Surrogate

by Raugos

Chapter 3

With a great yawn, Cliff Breeze stirred and glanced around.

The med bay looked exactly the same, as if Sternum had been prepping him for uplink just moments ago. That was good. His client had returned him on time and in decent shape this round.

He hopped out of the chair and winced as pain shot through every muscle in his legs and wings.

Lungs huffing and puffing like bellows. Wings straining against the freezing wind. High above the clouds, he threw his head back and whooped as he dove towards the icy valley below…

Cliff blinked.

Scratch that. He would be in great shape once the soreness faded away. Looks like someone had been giving his body a serious workout!

He briefly wondered if it had involved a certain other kind of exercise, and immediately regretted it when a pit opened up in his stomach. He shook his head. Bad idea to be thinking that kind of thoughts with a changeling nearby, and in all likelihood, Pixel Rust had probably dumped him—his client after that incident…

Something rustled in between his feathers.

When Cliff shook his left wing, a little piece of paper fell out, which he then unfolded and realised was a note meant for him.

It read: Sorry about last time, and thanks for sticking up for me. It will never happen again.

Great, that only made him guiltier about his marefriend.

At least getting cleaned up gave him time to tamp down his emotions and hopefully not think about surfing all the new memories in his brain, at least until he was safely at home. He also swallowed the note—best not to dump it anywhere in the centre where Sternum might find it.

Thankfully, he got through the pre-release check-up without rousing any suspicion. Sternum must’ve been having an off day; winter had truly set in, and the poor bug was shivering the entire time despite being so well bundled-up that he looked like a bee plushie.

With Hearth’s Warming around the corner, the city had put up a whole lot of extra festive lights. Ads and music were on full blast, and despite the cold, more ponies were up and about, even partying on the streets. Cliff ignored the crowds like a bug tunnelling through dirt, laser-focused on just getting home.

Once back in the privacy of his unit, Cliff did the bare minimum of checking his mail for parcels and dusting off his chair before diving right into the surfacing memories.

Elysium Heights, near the top of the city skyline. Fancy diner. Unpronounceable names of dishes. Juicy, tender, griffon-style poached salmon that melted in his mouth and rich, tangy crystal berry wine. Expensive as Tartarus. Too many zeroes.

Rumbling train out to Diamond Valley. A whole day of losing himself in the joy of flying. Huffing, puffing, straining, pushing himself to the limit. Resting on a cloud as it drifted aimlessly, watching the world go by…

In Cloudsdale Stadium, at a Rainbow Bullet concert. Stomping his hooves to the beat with thousands of ponies, singing and chanting their hearts out. Screaming and cheering when the Wonderbolts zoomed across the sky, trailing bolts of lightning.

It was one fancy or hardcore thing after another, with breaks in between just long enough to rest and recover before the next thrill ride. Even as a passenger to the memories, Cliff found himself needing to take breaks just to space things out a bit.

Seriously, his client was going on a major binge.

Which… wasn’t surprising.

With each hour that passed, Cliff was more and more certain that Pixel Rust had dumped him. She never appeared in any of the memories, and there was no apparent effort to make contact in either direction. Whatever had transpired between them, it had probably been done and dusted before initiating uplink, and anything after that was just him burying the pieces with as many distractions as he could.

Cliff went to bed feeling oddly full. And it wasn’t because he’d eaten a relatively hefty portion of oats and hay for dinner. He was just… sated. Maybe this was what changelings felt like after they’d properly stuffed themselves on love.

The next day was more of the same. Another motherlode of intense memories to surf.

That wouldn’t last much longer, though. He’d already glimpsed memories of things that’d happened on the same day as initiating uplink, and his gut squirmed at the thought of running out.

He forced himself to slow down, just a bit.

Around noon, he stumbled across something different.

His heart thumped as he sliced open the parcel. Gazed at the little glass bottle containing coarse, bluish-purple granules. Popped the cap off. Looked like coloured sea salt, smelled like ozone. He carefully sealed it back up and hid it in his safe with the combination lock.

Cliff got upright in bed and sat on his haunches, frowning.

Moondust.

One of his previous clients used to mix it with apple or pear juice for consumption. Word on the net was that it produced a mild but long-lasting high. Cliff was only familiar with the jitters and nausea of a Moondust crash. It tended to interfere with the slug’s normal functions, so memories of the high were rather numb and indistinct.

His present client had acquired more than a week’s worth of it. And yet, he’d never taken any at all during the uplink. Otherwise by now Cliff would’ve encountered faulty memories of the high or experienced the nasty crash. The post-uplink bloodwork also hadn’t detected anything in his system.

Could he have bought it for somepony else?

Or maybe his actual self? It did work for humans…

Wait.

There was one other way to use Moondust. The high was normally mild, but taking a very concentrated dose all at once would leave you in absolutely mind-blowing euphoria for hours, right up to the moment it burned out your nerves and stopped your heart. And that was it; you were out like a light, permanently. Cliff had once considered it an option, but back then he hadn’t been able to afford enough Moondust to go that way…

Cliff’s blood ran cold.

His client had been using his body like it was his last day in Equestria.

‘It will never happen again.’

“Oh. Oh, horse apples.”

Was he overreacting? Surfing memories didn’t allow him to read his client’s actual thoughts at the time of experience, only his mood. And it certainly didn’t give him access to the human brain of his client, aside from some phantom double vision when initiating uplink.

Maybe he was just saving it for the next round as Hoar Frost. Maybe he actually planned to use it responsibly, whether pony or human. Or maybe tomorrow the news would be talking about a dead human found somewhere in town, having overdosed on Moondust because somepony didn’t say anything…

He leapt out of bed and paced around, wings twitching. “Crud. Buck. Shit!”

A day and a half had passed since terminating the uplink. Definitely enough time to overdose and check out after one last thrill ride. But if he hadn’t started immediately, there was still time to stop him.

Cliff grabbed his saddlebag and phone. After stuffing his Bugtooth headset into his ear, he burst out of his apartment and launched into the air, surging through the narrow airspaces between buildings, narrowly dodging conduits, clotheslines and festive lights on his way to the surrogate centre.

Sternum answered his call. “Hello, Mister Breeze. What’s the—”

“Get a thaumoxone auto-syringe ready. I’m on my way!” he cried.

“Wha—for whom? Did the bloodwork miss something? Are you all right?”

“It’s… it’s my client. I think he’s planning to OD on Moondust.”

A long pause. Then, “And how exactly do you know this?”

Cliff ground his teeth and snorted. “Look, there’s no time to explai—”

“I’m not doing anything until you give me the skinny,” Sternum snapped. “Right now.”

“Just—aargh, fine! I’ve been surfing, okay?”

“What? Again? How did—”

“I bypassed the blockers. Been doing it for over a year now. Now shut up and listen!”

Cliff rattled on about the various clues he’d pieced together as best he could in between laboured breaths. The bucket-list activities, the breakup, even the secret note. If the Moondust was for his client, then he was almost certainly in Equestria, because if he was on Earth, there would be easier ways to end it that didn’t involve smuggling addictive substances through the portal.

By the time he was done with his summary, he’d just landed at the front door and let himself in with the retinal scanner, just in time to hear Sternum’s response both in person and through the ear bud.

“When this is over, you and I are going to have a long talk about honesty and risk-management,” Sternum muttered as he hung up. “I’ve got your thaumoxone. Now, how do you plan to find your client?”

Cliff swiped the auto-syringe and stuffed it into his saddlebag, then forestalled any protest with a raised feather whilst he huffed and puffed away. His wings burned with exertion, and he might’ve even pulled a muscle.

Eventually, he got his breath back and said, “I’m going to his place in Dasher Row. If the drugs are still there, I dunno, I guess I could—”

“Steal them?” Sternum deadpanned.

“—hide them until I talk him out of it,” Cliff snapped, rolling his eyes. “That’s if he’s coming to pick them up himself. If they’re already gone… that’s where you come in—you call emergency services.”

“And what? Ask them to search the entire city? He might not even be in Kinship! He could be in Vanhoover or Canterlot for all you know!”

“You’ve got access to his payment details, right? There’s got to be an address or visa status in there somewhere.”

Sternum blinked. “That data is held by the payment processor. I can’t ask Payfriend for those without a warrant!”

“Then call the cops and get them to do it!” Cliff threw his hooves up and snorted. “Tell them we know a human’s about to off themselves and cause an interdimensional incident—I don’t know, do something!”

“You do know that they won’t believe me without evidence, which means I must tell them about your voyeurism, right? And on top of that, deliberately bypassing the blockers and surfing memories is a crime.”

Cliff stomped a hoof. “If you won’t do it, then I will.”

“Really? After me being nice to you, this is how you act? If you tell them, it’s potential jail time for both of us! Are you stupid?”

“Stern, I’ve been ready to check out for a while already, so I don’t care.”

Sternum recoiled as if he’d been slapped. “What? Wait, are you experiencing dysphoria? How long have you been like this?”

“Why do you think I got into the business?”

“You—but the psych evaluations!”

“Missed it. It comes and goes.”

Sternum shook his head. “No way. You’re bluffing!”

“Go on,” he snapped, walking right up to him. “Tell me I’m lying!”

Sternum stared at him for a moment, and then deflated. “Oh, grubbing heck.”

“Look, we’ll figure this out, okay? I can—wait, what about the uplink equipment for the human side? There must’ve been an address for the delivery or setup, right? Can you find that in the system?” Cliff then gestured at him with a hoof. “You’re an old-world changeling. I’m sure you’ve got ways of getting that information from logistics.”

“That’s… a decent trail to follow.” Sternum squinted at him and slowly moved to tap on his tablet without breaking eye contact. “Also, that was pretty grubbing racist, but I’ll ignore it this once because you’re my favourite patient and I can see you’re in distress. I’ll call in a few favours and see what I can do—oof!”

In a split second, Cliff had closed the distance and wrapped him in a hug. He was kind of hard and bony even with all those woolly layers on, and he almost seemed to be absorbing heat at an alarming rate instead of giving off any—like a refrigerated can wrapped in socks. He squeezed tightly, meaning every second of it, and felt some of the tension melt away.

“Oh, well… grub, that’s kinda nice…” Sternum murmured. “What were we talking about again?”

“Find his real address. I’m going to Dasher Row. We’ll play it by ear from there.”

---

Despite his best efforts, Cliff Breeze couldn’t fly to Dasher Row with the same frantic speed as before. It was more than twice the distance of the centre from his house, so he forced himself to maintain a slower, steadier pace to avoid spraining his wings.

Whilst in flight, he managed to surf a few more memories, but found nothing relevant to the stash of Moondust.

It was late afternoon by the time he got to Dasher Row, and the winter sun was already getting low in the sky, leaving bright orange highlights on the tops of buildings and skyscrapers.

His phone rang.

“Yeah?” he answered, his breath fogging in the air.

“So, it turns out that our friend lives in 318, Block G, Dasher Row,” said Sternum. “That’s quite the bit of luck. Provided he hadn’t spoofed it.”

He blinked. That was the exact address for Hoar Frost’s home. But he’d never seen any human in his memories of being in that flat. Maybe his client had always kept his human body somewhere else during uplink, or in some hidden room that Cliff didn’t know of.

Either way, it drastically improved his chances of finding him alive.

“Thanks. Let me know if you find anything else.”

“Well, there is that one thing… please don’t be mad.”

“What?” he asked as he landed at the front door and presented his eye to the retinal scanner.

“Actually, never mind. It’s nothing. I’ll call you back if there’s anything. Good luck.”

The retinal scanner beeped pleasantly the same time as Sternum hung up. Good, his client hadn’t yet revoked his body’s access. That tracked; it wasn’t as if Cliff was supposed to know he lived here.

Cliff noticed movement in his peripheral vision and turned to find a minotaur cow smiling and waving at him from several units away. He only vaguely remembered her. Hoar Frost didn’t spend much time with the neighbours. He gave her a sheepish smile and waved a bit before hurrying in and shutting the door.

“Hello?” he called out.

The flat looked pretty much the same as he remembered: smooth concrete flooring and walls like his own apartment, but with nicer rugs and proper wooden furniture—none of that cheap plastic or metal stuff. There was even a decent couch. Clay sculptures, both unfired and glazed stood on most available surfaces. His well-used guitar sat on its stand in the corner. A plate of half-eaten cookies lay forgotten on the coffee table. The portable electric heater was on—that was a good sign.

