Ontoshock
People who travel to live in other countries, even countries very similar to their own - such as an American moving to live in Australia - commonly suffer a condition called 'culture shock'. The condition generally hits hard after three to four months, and can be very severe and surprising to those who experience it.
Culture Shock can affect mood, disturb sleep, cause feelings of terror or anger or confusion - or all three, and even effect digestion. Culture Shock usually goes through four phases: Honeymoon (where the new culture is enjoyed as exotic), Negotiation (where the worst symptoms occur as the person recoils from anything alien), Adjustment (while still suffering, routine helps establish stability in the sufferer) and Mastery (where the person finally assimilates into the new culture as a member of it).
Culture Shock is essentially cultural xenophobia. Some people never, ever get past the Negotiation phase. They are forced to go home, to be repatriated. This is a problem all multinational corporations have to deal with constantly as they move their staff around the world. Many simply cannot adjust to living and working in a land dissimilar - even in small ways - from their own. The problem is most critical when people from the wealthy First World are sent to nations less wealthy, technological and socially advanced than their own.
What then of the poor soul who can never return, who is ever aware of a better world and a kinder universe, trapped for life in an alien cosmos which is to them akin to the most backward of desperate, starving and conflict ridden of our own Third World hellholes? What if you lived on modern-day earth, but could remember being a unicorn?
Ontoshock
A Red Kryptonite Story
By Chatoyance
"So, Dawn, was it?"
The middle-aged woman nodded. "Dawnmeadow"
"Dawn Meadows? Hmm. I suppose they thought they were being clever there. You wouldn't believe some of the names I've seen come through..."
The woman bristled. "No. Not 'Dawn', space, 'Meadows'... 'Dawnmeadow'. One word. I changed it back."
The therapist leaned back in his chair and stroked his short, graying beard. "I see."
The woman stared at her hands as if they were unpleasant beasts grafted onto her arms. It was a look the therapist had seen often among Newmen. She looked up and stared at the wall to the left of his head with a wounded gaze. "I know. It sets me apart. It makes you creatures uncomfortable. It's cost me jobs, yeah, yeah."
The woman sighed and looked directly at the therapist. "It's probably alien to you, but some things are more important than being part of the herd." Almost immediately after she had said the words, the woman laughed. It was a bitter laugh.
Mr. Winters looked down at his portly belly, and tucked his sweater over the bulge of his shirt. When that didn't work, the therapist sat up in his chair despite the pain in his lower back. "It's been thirty years since Arrival Day. After all of that time, surely you know you do humanity a disservice there?"
Dawnmeadow brushed her hair from her face with her wrist. When that didn't work well, she reluctantly used her fingers. "Yeah. I suppose." She did not seem very sincere to Winters. "You have your moments. Occasionally. Sometimes. Maybe."
Winters scratched the edge of his beard, under his chin. "Thirty years, though, and you are still having trouble. Can you tell me about it?"
The woman made a strange chuckle, almost a whinny, definitely forlorn. "I have lived as one of you for three decades now, and every single day I reach for my bowl to eat my oats - I like oatmeal, the steel-cut, rolled kind. I don't cook it, I like it out of the box, I pour tea over it - and the bowl just sits there."
"I'm not sure I understand." Winters slumped back into his overstuffed chair. The pain in his back had become more important than trying to hide his gut. "is it an issue of touching it?" The way the woman had looked at her fingers suggested that maybe she had a problem accepting her hands. Some of the Newmen saw their hands as alien and strange, and developed phobias about them. They way she had used her wrist on her hair was another indication.
Dawnmeadow shook her head and gave a short, sad laugh. "No! It's that I CAN'T touch it. No matter how hard I try."
The therapist scratched his balding head, only to have his fingers remind him there wasn't any hair there to scratch. "You've lost me. I'm sorry. Could you try explaining that differently?"
"I'm a unicorn." The woman's eyes flashed, and for a moment Winters felt the touch of something alien in them. "Or... I was. Once." For a moment, Dawnmeadow almost looked as if she might cry. "I still am. Inside, dammit. Inside."
