5. The Animals of Farmer Jones
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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON
By Chatoyance
Chapter Five: The Animals of Farmer Jones
Calloway was uncomfortable. He tried to get back to sleep but he just couldn't. He raised a hand to rub his eye. It stung from the sweat that had gotten into it. That was when he noticed the silence.
The constant rattle of the air conditioner was gone. The only sound was the rapid breathing of the pony pressed into his back. Calloway sat up, and looked around the small motel room. Daylight streamed through the curtains. The air inside the room was warm and stale. What time was it? He checked the courtesy clock on the stand but it showed 4:15 am. The light was brighter than that. The local power must have failed at that time.
"Get up! Wake up!" Calloway shook the groggy pony the rest of the way to consciousness. She groaned as she lifted herself to a sitting position, supported by her forelegs.
"W-what... what time is it?"
Calloway was up and looking for wherever he had dropped his trousers the night before. "I don't know. Hopefully not too late. The power's off."
Dropspindle was on all fours now and clambering off of the bed. "It's hot in here." She made her way to the curtains and pulled them wide with her hornfield.
"AAAH!" Calloway blinked and turned from the glare. When he returned his eyes to the window his vision was still too blurry to make out what was beyond. Dropspindle was pressing her muzzle to the glass trying to see into the distance in the direction from where they had come.
"I don't see the Barrier, so that's a good..." The mare stopped speaking then turned from the window. "I can't see the mountains. There's no mountains!"
"MOVE!" Calloway had his pants on, he finished donning his shirt. He didn't bother to button it. He ran to the door, Dropspindle beside him. The door open, a wave of terrible heat seared them - Jaén was even worse during the day. Without constant power and air conditioning, nothing could live here now.
Direct and burning sunlight swept over them, making everything brighter still. Calloway glanced up to see the global smog layer being forced back by a massive shock wave in the upper atmosphere. It looked like a gray blanket being rolled away from his face. Chasing the blanket of smog was a shimmering wall of what looked like shining glass. Calloway stood, transfixed by the sight. The mountains were indeed gone. So were the nearby hills. The flat plateau of the city abruptly ended in a vertical and infinite mirror of the blinding daylight. The Barrier was less than a kilometer away.
"Into the car!"
Pony and human scrambled to enter the jitney. Dropspindle writhed into her seat, sliding behind the buckled belts. Calloway took the driver's seat and pressed the starter button. The NeoSterling engine rolled over, sucking alcohol. It started and whirr-rumbled to life.
"We almost overslept." Dropspindle couldn't process the full horror of the statement. She spoke the words flatly, almost without emotion. For her, it would have been her last night with another living being. For Calloway, it would have been his last night.
"Come on, come on..." Calloway had his foot to the pedal, the jitney went faster and faster. The roads were better here, in the former province capitol of Jaén, but they were still rugged and long unmaintained. The jitney jerked and bounded as the wheels ran over potholes and broken sections of sticky asphalt. In the terrible heat, the ancient, pre-Collapse roadbed had become soft and partially melted. The hot breeze from the open windows hardly helped either of them. Jaén was a deathtrap now in many ways - even without the Barrier, the heat would claim them in short enough time.
"We're making progress!" The place where the Barrier intersected the ground grew further and further distant. Dropspindle clung to her seatbelts while the jitney shook and bounced. She was panting now and wishing the vehicle had one of the human's cooling machines built into it.
The Great Barrier of Equestria stretched from horizon to horizon behind them, dividing the continent. Outlying shacks and buildings were taken by it, shifting and changing as they passed through. The gray-brown high desert became lush, green fields as the shimmering wall passed over it. But on the other side of the line, the green fields rushed away at impossible speed. For every meter of earthly land that the Barrier claimed, hundreds, perhaps thousands of kilometers of new Equestria exploded out the other side. It looked like a fierce river of greenery beyond the Barrier, streaming away at lightspeed into an impossible vastness.
