All the King's Horses.
Chapter Eighteen; Every Cloud
There’s a lot to be said for the mood altering properties of that wonderful drug morphine. Especially when administered to a species who’s natural disposition is slightly above ‘perky’, verging on ‘ecstatic’.
Katrina rocketed to the edge of consciousness like a boy cut loose from its moorings, bursting into cotton smothered bliss. Within the soft embrace of a heavy blanket, her tingling senses buzzed drunkenly at the edges of a fuzzy world. Vertigo spun the world around her, eliciting a tipsy giggle from the filly as she snuggled closer into the swaddling covers. Even the thin folds of the sheets echoed as long sloping valleys crisscrossing her relaxed form. It felt quite funny really, like her whole body was encased in balloons or as though her numb body had party melted into its surroundings.
With a rousing yawn, Kat stretched her stiff neck and wings, the latter tickling her sides as they strained against the thick cloth. Had it not been for the pressing headache and tenderness below her withers, Kat would have been entirely at ease. As it was, her discomfort prevented the soft covers from drawing her back to the land of nod. Strangely though, both the prickle of deadened nerves and the faint scalding ended in distinct lines along her legs, with no feeling at all in her fore hooves.
From a ways off came the sound of stirring, punctuated by the soft ‘clop’ as four hooves found the ground in a hurry. Gingerly opening her eyes, the stark metallic colours of a dorm room hovered as an undefined haze beyond a mountain of white pillows.
“You’re awake!” Exclaimed a strained voice from across the room.
Giggling dopily, the Pegasus watched as her view became dominated by an orangey burr, Dizzy’s relieved face slowly sliding into focus. With her forehooves perched upon the edge of the raised cot, the earthpony’s anxious smile filled the grey world with a passable impression of ‘faithful dog at its master’s bedside’.
“How… How do you feel?”
Even through a drug addled haze, the stark details of her normally bubbly friend’s distress became apparent. By all accounts the mare looked as though she hadn’t slept in days. Rather than her usual energetic posture, the little pony sagged on her hooves as though kept upright by will alone. Under the flattened mess of her unkempt mane, dull matte eyes stared out, framed by dark rings and the stains of dry tears.
“Silly filly.” Katrina mumbled drunkenly, “You’re all fluffed up! Heh, maybe I should be calling you Frizzy instead.”
Dizzy’s ear tilted in mild confusion as the bedbound filly descended into horsed giggles, her own grin faltering with renewed conflict. Salve had mentioned how confused Kat was likely to be once she woke up, but the young mare seemed oddly disconnected from reality. Leaning forward, she gave the recumbent Pegasus a comforting nuzzle, carefully avoiding her friend’s front legs.
Kat let out a contented sigh from the subtle embrace, the filly’s unkempt coat brushing against her own and filling her muzzle with the smell of daisies and tangerine zest. Yet at the same time a cool dampness was seeping into her side, a fresh wave of Dizzy’s tears soaking through the fur of her neck.
“I’m sorry.” Sobbed the filly, in barely more than a whisper, “I’m so sorry. I was so scared that you’d-”
“What happened?” Kat interjected, her rather more sober tone braking Dizzy’s blame taking.
Leaning back just enough to see her friend’s face again, the little earthpony drew a steadying breath before replying.
“The doctor said you’d tried to use blood packs to help Sarah, only… only I came in and there was the scalpel and all that blood. You… you kinda slipped when I screamed and… fell ‘into’ her.”
“Huh?” Blinking blurrily, Kat’s eyes stretched in comprehension, “Oh. Is tha’ why my arms feel funny?”
Beneath the sheets, two shot lumps moved as the filly tried to twitch her hooves. Seeing the distress rising in her friend’s eyes, Dizzy stretched her faux smile again and tried to think of the right words.
“They had to cut you free. But I’m sure you’ll be okay though!” She added quickly, wincing as her friend’s head disappeared beneath the sheets, “Salve said they’re making special arrangements to take you to a hospital in Canterlot, an-”
The lack of length and sensation finally catching up with her addled brain. She couldn’t feel her fourlegs, because there were no forelegs to feel. Dizzy froze mid sentence as the sheets were tossed aside with a flick of Kat’s long neck. Impulse drove her red rimmed eyes down the bedbound form, drawn towards the shocking absence below the pegasus’ withers.
Feathers bristling from the surprise, the Katrina gazed down at her lush green body, unblemished aside from two freshly bandaged stumps where her forelegs used to be. At first there was horror, flickering through her eyes to echo the look on the other equine’s features. Yet as she lifted her shortened appendages, the ghosts of muscles past still flexing within a mind still oblivious to their absence, an alien feeling began to blossom in her chest. Attached to this illusive warmth was, of all things, a joke.