"I see." Winters felt disappointed in himself for not catching on instantly. Of course. Of the three breeds of Equestria, the unicorns always had the biggest issue with hands. Apparently the magic they once possessed allowed them to feel the inside and the outside of the objects they held suspended, in ways that the mere sensation of touch could never compare to. For them, having only two grasping organs was a massive handicap as well. They were used to levitating dozens of things simultaneously, with uncanny precision.
"You can't possibly understand. You've grubbed around with your soft little claws your whole life. You have no idea." The woman was staring at the clock now, doubtless working out how much time remained to the session.
"Of course. You're right. I've never experienced what you have. But I can imagine, and I have counseled many other Newmen who had been unicorns, before. I have heard such things many times. In that way I can comprehend. Intellectually."
"I hurt." The woman's eyes were pleading now.
"Of course. That is why you are here. It must be very difficult..."
"No." The pleading had become a brief flash of anger, followed by sadness. "I mean, I hurt. Physically. In this body you people gave me. It's getting old. My joints ache. My muscles get hurt when I move wrong or lift something or forget that I'm not young anymore."
Winters nodded. It was all he could do. Equestrians had three-hundred year lifespans, by earthly terms. A pony at the age of fifty was roughly equivalent to a human of twenty or so. When the ponies went through humanification, almost sixty percent of them died on the table of extreme old age. Dawnmeadow must have just turned from filly to mare when she had been humanified. A young adult pony.
"It's so short here. Your lives... Celestia... so short." She spoke the last word as if it were an epithet.
For a while, the woman just sat, clearly troubled. Winters waited. He'd seen this before. She was fighting down her own emotions enough to continue. "I'm only eighty-three. I'll be lucky to see a hundred and ten!"
Winters calculated mentally what she meant in earth years. Eighty earth years, for a human, was very respectable.
"I don't know whether to cry or be angry!"
Winters straightened the tie under his sweater. "If you hadn't evacuated, if you hadn't been humanized, you wouldn't have had the last thirty years at all. Everything is a matter of perspective, miss Meadows. Perhaps you could look at whatever years that are left to you as a bonus to the bonus you already have enjoyed?" Patients sometimes only needed a better way to look at their situations. Dwelling on negatives seldom helps. Best to direct her to seeing her survival as a gift.
"Enjoyed?" Dawnmeadow had felt hurt that the therapist had already forgotten her proper name, but she had felt more insulted by his superior attitude. "I haven't 'enjoyed' wearing this apesuit - I've tolerated it. I've endured balancing on two legs like some circus performer, I've endured shivering in bare flesh without a proper coat, I've put up with limited colors, almost nonexistent scents, news of a world filled with war and famine and pestilence, greed and corruption beyond pony comprehension!"
Winters tried to look compassionate and engaged. Years of practice had allowed him to master the expression required. The single biggest part of therapy was often just pretending to be interested. While miss Meadows rambled, Winters remembered the old saying - 'Therapists are paid friends for people who don't have any friends to tell their troubles to.' Payment was the point of it all. He nodded with his best 'compassionate face' at the woman as she spoke.
"You fight and insult each other at every turn. Your entertainment is mostly violence in one form or another, you claim to be a society of equals - but Luna help you if you don't have money, are roan or brown or black, or if you are not a stallion!" Dawnmeadow paused to catch her breath. She was shaking a little.
"Our world isn't a perfect one. But humanity is growing, it is learning. Just a hundred and fifty years ago, slavery was considered acceptable in this very nation. Now it is considered wrong in almost all of the advanced nations. That's progress. Things are getting better." Winters gave his standard warm smile, useful for putting patients at ease.
"You say all of that like it's a good thing!" Dawnmeadow shook her head. "You sit there and say 'Oh, the rich nations don't like whatever evil thing, anymore!' Advanced nations? Some tiny percentage of your world? You can just sit there and be smug about that, can you? 'Things are getting better.' It's not quite as horrible as it used to be, here at least. This is the best you can do?"
