Myou've Gotta be Kidding Me

by DataPacRat

Disinhibition

"Ow." Hearing the word hurt, so I said "Ow" again, but quieter.

I remembered some of the preparations I'd been making for exactly this moment; at least some of them seemed to have worked, since I'd had migraines worse than how I was feeling, back when I'd been human. I braced myself a bit and opened my eyes; no stab of searing pain as the light pierced my retinas, so that was good. I blinked a bit, didn't see either glasses or goggles anywhere nearby, but I did see a couple of glasses of water (one of which should have some salt and sugar, the closest I could get to electrolytes), some headache pills, a hooffull of nuts for vitamin B6 and some oats for cysteine.

Looking on the other side of my pallet, I saw Amethyst crouched on her own, looking down at me with a rather wolfish grin.

As I sipped and munched, I did remember planning to drink a lot of water while I got drunk, to reduce the dehydration I'd be feeling now. I did remember at least trying to do that between shots of honeyjack... and that was about as far as I did remember, no matter how much I prodded or looked for associations. I remembered making at least a couple of toasts, in the tradition of Callahan's Place, and pouring some libations for the dead in the old Greek fashion, and Blanche staying with me with glasses of fruit juice.

I remembered having made the decision to go on a one-night bender. I'd tried to take a nap - and in my dreams, had been faced with the simple sight of a doe who'd died on the waiting table while I'd been working on a pegasus. That was all there was to the dream, in terms of senses and events - but what I'd felt had made me jerk awake with as much force as any nightmare. I'd seriously considered 'Pax'ing myself into a night of oblivion... and I tried extrapolating where that would lead me, and didn't like it. There were no grief counselors or PTSD support structures here, no serotonin reuptake inhibitors or telepathic psychiatrists anywhere in the vicinity. Maybe Larry Niven had a good idea for dealing with this sort of thing after all - and if he didn't, well, it wouldn't do me much more harm to try and fail than not try at all. So I'd locked up Chekov, the Warden whistle, my pepper spray, and every last one of our gems; given Captain Red the key; and told her not to give it back short of battlestations or me getting completely sober.

I wondered if I'd done myself any good. I had no particular urge to repeat the experience - but I didn't know if that doe would be waiting for me the next time I fell asleep. I did remember one detail from early last night - I'd made a resolution to learn whatever medical knowledge I could, whenever I could, so that the next time I had to deal with anything resembling the situation of the last few days, I'd have truly prepared the best I could to save all the lives that were saveable. Maybe, if I really did follow through, that would be enough to set the image of the doe to rest. I didn't have anything else to offer her.

I cleared my throat a bit, and finally spoke up. "I don't remember much. What all did I do?" Amethyst grinned wider, if such a thing were possible, handed me my goggles, and when they were on, curled her hand around one of my horns, and tugged me along. I pulled myself to all fours and followed her back to the main crew quarters.

When we got to the mess, the place was filled with ponies, diamond dogs, a dragon, a bear, and a griffin - and when Amethyst pulled me in, pretty much the whole lot of them broke out into applause, whistling, cheering, and cat-calls. I just blinked at the noise and tried not to flatten my ears. When there was enough room to speak, I tried piping up, "I blacked out, so whatever I did-"

I was cut off by Armina planting her beak on my muzzle for a kiss, immediately followed by Ursula. Without any better clues, I tried reciprocating to whatever they did, but after the busses, they rejoined the crowd.

"Is this the part," I tried asking, "where you get to tell embarrassing stories about whatever I did?"

"Hear that?" called out Gallant Heart. "She wants us to tell her embarrassing stories!" This got a roar of amusement.

"Gotta tell you, boss," said Red, lifting a mug in a salute, "I never knew you had it in you."

"Had what?"

Red was grinning. "You've got one of the filthiest, most perverted minds it's ever been my pleasure to get a glimpse into - and you've managed to keep it completely hidden away for all this time."

"Um."

"And the songs!" she leaned back in her seat with a happy sigh.

Without much else to do, I found myself a seat, rested my elbows on the table, and hid my head under my hooves. "Do I even want to know?"

"Got me. Let's see - you began your oratorio with 'A Wizard's Staff Has A Knob On The End', then 'Seven Drunken Nights', 'Bang Away Lulu', 'Barnacle Bill', 'The Woodpecker', 'The Good Ship Venus', 'Eskimo Nell'... and then you started something you called 'The Hedgehog Song', and just kept going with it."

"I liked 'First of May'," mentioned Tranquil Valley. Most of the others looked at her. "What? It's got a good tune."

I peeked out from between my hooves. "I actually remembered the lyrics to all of those?"

"Well," said Red, "those ones, yes - you started going 'la la la' in the middle of some of the ones after that."

I took a big breath. "Well - I guess that's not too bad... as long as I didn't accidentally sing up any magic with them. ... I didn't, did I?"

Armina shrugged. "Only enough so we could sing along and stay in key."

I opened the gap in my hooves wider. "Anything else I should know?"

Red's mouth twitched. "Well... Most of us now have a standing invitation to join your and Cheerilee's little herd, if we've a mind to. And I think you timed your puking over the rails to hit a village we passed over. Oh, and you probably want to pop over to your lab soon as you're up to it."

---

Just about every flat surface in, on, over, or just nearby where I usually did my experiments was covered in writing. And drawing. And squiggles that made absolutely no sense to me. Micro was carefully copying down the whole thing into a set of notebooks, piece by piece. "Um... hi?"

"There you are. Maybe now you can tell me what all this is about."

"... No?"

"Figures," she snorted. "Last night - well, early this morning - you pulled me out of bed to come down here, and said you'd 'figured it all out', that it was 'vitally important'.

I tilted my head and squinted at a spot on the middle of the floor, which all the lines and not-words seemed to be spiraling in toward, like a cross between the insane scribblings from 'Dark City' and, say, the seals in 'Naruto'. "All I can say is that after the first few drinks, I don't remember a thing. Did I say anything else?"

"Something about having solved the concentration of force problem. Amplitude. Multiple worlds. That you really could get something for nothing, as long as you paid it back with interest. Then you started dancing, sang something about hedgehogs, threw up, and passed out. Blanche and Amethyst dragged you to bed."

"... Maybe I was completely out of my head and all of this is utter nonsense?"

"That's entirely possible." She finished filling up one notebook, picked up another, and continued dryly, "But if it's not - do you want to miss out on all the wonderful benefits of this mysterious whatever-it-is?"

I sighed. "You might as well slide over, then - I'd better start looking to see if I left myself anything like actual directions anywhere. Or instructions. Or even just coherent explanations."

"Good luck with that - I haven't even found anything I can recognize as real letters."

"I might know a script or two you don't - the pigpen cipher, Tengwar, Shavian, Deseret, Unifon - one of my favorites... I know the forms of Solresol, but that's effectively a language all of its own, and the word-list was pretty arbitrary. The fun part of that one was it could be expressed as combinations of seven musical notes, seven colors, speaking, singing, writing, sign-language; but as an actual auxiliary language, it was pretty much a flop, because it went against too many of the deep linguistic structures that make what we're speaking now so efficient at getting across so much information in so little time. Esperanto's the biggie these days, though oddly enough, Klingon's got some pretty dedicated followers - hm, wonder if I can remember any of its pIqaD letters instead of the English-based transliterations..."

---

Author's Note: No, I'm not giving links to any of those songs - this fic is still Teen-rated, and they aren't.

Comments

[Horatiojones]

Wouldn't some of those songs been a little to human?
ANYWHO
Now to figure out the great Whatsit spell!

[I Thought I Was Toast]

if drunken Missy just sent normal Missy on a wild goose chase because she decided not to trust herself...

[Hayquill]

I am deeply skeptical of the "quantum mechanics" hypothesis-cluster. We know that Equis physics differs from Earth physics in several conspicuous ways, and in particular the differences tend to resemble an alternate implementation of similar high-level phenomena. It seems premature to assume that something as non-surface-obvious as quantum mechanics would carry over.

[Destructorspace]

1330731
But if you recall, Missy wasn't speculating on the existence of specific quarks and whatnot, but that pretty much all of the intelligent lifeforms on Equis have one or more organs that allow them to influence the probability of something happening. Which has been proven, at least for pegasi (pegasuses, properly), by Blanche. Right now, the best hypothesis as to how is that the organ lets them will things to happen is the one that, given the many similarities in chemical structure and testable physics, is the one that can fit best into our current system. Like Missy was thinking before, we shouldn't just say, "it's magic, I don't gotta explain shit", or just assume it has to be a field unique to this universe, or planet - after all, the gods who are sending everyone here from Earth obviously have access to it, so it has to be able to operate outside of Equis. Which makes the thought that they're influencing the probability curves of everything around them, in order to do things like one of the favored arguments of absurdity from quantum mechanics' detractors, suddenly fall through the floor, because every atom in the floor just didn't interact with any of the trillions of atoms in your body.

Also, Missy set up a double-slit experiment to see if the outlining of objects implied that light worked differently on Equis, or if there was another cause for them. I don't think we've seen the results yet, given the amount of interruptions as of late.

[ObsidianOrangutan]

And now I'm reading up on constructed languages... thanks?

[Lithl]

Children of Tara, Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra! The beast at Tanagra: Kadir beneath Mo Moteh. Kiteo, his eyes closed; Temba, at rest. Mirab, with sails unfurled! Sokath, his eyes uncovered! Zinda, his face black, his eyes red. Rai and Jiri at Lungha. Rai of Lowani. Lowani under two moons. Jiri of Ubaya. Ubaya of crossroads, at Lungha. Lungha, her sky gray. Kira at Bashi -- Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel.

[The Gentlemen]

you won't give me links? well then, TO YOUTUBE!!!

[AppleTank]

How did you go from sending people off to Equestria (or someplace) to getting drunk at this party?
Does drunkenness increase one's mental capabilities?

[ArTic]

Wait, can't they just use the translation spell to read what is there?

[DataPacRat]

Author's Note: No chapter tonight; I've been trying to wrestle a few ideas into shape, but none of them are ready for public consumption yet.

In tangentially related news, I'm finally putting my money where my mouth is.

[DataPacRat]

1330213
Missy's singing while drunk, and even when she's sober, she's crazy - nopony really minded unusual or even outright incomprehensible references.

1330463
I was debating with myself about that...

1330605
I was debating with myself about that...

1331680
You're quite welcome. AllNoun's a fun one to try wrapping one's head around.

1333739
Not quite; it does reduce some mental inhibitions... and Missy is usually about the most massively inhibited person I've ever written about. For just one example - this is her first time getting drunk, ever.

1335133
That was part of what I tried to cover, when I had her experimenting with the translation spell a few chapters ago. What that spell needs to work is at least one living mind which understands the spoken or written language to be translated. If there aren't any minds which understand it, then the translation spell doesn't translate it. Drunken Missy was the only one who knew what any of the Whatsit Spell meant - and now that she's sober, not even Missy understands it, so the translation spell doesn't have anyone's mind to rifle through to offer the meaning.

[RealityDowngrade]

And that's all I have to say about that.

[ArTic]

1335583
Ah, Then they get her drunk again and then one of the crew uses the translation spell. Problem solved.

[Ceraph]

Esperanto! Mi ne estas solece en la mondo Lingvistiko! (Or would it be Lingva mondo? I'm much better at mayan and spanish XD)

P.S Never heard of any of the others XD

[DataPacRat]

1343601
Google Translate seems to imply 'Lingvo monda'.

[borgvicugna]

Roy Acuff recorded a fun version of "Bang Away My Lulu" in 1936. No link, but it is a YouTube offering.