When the Barrier absorbed a human structure, the construction was changed, transformed - and even erroneously duplicated. What had once been a solitary three-story walk-up became a long dribble of colorful, pseudo-Tudor farms and houses that vanished as they flowed away into infinity. A dead, dry tree standing lonely next to the building became a gigantic stretch of forest streaming away from the surface of the advancing wall. Whatever single thing the Barrier intelligently transformed, at the speed the Exponential Lands were being created, it printed copies thousands of times over, filling endless new regions of Equestrian spacetime.
The Barrier was smart, Calloway had heard on the hypernet. It learned, it adapted. At first, it could do little more than make sand and sky. Then it learned to transform plascrete and gravel into soil and grass, piles of cars and rusting metal into rolling green hills, and even lightpoles into trees. By Year Three, there had been reports of mutie-rats being swallowed by the Barrier and not being killed by it. The Barrier had learned to transform the genetic aberrations into perfect little bunnies and squirrels, and other cute animals. Some suggested that given enough time the Barrier might even work out how to transform humans, and thus make the Bureaus entirely unnecessary.
But there wasn't enough time. Calloway, being a palynologist and a purple-level Twoper, dealt directly with the lesser elite. He was given the best tools for his job, and the best accommodations for his comfort. His expense account was almost unlimited - if he played his cards close to the chest. He found for the elite the very last of the planet's accessible petrochemicals, and to help that happen, he was greatly indulged.
Among those indulgences was information. The planet was dying, it had been dying for a long time. With the oceans dead and the forests gone, with nearly all animals extinct and the air increasingly stale and foul, there was, at most, thirty years left. Perhaps much less. Technology would not save them, it would only prolong the suffering. The Barrier did not have time enough to learn what a 'human' was, or how to transform them into a native Equestrian. The Barrier wasn't just a thing. It was vaguely intelligent in some strange manner, but it was not truly smart. It did the best it could.
Like all of us, Calloway mused. All anyone can do. The best they can.
The massive pile of shopping carts ahead, blocking off the Carr a Jaén - who would do such a thing? In the middle of nowhere? Worse, in order to make it to the 3N, Calloway had needed to drive nearly parallel to the Barrier for some time now. This gave the wall time to catch up again. As the jitney approached the pile, Calloway considered options. He could stop, get out, and he and the pony could work to move the carts. They could also collapse in minutes from the heat - the only thing keeping him conscious at this point was evaporation from the breeze. He already felt sick to his stomach from the hell outside. Dropspindle, with all that fur, definitely wouldn't make it.
"RAMMING SPEED!" He'd always wanted to shout that while preparing to plow into something, anything. Today his wish was coming true. If he had a second wish - and he desperately did - it would be that the carts would part neatly, that nothing heavier was beyond them or buried under them, and that no part of this would end up in a tangled wreck of metal or flesh. Or both.
Dropspindle shrieked as the jitney van smashed into the rusting pile of metal shopping carts. The sound of at least one headlight shattering, the spidering crack that now ruined the windscreen, the rearview mirror on her side being broken off - all drowned out her scream. Crashing, smashing metal and tinkling sounds temporarily deafened her sensitive pony ears. But, with some grinding and pushing, the jitney forced its way through.
"Not as good as the movies, but fun nonetheless!" Calloway listened for any obvious damage to wheel or drive. They had lucked out. The jitney roared on, the breeze back again, thankfully. "Water! Grab a canteen!" God it was hot. Night was awful, day was beyond terrible. "Listen - splash some on me. You too."
The look was worried.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. But if I don't cool off, I'm gonna pass out, and that's no good. Do it. You too, I need you conscious!"
Dropspindle slipped loose and collapsed on the floor of the van. She had never felt so weak in her life. She felt her stomach heave, but there was nothing in it. She got to wobbling legs and made her way to the middle of the jitney. She could just drag one canteen back. It took supreme effort to regain her seat by the window. For a while she just sat, breathing hard, letting the burning breeze from the window rip the sweat from her coat.
She pulled the canteen up with her forehooves and stuck the cap in her mouth. She twisted her head this way and that, but the cap wouldn't come off. Her teeth kept slipping around the thing, she couldn't get a decent grip and...
"Use your horn! You're a unicorn! Do that magic shit!"
