Meijer
Shipt
Admiral Biscuit
I see ponies everywhere.
•••
This wasn’t always the case.
There didn’t used to be ponies, and then something happened and there were.
I don’t really understand what it was, not exactly, and I don’t know if anybody else does, either. Sure, there were explanations; there were talking heads on the television pontificating about the multiverse and wormholes and probabilities and uncertainty theorems and Lord knows what else. At first I just tuned them out because that wasn’t the news I was interested in. There were pictures, then there were interviews and then I saw my first pony in real life and that’s when it finally hit home that they existed.
They weren’t just something on the television.
They were really here.
•••
I was in Lansing, going about a day as normal. I’d finished my shift at Firestone and got in my truck and drove over to the mall because my brother’s birthday was coming up and I needed to get him something. I only ever shop at the mall for special occasions.
Ponies are a lot smaller than people. I hadn’t known that; whenever they were interviewed on the news, it was just the pony and it was hard to get a sense of scale from just watching something on the TV. I had an idea that they were like horses but not quite as big.
She—I assume it was a she, because her coat was pink—was a unicorn. She came out of Hot Topic as I was going by and I just caught a glimpse of a plastic shopping bag with a bit of a glow around it, a light blue glow, it was. Just around the handles. That was what caught my attention first, the shopping bag floating along purposefully, not like a bag caught in a gust of wind.
If her color had been less vibrant, I might not have noticed her, but she stood out from the muted color of bluejeans, a little spot of light moving through the mall.
And then she was gone. It turns out ponies aren’t that big, and can get lost in crowds easily, even if they’re a vibrant pink.
I went to Barnes and Noble and I found a couple of books I thought my brother might be interested in, but I wasn’t all that focused on my selection at all; I was still thinking about that brief glimpse of an Equine—as some people called them—just shopping, just going about her daily business.
They say when you’ve noticed something, you start to see it everywhere. My first pickup truck didn’t have a sliding rear window, and I thought that was really rare, but after I bought it, I really started to notice the rear windows on pickups, and it turned out there were quite a lot with solid rear windows.
Thus it was with ponies.
•••
I noticed it on the news. Every now and then, there was a spokespony explaining something.
I noticed it at restaurants. There were now pony options when it came to food.
I sometimes saw them in commercials. The kind where a company wants to show how inclusive it is, and besides the usual token minorities, they also showed a pony.
It was a strange time. Nothing was sacred.
Every now and then, things would flare up in the relentless news cycle as society tried to adapt. Could ponies join the military? Who would they be loyal to? Should doorknobs be pony-friendly? How could a pony be fingerprinted? Could a pony operate an automobile? Opinions varied.
I went on living my life. I went to work and shopped when I needed to, and I didn’t see any major cultural shifts happening but at the same time, I knew that they were.
There was a front-page piece in the Lansing State Journal when the first non-student pony moved into her apartment, and then a smaller article when the second one did, and then after that there were surely more but things mostly died down until a pony bought a horse farm and that was newsworthy; that was worth a week in the local news, that was worth dozens of photographs of her caring for animals which were like her but not like her.
I suppose when the Western world had discovered great apes, there might have been similar news coverage.
•••
She was a fairly mundane pony, as ponies went. She—I assumed; she looked female—was brown, a fur color that would have looked at home on an actual horse. Likewise, her mane was plain in color, almost white or perhaps a very light blonde.
She was shopping in Meijer.
And she was wearing a shirt.
There had been countless debates about whether ponies should wear clothes or not. While I wasn’t somebody who mattered enough to ever be interviewed on the subject, I would have said that it would look weird for a pony to be wearing clothes. Even though it’s not the same thing, every time I saw somebody’s dumb dog wearing clothes, I felt bad for the dog. It had no agency, no way to protest being dressed up and being paraded around as a fashion accessory.
There was an endless supply of foaming-at-the-mouth individuals who were more than willing to reveal their craziness on television and argue endlessly how the mere sight of a pony au natural was the sole reason for the collapse of Western society. How it would corrupt children, how it would cause the collapse of civilization as we knew it. It was no different than arguing that playing Magic summoned demons or how playing video games was a gateway pastime to committing mass murder.
She was wearing a shirt, a green shirt, and appropriately enough it had silk screened image of a UFO on it.
Another cultural shift that had happened slowly and subtly, there was an app that let you have food delivered from a local grocery store.
