"And here is the latest update on the ETS crisis. The numbers coming out of Colorado, Arizona, Florida, and various areas throughout the south are staggering. Full transformations to ponies have reached the thousands, and those displaying symptoms have reached the millions. It is now being confirmed that if anyone has had the flu in the last month you are most likely already infected with ETS. Shelters are being put up in all major metropolitan areas to try to take in those with the worst symptoms. It is highly recommended that everyone, whether they have had the flu or not, please stay indoors if at all possible. If you are experiencing symptoms and are unable to reach a shelter we will be providing a support line at the end of broadcast to call for information on how to seek aid. Please be advised that long holds for the helpline are currently happening due to the high volume of calls, but if you stay on the line someone will eventually answer and do their best to assist you."
Matthew sat at his laptop waiting for the painfully slow internet to load a webpage. He was only half listening to the television, pretty much everyone had already figured out that it was the flu at this point, the news wasn't really reporting anything they didn't know. He didn't know why everyone kept watching like it was going to say something they didn't know already.
He brushed a hand through his dark green hair, and adjusted his position in his seat at the table because his matching tail that he had stuffed down his pants was starting to pull. He wished his parents would turn it off, it was messing with the buzzing in his ears. They both already had pony ears at this point, so they could at least turn it down. They had complained enough about how sensitive the things were.
His parents were a highly religious sort, they had tried to drill those same values into him. He believed in God, but didn't believe God was so hateful as his parents seemed to depict. When this had all started they had started making nasty comments about how this was how God was punishing the homosexuals for their filthy lifestyle. They had even shouted that kind of crap at people they saw on the street that were trying to cover up their changing hair color. One lady with bright pink hair had gotten into a shouting match with them about how she wasn't even a lesbian. There hadn't been much reasoning with his parents. They had seen this as the end times and for some reason had targeted gay people as the ultimate cause.
Matthew stopped himself from going further down that train of thought. Thinking about those kinds of things was far too dangerous a subject. Perhaps he was focusing too much on their comments about those kinds of people. It personally stung him a bit more than other things his parents thought were morally wrong and stood out more as a result.
That had kept up to the point that they started showing symptoms too. His mother sported a mix of yellow and purple hair now, which every day looked more like a mane. His father had a very deep blue. