6. Bedtime Stories
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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 Six: Bedtime Stories
The Comisaría PNP Sectorial Santa María de Nieva had the explanation for where the citizens of the town had gone - the El Gobierno-Mundial cuerpos ponification oficial had come and mass Converted every human in the entire region. De Nieva had been a Primary Conversion Center. Hundreds of thousands of people had come through this small town, been sprayed down, and then hauled away to Equestria en mass by a fleet of Equestrian airships.
Santa María de Nieva was covered in posters for the event, and the morning light revealed the evidence of those hundreds of thousands. Vehicles of every kind and type surrounded the tiny provincial capitol. Abandoned lifting-body airships had been half-landed and half-crashed into the dry bed of the Rio Amazon. Ancient autogyros perched on the tops of buildings where their owners had left them, entire jitney caravans were crushed into whatever space was available amidst the other vehicles on the ground. There was a giant pile of motorbikes and motorized bicycles that had been dumped in one place for some unknown reason. Or perhaps the reason was obvious - there were bottles of home-brew, long-kept wine and other liquors - many from before the Collapse - laying on the ground everywhere. The town was carpeted in bottles and containers.
There had apparently been a 'Going Out Of Humanity' party. Streamers and decorations covered everything that was not already encrusted in bottles, leftover rotting food, dried vomit, and clothing. Abandoned clothing was draped over everything, everywhere. Calloway and Dropspindle were forced to move cautiously around the town simply because of the mess. "It must have been one hell of a fiesta. At least they had fun before they went pony!"
Dropspindle stopped in the street, her hooves buried in empty pre-Collapse wine bottles, replicated food wrappers and assorted underwear both male and female. "You say that like becoming Equestrian is something to dread. As if it were the end of fun. Is that how you see Conversion?"
The heat was much less than it had been in Jaén, but it was still uncomfortable. It was also a remarkably moist heat - while the Rio Amazon was dry, and all the trees were gone, the ground deep below still bore significant amounts of water. The edgy weariness that both human and pony felt still plagued them.
"I don't know how I see Conversion. I've lost friends to the pony lifestyle - so to speak - and they seemed happy enough. Oh, if anything they seemed over the moon!" Calloway stepped over a pile of skirts and blouses and - intriguingly - diapers, and began walking again. "But they also just drifted away. Pony this, Equestria that - one big exclusive club, and humans need not apply. I don't know if ponies have fun because I've never been invited."
"I find that hard to believe!" Dropspindle diverted around a Pre-Collapse, self-driving Tesla Model EV and rejoined Calloway beyond the bumper. "No pony would exclude anypony just for being human..." She drifted off, remembering her experience of the alcohol bar and the religion church in Huancabamba. "Well... alright, that's not entirely true, I guess. Were you being scary?"
"Scary?" Now Calloway stopped in the street. "Scary? Me... scary? I'm the kid everyone beat up in corporate school. My big martial arts technique was the Face Block. I majored in Backing Down, Running Away and Bleeding Copiously - I am not what anyone would call imposing, much less scary." His tone was joking, but his face looked pained.
"Your friends, once they were ponified, they just turned their flanks on you? They never asked you to do anything with them again, ever? Not ever?"
Calloway looked at his feet. "Okay, yeah sometimes. A few times. To pony stuff! They were asking me to help plant gardens, like that was supposed to be fun or something. Hoofball and stuff. A few parties. And dinners. But going to dinner would just be uncomfortable! I mean if I sat in a chair, then I would be up high and away from the group, and I don't want to sit on a freaking pillow, that hurts my back - and what was I supposed to do, stick my face in the plate? Eat with my hands? And humans can't digest hay anyway!"
"So they invited you. But you didn't accept." Dropspindle sat down on a pile of Twoper jumpsuits. They were mostly red, but there were a few greens in there and even one blue level suit.
"No! I mean yes, they invited me... but of course I didn't go! They wouldn't really want me - big ugly naked ape? I'd be Frankenstein at the table. Nobody wants that." Calloway looked everywhere but at Dropspindle. "They just never got the hint. I had to shift locations, and then just as soon as I met new people, THEY'D go pony. Same bullshit all over again."
