“What? What is it?”
Daydream looked at Twilight from the other side of the machine. She looked expectantly to the paper that spilled into the box, then to Twilight, and back to the paper. “What does it say?” she asked.
The lavender unicorn pointed to the jagged line on the paper. “This line shows your heart rate.” She pointed to a series of number codes below the line. “These numbers show activity levels in the senses you use in your dream.” Finally, she pointed to several bar codes below the numbers. “When I use my magic to decipher these codes, they will tell us specific activities, emotions, and perceptions you had in your dream.” The unicorn pulled the paper out of the box until she reached the end of the flowing sheet. “We start here.”
Twilight squinted as she brought the paper up to her face. “Okay,” she began. “At the beginning of your dream, your heart rate spiked a bit, as if you were surprised… All of your senses are equally very active…” Her horn glowed purple as she decoded the barcode. She read what it said aloud. “Let’s see… Amazement, wonder, excitement, joy…”
“So I felt happy at the beginning of my dream?” Daydream interrupted.
“I suppose so.” Twilight looked to the next part of Daydream’s dream. “A few minutes into your dream, your heart rate calms a bit, your senses are dulled, and you were feeling… Worried, thoughtful, scared.” She turned to the next portion of information. “Your heart rate spikes again, your senses are still somewhat dull, and you have made a discovery, feel relieved, and are thoughtful.” Twilight furrowed her brow. “You’re still thinking? Huh…”
Daydream was perplexed. “How can I have so many different feelings while thinking?”
Twilight grinned mischievously. “Don’t underestimate the power of the thought process.”
Daydream’s eyes widened.
The lavender unicorn continued. “Your heart rate’s all over the place in your dream,” she commented. “It’s through the roof here, and your senses are wild, too! Specifically, sight, sound, and touch…” She paused as she read the decoded bar code. “You are expectant, excited, thrilled, joyous, anticipant...”
“What is this, a dictionary?” Daydream muttered. “Aside from the synonyms for happy,” she interrupted, “what else does it say?”
Twilight glared at her. “Could you be patient? You were the one who wanted to know what you dream about in the first place!” She took a deep breath and looked back at the code. “Casting a spell, lifting off the ground, falling back down, thought process interrupted, exhaustion…” She stared at the paper. “That’s it. That’s all there is.”
Taking a moment to let this sink in, Daydream finally said, “…So, I had a dream about the morning I lost my memory?”
Twilight shuffled through the information. “I-I don’t really know. I guess so… given the information…”
“But why would I have a dream about that?” Daydream thought for a moment. “I mean, it explains the change in my dreams after that day. But why did it change? And what did I dream about before?”
“This calls for more research!” Twilight put on a determined face and cantered over to the texts Daydream dropped earlier. She pawed through the books until she found a few about dream psychology. The unicorn plopped down and started reading, devouring one sentence of shared knowledge after another.
Daydream stayed by the machine. She was sick of doing so much research and felt that they had most likely reached a dead end. Lying down and resting her head on her crossed hooves, she reflected on the events that had occurred as of late. Perhaps doing so would make the situation clearer.
Funny how it all started on what seemed to be a normal day. Wake up, brush hair, try to remember her dream; it was so routine. She laughed inwardly, remembering how desperate she was to know about her dream, how frustrated she was that it never changed. And now I would kill for another average day.
She shook her head. It was simpler when she was just a forgetful, day-dreaming, confused pony. She had a clear goal. Something to stick to. Something that she would know when it was achieved. Now…
What goal did she have now? She found out what she dreamed, but she was left with more questions than answers. It was all a jumble in her head. She had memories she had forgotten, questions that were currently left unanswered, she even had information that kept popping up and no idea where it came from.
Thinking back, she remembered first bumping into Derpy. The mare seemed so clueless, so innocent. How could she possibly have known that the cross-eyed grey pegasus would have had such an impact on her life?
It was just an accident, the thundercloud and the lightning bolt. It could have happened to anypony just walking in the street. Hay, it could have simply hit the dirt road below. Derpy didn’t mean to cause all of this…
Yet, it did happen. The electric shock, the flow of memories, the changed dreams, all happened. And there was nothing she could do.