“Hello? Anyone home?” he called again.

Stupid. Even if his client was here, he wasn’t going to answer an intruder, was he?

Cliff shut the front door, gritted his teeth and marched into the bedroom.

“Oh, hayseed.”

A human male lay on the bedcovers, dressed in shorts and a singlet. Black-haired and pale-skinned, moderate but somewhat gaunt physique, probably in his thirties, if Cliff’s estimation of humans was anything to go by. He was shivering as he stared at the ceiling with glassy eyes, giggling and mumbling to himself as he traced something only he could see in the air with a finger. The nearby dressing table had a mug on top, next to the empty bottle of Moondust and a jug half-filled with brownish liquid. The scent of oxidised apple juice and ozone wafted in the air.

That had to be him.

“Hey, hey!” Cliff cried as he leapt to the bedside and patted his cheek with a hoof. “Can you hear me? How long have you been here?”

The human’s eyes rolled slowly to look at him, and then he grinned and slurred, “Hey, it’s me. Fuck, I’m a handsome pony…”

Cliff snorted in spite of the situation.

Right. There was no telling when his client had ingested the Moondust solution, whether minutes or hours ago, but the longer he remained in this state, the closer he got to permanent nerve damage. Not to mention hypothermia.

Cliff retrieved the auto-injector from his saddlebag and jabbed it straight into the man’s thigh. He barely noticed. That took care of whatever was in his bloodstream.

Next, he had to deal with the remainder in the stomach.

He grabbed a nearby bin, hauled the man up into a sitting position as best he could with the bin in between his legs, and muttered, “I am so sorry,” before tilting his limp head back and stuffing his largest primary feather down his throat.

A bit of wiggling triggered the man’s gag reflex, and then he doubled over, throwing up a whole lot of chunky puke into the bin. The air quickly stank of sour apples. Cliff repeated the process until the only result was dry heaving, at which point he set the bin aside and did his best to clean his mouth and face with the blanket, and then leaned him to rest his back against the headboard.

Whilst searching for water, Cliff took a brisk trot around the flat and found a little store room at the back of the kitchen, which had been repurposed to hide his human body during uplink. There was a lounge chair crammed in there, along with the neural interface headset, packs of diapers and basic life support machinery for the minimal upkeep of a comatose body.

Well, one mystery solved. His client must’ve been careful not to open it during uplink, especially whenever Pixel Rust visited, so Cliff never got to see it.

He hurried back to the room with some water and stayed by the man’s side, realising that he really should’ve made sure he hadn’t aspirated any puke in the first place. Thankfully, that was just heavy breathing. With each passing minute, those glassy eyes got a little more focused, a little more purposeful in the way they roved around. The smile gradually faded, replaced with bewilderment. His head stopped wobbling and bobbing around and finally turned to face Cliff.

Thaumoxone sure acted fast.

Cliff hadn’t planned this far ahead, so he blabbed the first thing that came to mind. “Hey, are you okay? I’m Cliff Breeze.”

“Philip,” the man said automatically. He licked his lips, made a face and sputtered. “How the hell did you find me? How’d you get in? Oh crap! Are the cops here—”

“Easy, easy!” Cliff pressed him back into bed. “No cops! It’s just me. You recognise me, right?”

Philip stared at him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I stopped you from doing something you can’t undo,” he said, gesturing at the empty bottle of Moondust. “Here, have some water—”

Philip slapped the glass aside, spilling its contents all over the bed. “The hell are you saying? Those bastards told me everything was private! How much did you—are you telling me you can remember everything we—I did?”

He winced. “I might’ve, uh, broken the rules a bit…”

Cliff then gasped and snapped his mouth shut, but it was too late. As Philip’s look of terror twisted into a mask of rage, he realised that he shouldn’t have let that slip. For all he knew, Philip might’ve simply been jumping to conclusions and would’ve believed any semi-plausible lie that didn’t involve violating his memories.

“You… you bastard!” Hands clenched into fists.

“Hey, easy!” Cliff threw up his hooves in surrender. “I made a mistake, okay? It was just luck I saw what you were planning and came here to save your life!”

“Yeah? Well, I didn’t want to be saved, you stupid horse!” Philip stumbled out of bed and advanced, towering over him. “You know how much I paid for that shit? I had everything planned out, and now you’ve ruined it!”

Cliff scooted backwards on his haunches, keeping his wings up in a placating gesture. “Look, I know you’re going through some awful stuff right now, but it’s going to be okay. You don’t have to do this. Things will get bett—why are you looking at me like that?”

Philip had stopped and was staring at him as if he’d uttered an unthinkable racial slur against his mother. Slowly, he raised a hand and pointed a shaky finger at him. “You… you fucking hypocrite.”

In spite of himself, Cliff felt his hackles rising and his feathers puffing up. “Excuse me?”

Philip gestured at his hooves.

When Cliff turned his gaze downwards, he realised that he was pointing at his fetlocks, at his wings. At the scars. His ears drooped.

“Yeah, I know what those are. Tartarus, after what you tried, you have the balls to lecture me about wanting to do the same? Bitch, you’re a fucking pony. You can fly! You live in Equestria. Magic is real here! What the fuck have you got to complain about?”

“You don’t know me!” Cliff snapped, flaring his wings as he stood up to his full height. “It isn’t always sunshine and rainbows over here. At least you’re able to enjoy the things you do! You can play music and do pottery and stuff without feeling like it’s dead and pointless! Hayseed, you even had a marefriend who liked you! You’re not dead inside! You’re just, what, chickening out? Are you seriously going to throw all that away just because you’re in a rough spot right now? Horse apples, if this is what you’re like, maybe I’m the one who got it from you through the uplink!”

For a moment, Philip glared at him in total silence. Then… “You know what? Fuck you.”

Philip lunged and drove a full-weight punch right into his muzzle.

Cliff stumbled back and fell onto his side, then grunted when he received a heavy kick in the ribs that sent him sprawling into the living room. With a groan, he got back onto all fours and beat a hasty retreat, putting the coffee table between himself and the rabid human.

“Stop! I don’t want to hurt you,” he growled.

“Eat shit.”

He dodged as a clay sculpture flew past his head and shattered against the wall. He ducked again and again as Philip lobbed a volley of ornaments from the shelves at him. A teapot cracked against his skull and made his vision swim with stars.

A sharp ringtone temporarily drew their eyes away from each other, to the phone half-sticking out of Cliff’s saddlebag by the door. He must’ve dropped it in his mad scramble to safety. Philip unceremoniously smashed it to pieces with a figurine of Princess Twilight.

Cliff threw up his hooves. “Oh, come on!”

With a frenzied cry, Philip charged and tackled him to the floor. They rolled around, bumping and crashing into chairs, walls and tables, knocking over dozens of knickknacks as they flapped, batted and punched at one another. Cliff managed to get in a couple of good hits with a backhoof to Philip’s face and a kick to his belly, whilst he received a few slashes to his legs with a broken shard of pottery.

At some point, Cliff managed to pin Philip down, but the human was surprisingly nimble and managed to get both his legs under his belly and launched him backwards into the air with a powerful buck that would’ve made an earth pony proud. Cliff squawked, flailing as he sailed in an arc, and then crashed onto something that crunched on impact.

Sharp pain blazed in his neck, followed by a horrible throbbing sensation that smothered him like a storm cloud. Cliff twitched and moaned as he rolled away from the broken coffee table, from the corner that had smashed into his slug. Jolts pulsed through his nerves at random, throwing his limbs in every direction. The world was spinning. Dark spots and bright flashes danced in his vision. Sounds blared and muffled intermittently, like somepony playing with the volume of his hearing. He curled up into a ball and scrunched his eyes shut, silently begging his stomach to stop churning and clenching, but it eventually overwhelmed him and puke came spurting out of his mouth. All the while, his brain throbbed with horrid, unrelenting agony.

“G-guh, help me…” he whimpered. “Make it stop…”

And then the world ended.

Comments

[Admiral Stoic Rum]

Ooo what a climax! Let's see what come next