Whatever reaction Dizzy had been expecting, it probably wasn’t laughter. Perhaps the manic laughter of despair, of a mind pushed over the edge of madness by outrageous fortune, but not a giggle filled with genuine warmth. took the filly entire off guard. Almost horrified, Dizzy sat and stared at her friend as a nervous smile scuttled across her confusion.
As Kat’s hysteria calmed momentarily, the earth pony tentatively cleared her throat. “Umm, Katrina?”
“Hehehe, oh Dizz. I’m okay, really.” Gasped Kathrin, bursting into a fresh bout of giggles as she found herself unable to rub her eyes, “I just thought -bweehehehee- no need to by this mare a drink, she’s already totally LegLess! BWAHHAHAAAAHAAAA!”
“Wh- what?” Dizzy gawked, sure that the injured pony had well and truly lost her marbles. “Kat. Don’t you know what’s happened to you? They had to take your forelegs!”
Giggles fading, Kathrin rolled onto her back and stretched out her wings across the bed. Part of her was quite weirded out. There was the depression trying to make itself heard along with a barrage of negative questions and worries. But under it all was this unshakable support that seemed to say, ‘it’s not all bad’.
“Well, guess that’s incentive to learn how to fly, isn’t it?” She said, staring up at the ceiling with a wide, almost content smile.
Utterly at a loss, Dizzy remained silent, squeezing her eyes shut as a fresh wave of tears began to seep down her face. Guilt pressed down on her brittle heart, her friend had gone snooker loopy and it was all her fault. Holding back the despair desperate to break free from her chest, the overwhelmed filly was snapped from her misery by the gentle cooing of her name.
“Dizzy. Look at me.”
On the bed, Kat’s calm smile had turned to face the tearful pony, radiating the promise of hope and forgiveness.
“Do I look afraid?”
Dizzy shook her head.
“Do I look sad then?”
Again the filly replied silently.
“Then what have you to be sad or afraid about? It was an accident, sometimes things don’t turn out the way we plan. Maybe later I’ll get upset or frustrated about this, but right now that wouldn’t help you or me.”
The smile turned away again to look at the slowly rotating fan hanging above its bed, the occupant releasing a long sigh of comfort. An odd susurration rippled through the air, hinting at an indescribably tiny sound that was more felt then heard.
“Mmmm this bed is sooo soft. Funny isn’t it. All that time I wanted to die, and I couldn’t see what I actually had. No matter how bleak the world seems, there’s always a Brightside. Heh, Brightside, that’s a nice name isn’t it?”
It was as though a thousand tiny bells had rung in quick succession, the pegasus’ remaining blissfully unaware of the display of glittering lights falling from the emerging pattern on her bare flank. The fur surrounding it seemed to darken, a gradient of deep green leading into a tiny star of brilliant white, like the light at the end of a dark forest path.
“Besides,” Muttered the pegasus happily, absentmindedly scratching her flank with a wing, “The important thing, the reaaaaly important thing, is that it worked. Didn’t it?”
Dizzy blinked as the question drew her away from Bright Side’s new cutie-mark, unsure how much she should her exhausted friend.
“… Yes.”
“oh.” On the bed, the filly’s chest rose and fell slowly, exhaustion calling her back to the land of nod once again “good.”
Whilst the Bureau presently contained only six highly spacious clinics, it had been originally designed to house up to thirty. A phased transition was already in full swing, the more luxurious modules decommissioned one by once and replaced with many smaller efficient units. For the time being though, lucky applicants that were accepted to the Portland centre were treated to facilities built to the exacting standards of the corporate elite.
This meant that, beyond the pleasant spacious façade, there were large voids behind every wall that ended up being used mostly for storage and service access. Down the edge of Clinic three, the entrance to the first new micro clinic now played host to a somewhat irritated Eric Malcolm, gazing stonily at a dimly flickering computer screen. Sterile as the surrounding environment was, they were marred by doctor’s impassive expression, though the oversized office chair in which he sat completed the sense of juxtaposition.
Blatantly ignoring the ergonomic curves of his recently pilfered seating, the gaunt man sat sideways with his knees over one arm rest, staring intently at the live camera feed playing out on the low resolution screen. It was being streamed from a storage room less than thirty feet away, one that sat parallel to supply pipes for the conversion rooms in the adjoining clinics. Conveniently, this made it one of the most heavily shielded areas in proxy to Clinic four. After the ‘incident’, the ex-janitorial closet had been hastily adapted to house the hazardous patient that now slumbered peacefully within. Numerous wall panels of the flat-pack building had been detached and moved down the corridor to reinforce the weaker parts of the structure, though even now the doctor was only just beyond minimum safe distance from the red double doors.