Would things have been different if she hadn’t bumped into Derpy? Would she have not gone into Sugarcube Corner? Would she have not gone home? Not seen the library book on the table? Not decided to go to the library? Would she have never explained her predicament to Twilight? Would she never have lost her memory for the second time in her life? Or the third? What if Twilight hadn’t suggested going to see Colgate? Would she even have been struck by lightning?
So many questions buzzed around in Daydream’s head. ‘What if’s crowded every corner of her mind, making her unable to think about anything else.
A headache began to form. Pounding blood pulsed through the veins in her skull, sending signals of pain to her brain. I should stop thinking about this, she warned herself. I’ll give myself a migraine at this rate. But the thoughts kept flowing. She tried to clear her mind, but the more thoughts she discarded, the more thoughts entered.
She closed her eyes. The blood pounding against her brain was becoming too much. Daydream curled into the fetal position, the only difference in style being her hooves pressed against her temples as if she were trying to squeeze the unrelenting wave of thoughts out of her head, as she began to hyperventilate.
Among her panic, she barely noticed a lavender unicorn prod her and attempt to calm her.
“Daydream! Daydream, are you okay?” Twilight tried desperately to get her attention. “Daydream, what’s wrong? Did something happen?” Her voice began to rise and became increasingly panicky. “Daydream! What happened? I need to know! Did something go wrong with the machine? Tell me! I can’t help you if you don’t tell me!”
Daydream couldn’t hear the unicorn over the pounding in her ears. The pain had increased tenfold and was still on the rise. Thoughts came and went, flickering past faster than rain. With everything going on, she couldn’t handle it.
Daydream vaguely noticed her own scream of pain before blacking out.
************
Oddly enough, the first thing to come into consciousness when Daydream awoke was her natural instincts.
I’m awake. I’m scared. Is there danger? Where are the enemies? Fight or flight? Is there an escape route? Buck first, think later.
When her other senses awoke, such as sense of sight, sense of hearing, sense of smell, and, of course, common sense, she found that she was in a small room with a few pieces of machinery, a stack of journals and quills, a lavender unicorn, and an unconscious blue mare at the foot of the bed she was on.
************
“Set her down gently. There we go.” A blue unicorn with an hourglass cutie mark instructed Twilight on where to put the mare she had previously held on her back onto the spare cot he had set up in his room. “Keep her head elevated. We don’t want too much blood flowing to her brain.”
Twilight moved a pillow into place below the lilac mare’s head. She turned to the mare instructing her. “Thank you, Colgate. I hope it wasn’t too much of an imposition for you to set up a cot for Daydream.”
“No problem at all. I always keep a spare bed around for troubled guests.” The way he said “troubled” inferred that there was more to tell, but he kept silent on the subject.
The lavender unicorn nodded. “So, what do you do with all of this?” she asked, referring to the machinery and journals cluttering the room.
“You would be amazed how many ponies come in with the strangest conditions, not to mention the worst of the amnesia cases. I keep this around for examining patients and I record a log of each one to use for future reference.” Under her breath, she added, “In a world of magic, odd things are bound to happen.”
Twilight smiled. Talking about other things helped her to calm down after what had just recently happened to Daydream. “So ponies often come here for medical evaluation?”
“Well, only the more severe cases, but to tell the truth I’m more of a scientific mind. I sometimes get invited to judge science fair competitions, but I'm really more interested in psychology."
Twilight glanced at the mare's cutie mark. "So, what does that have to do with an hourglass? If you don't mind my asking," she added hastily.
"Oh, I'm not really sure." Colgate looked at her own flank. "If anything, I thought it would be a pocket watch, since I was interested in hypnosis at the time I got it, so I don't have any idea as to why it's an hourglass." She smiled, recalling a past memory. "Sure surprised my parents. They thought I would go into the family business, dentistry. They even named me after their favorite toothpaste!"
"That sounds like quite the story."
"Yeah. You should've seen the Cutie Mark Crusaders when I told them my cutie mark chronicle. They were so confused." She smiled. "How did your story go over with them?"
Before Twilight could answer, shuffling from the bed alerted the two. Colgate cantered over to the edge of the cot. “Ah, she’s waking up,” she announced.
The mare bucked her in the side of the head, effectively knocking her out.
************
Daydream looked at the mare laying unconscious on the edge of the bed. Where the hay did she come from? She wondered. Looking up, she saw Twilight Sparkle staring at her, mouth agape.
“What did you… Why did you… What… Huh?” Twilight struggled to comprehend the situation and tried to form questions unsuccessfully in her shock.
Daydream cocked her head. Why was Twilight acting this way? She glanced at the knocked out unicorn in front of her. Her mouth fell open as she reached a conclusion.
“Did… I do that?” she asked, pointing at the cyan pony.
Twilight’s left eye twitched. “Yes! You did! Why?”
“Well, she’s unconscious on my bed and you were looking at me weird…”
“No! Not ‘why did you ask’! ‘Why’ did you kick her?”
“Oh… I don’t know.”
“DAYDREAM!”
The argument went on. Twilight kept wondering how Daydream didn’t know why she kicked the mare and Daydream was stating that she didn’t know that she kicked her in the first place.
Eventually, the yelling and fighting between the two mares was enough to wake the unconscious unicorn.
“What…” She trailed off, realizing that the two unicorns couldn’t hear her over their own shouts. “Hay!” She stepped in between the two and ceased their arguing. “What in the bloody pony hell are you shouting for?”
Twilight was the first to answer. “She kicked you! I was trying to find out why!”
The mare shook her head. “It was a natural reaction. She woke up in a strange environment without a clue as to what was going on, so she bucked the first thing to come near her.”
As the mare spoke, Daydream remembered her instinctual “buck first think later” response from when she first woke up and started to blush in embarrassment.
“But Colgate,” Twilight argued, “This doesn’t happen that often. Ponies wake up in strange places all the time! They don’t usually buck somepony when they wake up. I should know. My friend Rainbow Dash always does outrageous stunts…” She trailed off, realizing that the unicorn wasn’t listening anymore.
“I’m sure it could happen to the best of ponies.” Colgate dismissed. “Meanwhile, going unconscious is not something to be overlooked.” She cantered over to where Daydream was sitting. “Daydream, would you mind if I did some tests on you?”
Daydream’s eyes widened. Ever since she was shocked, the unicorn had this nagging, natural fear of tests being done on her. It was the reason she was so reluctant to have her dreams evaluated by Twilight earlier. She didn’t know exactly where this fear came from, but she knew that she didn’t want to risk it again, especially with a pony she barely knew. “I… I don’t really…” She trailed off, catching Twilight’s glare.
“Daydream, you need this. You passed out in my basement after curling up into the fetal position and screaming.” Twilight turned to the blue mare. “Daydream would love to let you do a few tests on her,” she responded in forced politeness.
Colgate, on the other hoof, was somewhat taken aback. “Well, I’d rather not do them without proper consent…” She looked at the unicorn in question.
Daydream took a deep breath. “It’s okay. You can do some tests on me,” she declared, ignoring the nagging doubt in the back of her mind.
The cyan unicorn shrugged. “Then let’s get started.”
Daydream followed as Colgate headed somewhere else in the house, briefly noting the mare’s odd accent. Was she from Canterlot? Or Trottingham? She was about to ask, then decided against it. It wasn’t any of her business, after all.
They arrived in a large room filled with machinery larger and more complex than that of the room she woke up in. Daydream marveled at all of the gadgets and gizmos that littered the floor, walls, and tables. She looked up to see Colgate switching on a piece of equipment.
It was roughly the design of the machine Twilight used to examine her brain, but it was three times as big and looked more... metallic. It was cylindrical in shape and what it lacked in wires it made up for in blinking buttons and levers. The blue mare flipped a few more switches and the machine began to hum ominously. "W-what is that?" Daydream stuttered.
"An MRI," the unicorn replied casually.
"What's an MRI?"
"It stands for Magical Resonance Imaging. It detects traces of magic in one's body that may be the cause of whatever ailment they have." Colgate slid out a cot from a compartment in the side and began to set it up.
"Is it safe?" Daydream asked.