"Calloway..." Dropspindle wanted to hug the poor little human, but it was too hot and he did not seem to want to even look her in the eye. "Equestrians have fun. Lots of fun. Even working together is fun - a lot of fun, which is why they wanted to include you. But I assure you ponies play and laugh and sing and joke and..."
"Yeah... yeah... I know. I know." Calloway straightened his back and looked at the nearby bar. " Hey... let's check in there. We haven't tried that one."
Dropspindle frowned briefly. "Yeah. Okay. Maybe we'll find a case of booze hidden away?"
"That's the spirit!" Calloway grinned, finally looking at the Equestrian. "Spirit, get it?" Dropspindle didn't. "Spirits? Another name for... never mind."
They had been searching the town for three days now, desperate to find alcohol. The NeoSterling engine of their jitney burned alcohol, and having been adapted by the locals, it could burn any form of the stuff. Impurities did not ruin anything, at least if they didn't build up too greatly.
So far, the pair had found two and a half bottles of what appeared to be something home-made, then sealed in Pre-Collapse containers. Altogether less than 27 ounces of fuel, definitely not enough to get them to the next human construction on the disturbingly empty map. The former humans had been astoundingly thorough in their consumption of 'brain pickling' fluids.
On the fifth night in Santa María de Nieva, Dropspindle found herself perplexed, and a little worried. Calloway had asked for some alone time, but that he would be back at sundown. They could share dinner together, but he needed some space. Maybe she could search more of the homes on the east side of the town for anything useful. It was okay, he had said. But he had seemed odd in his manner, even strange.
The homes were not fancy, some had dirt floors. Dropspindle managed to find 1.75 liters of fuel, hidden at the bottom of a chest stored in a closet. The bottle was very old, clearly from before the time that the humans called the 'Collapse'. It was a form of jitney fuel called 'whiskey', and apparently it was 'proof' of some argument that Dropspindle couldn't understand. That brought their total fuel to eighty-six ounces. Two and a half liters was still woefully insufficient for the next stage of their journey, but it was a victory, even if small.
On a wall in what must have been a filly's room, Dropspindle found a drawing and some crude humanese writing.
Mañana los hombres del gobierno
vendrán a convertirnos en ponis.
¡Estoy tan feliz!
Quiero ser un pony mucho.
Dropspindle had been told that she would need to learn two languages in order to achieve anything in Peru. Humans had many ways of speaking, and did not share a common language. Long ago, before the Pax Equestria, the dragons and griffons and diamond dogs had spoken their own languages. The dragons still did, among themselves. The most common language of the humans was called English, and it was used for trade and commerce. It had become the default language for most of the humans. Next came Chinese and Russian, because they had the most resources and had been the last 'superpowers' just before the human's Great Collapse. After that came Spanish, because there were a lot of humans who spoke it. It was the language of humans that were treated the most badly by other humans.
Peru was in the Southamerizone, and the entire continent had apparently been used as a reserve for humans that other humans did not want to help or deal with - much like the Afrizone and the Southasiazone which the human consulate had warned Dropspindle about traveling to. Almost every human in the Southamerizone spoke English and some variation of Spanish - though many in the middle of the continent also spoke Chinese, because humans that spoke Chinese had built many things there and been important in the zone for a while.
Dropspindle had been enchanted, before she left for earth, with two languages. English had lasted the longest, but her Spanish was beginning to fade. This was because she had used it the most, and the most used spell always fades first. She struggled a bit with the note - the picture drawn on it depicted stick-figure humans and stick-figure ponies apparently dancing or standing around - but finally got the meaning of it. The human child that had written it had been happy at the thought of becoming a pony. This made Dropspindle smile.
The light was dimming and growing faintly red. It was time to start back towards the 'mansion' that Calloway had chosen for them to stay in. It was the largest house in de Nieva, and had apparently belonged to one of the last hamburger lords. Large swaths of the rain forest that had once covered the region had first been burned away to convert them to grasslands. The grasslands were used to raise cattle - but not intelligent, speaking cows. Calloway had been very quick to explain this when Dropspindle had become enraged. Unthinking cows. Like meat machines, and not at all like the bovine people she had met and known.
The humans murdered the cattle and ground up their corpses because in the Northamerizone, before the Collapse, 'hamburgers' were an inexpensive meal. 'Fast food' corporations made billions, even trillions of units of human money, and some of the poor people of the Southamerizone got to live - for a short time - almost as well as those who ate the hamburgers up north. But others paid the price of this temporary boon - the aboriginal humans who lived in the rainforest. They were just pushed off of the land, or killed, or forced into camps, or ended up wandering the concrete streets of the Spanish speaking humans.
