The Conversion Bureau:
Inversion
Interlude
Throwing down his datapad, Jim Trenton sighed, and gathered up his coat. He needed something to drink and he needed it now, by God.
He found his way to a small tavern in Ponyville after hailing a carriage taxi. Since the arrival of humanity into Equestria and the merging of worlds, life had been somewhat outside the norm for him. But then again he was technically on another world— for however long that was going to remain true— where the dominant species were pastel colored ponies of all things. Outside the norm had practically become the norm for him in the last two years or so. He settled himself into one of the seats. Luckily the tavern had been willing to renovate in order to accommodate their bipedal neighbors long ago thanks to the fact that Minotaurs also existed in this world so it wasn't any real hassle.
"Scotch on the rocks." Jim said to a waitress who came up to him. "Hell, make it a double."
"Bad day, Jim?"
Jim turned to see Mayor Mare approaching, and gave a helpless half shrug.
"Same shit different day, Mayor." he said as he made room for her. He liked the mayor of Ponyville. She had been somewhat unsettled at her first few interactions with humankind, but eventually warmed up to them. "And I'm sorry to say things aren't getting any better."
Mayor Mare nodded as she took a seat next to him just as his order arrived. If he was drinking Scotch, then she felt confident in guessing that there was probably more to his statement he wasn't saying. Not yet at any rate.
"So, I hear Pinkie Pie converted about two weeks ago." Jim said. "Can't imagine that went over as good as she might have wanted."
"Her friends supported her through her orientation and were there for her when she came out as a human. Princess Twilight was...less than enthusiastic about the entire thing, mind you, but she kept a brave face for Pinkie." the mayor replied, ordering herself a small salt lick. "Research into the Field not going well I assume?"
"Understatement of the year, Mayor." Jim replied, taking a long drag off his drink. "I might as well be trying to kill Godzilla with a pea shooter for all the progress I'm having on that damn thing."
She winced. She didn't understand the reference entirely, but she got the basic idea behind it.
"Have you tried coordinating your research with Princess Twilight?" she asked.
"I wish. She still refuses to collaborate with us. She just demands any information we have on the matter and works on her own. I dunno what her problem is, tell you the truth. I want to help you guys. We all do. But she just refuses to get the idea into her head that we're not just dragging our heels here. We want to preserve your race as you are as much as you guys do. Why she can't see it I have no clue."
"I think she's just scared, Jim. Remember, she's used to being able to find answers for things like this after consulting just about any and every book she can get her hooves on, and failure isn't exactly something she's entirely taken well." The mayor said, and shuddered as she recalled the Smarty Pants incident. Sometimes she wondered about the sanity of the fourth Alicorn.
"I can't say I blame her for taking this badly. I mean, Unicorns stand the most to lose. Aside from maybe the Alicorns. The Pegasi might lose their wings, but in the long run that's nowhere near the loss the magic users will face." Jim sighed. "And things might be worse than we first thought."
"How so?" The mayor asked, looking concerned. Jim shook his head. And slammed back a hard gulp of his drink before letting his glass slam to the table with a heavy thunk.
"Wish I could tell you, Mayor. Really, I wish I could. But I can't even be sure of what I've learned yet. We're making sure to double check anything we get when it comes to research on the Field because one screw up could result in God only knows what. All I can say is that if what I've discovered is true, then it needs to be kept quiet for now. Don't need the populace to panic." Jim replied. He looked about ready to try to drown himself in the ice in his glass, all truth be told, and that worried the mayor more than whatever unrevealed discovery he'd made did. She reached out and patted him on the back gently. For all that humans could do, Ponies still had amazing hoof strength and could do damage to humans accidentally if they didn't watch how much force they put into any contact with them.
"I'm sure it will work out, Jim. Or at the very least, I have every confidence that whatever the problem is, you and your people will do your utmost to either minimize it or solve it altogether."
"I hope so, Mayor. I really do. Because if this is accurate, I have no idea how it will affect your society." He sighed and shook his head, a doubting look on his features. "I'm not even sure how we'd attack this problem if it turns out my discovery is a legitimate issue. I'm hoping that I'm wrong. But I'm having the computers run through another set of simulations and all just in case. But the chances of solving this if its real aren't good."
"I wish I could help, but I don't even know what the issue is. Maybe you'd feel comfortable talking to one of the Princesses?"
If anything, Jim actually looked worse at that suggestion, slamming back another large gulp of his scotch.
"I'm going to have to by tomorrow, I think."
The four alicorns arrived at Trenton's lab late in the afternoon the next day, and Trenton looked as bad as he had in the bar. Worse, actually, as he was nursing what felt like the mother of all migraines. But he gave a warm, if pained, smile, and shook hands....or hooves in this case...with the four princesses.
"Dr. Trenton. A pleasure." Cadance said with a smile. Though she then frowned. "You don't look well."