"Of course it's safe!" Colgate exclaimed. "I've used it countless times before."
Daydream frowned, doubting those words as the mare took out a wicked-looking hypodermic needle. "What's that for?
"It's just liquid contrast. I'm going to have to inject it in your foreleg to view the images from the machine."
The lilac unicorn was feeling less and less brave about this. Her anxiety from before was returning. Taking another deep breath, she asked "So, what exactly is going to happen?"
The blue unicorn looked up, seeming to finally realize how uncomfortable her patient was. "Well, you're going to lie down on your back on this cot and enter the machine head first. The machine will essentially 'take pictures' of your brain, coloring in sections of predominant magical activity. This will take a few hours, so the best thing for you to do during this is take a nap. I'll wake you up when the procedure is over and we can take a look at the data." Colgate softened her features. "You'll be fine."
Daydream sighed. She was still nervous, but she wasn't going to let that get in her way. "Alright. How should I sit again?"
Colgate showed the lilac unicorn the proper way to lay down, with her back on the cot and her hooves folded over her chest. She inserted the needle, which was surprisingly painless compared to what Daydream had expected, into the inside of her arm. After the needle was removed and a bandage placed on the spot, the lilac unicorn was slid into the machine.
The machine's humming soon transformed into acoustic pulses that pounded against her eardrums. She started violently at the noise, but calmed herself down after hearing Colgate's shouts of "Don't worry! That's supposed to happen!" Daydream sighed and closed her eyes. Soon, the steady rhythm of the noise lulled her to sleep.
************
"Daydream!" The lilac unicorn awoke to the sound of her name being called. "Daydream, the test's over. You can sit up now."
Yawning, she noticed that she was no longer in the machine. As she got off of the cot, she tried, and failed, to remember the dream she just had. She trotted over to where Colgate now stood, next to the immense machine.
Colgate levitated a sheet of translucent paper in front of her, examining it intently, before setting it down on a nearby table. “Okay, Daydream,” she began. “It seems that you have some powerful magic protecting certain regions of your mind.” She turned her gaze directly into Daydream's eyes. “Tell me, have you had any odd dreams lately? Dreams you can’t remember in the morning?”
Daydream was torn between widening her eyes and rolling them (eventually deciding to do both, making an odd impression on the blue mare). It was common and repetitive news to her that her dreams were going crazy and that she could never remember them. “Yeah,” she replied, then, under her breath, muttered “tell me something I don’t know.”
“Well, it seems this magic is mainly controlled in these dreams, keeping the spell constant and at full power as long as you continue to sleep.”
Daydream blinked. “How did you figure that out?” she asked. “I mean, no offense or anything, but Twilight Sparkle couldn’t figure it out and she’s one of the most powerful and intelligent unicorns in Equestria.”
"Why? Did Twilight perform the same test with you?" she asked, genuinely curious.
"Well, no..."
"Then why would you not think that different methods would produce different results?"
"I don't know."
Colgate rolled her eyes. "Back to the topic at hoof, because of that magical barrier I can’t figure out anything more without many more tests.” She looked expectantly at the unicorn, as if she anticipated her response.
Daydream, who was fed up with so many tests, groaned, “No… thank you.”
Colgate nodded. “Then I suppose you should be going.”
“Wait! What about my migraine?”
“Ah, yes. The reason you came in the first place.” She shuffled around for a moment. “Here,” she directed, giving Daydream a bottle of pills. “Every time you begin to think for a while, take two painkillers with some water.”
“That…that’s it?” Daydream asked, bewildered.
“Of course.” What did you expect, a magic spell? From what your friend told me, that definitely does not work."
Daydream stared at her for a few seconds, then smiled politely and took the pill bottle. “Thank you.” She gave her farewells and left the room.
Twilight met her at the door. “So, what did she say?” she prompted eagerly.
The lilac unicorn went over the events that occurred. “Oh, you know,” she responded. “Just something about pills.”
Twilight, having noticed the bottle of pills she carried, nodded and asked no more questions. They trotted silently back towards the library. As they were all the way across town, it became dark when they neared the large oak tree.
As they walked in the door and turned on the light, they were greeted by a surprise.