This was turning south quickly. "Miss Meadows, let's leave that as it stands, and perhaps talk a little about what brought you here? What exactly is the problem?"
"DAWNMEADOW! NOT 'Dawn Meadows', NOT 'miss Meadows', Dawnmeadow, one word, one name, three syllables, all together! It's my name, I took it back, it's mine, and if you can't be bothered to get it right I am out of here!" The woman was indeed shaking now.
Winters wore his regret face, and he truly meant it too. "I am very sorry, Dawnmeadow. It's been a long day for me, and I sincerely apologize for getting your name wrong. I promise I will not say it incorrectly again." Winters wished he could take his sweater off and loosen his tie. It had been a long day and he felt very tired.
Dawnmeadow took some time to calm herself. She tapped at the floor with the toe of a shoe, and nervously rocked for a bit. "Alright. You want to know why I am here? I'll tell you."
"Go on."
"This isn't my universe. These physics aren't my physics. Everything falls apart here. Where I come from, that doesn't happen. Not like here. Things can be made to regrow, regenerate, renew. Resources don't just... run out. You don't run out of stone, or wood, or metal, or food." Dawnmeadow scraped at her jeans with her stiff fingers as if she were pawing the soil with a hoof.
"Where I came from, there was magic everywhere. You humans... you don't even know what magic really is. It isn't Harry Potter or Gandalf or some lame excuse for things to happen. It's a living force, a living thing, and it's everywhere and nowhere, like the air. It's part of reality, fundamental and real, and it affects you and you affect it. It's an art, and a nourishment and... and... it's like gravity. It's isn't silly or ridiculous. What you called our 'magic' was a native part of our lives, and it was the best part, and now it is gone."
Dawnmeadow shifted, hanging her head. "I miss my princesses. I miss Luna and Celestia. They gave their very existences so that we could escape to your world but... you have dictators and presidents and kings and warlords and prime ministers and they all fight and feud over petty, stupid things."
"My princesses were eternal. They had always been and always would be. There was no dispute, and no fighting and no arguments. They were utterly benevolent. Can you grasp that, Mr. Winters? Can you even imagine that? An absolute authority that is also absolutely benevolent? Celestia cared for her subjects like a loving mother her foals. In your world there is no certainty - tomorrow, bombs could drop because some human got upset."
Winters considered mentioning the story he had been told by several patients about the princess Luna, but held his tongue. She had faded away shortly after the portal to Equestria had closed, it seemed petty to speak ill of the... 'dead'. Besides, this woman clearly needed to get her issues out in the open. "Yes, our world is still a volatile one."
"'Our world' - you keep saying that. It's not my world. It's your world. I remember my world. It was a world of kindness and friendship." There were tears in Dawnmeadow's eyes now.
"This is your world now, miss... Dawnmeadow. You live here, and for all of its faults, this is the only world there is."
The woman shook her head violently. "Oh, that's what you think. Just a fraction of a millimeter away are countless, endless worlds, universes, and the majority of them are filled with 'magic', with life, with wonder. They're right there, and you can't see them, and you can't acknowledge them, and you damn well can't get to them. I can't perceive them anymore either, and that hurts... oh that hurts so much. Right there, and I'm just as blind and helpless as you are."
"I will have to take your word for such things. Our scientists say that..."
"Blah-blah-blah. That's what your scientists say. It's a mechanical universe. It's a pointless, meaningless cosmos where existence is a random accident and ISN'T THAT JUST THE MOST WONDERFUL THING!" Dawnmeadow shivered. "Oh, they go on about how amazing and great and rare it is to just be able to exist at all, considering that it's all an accident. They say that like it's supposed to inspire awe and poetry and wonder! No! It isn't one bit nice. It's horrible. I don't know how you can get through each day with that knowledge.
"Seriously, Mr. Winters, how do you get through every day knowing your universe is an accident and that your life is a meaningless event that just happened randomly? Just chemicals held briefly together for a few decades? How do you live with that?"