She didn't even feel embarrassed. She didn't flinch at the human's violent sounding expletives. She was too miserable to react. Weakly, she formed a grasping field around the cap and felt with it to judge which way the threads ran. Oh yeah. Righty tighty, lefty loosey. Some human had taught her that, months ago. Working on her bathtub. Oh, for a cool bath! Nice cold water, just soak in it, just...
"Water! Douse us! Get us wet! NOW!"
Dropspindle awoke with a start. "Sorry!" She had never been so hot in her life. Her muscles ached and she felt like throwing up. She felt dizzy and a little like she might pass out. Again.
Water snaked out of the canteen, covered in faint thaumatic light. This was a real and amazing magical spell she had learned as a child: how to make a mess. The water politely balled itself up, gleaming like a crystal sphere in the air.
"Okay... that's pretty neat." Calloway could not help but glance repeatedly at the little ball of water floating between himself and Dropspindle. "Now wha..."
The water ball exploded, shooting out left and right, dousing Calloway and Dropspindle both. Almost none of the water squirted on the dash or the window or anywhere else. The water felt hot at first, because the canteen itself was hot, but the burning wind of their travel quickly cooled it.
"Ohh... oh, that's a good trick! Just amazing, Droppers! And..." Calloway smeared the water around his face, dobbing some on his other cheek and on the arm by the window. "...also really refreshing. That helps. Wow it's hot. I can't even guess."
Dropspindle used her hornfield to spread the droplets through her coat. Then she lifted the canteen to her muzzle and drank some of the hot water inside. "Droppers?" She levitated the canteen over to Calloway, who stared briefly then took it from her thaumatic grasp.
"Um... yeah." The water was too warm, but it was wet, and thanks to the waterball explosion and a bit of evaporation, he felt like he could keep it down. "Nickname. Better than 'Dropsy', that's a disease. 'Droppy' just sounds stupid. So I went with 'Droppers'." Calloway took another mouthful and let it sit for awhile, then he swallowed. The flesh of his mouth felt like old leather.
Dropspindle took the canteen back with her field. She took another drink and put the cap back on. She sent her field through the entirety of the canteen, to feel the level of the water inside. Less than half full. If only they had awoken earlier so as to have time to refill the canteens. Or been less exhausted the night before. "I prefer 'Dropspindle'."
Calloway was silent for a while. "Okay. Dropspindle. But you need to know - nicknames are a sign of camaraderie to humans. It wasn't an insult. It was meant affectionately."
The unicorn clung to her shoulder strap as the jitney followed a tight left turn onto the 3N towards Bagua. "I know. Thank you for that - for the affection - and I do understand your custom. I just prefer my whole name is all." She felt bad saying anything, this was only the second time the human had appeared to warm up to her, but having her name said correctly mattered to her. She had worked very hard to get it properly translated into the most common humanese language, and it was hard enough to feel any real acknowledgement from these creatures in any case. It was a matter of respect.
"I'll try to remember, Dropspindle." Calloway glanced out at the dry bone gulch where once the Rio Amazonas had occasionally flowed. "But forgive me if I slip up in a crisis. There's one more use for a nickname - it's shorter and quicker when the feces hit the fan."
The feces had hit the fan. Dropspindle shook the last canteen with her hornfield to demonstrate precisely how totally empty it was. They were out of water. Worse, not one of the GovRation foodpaks had anything liquid in them. They were all dry replibars and nangineered wafers. Calloway hoped that the selection from the abandoned market did not accurately reflect what real Blackmesh regularly chowed down on, because the poor bastards had it hard enough as it was.
"What are we going to do?" Dropspindle lowered the canteen nearly to the floor of the jitney, then released her field. The container fell with a hollow thunk.
Calloway had taken the 5N north, following the dry Rio Amazonas. They were fast approaching a side road that would take them to Santa Maria de Nieva, another province capitol. It would likely have water. But it also represented traveling parallel to the Barrier once again, not to mention the time that would be used searching the small town. "You're certain there's nothing - nowhere else?"