The hamburger lords lived well by Southamerizone standards, but soon the grasslands died off and became sand and cracked earth. The rainforest was like a carpet over a desert, and when the carpet unraveled, it could never grow back. Grass lived for only a short time on the ruined soil left by the burning of the forest. Once the cattle had eaten it, it could not grow back either. So the hamburger lords sat on their fortunes until those too ran out.
The mansion of the hamburger lord had air conditioning, it was electric, and there were solar panels on the roof. Calloway had made them both work once again. The batteries for the night time no longer worked, but during the day they cooled the house greatly, and were careful about the doors, so that the relief from the heat lasted almost until morning.
As Dropspindle was leaving the house of the unknown human filly and her family, she noticed a photograph on the wall. It was of a human woman and a human man. The man was wearing something Dropspindle had seen many times when she had first entered the human's world. The man was wearing a Blackmesh uniform. More pictures confirmed that the man was almost certainly the sire of the little human filly who had drawn and written the artwork on the wall. Blackmesh. They were assigned Emerency Ponfication Kits!
Since the human government had come and saved everypony here, and for miles around, the man in the picture wouldn't have needed his kit. It might still be in this very house! Dropspindle galloped to the larger room where the man and woman must have slept. She began digging through the closet there, looking for anything that looked like it had been made for a Blackmesh Security purpose. Closets were not a priority to search - humans didn't seem to keep their alcohol fuel in them.
There was the man's uniform! The stretchy carbon-fiber material of it was supposed to become like armor when anything moving quickly impacted it. The nanowoven fabric acted like a 'non-Newtonian fluid', whatever that meant. Dropspindle had spent an hour chatting with a very nice Blackmesh guard when she had been processed for entry into earth. The suit was covered in pockets. She nibbled at one until she remembered, despite her excitement, that she was a unicorn. She immediately began running her hornfield through the pockets and all over the dark spiderweb of the uniform.
There were many devices and tiny machines. She felt them short out or become ruined by her field as it passed through their electronics. So many little machines. Finally - a bottle! A flask! Dropspindle popped open the pocket and lifted a small, rounded, spun carbon-fiber case out of it. She held the case in front of her in the dusky light from the windows. On the front, in white humanese symbols, it read:
E P K
Contains one standard dose.
For emergency use as directed.
Property of Blackmesh Security.
Dropspindle opened her thaumatic perception, and the bottle ensconced within the case glowed with arcane light. Dweomer radiated out into the dim, colorless cosmos from the flask. She turned her head after noting that the normally gray, dark-as-night earth was being softly illuminated from behind her. Equestria blazed like a spotlight held to her face. The Barrier was a wall of color and light that shone straight through brick and concrete, buildings and mountains and land. Nothing earthly could block the unutterable glory that filled half of her magical vision.
Turning back to the bottle suspended in front of her, the minute spark inside now seemed barely there at all. It had been some time since she had used her couplement's vision. She closed her inner eyes and the bottle was just a bottle once more, and the walls of the house were opaque and no longer glass. The room was getting very dark now, the sun was setting. She made her way to the open front door, the small case tucked into her scavenging bag along with the bottle of whiskey. She felt very excited - whatever else happened, Calloway would live!
And whatever else happened... she would not end up completely...
alone.
Dropspindle entered the 'hamburger king' mansion, being careful to slip through the door while it was opened as narrowly as possible. It was important to keep the cool air in and the hot air out. Calloway had rigged things so that the house became positively icy during the day, when the solar panels worked, so that the cold would last as long as possible through the hot and humid night. He had hammered covers over the largest windows to reduce the 'greenhouse effect'. The interior of the mansion was fairly dark all of the time now, but paths to important rooms were lit by small LED lamps which they had found in a hardware store in the town.
The smell of something burning - wax, earthly candle wax - assaulted Dropspindle's sensitive pony nose. Combustion was different in the human's universe, and stung her nose whenever she encountered it - which was frequently. Humans liked to burn things - food, especially flesh (UGH!), old pieces of wood, dried feces, and other things. Fuel was hard to come by, and so humans used anything that they found would combust.
Dropspindle followed her nose through the long hallway to the dining room.Many candles illuminated it. There, she saw the table covered in very pretty dishes and bowls, and the bits of shiny metal that humans used to protect their hands when they ate. There was a centerpiece, an elaborate vase into which dry, long dead flowers and other brown plants had been artfully arranged. Nothing at all grew anywhere nearby, so where Calloway had found even dead plants was a curiosity.
"Hello? Calloway? I found the answ..."
Calloway appeared from the door to the kitchen. He was dressed in a strange, uniform-like costume. It was a black suit and jacket, with a white shirt underneath, and cuffs at the ends of his forelegs. Arms. Around his neck was a wrapped and knotted length of some silken fabric, bright red, with a small metal ornament tacked through it. His wild mane was neatly combed and brushed into place, and while there was not enough water to waste on bathing, he had cleaned his barely furred face. He had also shaved off the fur that had grown around his jaw and under his nostrils.
"Madame! Welcome home, mistress of the mansion!" Calloway bowed while holding a cloth over one arm.
Dropspindle stared. It was all she could do.
"Dinner is prepared, as always, but tonight we have a very special menu for your enjoyment!" The human's eyes sparkled with glee. What was the creature doing? Had he gone mad? "The finest imported Equestrian hay begins the repast, tossed with dried apple slices, also imported."
Dropspindle removed her scavenging bag and slid it with a flash of telekinesis to the corner of the room.
"Please, Madame, take your seat, and dinner will be served." Calloway pulled out what appeared to be a low, small table upon which he had arranged a large and comfortable pillow. She would be able to sit comfortably, yet reach the table surface easily. Human chairs and tables were not designed with ponies in mind. Dropspindle approached the impromptu Equestrian-styled seating arrangement and goggled at it. The entire situation was confusing, yet clearly not any form of human mockery or insult. "May I help you up, Madame?"
Dropspindle allowed Calloway to assist her onto the table, she was too stunned to do otherwise. He helped her become comfortable, smiled, poured cool water into a glass for her, and then vanished into the kitchen. "Calloway? What... Calloway?"
Busy sounds came from the other room. Dropspindle looked at the table. There were two settings, only his had the metal 'silverware'. The tablecloth smelled musty and old, but it was beautiful. It had been elaborately embroidered. Dropspindle levitated her glass and sipped water - then took several deep swallows of it. She had forgotten how thirsty she had become while searching the town. She filled her glass from the nearby pitcher and downed it again.
The embroidery was gorgeous. The tablecloth had once been white, but had yellowed somehow. Things did that in the human universe - they degraded in strange ways. They lost color, or gained other shades. They crumbled and fell apart for no reason.
This could be fixed.
Dropspindle's horn began to glow. She formed the shapes in her mind and twisted them into the pattern she had spent months learning. There was a brief flash of thaumatic light. Her tincturation spell left the tablecloth looking like freshly fallen snow. The yellow stain was gone, the original brilliance restored. Such a beautiful piece of work, such lovely detail.
Calloway ducked into the room, holding a large metal bowl that he was stirring. "You okay?" He seemed worried.
"Sorry! Just tincturating the tablecloth! See? It was originally white!"
"Tinc... um... yeah. Ahem." He straightened, the worry fading. "Very good, Madame. Please excuse the intrusion. Dinner will be served shortly. I am in the process of plating it now. Madame." Calloway half-bowed, not enough to spill the bowl, and turned neatly and left. He seemed to be playing a game, Dropspindle mused. Perhaps this was some kind of human form of recreation or something. He didn't seem like he had gone insane now, when he had entered, whatever mask he was wearing had briefly dropped. He had been genuinely concerned for her. He had seemed like himself. The 'Madame' business was some kind of playful act.
Dropspindle wanted to play along, but she didn't know the game. It didn't seem right to ask for the rules, so she resolved to simply act appreciative. Whatever the game was, it seemed to involve treating her like one of the Canterlot court or something. Hmmm... a butler! That was it! Calloway was playing being the human equivalent of a butler! Like the nobles of the court sometimes had. How interesting! Humans had professional helpers too. That was interesting to know.
Calloway swept into the dining room, a large platter in his forehoo... hands. He set the silver platter down on the long table, and began fussing with the bowls and tools on it. Using some kind of attached pair of gripping... silverware... he filled the bowl he had placed in front of her with real food. Real, actual food! Hay, as promised, tossed with dried apple bits and a sprinkling of a dressing that smelled sweet and sour both. It was astonishing. Where had it come from? It was not replicated food. It was authentic, as he had said.
Replicated food - nanostructed rations and wafers and blocks - had been a problem for Dropspindle during their journey. Replifood just didn't digest well for Equestrians, and Dropspindle had been plagued with alternating bouts of severe constipation, cramps, gas and diarrhea for the past several days. She seemed to be adapting, gradually, but it was very unpleasant, not to mention painful. Finally... real, genuine, not-manufactured food!
Calloway filled his own bowl with cooked, replicated package noodles sprinkled with the same dressing. His had no dried apple bits, it dawned on Dropspindle that there must have only been one, probably dessicated, apple. He had used it entirely for her. "Please, Madame, tell me what you think."
Dropspindle felt tears well in her eyes. She bent her head and nibbled daintily at the hay. The hay was old, and had the smell of dust and possessed a faint taste of mold. But it was real, and it had come from Equestria... like the apple. The bits had been dry for a very long time, but they crunched surprisingly well. Amazing - the crunch of the old hay matched the crunch of the long dried apple, and together, with the honey-and-lemon tasting dressing were surprisingly good. The dish wouldn't win any Canterlot Querier 'Out On The Town' food awards, but for the edge of the Amazon desert, it was an incomparably magnificent treat.
"Calloway... this is... you are... " Dropspindle found herself sobbing. Food, real food. Food that wouldn't hurt. Made carefully, served beautifully, that tablecloth, all the effort... after so many days of misery and heat and constantly searching through sweltering abandoned houses, stumbling over bottles and clothing and worrying constantly about... now, here, finally... it was cool and pleasant in the room, with real food and cold water and there was a pillow to sit on and everything was so nice and...
The tears ran down the unicorn's muzzle.
"Oh... Dropspindle... I'm sorry! Whatever I did wrong... I'm sorry, I... I tried really hard, I just..." Calloway was beside her now, on his knees, not quite sure whether to hold her or keep his distance. "I only wanted to thank you. For bothering to save me. You risked everything and.. I wanted to do something special for you that..."
Dropspindle turned and draped her forelegs over his shoulders. She pulled him closer. "You silly little monkey... I'm crying because this is so wonderful!" She bawled for a time, and was surprised, when she regained herself, to find Calloway's cheeks wet too. "It's just been so hard, and this was so... so nice... and... the tablecloth and the food and... I didn't know what you were doing, and I thought you had gone squirrelly on me or something at first and..."
"So... it's okay? I did okay?"
"Yes. This is just amazing. It's more than okay. It's..." More tears, more relief, poured from her. Luxury, and such thoughtfulness, in the middle of Earth. It had now become the new most incredible thing she had witnessed in the entire universe of the humans.
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I don't get it. Why so many dislikes for such a great story?
6151721
I have many fans, but I also have a very dedicated hate-fandom too. Over the past years I have been threatened with death, had my family members threatened, had our servers attacked, and I have been constantly harassed in every possible way. Much of the worst of it has died down, thankfully, but some little, tiny, constant harassment continues.
The insanity of it is beyond comprehension, but there are people, members of the hate groups here, that go out of their way to downvote every single post I may ever make, about any topic. They also are dedicated to an important mission: they must, by any means (multiple accounts, constant, day after day effort) downvote every single story I have ever written. Their goal is nothing less than to keep my works permanently and massively downvoted. Because. Because hate.
It gets funnier, and more stupid too - the people doing this? They openly admit they have never actually read my works. The logic is simple: my works are evil, thus they should never be read, thus they never read them, because they are evil. And because they are evil, they must be opposed, constantly, every day, every hour, forever.
It's been more than three years now. There are at least three such hate groups, each with around 400 to 600 members (with a great deal of overlap.)
What is their central beef with me?
It certainly isn't because I am a sexual minority - oh they are very clear that this isn't the real reason despite all the truly awful things they call me. It isn't that. Really. They aren't bigots. Believe them. No... the real reason is because I am apparently a misanthrope, and in not being super happy with humanity, I have forfeited any right to exist, create, or have my work read by anyone, anywhere.
You see - I write stories about humans being changed into another species. And that is the most evilest evil there ever was. Writing about incest and murder and rape and white supremacy and war are fine. That's allowed and good. But writing about humans becoming ponies and liking it? Oh, that's genocide. That's evil. That's misanthropy, and it cannot ever be allowed. That's the reason. Not the sexual minority thing. The pony transformation stuff. That's the real reason.
So... I have been stalked and harassed by intensely stupid, bigoted, probably mentally deranged people, all egged on by a sort of internet hate cult that most members don't even know why they are part of.
Welcome to Fimfiction.
Cute. And nice. Heartwarming even.
But I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.
6149073
Okay, so it was a case of me thinking to much. I was a bit confused because there is no Farmer Jones here to feed anyone anymore. Essentially our heroes raided the pantry while Farmer Jones was away.
Kotani was a bit of a straw man at the beginning there, setting himself up to be easily refuted. It'd be quite a feasible concept for newfoals to gravitate naturally to other ponies, those most receptive to the new heightened amount of socialization they need to be satisfied. Not out of disdain for old human friends, necessarily, but out of utility. These newfoals would have to know how uncomfortable it could make human friends to be invited to distinctly pony activities, having been humans themselves. As for other ponies, it's been established in other Chatoverse stories that humans in general seem more standoffish or even menacing to a newfoal at first; Kotani could easily be ignorant as to how he himself came off to ponies, especially if he was not receptive to conversion for himself.
Kotani seems like a member of what I would imagine to be the silent majority of humans in a TCB scenario: the ones who just consider conversion to be this strange thing other people are doing, the big thing on the news happening separate from their personal lives. It's almost like the advent of Facebook 10 years ago, and being a holdout while aunts and uncles you never imagined regularly using a computer suddenly taking to it like a fish to water. He could understandably see conversion as "the end of fun," as it was put. The end of normalcy, resignation to the new and strange.
6151747
Yes. I've never - to my memory - written a character like that before, and they would likely make up most of the population. So, it's time, I reckon.
"Religion church"? Are there other kinds? Perhaps Dropspindle thinks there are.
I can understand Kotani's hesitance. Normally, I'd chastise him for not testing his "end of fun" hypothesis, but the thing about Conversion is that you don't get a trial run. Drink potion, get hooves, no take-backs. That can be a terrifying prospect.
Language spells have an interesting unintuitiveness to them. The more you use it, the more it wears out. In order to maintain fluency, you have to use the language as little as possible. How bizarre.
Dropspindle does seem to forget about the whole "magic" thing rather often. Well, she isn't Twilight; she doesn't see her magic as the solution to everything, because for her, it isn't. Not if the problem isn't cloth-related. (Also, there's the blend of panic and unrelenting heat slowly cooking her brain.)
And that scene at the end is adorable. These two don't just have a Plan B; they have a friendship.
I see what you did there.
6151740
That much anger can only be out of fear. Because if what you write is true--not the magical ponies part, but the "humans-ruin-the-world" part--if all that has veracity and merit...then it means that we're wrong about how we live. It means that we have a responsibility to give up our selfish comfort while other people and tiny animals suffer. It means we have a responsibility to love one another. It means you don't have the moral right to be a jerk.
The greatest fear people have is not suffering, it is being evil. If what you have done in your life is evil, and you know it, then you may not continue. You must fall to your knees, beg forgiveness from those you have hurt, and begin working to make amends. That is the only possible reaction. Except for one other. You may ball up your fists, stomp your feet, and shout, "No! It is not I who am evil! It is you! I am good, and to accuse good of being evil is itself evil!"
6151747 6151761
I'm guessing that the scifi and fantasy genres aren't exactly alive and well in the future. I'd half-expect what appears to be a classic geek like Calloway (bullied at school, applied science career, gamer, etc) to enjoy thinking about other worlds and alien races. Then again, maybe I'm just projecting.
-----
...of course combustion is different. Extropic universe. Right. No waste products, just light and heat. Probably don't even need to clean out any ashes when they're done. (I'm guessing there's still a way to make charcoal or something like it if you want it.) I hope there's still a pony-equivalent of "nice wood smoke smell", though. That's comforting on a cold day for some of us humans.
¡27 Ounces!