"Not everyone believes what science says. Religion, philosophy... metaphysics... why there are all kinds of beliefs! Perhaps there is 'magic' in the world that you know nothing abou..."
"No." Dawnmeadow stared with hard eyes. "I am a unicorn. I know. I've seen. Long ago. Before. Besides... all this 'progress' you were touting to me before - that was the result of science making a mockery of old evil beliefs through proof and evidence. You can't have it both ways. Your precious science isn't just true when it's heart valves and better toys, and not true when the same understanding tells you your religion is bullshit. That's just lying to yourself. That's another thing you creatures are really good at. Lying. Oh, you are cosmic level liars."
Once again, things had gone tits up. Winters wiped his forehead with a sweaty palm. "So what you are saying is that... you are having difficulty accepting life in this world?"
Dawnmeadow sat, mouth agape for a moment. She closed her mouth slowly. "Yes. Yes, Mr. Winters. I am having difficulty accepting life in this universe. It isn't just this world, this earth - I don't like space, I don't like galaxies and quasars and black holes. I don't like entropy and the Big Bang and meaningless, pointless, hard, terrible, uncaring physical laws.
"I don't like having to walk on two weird feet when I should be on four proper hooves. I don't like a culture of lies and violence and sexism and greed and constant competition. I don't like patriarchy and racism and ethnic cleansing. I don't like cancer and heart attacks and kidney failure. I don't like other animals being tortured and killed for burgers and back-yard barbeques.
"I'm tired, Mr. Winters. I'm tired of humans being cruel and mean to other beings just because they think it is fun. I am tired of mean stories, and violent everything. I am tired of... you know what I want?"
Winters looked at the clock. Almost over. Thank god. Almost Miller time. "What do you want, Meadowdawn?"
"I'd just like to dream. Just dream. About my home universe. About Equestria. About anywhere decent. There were spells for what you people call 'lucid dreaming'. Plants too, dreamberries. Anypony could have magical dreams. If I could just have that. Just that. I could probably cope with all the assholes and jerks and insane humans if only... if only I could just have dreams where I could feel my proper body. Walk on my own hooves. Feel my mane sweeping around my ears. The taste of grass on a beautiful day."
He knew he'd probably regret it. "What kind of dreams do you have?"
"Nightmares. Ever since I entered your world. Nightmares, every night. Except... once. For a short time, when I was being treated for one of your diseases. Oh, sickness... that's another thing I really don't like about being here. That's a big one right there."
"Nobody likes to be sick, Dawnmeadow." Winters glanced again at the clock.
"I feel sick. Sick of the body, sick of the soul. The soul science says I no longer have in this death-universe. I feel like an alien, because I am an alien. I wear this human body, but I am not human. I'll never be human. Sometimes... sometimes I wish I could be, that I could just forget and be one of you crazy monkeys and... no. I don't mean that. I would never want to be something I wasn't. It's just... it hurts so much to be trapped in the wrong universe, in the wrong skin." Dawnmeadow leaned forward, her arms tucked in close, as if trying to shrink away into nothing.
"Ontological Shock."
"What?" Dawnmeadow looked up.
"That's the definition of your condition. Ontological Shock. 'Ontoshock' for short. A lot of your people have adjusted to life on earth. They live contented lives as humans now. But some... some of you can't seem to let go of your original world, your original reality. It's a bit like 'culture shock' only more profound, more encompassing. It's not just a matter of culture, it's... everything, really. The whole of creation feels wrong. You aren't alone in feeling this way." Winters took one last look at the clock.
"I'm not... alone?"
"Heavens, no. There are quite a few like you. I can't say there is a 'cure' as such, but there are some things that can help. Ways of thinking about your situation, distractions that help, techniques to find momentary relief. Perhaps we can go into some of these in your next session." Winters stood up and held a hand towards the door. "I'm afraid time's up for now. But if you want, we can schedule another session for two weeks from now."
