lines that changed the course of ponykind.

                                            >"This world is about to end. We have concluded that this world will catastrophically run out of magic in 10 years time and magic-dependent life will perish."

                                            >There was a roar as hundreds of journalists, cameraponies and news anchors reacted to the impossible news. Is the world really going to end?

                                            >One newspony with the BeezFeed logo on her legband asked with a professional voice that betrayed her trembling legs if he was sure of it and if the reason was known.

                                            >He confirmed and explained the technicalities that flew over everypony's head, but we all understood that this was it.

                                            >After what felt like days of answering questions the conference was over and the symposium was closed early.

                                            ...

                                            >It's been 8 years after the incoming end of the world announcement, and true to its word, there's been cataclysm after cataclysm. Unicorns all simultaneously collapsing from magic deficiency, Cloudsdale not being able to make weather anymore, mass crop deaths, even the Everfree was receding and the Timberwolves crying in pain as their life was ripped apart.

                                            >I always throught the world was going to end in my lifetime and joked about not caring. But I never expected it to be this catastrophic! I expected something like Tirek or Chrysalis' plots, not a flat-out world erasing.

                                            >I wanna live! CELESTIA DAMNIT I WANNA LIVE! But what can I do? The Ark spaceships will only take rich ponies or crew. NEETlife got me this far, but I can't sell 'is good at games' as crew work and I can't afford the ticket for the ark so I'm trapped here.

                                            >Or so I thought. The Ark ships needed maintenance and janitorial staff. Ponies that would live forever on the ship and would never see solid earth again in their lifetime. Or several.

                                            >It didn't matter. If it meant not dying in 2 years time it was worth it. So I signed up. I'm not a mechanic so I lied and said was a very good janitor. I hate cleaning but it is better than soulripping death.

                                            >2 weeks later a notice came through with an URGENT label in red letters. I was accepted and there was no going back; I was to take at most 2 boxes full of my stuff, take it to the ship and move to live there as the last ponies (and a few non-ponies) got processed.

                                            >Cryostasis is one hell of a thing. The old wizards claimed it would never work, but it did. Magic could sustain the body, but every stabilized pony meant time stolen from the planet's last stand.

                                            >It didn't matter, survival was more important, goverments worldwide were collapsing, Equestria was just one misunderstood public statement short of total anarchy.

                                            >So I packed my high-end computer, my few books and diaries, my mother's pillow and I said goodbye to my family's house. Forever.

                                            >The trip was short, they were building one of the arks nearby. You couldn't look away. It consumed your sight. It was bigger than mountains. Tartarus, it dwarfed the sun in it's massive size.

                                            >Would Celestia leave with us or would she stay with her subjects to the bitter end? What about the other princesses? Is Luna going to be here? Do they have their own arks?

                                            >You wouldn't know it, but Luna was a hardened gamer. I once met her on a Pony Farmtress 2 server and we hit it off. I did not know she was Luna at the time however. I almost soiled myself when she spoke! I was clamming and grieffing the goddess of the night!

                                            >But I digress. I made my way to the docking bay and gave the tired looking stallion my custodial ID. He looked at me with a mix of pity and despair on his eyes then gave me a keycard for room 2143.

                                            >That's a lot of janitors and maintenance crew. Then again, this ship is more like a country than a ship.

                                            >As I made my way to custodial bay, I noticed it.

                                            >Everypony here was a social outcast. There were the telltale signs of NEETdom everywhere. Haynime posters, figurines, computers, etc. Did nopony else want the custodial jobs? Or is it that this was the only job we could get?

                                            >I went to my room and opened the boxes.

                                            >I unpacked my computer, put the books and diary on the small bookshelf, replaced the neat and tidy pillow with my mother's one and hopped on the bed. It was softer than what I had at home.

                                            >Home... I'll miss that place.

                                            >I fell asleep for who knows how long, but I got awakened by the blaring alarm screaming on the halls. I quickly leaped out of the room and went out, only to find everypony doing the same.

                                            >An automated voice claimed that the ship was leaving port and for any conscious personnel to lay flat on the floor lest the hyper acceleration knock them unconscious.

                                            >I must've heard the warning late, cause I could feel my whole body weigh a thousand times the normal weight and collapsed like a brick.

                                            ...

                                            >I woke up in the medical bay with a dizzy head and a bandage around it, seems I almost broke my skull. I thanked my lucky stars the grease on my mane worked as cushioning.

                                            >"Thank fucking God you're back, Floor, you almost died on us ya cunt!"

                                            >That dissonant stallion way of speaking in a filly voice. That motherbucking shit eating grin. The unmistakable green fur.

                                            >It was Anonfilly69! Or Anon, as she liked to be called. We had sent each other pictures of cosplay back in the day so I knew her face. We were pretty close friends on World of Humiecraft.

                                            >After we reunited like long lost friends she introduced me to the rest of the custodial staff.

                                            >You'd think that they could summon a couple hundred golems and keep the place clean that way. Turns out that would overstrain the magical engine and leave everypony stranded, so we were given a chance at life here.

                                            >There were about 1800 mechanics and 400 janitors, myself included. It didn't take long before one of the more techie mares found out how to link our computers into the ships' intranet.

                                            >200v200 on PF2... Now that sounds fun and I knew the meta farm placements.

                                            ...

                                            >It has been a couple of months and we've all found a husbando or waifu by now. Among the frozen ponies of course.

                                            >We had a solemn vow to never claim a pony that was already claimed. Mine was none other than Righteous Charge, I used to snuggle next to his regal cryopod and read fanfics to him. Most ponies did similar stuff. Anon liked geting intimate with a green mare with a lyra on her flank, often rubbing herself while whispering stuff.

                                            >We didn't judge. Most of us did the same, and we would never get a special somepony in normal circumstances, let alone these impossible times.

                                            >A hierarchy of sorts manifested after a few weeks. The two ways you had to increase your rank were being better in games or aiding others. The chefponies weren't that good at videogames but Celestia did they make some mean hay tenders. Each sunday we'd check the ranks and write the number on our IDs.

                                            >We got a pretty good thing going. The farming bay was automated and would produce enough food for everypony and the few ponies that knew how to cook took it upon themselves to make decent meals out of the veggies instead of letting everything become nutripaste. We did recycle the food scraps and plant waste into nutripaste and 'biowaste' into fertilizer.

                                            >I myself was rank 58/403, not too shabby if I do say so myself. That earned me double rations of hay tenders, or "tendies" as we called them. If I could get to rank 40 or higher I could get triple rations and could sell these to other ponies so they did my work for me.

                                            >Thing is, everypony thought of that.

                                            >We quickly developed an economy fueled by tendies. Higher rank ponies would do less work by paying others in tendie rations, meaning they had time to train harder and climb the ranks. Lower rank ponies would take the extra tendies and do extra work, but they couldn't train as hard and some got stuck.

                                            >It was never said, but everypony accepted the chefsponies as the defacto banks. Every day you got your rank's worth of tendie IOUs, which you could give to the chefs for a standard 10 tendies ration, which are supposed to last you the whole day. I tend to eat somewhere around 18 tendies daily, so ranking up is very important if I want to restore my neet-life.

                                            >There was one pony in particular that everypony respected despite the rank. Scruffy, the 403/403 Janitor. He actually liked cleaning the toilets and washing dishes or cleaning the sometimes stuck biowaste recyclers (which smell awful). He never demanded extra tendies for the hard work so a rumor started that he worked for free. Yet ponies would always give him a ration or two of the tenders as thanks for the hard work.