6151740
Yeah I know just what you mean. Its truly astounding the perseverance these haters of you have been. I had originally guessed that by this point they would have gotten tired of bothering you and moved on with there lives. Although at this point I can clearly see I have greatly underestimated the human capacity to stubbornly hold onto hate for the dumbest of reasons. Its amazing and kinda sad. These people could literally be doing anything else with their lives and it would be more productive then this.
And the sad part is I will probably have to deal with them myself before too long. The first chapter of my first real conversion bureau story is nearing completion and odds are its gonna attract haters like flies to honey.
Oh well no way I'm gonna let them stop me. Still its gonna be tough to resist not trying to retaliate against said haters. I mean the Ape part of my brain is saying "time to show these assholes who's boss! Its Smashing time!" but the pony part of my brain is saying "Wait! So far smashing hasn't stopped it its only made it worse, No Smashing!" Then the ape side says, "No smashing, but I like smashing." The pony then replies "No smashing!" and its hard to resist the ape side at times.
Neglecting for the moment the issue of the possible unhospitality of the exponential lands.
Is genetic bottlenecking a thing?
That is - can two ponies create a viable town, or would there be birth defects?
6151721
Most TCB authors have gotten a lot of grief from the bunch 6151740 mentions. Since I've written my TCB fics I automatically get two downvotes within seconds of posting a new story. And yes, the chapter read count is often still at zero, so these are not likely to be legitimates comments on the quality of my prose!
6151878 says it well above. Some people see any criticism of how we (humanity) undertake our affairs as being misanthropy (literally hate of men.) I've always found it so ironic that the people who care enough to seek to change things for the better get accused of hating the people whose lives they are trying to save. It sure doesn't pay to be a whistle-blower!
6151742 , 6151747 , 6151823 , 6151878 , 6151916 , 6151980 , 6152524
It appears our center of gravitas has returned, and so the council has reconvened!
6152923
My personal theory is it would be viable, and you'd be able to get all three pony types out of it with full color variation, etc.
Humans get birth defects and genetic bottlenecks because we live in an entropic universe. We get new features through mutation, aka stuff randomly breaking and very occasionally being useful by accident. Equestria is extropic, so you can get something from nothing. Any two opposite-sex ponies would be able to breed just fine, and whatever ponies use as a genome-equivalent probably contains everything they need for all the variants. Even if it doesn't, "magic" would probably introduce the missing elements into foals eventually.
6153063
Let's hear it for humanity smart enough to get itself in a lot of trouble yet not smart enough to realize or admit its in trouble. What an unfortunate state of affairs.
6152923 One of Chatoyance's previous works, The Taste of Grass, wherein a population of about 500 ponies is abandoned in the exponential lands briefly touches on the concept of genetic bottlenecking being an issue. The population is said to not be large enough for a viable genetic pool to persist for more than a few generations.
First off, cute in-joke. Second of all, holy cow I know exactly what you mean by a disturbingly empty map. I just kicked off on writing something set in Alaska, and was scanning through Google Earth to find a good spot, and after a few minutes I was just thinking "Good Lord, there really isn't anything up there that isn't nature and Anchorage, is there?"
6151740 Sarcasm isn't befitting you, Chatoyance. Well if you look at the borderline troll-logic of vehement, violent anti-LGBTQ individuals, with their constant paranoia about "catching gayness", then your TCB ponies are kind of subliminally primed to set off their Danger Will Robinson alarms as a nightmare scenario.
This was a very good chapter though, I liked how Calloway was immediately concerned he had upset Dropspindle with her crying tears of joy.
6186528
...this, THIS right here, if it wasn't for the Barrier eating this mess up, this would be one hell of a NIGHTMARE to clean! On some days I just wish the Barrier would eat the messes where I work too! Bah!
I heard the Zelda Chest Theme as Dropspindle found that elixir in the closest!
And that was heartwarming of what Calloway did, a good feeling to go off to sleep on.
Buck the booze. Look for potion, numbskulls! They were spraying it like Pinkie Pie throws confetti, there could be a stash somewhere!
Praise Luna! She finally shows some, ahem, horse sense!
Or maybe she heard me shouting at her from outside the story. At this point I wouldn't dismiss it out of hoof.
That's lovely. That's beautiful. I'm happy for you.
Now for Luna's sake PONIFY HIM NOW.