I’d never considered the app myself, even though I hated shopping with the burning passion of a thousand suns. I relied on knowing the layout of Meijer, of being able to get in and out in under a half hour with food for the week. The goal was always to spend as little time as possible in store, to get the same things week after week. The things I knew I’d like, the things I knew I’d eat.
She was wearing a shirt with a Shipt logo on it, and she was consulting a cell phone strapped to her foreleg.
•••
There were pony-friendly shopping carts. They’d just showed up at all the big chain stores and after a while, it had been like they’d been there all along.
When I was a kid, there weren’t options. There was one size of cart, and that was that.
Before ponies, things had already progressed to big shopping carts and little ones; baskets and mobility scooters; there were carts that looked like cars for kids to ride in and child-scaled ones at Polly’s with a flag that said “customer in training” for older kids to push. That last one was kind of creepy when I thought about it too much.
She was pushing a pony-friendly shopping cart and consulting the cell phone strapped to her foreleg, and after a moment of processing the weirdness of it, I couldn’t help but wonder if the app sorted things by department. Did it use the phone’s GPS and know what Meijer she was in? I had the floor layout of the three I most commonly went to memorized, at least for the stuff I bought all the time.
It wasn’t polite to stare but there were a lot of people at Meijer and she was concentrating on jars of pickles, no doubt choosing the correct one. She finally made her selection and spun the jar around, squinting to read the numbers on the bar code just to make sure.
For a second, as she pulled it off the shelf, I thought she’d drop it and break it.
Once it was safely in her cart, she lifted her leg up—the one with the cell phone—and tapped it with her nose, then moved down the aisle, her eyes focused on the various canned and jarred foods.
Back in the day, a good taxi driver had to memorize all the streets, had to have a mental map of the city. According to a YouTube video I’d once watched, that was still a requirement for getting a taxi licence in London, even though GPS had probably rendered the need for that particular skill moot.
Assuming that the Shipt app isn’t to the point where it tells the delivery person—delivery pony where all the items are in one particular store, an efficient and profitable shopper would know where everything should be. Would know, even if the app doesn’t, what the most efficient way to get all the items on the list is.
She’s not quite there yet, but she’s close. I could tell the difference between purpose and confusion; she homes in on a section of shelving and pretty soon a dozen cans of Starkist tuna are in her basket.
They were on sale: buy ten, get one free. Were the savings passed on to the customer, or was that a bit more profit on her end?
•••
I usually tried to get in and out of Meijer in under a half hour, but this time I didn’t.
I wasn’t stalking her; that would be creepy. Instead, she was working a similar path to mine, front to back, skipping the aisles that carried nothing on her list. Sometimes we were facing as we went down an aisle and I wondered if it was socially acceptable to wave to my newfound acquaintance; other times, she was at the opposite end of the aisle and I only saw her backside.
She and I both had to squeeze by a Karen on her cell phone, cart blocking most of the aisle as she debated with her husband or boyfriend or whomever is on the other end of the line. Judging by Karen’s agitated pacing, the choice between Ragu and Prego might’ve been life or death.
•••
For a brief moment, we shared a conversation. Maxwell House was on sale, and the coffee section looked like it had been gone over by a horde of Mongols. Somewhere in there was surely a can of Master Blend, and as I looked, I heard a feminine voice with a subtle and exotic accent quietly say “excuse me.”
“Sorry.” I stepped back and a hoof reached in, selecting a boring can of medium roast, and then it was gone.
Like most guys, I don’t often notice the little details, but I had noticed the smoothly-brushed fur on her leg, the shine of her hoof, and the glint of her steel shoe.
•••
I hadn’t intended it, but we wound up being lane buddies.
I finished before she did—I’d headed for the checkouts after finally laying claim to my Master Blend, while she’d had to take a detour to the pet section to pick up a bucket of kitty litter.
The man in front of me was either stocking up for the apocalypse or else he was a once-a-month shopper. When it came time for the lanes, I didn’t patrol the front of the store like some; I just chose my lane and stuck with it. Once upon a time, I’d skimmed through Archie comic digests or whatever other magazine they were offering as an impulse purchase; these days, I just got out my cell phone and caught up on friend drama and memes on Facebook.
Once there was enough room on the belt for things, I started unloading my cart, and as soon as I’d finished, I set the bar at the end of my groceries as a courtesy.