Dropspindle turned from the pile of opened foodpaks and grabbed the map in her hornfield. The map floated up beside Calloway and hung there. "Look for yourself! There's nothing but tree stumps and cracked dirt forever! There's hills, we've got hills, and mountains - there are more of those, plenty of those, and dry rivers - there's a big dry river right by us but no other towns!" Her voice sounded shrill and not a little panicky. Calloway remembered a holo about Equestrians and something about how they needed more water than humans did. The little unicorn was almost certainly in a very bad way.
Calloway didn't feel very good himself, truth be told. "No choice. We're heading for Maria de Nieva because without water we can't make it. If that's all there is, then it had better be enough."
Dropspindle stumbled back to her seat and tried to climb back into it. Eventually, she just lay with the front of her body over the seat, and her hindquarters splayed out to the side. Calloway wanted to help her up, but the road was difficult and he couldn't figure out any way to get a good hold on her that would be beneficial. Grabbing her mane certainly wouldn't be nice. Instead he briefly reached over and patted her flank, then returned his hand to the wheel in time to avoid a particularly nasty pothole.
The red polka-dot of the earthly sun was setting when they pulled into Santa Maria de Nieva. They had needed to use the spare alcohol tanks, now they needed fuel as well as water. They had only made 240 kilometers. The map was old, and according to it, such a journey should have only taken three and a half hours. It had taken all day and had emptied all of their canteens. The road had been terrible, and where it was not broken and ruined, it had been missing entirely. Beyond the road was a landscape of endless treestumps or abandoned fields of cracked earth that had once been pastureland carved out of the stump forest. Occasionally they had passed broken construction vehicles, many clearly dating from before the Collapse.
Tree stumps and former hamburger factories glowed crimson in the last dregs of the dying light, as far as the eye could see. Dust devils prowled the former feedlot factory farms or skulked among the stumps. The heat had been relentless, and both pony and human collapsed when exiting the jitney. They had parked in front of what seemed to be a supermercado. The power was clearly down here as well - no lights burned anywhere. It was marginally cooler here than it had been in Jaén, thanks in part to having caught up with the global smog layer which blocked a great deal of the searing sunlight. It was almost a comfort and a relief to be able to stare at the setting crimson disk with unblinded eye - this was the sun that Calloway was used to seeing, not the harsh glare of the smogless version.
The LED torches came into their own approaching the pitch dark supermercado. Inside, Calloway and Dropspindle found several cases of packaged water. Bottle after neoplastic bottle, they guzzled and laughed and splashed each other. The dampness did not last long. When at last they felt better, they set about searching the isles for better things to eat than the opened Foodpaks back in their jitney.
The market had apparently already been raided - quite thoroughly - but some items had slipped between shelves, or had been kicked into corners during whatever frenzy had occurred here. Eventually, Calloway and Dropspindle gathered a small pile of goodies. Nanostructed packages of simulated corn, quinoa and the thing that had replaced chocolate made up their dinner. All were high-priced items for Southamerizonian Twopers. It was a feast and they gorged themselves upon it.
Then they collapsed on the supermarket tiles.
"We need to get fuel!" Dropspindle shook Calloway awake from his food induced coma. They were both desperately weary, but the memory of having to leave Jaén was still in their minds.
"Uh... oh... yeah." Calloway dragged his resisting flesh upright. "Sorry. Just so tired, you know?"
"I know. But we have to stay ahead."
Calloway lay down again on the cool feeling tiles. "Maybe we don't. Not immediately. How far are we from Jaén?"
Dropspindle worked to remember. "240... something kays. Something like that." She sat down again. It felt good.
"Well, that damn Barrier only travels at fourteen klicks, two-forty divided by fourteen... um... ten tens in a hundred... god my brain is not braining properly... two hundred is twenty tens... no... SHIT!"
"Seventeen. We have a seventeen day lead at the moment. Sixteen to be very safe." Dropspindle lay fully down, the tiles pleasant against her undercarriage.
"Seventeen. Sixteen. For safety." Calloway rolled onto his side and looked at the mare. "Better at math than I am at the moment. Man, I feel awful. Better than before, but awful."
"I have never felt worse than now in all of my life." Dropspindle lolled her head to the side and gazed back with one large, magenta eye.
"Equestria isn't like this I take it. Not any part is like this?"