Doctor Malcolm finally gave up on the rapidly degrading feed. Though the source was quite close by, the image of his ‘patient-by-proxy’ remained fuzzy at best, glitching as the high Traumatic field played hell with the camera’s electronic sensor. Setting the tablet aside, he reached down beside his awkward perch until his fingers closed around the handle of a large conical appliance. Tapered end against his mouth, the device let out a high pitch whistle as Malcolm pulled its trigger and spoke into the aperture.
“SALVE. FORGET IT, THE CAMERA JUST CRAPPED OUT AGAIN.”
A moment or two passed before a teal equine emerged from the double doors, nickering in irritation at the crass interruption. Flanking the mare were two newfoal unicorns she had recruited from the clinic, both promising students of advanced magic manipulation. Whist Salve approached the slouched Doctor the other two remained behind at the closed doors. One screwed their eyes up in intense concentration as they practiced levitating a metal cup while the other popped open a book on equine anatomy.
“You know,” She sighed, setting down the camera she had been carrying between her teeth. “That instrument is really quite abrasive. I can hear you perfectly well in there if you’d just raised your voice a little.”
In case his impassive features didn’t convey his feelings on the matter, Malcolm raised the megaphone to his lips again.
“DULY NOTED.”
Ignoring a clatter of dropped cups from the students, Salve fixed her colleague with a stiff glare and expanded a thin blue field of magic around her horn. With a short squeal of burning electronics, blue smoke began to seep from the megaphone’s mouth piece along with the smell of ozone, symbolizing the sole of the machine had ascended unto silicone heaven.
“Party pooper.” Muttered the doctor, idly casting aside the newly anointed paperweight “Everything still looks in order though, no obvious abnormalities or extra limbs. Is she reacting to stimuli yet?”
Rearranging herself to get access to her saddle bags, the equine retrieved an old-fashioned clipboard and checked the various additions since her last visitation.
“Not so far. After her airways cleared up there hasn’t been any other issues. Not all that much to do but wait and see if she wakes up. I’m worried about her pigmentation, or rather lack thereof. Never thought I’d see a true Albino.”
Malcolm was genuinely intrigued. “You don’t have albino’s in Equestria?”
Shaking her head, salve lowered the clipboard and looked at the towering doctor sincerely. “Well, no, not like this anyway. Ponies can be white coated, and even have red eyes. But even then they have some slight tint or subtle hue. Her though… she’s just ‘blank’, no colouration what so ever, even her mane is practically see through.”
With a sigh, she turned back to her notes “But other than that I’d say she’s a perfectly healthy young filly. Too young though.” Salve added as an afterthought.
Malcolm smirked inwardly, privately relieved that his knowledge wasn’t entirely redundant.
“Age is exactly right actually.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?” Salve said, giving the doctor a quizzical look as she secured the clipboard. “Acording to what her sister told me, she should be at least fifty or older. Yet now she can’t be more than sixteen at a stretch.”
With this confirmation, Malcolm’s introspective smile took on a devious edge. “Trade you the reasoning for an explanation behind the pointy hat brigade stood back there.”
Following the doctor’s gesturing finger towards the diligent students, Salve squinted in momentary confusion before finally grasping her colleague’s vague reference to horns.
“Oh.. well it’s two fold really. They’re both interested in pursuing medical careers in Equestria and I thought this would be good experience. They get to see patient care first hoof and we get coverage given we can’t be down here all the time.”
Noting Malcolm’s approaching interruption, Salve raised a hoof and cut him off at the pass.
“Yes, they’re inexperienced, but she’s stable and doesn’t need much more care then a comatose patient. Anyway, the other reason was something one of the instructors mentioned. Having more unicorns in the area should help to disperse all that saturated magic. I’m not sure of the machanics myself, but it does seem to be working none the less.”
At this the medic opened her pack with a gentle touch of magic and allowed a small glass square to float out. Suspended within the resin was a thin blackened membrane, artificially grown human skin to be exact. Before the recent jump to mass production, when R24 had come in small twenty-seven ounce jars, the skin slides had been an essential tool for Bureau staff. By measuring the speed at which the exposed tissue disintegrated, a standard model was developed to check for dangerous levels of Thaumic radiation.
“We ran the Slide test again.” Salve continued, rotating the sample in mid air. “It took five minutes for the effects to show, more than doubled from this morning alone. If that continues it shouldn’t be too long before it’s safe for her to go back to Clinic four.”
“Heh, so you’re acting like a magic heat-sink?” Goaded the doctor, swinging his legs around until he was no longer contravening safety regulations.