"Two... weeks?"
"Just set it up with my receptionist." Winters waited for the woman to slowly get up and move toward the door. He moved in reaction, imposing himself so that it was clear that he also intended to leave, and that leaving should be prompt. "Hang in there. There is even group therapy available. Ask Dorothy, there. Dorothy? Give miss Dawnmeadow the sheet on the Ontoshock group, would you please?"
"Wait... that's it?" Dawnmeadow seemed less angry than fragile now.
"For this session, yes. Talk to Dorothy to set up another one. Goodbye for now!"
The door was shut. Winters let out a long breath of relief.
Ontological Shock. When they weren't pretending that everything was how it was before, they were being horrified at how things really are. Disordered, disconnected, and in disarray. Problem patients. Angry, delusional, or desperate, and seldom if ever truly content. Always yearning for the impossible.
Winters took off his tie, and finally escaped from his sweater. Ah. Better.
It had been a very long day, and miss 'Dawnmeadow! One Word!' hadn't made it any easier. Maybe he'd hit the bar on fifth on the way home. Yes. The bar.
Winters chuckled, remembering the old joke. "There's a special group for people who hate their jobs. It's called a bar!"
Yeah, that was a good one.
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On one point of this, I have to give an old-school-Internet "Me Too":
Seriously, intercourse that excrement. You want to say that the universe is random, you want to say that we don't live in a fantasy, you want to say that we're all complex and sometimes contradictory, you might be right. You want to say that that's better than a perfect world, and I look at you over my glasses like, "What the buck are you on?"
Ooh. I figured it was "ontological shock" as soon as I saw the title. And I expected something like the author's note as soon as poor Dawnmeadow started venting. Get out of my head, Chat!
Seriously though, unless you've got the magical, from-Equestria kind, no self-medicating, 'kay?
3308551
Well, we're stuck with the craptastic situation where "the universe doesn't care, and in the long run, nothing matters." However, as a really sucky consolation prize, "the universe doesn't care, and in the long run, nothing matters," so you might as well enjoy what you can.
"Very sad life. Probably have very sad death. But, at least there is symmetry."
I'm really enjoying those Red Kryptonite stories, but they're also quite chilling.
Perhaps it is irrational, but I continue to hold out hope for something more than this world. I can feel that it's out there. I can feel it inside of me. I can hear it at night. I long to see it, to touch it, to live it. Your stories seem to bring me closer to it, I continue to thank you for writing them!
ouch, how perfectly depressing. These stories are really begging for backstory, but I know one won't be coming, and if they did it would make it that much worse...
3308587And then Steinman from Bioshock comes in and screws even that up.
3309160 You and me both. On the one hand, I like science a lot. On the other, I would really like it if God was shown to empirically exist without the use of fault and/or circular logic. Even with the implication that said higher power allowed all of our suffering to exist, it might mean that there was something out there that made us intentionally and even cared for us. The idea that we are an accident is very likely, but existentially disturbing.
3309587
Eh, I more meant to say that I hope Equestria or something like it is out there ready to save us from this universe. I would *prefer* to believe that this universe is not the work of some "God" because then it would mean all of this hell was intentional and I just can't respect any being that would purposefully do something so horrific to its creations. When I look at this, I see a universe full of unimagined potential, a universe full of pathways to a much brighter future than anything we could hope to conceive of.
A future that I hope involves colorful magical equines.
3308587
The universe doesn't care. Nothing matters to the universe.
We care. Things matter to us.
The only meaning of life is the meaning we give it. There is no grand plan, no ineffable design. There is only what we make of it. And I say, instead of bemoaning the fact that the universe is set up that "horrible" instead of "awesome" is the default... that we make our own awesome. Reach for the stars. It will always be impossible until we make it possible.
3309630 A slight oversimplification, but an optimistic one. Imagine, however, if we were rescued by cheese. After all cheese is the meaning of life:
smbc-comics.com/comics/20120424.gif
3309751
I would be ok with being "rescued" by Queen Cheeselegs.