No sooner than I had done that, a familiar foreleg started loading the belt.
There were so many questions I wanted to ask her, both broad and specific, but I wasn’t sure that was socially acceptable. Just the same, I closed Facebook and scrunched my groceries together a bit, giving her more room.
I hadn’t noticed before, but her shod hooves made a distinctive clack on the tiles every time she shifted on her hooves. Not quite as pronounced as tap shoes, but noticeable.
•••
It wasn’t polite to stare, so I didn’t, but I couldn’t help but notice as the clerk slid the dividing bars down, she hoofed one her way and then chose a single packet of Eclipse bubblegum. That was a personal purchase. Did ponies in general like bubblegum, or was that just her? I didn’t know; for all the coverage that had been on the news, they’d never covered chewing gum.
How would she even unwrap it? There was the cellophane and then after that the gum was in little foil-covered plastic recesses, which didn’t seem all that hoof-friendly. Still, if she could put a jar of Gielow pickles in her cart without dropping them, surely chewing gum wasn’t beyond her abilities.
•••
Conventional wisdom is to not shop when you’re hungry, and I normally didn’t.
Meijer had you covered if you were. Besides all the snack food in the isles and the candies and individual sodas at checkout, this one also had a Subway near the entrance. They were currently advertising bacon for an extra $.50 on any footlong.
I’d never been much of a fan of Subway—in my opinion, it was a food option when there was literally nothing else, and that was about it.
Just the same, I dallied there, not buying anything, until I saw her walk past. Her shopping cart was empty and her saddlebags were bulging.
I couldn’t decide if I should feel bad for her that she had to carry the groceries that way, or if I should be jealous that she could.
•••
I suppose the usual way that Shipt worked was that the buyer would load all the groceries in their car and drive to the address in question.
I didn’t see her leave Meijer, because I stopped at the gas station. Just as I needed food once a week, so did my car, and it was convenient to do all my shopping in one place.
When I got back on the road, I did spot her, walking purposefully down the cracked and broken sidewalk. Michigan isn’t known for the quality of its roads, and the sidewalks are generally worse, if they exist at all.
For just a moment, I considered slowing down, maybe pulling into the parking lot in front of her. Roll down the window, offer her a ride.
But I didn’t.
I could still see her in the rearview mirror as I sat at the traffic light by the former Blockbuster that was now a Sherwin Williams paint store.
The world was changing, and I was okay with it.
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Reminds me of the first time that I ever heard Rap music. It was the mid 1980s in a shopping mall in east Texas.
It was playing in a department store window, so I stopped to look. Some kid starts telling me what the lyrics are.
I put on my best Stupid Look & said “That’s amazing! You don’t look especially holy, but he is Speaking In Tongues & you can understand him! Both are miracles!” He went away. Not running, but quickly.
Even back then, I knew “On the Highway of Life, crazy people have the right of way”
Oh I love it I love this
Two
Shiptsships that pass in the night.A delivery mare, Biscuit I love you so much.
I thought for a moment it was going to be about the coffee thrower.
9811446
Me too!
Specially the way he compared ponies with animals at the beggining. I suspect that may have bern ab intention.
Pretty nice story :D
Heh!
Was reading this while listening to the Spongebob production music song: "Me for You"
SpongeBob "Me for You"
Yeah, well, my dad and I have never been good at obeying that particular bit of wisdom. ()^_^
Depends on the locale, really. Before moving to the middle of nowhere in Kansas I'd lived in Dearborn Heights for several decades, and they were usually pretty good about keeping their roads and sidewalks maintained from what I recall.
That aside, I liked this story overall. It gives the reader a clue as to what things must've been like when humans and Equestria's residents started sharing the same planet over time, and that was cool.
We always expect cultural shifts to be sudden and sweeping, but they rarely ever are. It's a gradual process and we rarely notice untill the changes really pile up. In a lot of ways this story is a more grounded "Earth and Equestria meet" story, mach of the fallout wouldn't really sink in for YEARS after it happened.
It's official: Ponies use phones via boops.
I got to agree the apps out today are just insane. You can shop from your grocery at home and have it delivered to your door. Or you can do curbside pickup and just go to the store and they bring it out to you.
On a side note I think almost all of your ponies on Earth stories take place in the same universe. It makes me wonder how long until we start seeing the first pony politicians?