“Umm, sort of. I think it’s something to do with ‘ambient Thaumic modular thingies’.” Salve stuck her tongue out at the twisty technical jargon. Give her a good Atypical Odontalgia any day. “I didn’t really cover magical theory much, just the basics.”
Malcolm ‘humphed’ in response as he stood and stretched his cramped limbs. “Well that is a blessing. With any luck that blackmesh investigator will get off our backs once he can observe the result first hand.”
“And you can tend to your own darn patients again.” Beamed the pony, her attempt at human sarcasm leaving a bitter aftertaste on her tongue.
Pausing, Eric looked thoughtful as he turned and started back towards the module’s exit. “She’s not my patient anymore Salve. I handed my notice in yesterday.”
“What do you mean?” Salve gawked, appalled at this sudden revelation. “
Eric just smiled thinly.
“Have you ever heard of ‘Clark’s Laws’?” He asked, sweeping out another cigarette and tucking it behind his ear. “One of them states that, Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Salve rolled her eyes dramatically and fell into step beside Malcolm, “That dose sound like a very ‘human’ parable, yes.”
“Then how does your ‘magic’ work?” Queried the Doctor, his manor suggesting he knew the answer well in advance.
Knowing that her colleague was goading for an audience, the unicorn decided to walk head long into the fray. “Eric, nopony needs to know how magic works, because it just does! It’s as much a part of Equestria as the rocks, trees or animals. My point is that if Equestrian magic were some kind of advanced technology, then probably wouldn’t be nearly as… well, Magical.”
“More importantly,” Continued ‘Eric’, sweeping up where Salve had left off, “it would be confined by reason. By all accounts, if ‘reason’ had its way that girl should not have lived. No Calcium, no bones. Yet a few extra drops of blood, some happy thoughts and Presto! Suddenly you’ve got a whole working body? I’d say it was impossible but the evidence is lying in a coma next door.”
“My point is, the reason you don’t understand it, is because it is unquantifiable. One minute it’s just another force, the next its performing miracles. There are no laws which it universally obeys, thus no way it can be predicted or controlled.”
Pushing aside the hanging plastics, Malcolm strode down the metal stares leading to the void between clinics. The path ahead was lit by work lamps gathered from all over the site, creating a tunnel of light towards the service exit back to the bureau foyer.
“The rules have changed, in that they’ve been thrown clean out the window. Frankly I’m too tired to give a damn. No point in being a mathematician in a world where one plus one equals fish.”
“Maybe you’ve just got the wrong equation? Does that mean the answer isn’t worth finding?” Remarked the mare, stepping around the sullen doctor as they crossed into the auditorium, “Anyway, I thought you were going to tell me about the age thing.”
Malcolm scoffed and lent against the glass barrier looking down the lobby. “Why do you need to know? It’s ‘Magic’ afterall, and no pony needs to know how that works.”
“Oh come on, you can’t lead me on like that only to not tell me!”
“… Fine.” He requited at last, “Nanites can’t accommodate biological changes, so were creating perfect copies of cells to replace dead or defective tissue, including her DNA. Physically she aged until she was perfect for combat and then stopped. Biologically though, she hasn’t aged a day since the Revenant procedure.”
“Ah-ha!” Salve barked triumphantly, almost making the doctor jump sideways, “You see! That makes perfect sense. Your knowledge isn’t redundant Eric, you just need to open your mind a little. Magic didn’t bring Sara back from the brink, it was Kat’s conviction that her sister couldn’t die.”
Razing an eyebrow, Malcolm inspected the unicorn critically. “Are you seriously suggesting that she was saved by the placebo effect?”
“Why not,” Shrugged the pony, “If happy thoughts and a positive attitude can keep cancer in check, why can’t it apply to the whole body?”
Silence descended between the two as a new wave of human shaped ponies walked through the sliding glass doors. No two were alike, but each would be looking for a new life or an escape from their old one. They wouldn’t find either here.
Perhaps it was wrong to offer redemption on a silver plate, without strings or responsibility beyond those that were seen as a given. But every single man woman and child down there had a story to tell, a thousand moments they wish they could take back, a price they had already paid three fold. Conversion would show this too them, bare back the walls of self worth and expose all that they were beneath.
A pitty it came at such a price.
Stripped of the violent ape that could both create and destroy at the behest of a cruel cycle, some would burst into tears when they first awoke in their new forms. They would think themselves unworthy of this second chance, such was the price of clarity. But they would be lifted from sorrow and doubt by those around them, bolstered by the kinship they would find awaiting them. In a world without selfishness or greed, they would find new drive in the happiness they could bring to others.
They may question themselves in the fullness of time. Perhaps they would regret the cost or lack thereof.
But what few would understand is that the only requirement, is to want for happiness.
The End.