3309793She'd probably feed you to her pet Spaghetti Monster for calling her Cheeselegs. Hope it's this kind:
):
s3-2.kiva.org/img/w800/196261.jpg
And not this kind of spaghetti monster (if you know what I mean
derpicdn.net/media/W1siZiIsIjIwMTIvMTIvMDgvMjFfMjJfMjNfMzE4XzE3NjU5N19fVU5PUFRfX3N1Z2dlc3RpdmVfcmVhY3Rpb25faW1hZ2VfYnJvbnlfYnJvbnlfc3RlcmVvdHlwZV9jaGVhdG9zIl1d/176597__twilight-sparkle_rainbow-dash_pinkie-pie_rarity_applejack_suggestive_grotesque_fat_reaction-image_poster_computer_brony_brush_soda_can_fat-human_brony-stereotype_cheatos.jpg
And someone downvotes me. Way to take a joke, unknown person.
3309723
As I've mentioned before, I am not as optimistic as you. However, that said, it could be much worse. Imagine if the universe did care, our lives did matter... and this relative craphole (compared to what we can dream up) is actually what we deserve? That's depressing as hell.
3310140 Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal actually did a comic on something similar once, saying that if there is a god, and our universe is a simulation, then that god is escaping to our world because it's just that much better than the world he/she/it comes from. Or something along those lines.
3310251
Hm, you do have a point there actually. We have nothing to compare this world to but what we can imagine. It's just like the point that is made in Teacup, Down on the Farm- without a reference point to compare to, even paradise can be boring. But maybe there's something else to that- after all, if you're perfectly content with the world as it is then there's no incentive to make anything better.
A very appropriate end quote there. It feels like you put yourself on the couch, with a piss-poor therapist on the other end. Or at least a tired one. Morning appointments are always best.
Actually, writing might be the best option for Dawnmeadow. I wonder how many Equestrians became authors in this setting. To us, it's rich fantasy. To them, it's the last memories of home.
The worst part has to be the comment about the infinite worlds less than a skin's thickness away, each filled with as much magic as Equestria. And of all the gin joints in all the Multiverse, they had to walk into ours...
Part of me wants to write something with a bit more magic and wonder on Earth's end, if only to make up for this horribly, wonderfully depressing ficlet.
The picture is so fluffy....
3271304 3279849
If I were a newfoal and had heard that discourse I guess I'd weep but also feel a redoubled urge to show myself worthy to Celestia so that even if she kept regretting having taken humanity into Equestria she at least wouldn't have to regret having taken me in.
I guess the majority of the other newfoals would follow through more or less in the same direction. After the shock most would struggle to be even more perfectly Equestrians than they would have otherwise, all hoping for they day, perhaps generations down the line, when Celestia would be able to (truly) tell their descendants she didn't regret having taken humans in anymore, that she was proud of them and glad she went forth with the effort to save humanity, or something along those lines.
3272244
Ah, but consider this: it's established in the bits about Time Turner that the Earth Celestia enters to save is but one of many, perhaps infinite, alternate Earths all going through the same problem of biological collapse and extinction. If she were to let her compassion rule her she'd feel obliged to save ALL of those realities. Not just 19 billion humans, but untold trillions. And consider: she has full duty of preserving the well being of her own creatures first and foremost.
How would you solve this?
3308587
Ha! I just showed my wife that episode.
How do I deal with my existence, nay, my galaxy's existence being a sheer accident? No, it's not really unique- I believe in multiverses. The answer is indifference! I know how much bigger even a billionth of my observable universe is than me, and I don't really care. The primary escape from the bigness of the universe is, for me, thinking about those in the future who will hopefully explore it. I'm young enough that I could be a Mars colonist if I tried for it, and that makes all the difference for me. If I was born in, say, the 30s, when we knew the vastness of the universe but not if we could get anywhere in it or not, things would probably suck a lot more for me.
3533622 And so you have infinite-plus-one Celestias.