This story is the definition of slice of life, and a pretty darn good one, too.
It also highlights the fallacy of "overnight success" or "sudden failure." If you really scrutinize anything which happens out of the blue, you'll usually find there were several little things which led up to the big event. The housing crisis of 2008 was years in the making. Ariana Grande spent years building her career at places like Nickelodeon before she became white-hot.
I wonder whether I'd be bold enough to approach a pony if they really existed here, or whether I'd react like the narrator.
9811950
I kinda wonder the same thing about myself, honestly. If they made it known that they liked cats as much as humans did, I imagine that would help me out a lot, but otherwise I'd just keep to myself.
Really enjoyed this one, a very nice reflection how the aftermath of pony first contact might actually play out. Which is: very mundane and unexciting. If humans are anything, we're good at adapting to changes (give or take a varying amount of fundamentalists). And ponies are just the same, considering the weirdness of their home planet.
This really needs to transition over years as more ponies show up, until the POV character realizes how *few* humans there are, and then eventually how he is the only one.
To be fair, the United States isn't known for the good quality of its pedestrian infrastructure in general. It's not just a Michigan thing.
9812451
Well, in the North, pavement in general has a very short life expectancy. As the saying goes, there's only two seasons: Winter and Road Construction. All winter the roads and sidewalks are worn and cracked by the tons of salt and sand dumped on them, and the ground freezing and flexing underneath causing buckles, and even a tiny crack quickly growing from water freezing in it. Then from the moment things thaw in April, all the way into November, it's nothing but lane closures, road closures and detours. This summer, literally every main road out of my neighborhood was blocked. County Road I, County Highway 10, Interstate 35W, Highway 65...
If Maud Pie and a team of her fellow roctorate earth ponies were to come help Humans invent better types of asphalt and concrete, it would be a tremendous boon.
I have to agree with everyone else here: this is realistic for a first contact scenario between Earth and Equestria, even though it doesn't feel realistic at first—perhaps it's because I'm so used to high-octane, high-action first contact stuff where drama and stakes are high that reality becomes a little unrealistic for me. That slow, creeping feeling of change just catching up on you without much fanfare—you got that one nailed down for this fic!
Thank you for this story!
The King of Slice of Life strikes again!
It's like "Alien Nation", except ponies don't dissolve when you throw them in the ocean.
Concentrated lye or mineral acid WILL dissolve them, however!
I proved this with many MANY tests!
This. This all day every day. This to literally half the planet.
9813031
I was talking about the relative priorities shown by US governments vis a vis transportation. Priority number one is shoving as many cars down the road as possible. Everything else is secondary if it gets considered at all.
See this one is cheating because it takes advantage of the fact that anything specifically mentioning Michigan is going to get a thumb from me.
This is by far my favorite story of the four you put up over the weekend. Love the feeling of epiphany gradually sinking in, until the end.
And just as those people ignore the angels and weddings, so to do the ignore anything about ponies that conflicts with their preconceived notions.
Brilliant work in capturing the transition from novelty to normalcy. This is like the literary equivalent of a Norman Rockwell painting, gorgeously capturing an everyday moment. (And now I'm imagining Rockwell doing pony art. Or art of people on smartphones. Or ponies on smartphones.
) Thank you for this.
This was lovely. I loved this whole little series (though I am kind of partial SoLs). The gradual noticing of everything, I could see it all in my head, and that's one of the marks of a great writer. I've never doubted that from you. Just one other thing:
There's always a Karen. Always. And they are not gradual. They always seem to pop up out of nowhere. I've never heard of anyone that grew up with a Karen.
Ever.
My Mother actually works as a driver for Shipt. She's not too big on ponies though. Still this gets an upvote for reminding me of her.
When I was a kid, a local grocery store did that, too. I don't know why they stopped. It was also the first place in town to have doors that open automatically. As a kid, I found it fascinating even after I figured out they were activated by pressure switches beneath the doormats.
Just like with most fics like these, I would like to say one thing: more please!
- ah, was thinking about something similar, mostly in context of 'will I worry about literal horses as much if I will be myself a bit like horse?" and resolved this with yes, because I care about my dog Grey for example, even if he doesn't talk 'as human'...
