4. Similes Are Like Songs In Love
I.D. INJECTOR DOE
That Indestructible Something
By Chatoyance
═════════════════════
4. Similes Are Like Songs In Love
"In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing."
- Franz Kafka
For the next five days, Gregoria played off the idea that she had contracted some kind of illness that had given her terrible dreams and affected her emotions and concentration. She suggested it might have been some food-borne illness, which clicked in her mother's mind - her mother had once read about something, somewhere, that seemed more or less like what Gregoria appeared to be going through.
This made a perfect cover for Gregoria to concentrate on learning how to live with her new body, how to use objects and accomplish tasks, and through it all to remain at home and not face the world at large. Keeping very busy struggling to meet the challenge of her transformation was the only thing that truly helped to keep her fear and the horror of what had happened to her at bay. As long as she felt she was making progress, Gregoria felt she could cope.
Gregoria paid attention to how her family interacted with her, trying to decode the rules behind their blindness about her change. During a discussion with her father one evening, where he asked about how she was feeling and whether or not there was some emotional or other problem in her life behind it all - her father was quite perceptive, really - Gregoria noted that when he looked her in the eyes, his gaze truly followed hers. He did not look over her head, he did not seem to perceive some ghostly image of her in place of her pony body. He looked down to meet her eyes, reached down to pat her head, yet seemed utterly oblivious to the fact that she was half her height. He functioned as if he was dealing with her pony body authentically, but mentally he was simply incapable of being aware of how different it was, for example, to stoop over to pat her new equine shoulder.
Although she was very curious to see what might actually crack or break the bizarre unawareness of her family, Gregoria was keenly aware that doing so would be a catastrophe. Instead, she decided to be grateful for the advantage of their blindness, and to be careful not to upset her situation. In order to discover a solution to her problem, she needed to survive, and to survive, she needed her family to continue caring for her as they always had done. The strange blindness was perhaps her only true advantage in the entire circumstance.
Using her computer, a somewhat old off-brand with Windows XP on it, took some effort. Initially, Gregoria considered the keyboard and mouse as hopelessly lost to her, and began to mope. Watching television with her sister one day, she saw part of a program that featured a person paralyzed by some illness or accident. They had been rendered a quadriplegic, with only the use of their neck, head and face. The remarkable thing was that the individual, a boy, was expert at playing videogames using only his cheek, mouth, neck and jaw. He was astonishingly proficient, in fact.
This shocked Gregoria into shame for her self-pity - if a young man could function so well with far less than she possessed, then she felt she had no right to feel sorry for herself. Immediately, she went to her room and set to conquering her computer as a pony.
The keyboard was actually fairly easy to deal with. Nothing more than a pen in her mouth allowed hunting-and-pecking of keys, though the issue of pressing two keys at once was a problem. The shift key was not too difficult, the edge of a hoof could nicely hit shift without mashing anything else, likewise the spacebar. CTRL-Alt-Anything was right out, as far as she could tell, though the F keys were easy enough with the sharp edge of a hoof used sideways. She could not type quickly, but she could type, and even use capital letters. She felt instantly more powerful and in control, once she had mastered her keyboard.
The mouse seemed impossible at first. It was easy enough to slide it - the curve of her Microsoft mouse fit very tidily into her frog - the arrow-shaped, leathery fold of tough skin inside the wall of her hoof - but she had no way to press the buttons. Initially, she simply moved the mouse, lifted her hoof, used the edge of the hoof to hold the top of her mouse steady, and then clicked a mouse button with the pen held in her teeth. This was slow and annoying.
By accident, Gregoria clicked the mouse button while moving the mouse and wondered how it had happened. It turned out that the rolls of flesh that made up the frog were bumpy enough that they could depress the mouse buttons, provided she rotated her hoof to the left or the right side of the mouse. At first it seemed a difficult trick that could only be managed by luck. By the end of a day of surfing the web she had mastered using the mouse. The mouse fit neatly into the hollow of her hoof, and by rotating her hoof left or right over it, she could hit and click the buttons. Just before she went to bed that night it struck her that if she just didn't press down so hard, the mouse wheel was trivial to roll just by stroking it.
Gregoria spent much of her day trying to find anything on the internet that would relate to her situation. There were archives of stories about transformation, fantasies about humans being changed into all sorts of animals and creatures. It seemed to be quite a desired thing among some subset of the population, a fetish even. Some stories even had similarities to her circumstance, but none gave any possibility of a cure, or even a solid reason for the transformations.
Changing into another creature was not taken seriously except by the most marginal of individuals within truly ridiculous websites, so Gregoria abandoned trying to find others like herself, and instead devoted her attention to what might be the cause of her family's inability to perceive her bizarre change of species.
After attempting many different search parameters regarding perceptual blindness, Gregoria stumbled upon something that seemed to suggest a real answer to why her family could not see her as a pony. She came across a video about an illusion on YouTube that showed a number of people passing a basketball between each other. The goal in the video was to count how many people wearing white passed the ball. She dutifully did so, wondering what the illusion in all of this was.
Much to her surprise, she had entirely missed a man in a gorilla suit walking through the scene. She simply had not seen him at all, and the fact of this utterly flabbergasted her. It seemed impossible - and it was, if she knew the gorilla was there, and made an effort to look for him. But, if she followed the instructions honestly, and only counted the number of passes, the gorilla simply wasn't there. It was literally the gorilla in the middle of the room, and it was utterly invisible.
Following this line of search, she soon found that the same sort of blindness affected the mind in every conceivable situation and manner. It turned out to be a major issue in medical diagnostics - things could be missed which were entirely obvious, if the person studying a lab report or a scan was intent on something specific. In a way, it comforted her to discover that her pony brain could be fooled just like that of any human, and in the same way. She might not be human herself at the moment, but neither was she completely alien, either.
To cap off her research into perception, YouTube Penn and Teller showed her just how easily she could fail to see things with a version of the cup-and-ball trick done with entirely translucent cups. There was no doubt about it - the mind was more than capable and willing to see only what it expected to see, or what it wanted to see. This weakness must be precisely what was being exploited - only in a vastly more powerful form - to render her pony existence invisible to human beings. Gregoria was left wondering what was magnifying this basic perceptual flaw. Was it just a natural side effect of her transformation, or was there some purpose to it, was it deliberate in some manner?
When her mother hugged her, or brushed her mane out of her eyes, she was basically 'counting the basketball passes'. She was not seeing the gorilla right in front of her. The mechanism just seemed so very clear to Gregoria. But it was powerful. Much more powerful than could be explained with a YouTube video. It was as powerful as if it were magic.
That made Gregoria think - although she did not believe in magic, her overnight transformation into a pony from a cartoon might as well have been just that. Perhaps what she needed to do was find out more about what she had been turned into. She tried to look into what there might be on the internet regarding 'My Little Pony'. In an instant she was overwhelmed.
Her friend, Rachel Priss, had told her that there was bit of a fandom, when she had tried to get Gregoria into watching the cartoon. Gregoria had no concept of what an understatement that had been. It seemed less of a fandom than a religion, or even a social movement. The sheer amount of pony material on the web was overwhelming. Gregoria didn't know where to begin, or even what she should be looking for. It was blinding - as blinding to her as the strange transformation blindness that her family had with regard to herself. Gregoria thought about calling her friend and using her as a guide and filter.
That was when Gregoria learned that touch-sensitive phones were useless to the hooved.
Email worked for her, though, and in short order she had managed to write to Rachel.
To: rachelpriss@gmail.com
From: gsamson@gmail.com
Subject: I need your help with pony stuff
Cc:
Bcc:
Attached:
Rachel i really need your help. can i come see you tomorrow? maybe we can hang out and talk pony.
gregoria
Gregoria had met Rachel in high school, they had gone on to the same college just to stay together, Rachel was her best friend in the world. Lately though, the two had become rather distant. Rachel had completely flipped for the pony thing. She seemed to eat, breath, and drink pony. It was My Little Pony this and Friendship Is Magic that, and there was pretty much nothing else she wanted to talk about. Gregoria had tried, she had really tried to show some interest in her friend's Big New Thing, but frankly... it was a kid's cartoon. A show about cartoon ponies for little girls, and it didn't hold any real interest for her.
Rachel had tried to explain about the show having some great stories and an amazing world, and that it was done by some other cartoon bigwig or something, but the fact was that Gregoria had just plain outgrown cartoons. There was nothing there for an adult with adult tastes. If anything, Gregoria had felt pity for her friend Rachel, who seemed to be retreating into childhood and losing touch with being an adult.
Of course, there was a reason for such a retreat. Rachel had lost her boyfriend, Rick, to the War On Terror. Rick had been lost with a bunch of other guys in Afghanistan, blown up by some device buried in the road. After that, Rachel had been a mess and the only thing that had pulled her out of it was the pony cartoon. Rick had loved the thing, so Gregoria supposed that for Rachel, clinging to the show offered some connection to her dead lover. But Rachel had gone into it much farther than Gregoria could follow. It just wasn't healthy. That was what Gregoria's mother had said. It wasn't healthy for a grown up woman to like cartoons.
Maybe mom was right, Gregoria reflected. The existence of 'Friendship Is Magic' certainly hadn't been healthy at all for her.
It took very little time before the email was responded to.
Envelope-to: GSamson@Gmail.com
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha246; c=relaxed/relaxed;d=gmail.com; s=21123013;
h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type;
bh=zVBme/yENuCR7BfY9w0T2L7c9+7FxrZUslE+7lAmNIk=;
t9CQ==
Date: Sat, 18 Nov 23:00:37 -0800
Subject: I need your help with pony stuff
From: Rachel Priss <RachelPriss@gmail.com>
To: "Gregoria Samson" <GSamson@Gmail.com>
Bcc: GSamson@Gmail.comSweet Celestia, I haven't heard from you in like a month! Yes! YES! I would LOVE to hang out and talk Pony with you! I've missed you so much! Best Friends Forever! I'll make you lunch - I've got a surprise! See you at noonish! I am so happy to hear from you!
- your best friend forever, Rachel (Sunflower Feathermane)
<(^,^)>
Rachel always tended to lay it on thick, but since the death of her soldier boyfriend, she'd become really clingy. That was another reason for the distance Gregoria had felt it necessary to place between herself and her old friend. Sticky or not, the fact was that nobody in Gregoria's life could possibly know as much about Equestria and ponies as Rachel Priss.
Tomorrow, Gregoria decided she would finally leave her house and face the world. She would go out as a pony, ride the subway, and visit her oldest friend Rachel. She would talk Pony with her, and grill her to find out anything useful about what she had been transformed into, the world of the cartoon her new body was based upon, and whatever else seemed useful.
And one other thing. Rachel really was her best friend. If anypony in the entire world would stand with her, help her, no matter what, it was Rachel. Rachel had always been the better person, and the better friend - while Gregoria had felt some shame about this reality, never before this night had she felt it so keenly, so cuttingly, so harshly. That, she recognized, was her pony brain affecting her. The cartoon was called 'Friendship Is Magic' and the core of it was teaching the power and value of friendship to little girls. Gregoria's new pony brain was trying to change her, trying to make her a better friend, a better soul. The invasive nature of that chafed her. It reminded her that she hadn't been the best of people, or the best of friends.
Gregoria suddenly realized that it was very likely that the reason Rachel had become obsessed with a cartoon was because her 'best friend in the whole world' couldn't deal with her becoming clingy and needy after suffering a life-changing tragedy. At this realization, her new pony brain reared in disgust and kicked at Gregoria's heart in guilt and anger. She had let her friend down, terribly, just because it was inconvenient and troublesome to stand by her in a time of need.
That wasn't good. That wasn't nice. But it was her choice. Gregoria, right or wrong, had chosen to be a bad friend, and she had decided to deny the fact of that and lie to herself that it was all Rachel being childish and grasping. Oh, that sounded so evil now, so wrong. But inside herself, Gregoria tried to fight against the overwhelming shame she now felt. It was vastly more than the faint shame she had managed to suppress as a human. But this new self-loathing was not her, it was the pony body speaking, the pony brain she had been deposited within, taking over. This wasn't her, this wasn't the Gregoria she remembered being.
It was very difficult to get to sleep. Gregoria kept tossing and turning, alternately filled with upset at the invasion of thoughts and emotions that were not usual or common to her, and then finding herself agreeing with those same thoughts. Initially, she had her rage to fight her pony brain, rage that shouted that she had been violated, altered against her will, changed by unnatural forces. That she had been the victim of a terrible injustice.
But it became increasingly difficult, as the night progressed, to claim victimhood and moral superiority when it could not be logically denied that what she was angry about having been stolen from her was the capacity to treat her best friend like a tool of convenience rather than as... a friend.
When morning came, Gregoria was exhausted and beaten. She felt like she was losing part of herself with each passing day, and the worst part of it was that she could clearly see that the part she was losing was the very thing she most despised and loathed about herself. She lay on the bed and slammed and spanked the mattress beneath her, raging like a baby throwing a tantrum.
Then she wept for a bit, rolled over, got to her hooves, and focused on the issue of what to do about the matter of shoes.
──── ∆ ────
Laying about the house for almost a week, Gregoria hadn't needed to wear shoes. Now, going out into the world, she would seem quite the little hippy prancing about without them, and this was something Gregoria did not want. More than this, it just wasn't safe, not in Brooklyn.
The black boots, on her hind legs, clomped clumsily as she left her Hinsdale Street townhome. Gregoria had needed to stuff scarves into the boots to help keep them on her hooves, packed in tight with the help of a wooden ruler. That was enough, it seemed. Her mother repeated how glad she was to see her wearing a skirt again, and didn't mention the fact that Gregoria's front legs did not also have boots on them. She also did not mention that Gregoria stood half her height, walked on all fours, or nearly knocked over the little souvenir snowglobe on the shelf with her tail. Perceptual blindness - the name Gregoria had discovered more or less fit the phenomena - was a blessing in so many ways.
Thinking about it on the subway to Chelsey - Gregoria had used her pass while holding it in her teeth - it really should be called something like 'sustained perceptual blindness' or maybe even 'verity dissonance' - which was funny for a few moments as an acronym, but which she quickly discarded. Whatever it was, it made it possible for her to lay across an entire seat and not have anyone even think to try to sit down there. She wondered if the other riders saw her sprawled equine body - it was just so much more comfortable than trying to sit unnaturally upright - as a horrifically fat woman taking up two places, or if they just couldn't face the sheer anomaly of her condition and moved on without any consideration at all.
During her walk to the second subway entrance on 14th (she took Livona to 8th, then 14th to 7th), she noted how absolutely nobody took any notice of her at all. It was a completely normal New York experience, no eye contact, and not one person pointing out the fact that a golden yellow unearthly mare was trotting about wearing a cheap skirt, clumsy boots and a sad wrinkle of tube top around its neck.
To serve as a purse for her trip to Manhattan Island, Gregoria had draped her old bicycle bags over her back. They worked as remarkably serviceable saddlebags, even if they were a bit moldy and ratty. Her new pony nose did not like them one bit, but they would do for now. If they worked out well enough on this trip, she intended to invest in some better ones, if not even actual saddlebags made for a real pony - she had no idea how long she would be stuck in this form, and the ability to carry things easily was her single greatest constant problem.
On the second subway leg of her journey, something unexpected happened which set her mind to possibilities. A very young child, a little boy of perhaps two, maybe two and a half, began staring at her as she lay across her seat. The boy's eyes were wide, and he could not stop staring. Soon he was waving his arms. The child's mother smiled in faint embarrassment when she saw Gregoria had noticed her boy fussing. Her efforts to redirect the child's attention were opposed by excited statements of "HORSEY! HORSEY!" that made Gregoria startle. The child appeared to be able to see the truth of Gregoria's existence.
Complex emotions flooded Gregoria. On one hoof, this was validation that she herself had not gone insane - another living creature, a human, if only a baby, had seen what she truly was, and had stated what he had seen. It wasn't just her, it wasn't just some amazingly complex personal hallucination going on - Gregoria was a pony for real, and someone had finally noticed. On the other remaining three hooves, the fact that it was possible to be seen at all represented all manner of dangers and risks.
Fortunately, the word of a two year old carries no weight, and the mother moved further away to end the fuss. During her ride, Gregoria had been near other, older children, and they had seen nothing. She desperately wondered what made this particular little boy different - was it his age, or was there some other factor she knew nothing about? One thing, though, had become clear. The strange perceptual blindness was not absolute, nor was it universal. It had been breached, somehow, if only by a two-year old, and that suggested many things to Gregoria. It suggested that if she were not careful, she could potentially expose herself, which would almost certainly be a disaster. But it also suggested that if she needed or wanted to, she might be able to convince someone of her situation. The event also made her wonder even more about how the blindness took hold, and why.
Out of the subway and down the street, Gregoria made her way to Rachel's apartment. Rachel had actually succeeded in making a life for herself away from her parents, thanks to very good luck, a bachelor's degree in finance, and a solid contact at the SEC. Rachel was an entry-level examiner, and made enough money to live on her own. Gregoria's new pony brain did not need to inform her that she was deeply jealous of her friend, but it had made her feel rather bad about feeling that way.
The sound of her forehooves and the floppity-clop of her ill-fitting boots sounded loudly in the hallway. The door opened at her knock with a hoof. If Rachel felt any resentment at being abandoned and ignored by Gregoria during her time of grieving, she did not show it in the least, and Gregoria found herself held tightly in a clumsy hug. Rachel had dropped to her knees, wrapped her arms around Gregoria's neck, and buried her face in Gregoria's golden coat without a second thought. Rachel's tears soaked into Gregoria, and much to her surprise, Gregoria found herself sitting down on her haunches, wrapping her forelegs around Rachel, and bawling too.
Before she even knew what she was doing, Gregoria had confessed how badly she felt about abandoning her friend, had begged for her forgiveness, swore never to do it again and to be the best of friends forever more. She then finished with more weeping into the shoulder and back of Rachel. When she finally lifted her long neck away from Rachel to part, she felt relieved, redeemed, happy, sad, and shocked - her pony brain had taken completely over, intent on making her a decent person whether she liked it or not. It bothered some part of her that she could not truly resent this fact.
Soon, Gregoria was pinching her fetlocks around a bottle of pop - Red Pop, her favorite - and smiling despite herself into the face of her old friend. Rachel was a dishwater blond with green eyes that was almost nondescript to the point of invisibility. Gregoria, who as a human, had been a striking, dark-haired girl with a more than decent figure if she did say so herself - and she did - had enjoyed feeling more attractive than her comparatively plain best friend. Now, for the first time, she felt envy for Rachel's average appearance.
Rachel, at least, was not a pony. Rachel was still human, and it stung Gregoria that she herself was not. Somehow, even more than dealing with her family, sitting with Rachel brought home the reality that she was not the same species anymore.
Sipping her Red Pop, Gregoria and Rachel caught up with each other. Rachel had found in 'Friendship Is Magic' something that filled some of the empty hole in her life caused by the loss of Rick. He had loved the show so very much, and she was his 'Little Fluttershy' when he was able to write or call. She had managed to keep her job despite a period of low performance due to grief because the show and the fandom had buoyed her up when she needed it the most.
Rachel had been very busy in the fandom. She regularly followed a number of websites that Gregoria had never heard of, and planned on attending a convention. They had conventions for this stuff? Gregoria was surprised at just how big the whole 'pony' thing had become during her distance from Rachel. Rachel went on for some time about the new season, the episodes she liked and didn't like, and talked about writing fanfiction and which authors and genres and sub-genres were her favorites, and about all the online dramas and fusses that went on.
Finally things settled down, and Rachel remembered that she had promised lunch. She was very embarrassed, and set about making what appeared to be sandwiches.
Gregoria tried to find some way to sit down and be comfortable while Rachel made lunch. Trying to sit at the small kitchenette table was very uncomfortable, the seats were hard and hurt her flanks. Finally Gregoria settled for draping herself across the old overstuffed arm chair, and despite laying on her belly, Rachel said nothing and made no notice.
Rachel nattered on about ponies and episodes and online dramas on forums while Gregoria sat half listening. She looked about the small, tidy Chelsea apartment. It seemed to be furnished in the Middle Ikea fashion, with a hand-me-down wooden Krāppö Bookcase dominating the room. On various shelves were pictures of Rachel's relatives, and of Rick in and out of uniform, taken in various places around the city. One image caught her eye as strange, but by then lunch was served.
"Oh, I hope you like this. It's a bit odd, I know, and if you don't like it, I promise I'll take you right down to get pizza at the Greek place, alright?" Rachel was someplace between beaming with excitement and shivering with worry, she was trying something new or daring - for her at least - and it was very clear that she was desperately hoping her work would not be a complete disaster.
The plate before Gregoria - sitting on her left flank uncomfortably at the table - held a sandwich, neatly made. The first thing Gregoria noticed was that it looked familiar - the top of the sandwich had a toothpick stuck through it, impaling a rather large daisy. It came to her - it looked just like the daisy-and-daffodil sandwich Twilight Sparkle had ordered in one of the episodes Rachel had gotten her to watch.
"There's no daffodil! The writers got that wrong, daffodils are deadly poison. I guess they didn't do their research. Or maybe daffodils aren't poisonous in Equestria. Anyway, there's no daffodils in it." Rachel smiled, worried. Gregoria stared at the sandwich. It was filled with lettuce and... daisies. It was a lettuce and daisy sandwich, likely with Miracle Whip or mayo slathered over it, maybe some mustard.
"Honestly - daisies are perfectly edible. People used to put them in salads long ago. I got organic ones, so no pesticides either. It's safe, really!" Rachel looked very worried now.
Rachel had become such a fanatic, so obsessed in her love of My Little Pony that she had somehow reasoned that serving someone a daisy sandwich was a good idea. Gregoria's mind reeled at how far her friend must have fallen into crazy to do such a thing. Her first impulse was to storm out, the girl was too far gone. Time to sever all ties and run screaming from the freak.
Then her new pony mind began to take over.
Rachel was hurting - she missed Rick. My Little Pony was the only thing she had to fill the void in her life, especially since a certain yellow mare had abandoned her. She had gone to enormous effort to make authentic - as much as was possible - Equestrian food as an exciting treat to share. Gregoria felt her desire to flee melt as concern for her oldest friend grew inside her.
And there was another thing.
Her stomach growled like a timberwolf. This was the single. Most. Delicious. Thing. That Gregoria had ever seen in her entire new life. To her new pony senses, this was a feast, a rapturous wonderment of proper, decent cuisine. She had been starving, eating blood-flecked scraps from the nightmare table of carnivorous Man, and her dearest, oldest friend had made her a proper, appropriate meal. This was ethnic pony food, and Gregoria's new body craved it, yearned for it with every tingling, erect hair on her entire golden-yellow coat.
Gregoria didn't even make a pretense, she was too overwhelmed. No hoof on the table, no effort at a napkin. Before she even knew what she was doing, her muzzle was down in her plate gobbling huge bites of daisy and lettuce and mayo-with-a-touch-of-mustard. It was heaven on a plate. Gregoria was in pony bliss, dining on Celestial delights. She came to her senses only when she found herself licking her plate, her long pony tongue polishing the dish in wide, sweeping strokes.
"Wow!" Rachel couldn't be happier. "Want another? I'll make you another, I have a whole bowl of daisies here! Oh, this is fantastic!" Immediately she had turned around and had begun chopping and setting up more bread to toast. Rachel hadn't even touched her own sandwich yet. Her mind was only on pleasing her friend.
Gregoria sat up, winced at the hard, unpadded seat, shifted her flank slightly, and found herself staring longingly at Rachel's uneaten sandwich across the table. She shook her head. What the? Inside herself, Gregoria could feel the battle between who she had been, what she had been, and her new self, her pony self.
Human Gregoria would have already been on the subway home, a lifelong friendship ended because it had gotten too demanding and weird. Pony Gregoria worried for her friend, felt sorry for her loss, forgave her eccentricity entirely, and only wanted to stay and help as much as she could. That and gobble down as many daisy sandwiches as she could get her hooves on. Gregoria sipped the last of her Red Pop. It went far, far too well with daisy sandwiches.
Rachel was singing to herself now, one of the songs from the show she loved. It was about wrapping up winter or some bizarre thing. Gregoria shifted again, relieving her flank, and stared at her own yellow hoof. She was getting too used to this. She needed to adapt, if she was going to survive and get to the bottom of her transformation, but it bothered her how well she was succeeding at the task. She had really, really enjoyed that sandwich. Her hoof did not horrify her anymore. This morning she had pinched her brush between her forehooves so that she could comb her mane. She had liked what she saw in the mirror. She had thought her golden coat was lovely and soft, and only the fact that she caught herself brushing her cheeks had made her stop trying to improve her appearance.
What should she care whether her coat was smooth and shiny? She wasn't a cinnamon-swirling pony!
Only, she was. And it was clear that her pony self could not be entirely denied, no matter how much she tried. It wasn't that she was changing - she had already changed, in one night. She wasn't fighting some invasive alien mindset. The true horror hit her - she was fighting herself. The reason she couldn't win, the reason she couldn't just make the 'pony' vanish, or push it away into some corner of her mind and lock it up was because it was her. It was as much her as her memories of having been human. She was a pony, trying to pretend to be a human now. Clinging to something she wasn't anymore.
No. No. She had her memories. Gregoria had her memories, and they weren't fading, they weren't being lost. Her memory of her human life was clear and sharp. A great deal of it didn't set well with her new pony brain, but that was just too bad. A person is their memories. She still had hers. Therefore, she was still human, inside.
Her plate now held a stack of three daisy sandwiches. Gregoria's mouth drooled. While Rachel looked on, beaming with joy, Gregoria lost herself in pony ecstasy. The sweet, delicate daisy petals, the sour bite of the the centers, the way the mayo and mustard brought it all together, the light crunch of the lettuce... for a while Gregoria only knew joy and contentment. Then she sat back, as best she could, and burped.
It was the best meal she had ever eaten in her life.
Rachel had nibbled at her own sandwich, finding it less appetizing than she had imagined it might be. Gregoria found another opened Red Pop in front of her, and washed down her meal with the sweet soda.
"Wow, Greggie, you really like daisies!" Rachel was reasonably surprised - daisies didn't taste like much to her, and her friend had always been an 'extra meat' sort of person. Only her excitement over having her friend come back into her life and want to talk ponies had made her think daisy sandwiches were a good idea. Reflecting on it all, now, it dawned on Rachel that her friend was acting rather strangely.
Gregoria saw her friend suddenly jerk back and shake her head.
"Rachel? You OK?"
Rachel slowly looked up at her. "It was one of my... things."
"Things?" It bothered Gregoria that she was getting so comfortable with her new voice.
"Sometimes I..." Rachel looked worried, afraid of judgement "...sometimes I sort of think I see stuff. Out of the corner of my eye."
"What stuff?"
Rachel swallowed a sip of pop. "Pony stuff."
"P...Pony stuff?" Gregoria felt a sense of dread.
"Um... yeah. But only for a moment. Little things, when I'm out in the city. And dreams. I've been having these weird dreams." Rachel was clearly afraid, less for what she had been experiencing than for taking the risk of telling her friend about it all.
"Dreams? What kind of dreams?" Gregoria's heart was pounding now. "Wait... Celestia... dreams?"
Rachel's eyes widened slightly. "y-yeah. Celestia dreams. For the past week. Every night the same dream."
Gregoria's heart pounded, and she felt a rushing in her tall pony ears. Little things out of the corner of the eye. Cartoon things. Celestia dreams. Stupid little aberrations that no reasonable person would pay much attention to. Dumb things, easily explainable by fatigue, or stress, or spending too much time watching goofy cartoons. Gregoria's muzzle frowned.
It was exactly what had happened to her, in the week before she woke up in the body of a pony.
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I think it's spelled "simile", not similie, and adding the s doesn't add an extra i
It's interesting that the non-pony-lover was changed first... or was she?
I think I'm allowed a dun dun daa
Hmm, so young children can see through it? Makes it seem more like Death from Discworld, where only the truly innocent can see more than a vague humanoid shape.
Now I'm imagining this universe is a bit like a less... extreme version of Reality Break. Select humans getting transformed, something more going on in the background....
Anyway, now I don't wanna wait for another chapter? Will Gregoria try to tell her friend that she's a pony? Is her friend actually changing? Are there more ponies out there, just as alone? If so, are ponies immune to each other's Perception Filter's?
Find out next time, on That Indestructible Something!
oh i think im starting to see the rules now. a week of pony dreams beforehamd ehh? interesting
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Hee!
Indeed, all will be revealed, in time.
It's just 'pop' in NY too? I thought it was just a Chicago thing! Our pizza is still better.
I'm really enjoying this story. You should like. Write more.
titaniumteddybear.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/sailor-says-there-be-a-shit-storm-brewing.jpg
What about the other hoof?
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FIXED!
This is what I'm waiting for. Daisy sandwiches. Daring stuff.
No, but really. I'm very excited for this interaction between Gregoria and Rachel.
Dun-dun-dun! (daa, seriously?)
... ... DA DA DA! (Ich liebe dich nicht, du liebst mich nicht)
Thank you for the update! Just think of these troll posts as encouragement because uhhh... maybe my inner critique went to sleep, idk. Or you did an excellent job on this.
If the next chapter continues this scene, Gregoria should quiz Rachel on what she saw. (I'm guessing it was Gregoria's true form.)
If she's crafty, she can maybe use this to segue into Rachel helping her because she knows the truth!
Of course, maybe Gregoria's not sharp enough for that.
I'm loving this! Gonna have to start reading TCB stuff too now.
Out of curiosity, Chatoyance, do you listen to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe? All the sciency articles you brought up were in last week's episode. Fun coincidence, if not.
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I've never heard of that, but I will check it out. I read about Perceptual Blindness years ago, and remembered the YouTube video while I was writing. Took me a bit to find it again. I constantly study all kinds of things. I just like to learn.
So ponies are as a species inherently nicer to each other, kinda like some birds base their hierarchy on which members are the nicest. Or the monkies which use sex in all social situations. It is an interesting take on the show as well on the fact that the brain runs the OS relevant for the species. Change the species and the OS changes as well (I guess this gem originated from the Optimalverse). I can't remember having seen a story before which did it this way.
Either the protagonists remained basically human, just with altered senses, or their personality was completely overwritten, which basically ends any story. If you are happy with the transformation resp. don't remember being different then there is no conflict left, which kills any story. The former option is more interesting, but usually derives from conflicts outside the transformations. Being aware of changes, but not being able to fight them even if you wished to... I can't wait to see what Gregoria will end up with.
didnt see that one comming
lets see what happens!
It's story concepts like this that make you take a step back and think a little less skeptically about those late nights of listening to Coast to Coast AM."
Five BoonBucks says that Rachel going to turn pony.
Anyways, Here you are miss, a random face
May Celestia Shine Upon You, and May She Smack Reality Right In The Kisser.
Chatoyance:
I see what you did there
Thanks for addressing my question
So it seems likely that she could intentionally illustrate the disconnect between perception and reality assuming that the Perception Filter doesn't have some kind of active countermeasures for just such a contingency. Though she's right to decide that she might not want to try forcing her family to come to that realization just yet.
I am you and you are me and we are us and I am the pony.
In any case, excellent chapter, both the reconciliation and the mental civil war. I especially like how sufficiently young children can see through the perception filter. If I'm correct, it may be more accurate to say that they don't experience the filter; they don't yet realize that ponies are impossible, and therefore their minds don't unconsciously reject the sight of one, much like with the Death of the Discworld.
Thinking about it, there's a fair bit of morphic resonance here too, though that's less because Gregoria's pony-shaped and more because gregoria.exe is running on wetware with PonyOS.
Sorry. I have a tendency to draw parallels between my various beloved fictions.
Looking forward to more!
Aaaahhhhh this stories so good. I like the idea so much. Really glad you are updating quickly too, I can't get enough of this story.
DHFJFJTJFBRKRNXNNFBHTVVD I don't want it to end there!
Was the kids name Jettdl by any chance?
"This is something" should be "this was something" to match tense with the rest of the paragraph.
"It's" should be "its" here, since expanding it to "it is" doesn't make sense in context.
Heh. "But daddy, why does the Emperor have no clothes?"
Strangely enough, "blond" is one of the very few English words that has a gender -- technically, "blonde" is what's used when referring to the hair color of a woman, while "blond" refers to the hair color of a man, as seen here.
Presumably, "strikin" is supposed to be "striking"?
2176725 Nope. not just Chicago. We just say "pop" here in Canada too. Or, at least the anglophones do. I'm not sure what the Francophones call it.
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It's still a thing elsewhere, guys. It's not going to be controlled or concentrated in a few select areas; it's everywhere I've been, from California straight-through to Louisiana.
2179313
FIXED! I swear I edited this twice. Farg, that's a lot of errors.
This was an awesome chapter - I like that we're really getting into the meat of things and examining the actual mechanics of the scenario. It'll be interesting to see what kind of forces are behind these transformations and how they're choosing which individuals to target. Since Rachael's set up to be next, I can't help but wonder if she'll end up a different pony type and the perceptual filter will be struggling to cover wings or magic. Let's hope Rachael isn't, say, leaving feathers everywhere.
I also wonder how it would affect adults who train to retain that kind of observational naivete and expectation of being surprised, instead of just parsing everything into workaday images; scientists, poets, artists, musicians, designers and the like. I usually don't tell anyone this but I always momentarily flip into just examining people as if they were physical objects or collections of shapes and textures, since that's how I increase my, uh, vocabulary of what it's possible for things look like. I could imagine a musician suddenly seeing her as a pony because s/he becomes taken with the rhythm of how her legs move, over and above seeing her as any kind of 'being,' or an engineer or early hominid anthropologist noticing the elegant but foreign way those legs continually support her shifting weight.
There's actually a stand-up bit I do sometimes about seeing impossible things out of the corner of your eye. I can definitely sympathize with Rachael there...
That gorilla experiment is a classic... I wish I'd had a chance to see the video and try it out before I'd read about it and was put on alert. I recommend the blog "You Are Not So Smart" as a great treasure trove of these, if not also bit of an inoculation against them.
I thought the exploration of the changes to her brain was exceptionally well-done, especially since that seems to be part of the core theme of the story. It's certainly true that one's previously defining values can become surprisingly irrelevant over time in the face of new ones, like a macrocosm of the way each moment is basically a tug of war among a dozen competing ideas and interests to begin with.
2181261
You are at the heart of where I am going and what I am doing, and you have an uncanny grasp of some bits I will be playing with, eventually.
Celestia's converting the human race! FLEE Every one FLEE!
*cue sephiroth's battle theme from kingdom hearts*
HEE!
It's weird and I'm still not getting a handle on what is going on. Gregoria is right to finger magic but it clearly has some limits. As much as we, as a species, are excellent at refusing to perceive things we don't want to deal with, it's still difficult to figure out its limits. Most children don't seem to be reacting to Gregoria's appearance so there must be something special about that little boy.
What's really interesting is how Gregoria's own internal perceptions have changed. She's started thinking like a pony - harmony and the magic of friendship are dominant forces in her behaviour. This means that this isn't just a transmogrification; her brain has clearly been rewired on a very fundamental level.
I liked a lot of your character stuff this chapter, and your very realistic and engaging relationship between the two girls.
I was a little disappointed that you jumped POV back and forth without giving us any warning. That was jarring.
And I don't know if daisy sandwiches are THAT weird. I mean, some people in the world really do eat flowers. I've always wanted to try them. The problem is that so many of our flowers are contaminated by pesticide, you can't really trust what you find. I wonder why there aren't more pony fans trying to get us edible flowers...
I remember watching that gorilla video back in AP psyche. Freaked me out a bit.
Gregoria has good taste in sodas.
"a somewhat old off-brand with Windows XP on it" If this takes place after April 8th, 2014, then that computer is vulnerable to security issues.
Making a personal note: Their names are Gregoria Samson and Rachel Priss and Richard "Rick" Deckard
Look up Chelsey
So Rachel's "pony" name is Sunflower Feathermane? That reminds me of Project: Sunflower.
Well, I am somewhat tired, but I neither need to go nor feel like going to bed yet. Let's see if the next chapter answers more questions than it poses! This early in the story, I doubt it. :)
Okay, so either the distortion is accomplished in the minds of the perceivers or Gregoria's own perception is altered to make it appear so. The latter hypothesis does not seem likely to be useful, however, as anything that could alter her sensory inputs in such ways could also alter the data so thoroughly that scientific analysis of what was actually happening would be impossible; indeed, it would beg the question of whether what was "actually" happening was what was actually happening, since all the data would be consistent with a different version of reality. At least for the time being, therefore, I think that we must assume that the illusion is layered between the minds of the perceivers and everything else. But, as I commented last time, if both that and its ability to transmit through recordings are true…
Though, now that I think of it, Gregoria's available data would still suggest that the simplest (though far from simple, by this point) answer is that she's insane. I wonder when and how she'll finally get information making that not the least unlikely hypothesis?
It's a bit sad that Gregoria appears to think that being revealed as a pony would stop her family from caring for her.
I'm impressed by her so quickly figuring out a way to use a three button mouse with hooves.
"Gregoria spent much of her day trying to find anything on the internet that would relate to her situation."
…Yeah… Unless Mr. Crown (or someone else we've not met yet) put something out to try and catch people, that's probably going to be a lot of googling and sifting through the chaff. And probably without any useful results.
"Count how many times the players wearing white pass the ball"
…But there are two balls. Is that the trick?
…Or the trick could be the gorilla! In fairness, I wasn't trying to count so much as half wondering about the disagreement in number and half remarking on how difficult the action was to follow.
Ah, but I didn't notice the curtain changing color or the player leaving. Interesting! I've read about such things, but I don't recall trying them myself before.
"It seemed less of a fandom than a religion"
As an aside, I remember reading an article once that pointed out that we'd literally virtually deified Lauren Faust. I thought that it was a rather nice play on words. :)
As another and slightly more serious aside, I have actually wondered about the likelihood of religion springing out of FiM. It seems rather crazy, certainly… but a: so does the existence of the fandom in the first place and b: so does the existence of the-celebrity-cult-founded-by-a-science-fiction-author-which-somehow-got-recognized-as-a-religion-and-must-not-be-named-for-fear-of-lawsuit-ology. And most religions probably seem crazy when they're starting out.
…Gregoria, if it was the mere existence of the show that was responsible for your current condition, then now really would be the time to start bowing to the Prophet Faust. I kind of doubt that the cartoon is some great sentient spell that reached out and touched you; more likely, it stems from the same cause as your transformation.
(It could also be that the entity that transformed you was inspired by the show, but, really, if FiM is so good that wandering eldritch whatevers decided to stop and join the fandom, I think we may be back in Prophet Faust territory.)
"DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha246; c=relaxed/relaxed;
d=gmail.com; s=21123013;
h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type;
bh=zVBme/yENuCR7BfY9w0T2L7c9+7FxrZUslE+7lAmNIk=;
t9CQ=="
Huh.
[googles]
I've not seen or heard of that before.
…I'm also kind of suspicious now of why Rachel thinks that that such a casual-looking message needs such identity confirmation.
Okay, I was assuming that Gregoria and her family were exaggerating due to having a very different perspective, but Rachel does seem to be rather intensely into poni. As was mentioned, though, she certainly has a good reason, and it's quite good that she subsumed herself in ponies as a coping mechanism rather than taking up drugs or somesuch thing.
"Rachel really was her best friend."
"I haven't heard from you in like a month"
And I'm sad for Rachel again. I mean, I'm far from an extrovert and often look forward to days when I don't expect to have to talk to anyone, and I still talk to the few friends I have much more frequently than that.
Ah, and we have a location!
"verity dissonance"
Ooh, nice phrase.
And here's an answer to my earlier question. At this point, the necessary complexity of the hallucination would be such that insanity becomes, I believe, untenable as a working hypothesis.
…Which Gregoria says in the next two lines. :D
"The event also made her wonder even more about how the blindness took hold, and why."
Well, it's not just natural. Missing the gorilla or the curtains when you're distracted and the interval is brief is one thing, but if the gorilla is jumping up and down in front of a crowd of people, eventually they will notice.
Gregoria doesn't seem to have had a lot of exposure to Douglas Adams, though.
Ah. Now. A question! Does Rachel posses a mental configuration allowing her to decided that it might be her problem after all? We shall soon see.
…And it looks like she either doesn't or is really good at taking surprises in stride.
"Rachel, at least, was not a pony."
Ah, but you don't know that, do you? I can be pretty sure, granted, from my outsider's perspective and the additional data available to me, but you're already aware that you could miss the gorilla even when knowing it was there. I don't think that you should be so quick to conclude that she'd not a pony just because she doesn't look like one.
"and about all the online dramas and fusses that went on"
Ah, yes, those. Sigh. You know, thinking back to a religion of pony, we do already have the charity arms, the community, the occasional doctrinal war, people saying "Love and tolerate" and then blatantly ignoring it… even the occasional person out to take the money and run (Las Pegasus, I am thinking of you).
"One image caught her eye as strange, but by then lunch was served."
…Of course it was! We couldn't get an answer that easily, could we? :D
…I just thought that actually maybe it's a good thing that Rachel isn't seeing through the field. She's probably been told by a variety of people, likely somewhat insensitively by at least a few of them, that she's far too deep into poni. If she saw her best friend actually as a pony, she might start having grave concerns about her mental health, and it sounds like she doesn't need any more stress in her life right now.
And yes, for some reason, pony food tastes good to your… Hm, though, actually, I suppose that that wasn't a given. I mean, I am, as far as I know, human, and there are many human dishes that I dislike or would even find disgusting. That you find it so good is, in fact, probably another data point in favor of you being in a pony body on a pattern, and with at least some of the software, of a pony from a setting similar to the Equestria of FiM. That already was pretty clear, of course, but now we've a bit more in its favor.
Been a while since I've had lettuce, now that I think of it… My undergraduate university had a wonderful dining hall, but now my meals are most from cans via a rice cooker. I have a pretty healthy diet still, I think, but crisp lettuce is not in it. Bean sprouts, too… And... Now I'm nostalgic and hungry at the same time.
Oh, and I've still got Winter Wrap Up going through my head. :)
Hm, and a partial point of view change.
…Ah. And it looks like, once again, one of these chapters brings something up only a little while after I think of it. Okay… This could either be very good or very bad, depending on how Gregoria and Rachel handle it…
And my head provided its own "Dum Dum Dummm" at the end there. (What is that called, anyway?)
Anyway, another fine chapter. I plan to read the next one very shortly, first I'm going to read a bit of something I don't need my hands free to comment on. I've just pulled a bag of frozen broccoli out of the freezer, you see; I may not be able to have a plate piled high with grilled rice and tofu and lettuce and green peppers and jalapenos and bean sprouts and… anyway, though, I can have some frozen broccoli!
(Also, I note that I used "anyway" three times there. I apologize for the sloppy composition, but, in my defense, I was already tired, and then you made me hungry on top of that. :))
edit: And my brain just started with "Three months of winter coolness..." again. :D
I am officially enthralled.
You've taken one of--if not the most--overused tropes in Fimfiction (human turns into pony) and created something utterly unique. I've also noticed quite a few elements from Friendship is Optimal and The Conversion Bereau blended in. But again, in a wholly unique way.
Here is what is wrong with the story:
This should be written in dialogue. You do too much telling when you should be showing. Avoid turning action into recaps and summaries.
Other than that: interesting story so far. It is a unique take on the human transformation experience.
seriously never stop being so awesome Chat. this story is good so far.
About typing:
I do not know about WinTels, but on MacIntoshes, even Big MacIntoshes
, one finds sticky keys. one can tap the modifier-keys, then the letter keys. One does not need to hold down a million keys at once. This makes 1-handed typing easy:
One can use the right hand for the mouse while typing with the left hand.
I have a bit of a habit of reading your endings first just to make sure for the most part everything turns out. I actually do that with most books I read and will even read about movies before I go see them. It doesn't really spoil anything, at least for me. Although, I haven't yet read the ending of this one. ^_^
I'm still slowly picking my way through all your stories. Too much work, not enough free time. Other hobbies need attention too. >.>
Somewhat often, I'll think back fondly about parts of a story of yours that I've already read. Might even cry a bit. Can't really say that about any other series that I have read. Yours is just so immersive. ^_^
Anyway, first time seeing that perpetual blindness video. I counted 16 passes. I saw the gorilla as it happened. I "oh yeah'd" when it said that a person in black left; I did remember it happening passively and definitely remember the gorilla actively. Totally missed the color changing curtain in the back though. XD
Apologies again, this went on longer and a bit more random than I meant to. Thanks for sharing your world with us. I really love it all!! ^_^
What a bizarre alternate universe! It has Windows XP but doesn't align its hashes to powers of two!
9990044
I think I just straight up copied an extant email, then changed details like names. Probably, this was done during the turnover stages from older Windows to current Windows, and I just have... no... clue anymore!