Dropspindle let her eye roll and her lid close. "Not even the largest desert is even close to this. I didn't know it was possible for any place to be this hot. Your world is horrible, Calloway!"
Calloway slumped, laying his cheek down on the tiles, rolling so his belly met the floor. "Wasn't always this bad. Th' used to be a jungle. Rainforest. Birds and tall, tall trees. Water. Rivers. Lots of rivers. O' so the hist'ry holo says. Green. Nothin' but... green." He was already half asleep.
"I wish... wish I could... could have seen it... back... then." The tiles were cool and Dropspindle was already chasing something blue through the beautiful trees of magical Equestria.
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6146996
Ah, but Psychometry. Dropspindle can and does do all you state, plus having ability to - after a short spell - know the history of the fibers or fabric, and what happened to it, and those who have touched it. A longtime student of parapsychology, I derive from the accepted terms already in use, you see.
Great story, can't get enough of it.
(Also, I love how the two of em are bonding. Heh.)
6147507
I am very pleased you are enjoying it! That really makes me feel better tonight. Thank you!
They made it to Honduras?! Send ponies, bits, and potion! (Anyone who gets this wins my undying love)
On topic, is there any kind of endgame for the two travelers here? Are they hoping to stumble across some leftover potion somewhere? Is there a harbor where they're going to look for a boat to South Africa? Is the plan to stand on the edge and shout for Princess Luna to save them? Or are they just running for Calloway's life with no plan? Because if it's the latter, it seems to me that Dropspindle took a very large risk for a very little chance of success.
Of course, as a pony, she might look at it as a great reward, on the "who saves one life saves the world entire" logic.
Well, that was harrowing. Still, our heroes have a growing margin of error and relatively plentiful supplies. Things are looking up for them... which probably means you have a monkey wrench ready for throwing.
Also, I love the image of landmarks getting massively replicated as they make contact with the Barrier. It's sort of the ultimate example of cartographic distortion, like if the Mercator projection resulted in a Greenland that was bigger than the Earth.
6147412
Well, IF you want to nitpick ;) psychometry has nothing to do with measuring objects, but measuring souls, and souls are perfectly capable of observing things. :P
But your point is well-raised and I have enjoyed this foray into wordplay.
6147700
Well if I were to guess PJ atm I doubt their plan has evolved much beyond run from the giant magic wall of doom!
Considering the fact that so far they've either been in constant peril of dying, extremely exhausted, and frantically scavenging for supplies. I doubt they've had the time to sit down and discuss what their ultimate goal is.
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Shame she didn't like the nickname Droppers I kinda liked that name. Its really cute and I think it fits her nicely.
"Neigh-neigh," says the horse.
I don't get this chapter's title.
6148918
Apparently you do - you are the first to catch that the titles of the chapters - past the first chapter which is an arbitrary reference to a stage play / movie (that I have never seen!) from 1951 - are the titles of the original Little Golden Books first published on October 1, 1942.
The Animals Of Farmer Jones are starving. They are hungry, every last one of them. But where is Farmer Jones? Why isn't he feeding them? Oh wait he does. All the animals get fed. They are finally comfortable.
And finally, so are Dropspindle and Calloway!
6148347
My eyes are burning from reading this chapter...
...from the descriptions of that heat course, another glass of water will help! Good thing I don't live down there let alone at that time, I already start to melt up here!
It just brings to mind a much, much better version of a Minecraft world being generated. Vast expanses of potential and lushness, a great canvas to build towns, lives, and friendships upon! Renewal. And yet for our two protagonists, a vast expanse of loneliness should they be caught now...
Dare I let my curiosity ask what this does?
I think I'm going to need some more water too, feeling rather thirstier after these two chapters!
Ohh, how I wish they had a pegasus with them. A pegasus could leach water right out of the air for them. If there's atmosphere, then no matter how dry it is, there's oxygen and hydrogen which can be recombinated into dihydrogen oxide. Even if there's only trace elements of hydrogen in the atmosphere, hydrogen can be produced from solar or electrical energy with a little manipulation. Given direction, a unicorn like Dropspindle could manage it.
#amateursciencegeekwhoseinnerponyisapegasus
I can forgive them thos. They're exhausted.
But they need to haul flank.