- huh, pony in boots, for extra kick! (well, real horses probably better with something more horse-friendly, magical earthponies probably can do things differently, and their hooves may react differently to anything attached/glued to them ... This is actually quite a big question for me - because I know real-world horses/ponies and nearly all other beings have their own small but vital needs, I can only guess what exactly may magical ponies need? And what may happen if they not get it enough ... :/ You see, I tend to look at grim end of possibilities, may be because nearly everyone else focused on bright side of things)
I would think thousands or millions of alien magic ponies just showing up out of the blue would collapse WORLD civilization instantly.
The chaos would be staggering... and thus I know Discord would be behind the ponies being here in the first place.
9815386 And so too do people ignore that this is fantasy trying to make the case for something actually taking place in reality, and thereby glossing over everything that doesn't nicely fit into the theme.
Magical aliens appearing out of the blue would cause global devastation immediately, and you know it. Humans can still barely manage to get along with each other, and I suspect mainly out of the fear of M.A.D. if they get too riled up. Throw in REAL aliens... with REAL magic... a new form of power to exploit... the term 'apocalyptic' jumps to mind.
9811232
Thank you!
9811237
That’s clever.
9811434
Legit as soon as I figured out what Shipt was, I thought it was the perfect thing for a pony to do.
9811446
Who’s the coffee thrower? I feel like I’m missing something.
Or are we talking about the angry man in Silver Glow’s Journal?
9811590
Hmm, I assume you’re talking about the angry man in Silver Glow’s Journal . . . I hadn’t intended the story to be from that perspective, honestly. Legit, it’s sort of a self-insert, in a vague kind of way.
Thanks!
9841701
Aye, that one!
P.S. October 5'th is when I resume re-reading Silver Glow. I set an alarm and everything So I don't get 2 months behind again and then binge read into the future... again.
9811699
Huh, that’s an interesting song.
Never watched that much Sponge Bob, mostly ‘cause I’m old. And don’t have a TV.
9811717
Nor I, honestly.
Being in a ritzy neighborhood or a place where people complain about it helps. Also the city having money helps, too.
Thank you!
That’s often a subject that’s overlooked in stories, I think. It’s kind of boring, story-wise, and yet, it’s the kind of thing that really should be discussed. I think that a lot of time, major shifts do wind up just being a collection of small things over time . . . I mean, my grandpa remembered the end of WWI, and every now and then I wondered how weird it must have seemed to him to have seen Civil War veterans marching in parades to having a black president, you know?
9811878
Yup.
Booping is the only way.
9811742
Yeah, each little thing isn’t much, but over time the changes add up and then you’re left in wonder about how things used to be.
Yeah, there’d be the initial shock, of course, but then for most people things would go on as normal. Most people would only see ponies on TV, probably for years, and the first casual encounter in the wild would be strange.
9811946
Sadly, that’s more limited out in the country, at least as far as I know. Never tried any of those services, though, so maybe I’m wrong about that.
We do have the Schwann’s truck roving around.
I guess they kinda are. . . .
Pony politician, you say?
Maybe Night Flower could give it a go.
9811950
Thanks!
One of my favorite quotes--which I sadly cannot remember exactly--was “I worked hard for ten years to be an overnight success.” While there are certainly people who suddenly burst onto the scene and take the world by storm, you’re right that most of them have been working for years to get the skills and exposure and whatever to make it happen.
That’s a tough question, isn’t it? I’m not sure I would, honestly. I’d want to, and I’d probably curse myself for not being bold enough to do it after the moment had passed.
9812110
Thanks!
Yeah, we mostly are.
Somewhat related, back in college I read a sci-fi story where one of the characters reminisced watching television shows on his pocket television. Many years later, I re-read it, and realized that I could now do that very thing with my smartphone.
Yeah, they have a different kind of weirdness to deal with, but they seem to generally take it in stride.
9812305
That’s kind of creepy, TBH. Like something in the Friendship is Optimal universe.
9812451
To be fair, the United States isn't known for the good quality of its
pedestrianinfrastructure in general. It's not just a Michigan thing.I fixed that for you.
But you do make a good point.
9813429
Let’s be honest, there would very much be moments of first contact that were of the hair-on-fire type, but “OMG ponies” has been done to death, at least in my opinion. :P For me, the interesting part is what happens next.
Thanks!
You’re welcome! Glad you enjoyed it!
9813439
That’s my superpower.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2019/9/3/2135838.jpeg
9813710
Concentrated lye will dissolve you, too.