"Blame it on the hangover. I went on a small bender last night."
"Bad news I take it?" Celestia asked even as she stepped forward and applied as much magic as she could to Jim to help him with the effects of his binge drinking. He gave her a grateful smile and then moved to his workstation, picking up a large sheaf of papers and handing them to Celestia, who took them in her magical grip as she and Luna and Cadance looked them over. Twilight stood a bit off to the side.
"Something wrong, Twilight? Usually you're the first person to want to look at my work notes." Jim asked.
"Pony."
"What?"
"Pony, not person." Twilight said flatly. "I'm not a person, and I really wish you wouldn't call me that."
Jim sighed. This was a semi-regular thing with her, and he mentally chided himself for not seeing that coming. "That doesn't answer my question though."
"I want to hear whatever this is from you. Not your notes. I'll see them soon enough." Twilight said, ruffling her wings while shifting her weight from one side to another in agitation.
"This is about Pinkie converting isn't it?" Cadance said, looking over at Twilight, leaving the other two Alicorns to look over Jim's notes. The looks on their faces told him they were taking it as bad as he was. Cadance made her way to Twilight and gave her a comforting nuzzle. or tried to. Her sister-in-law seemed unwilling to be mollified by the affection.
"It's their fault." Twilight said after a few moments. "If they hadn't created that conversion serum, ponies would still be ponies, and Pinkie wouldn't be some caricature of herself instead of the mare everypony loved."
"If we hadn't created the serum, you entire species would be headed for extinction, Twilight."
"At least we'd be dying as ourselves! Bad enough that our worlds are merging, but we're the ones facing extinction, whether by the Field or your serum. How is that fair? You don't have to make the kind of sacrifice we are, and you still haven't found a way to make it so that we don't have to convert to survive the Field. I don't think you're even trying!" Twilight felt bad for the look of hurt on Jim's face, but after keeping this in for so long, she couldn't stop herself, despite the appalled looks on the faces of her fellow Alicorns. "When I was changed into an Alicorn, it took me some getting used to, but at least it wasn't that big a change. I'm still a pony, after all. And I never planned to be anything else. I don't want our species to go extinct, and I want to stay an Alicorn. It means some big changes, particularly in lifespan, but at least it meant I'd still be me!"
Jim sighed and shook his head as he plopped into his chair heavily. "Like the old saying goes Twilight, 'Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it.' "
Twilight was about to retort when his actual statement processed in her head. She lilted her head in confusion.
"I don't understand."
Turning to his computer terminal, he generated a projection on the screen in the wall. "Take a look." He said. The screen showed a blood sample, with a caption stating that it belonged to a pony called Summer Breeze. The image was taken from an actual blood sample on Jim's workspace. He picked up a small liquid dropper. "That image is a normal pony blood sample." He typed in a few commands, and the magnification became such that they could now see the physical structure of the sample, as the blood vessels of an Equestrian pony were very different from that of a human's in look and genetic construction. "Watch what happens when I add the serum to it." Adding in a few small drops of the serum caused an almost immediate reaction. because it wasn't an actual pony, the process took only a few seconds, but the computer was able to record those changes and play them back in super-slow-motion.
"I'm not sure I understand, Doctor." Luna said, cocking her eyebrow. "You've shown us a demonstration of this before. It was how you were able to show us how the process of Conversion would work to begin with. Why is this an issue now? Has some unknown side effect emerged that's caused an issue? Are our subjects safe?"
"The ponies who've taken the serum are fine, Princess Luna." Jim said, holding up a hand to calm the Alicorn. "The problem isn't with them per se. It's with you four. Or rather the problem affects you four. My notes show that the greater the magical power concentrated in a single place, the more rapidly the field seems to devour it. That's bad enough, but I'm afraid there's a bigger issue at stake."
Turning to the computer again, he typed up another few commands. Four sets of blood samples came up, with captions below each sample that indicated them to have come from the Alicorns themselves. Jim picked up another dropper, this one with four different ends, and exposed each blood sample to some of the serum. The effect was immediate and frightening, as each blood sample reacted violently to the exposure, to the point that the petri dishes shattered as their blood samples evaporated. The four Alicorns had stepped back several paces when the reaction to the serum had started.
"What does this mean?" Cadance said, eyes having shrunken to pinpricks in fear. "A-are we somehow incapable of being converted?"
"Sadly, yes. And because the Field reacts more quickly to higher concentrations of magic....."
"We would die more gruesomely and quickly than those of our subjects who had been first caught by the field in the Crystal empire." Celestia finished for Jim, and shuddered. "Is there any means to avoid this?" Jim gave the princess a sad look and a helpless shrug.
"I'm working on it. But as it stands right now, unless we find some way to make the serum work for you....we may have to either send you off planet, or leave Equestria without its rulers."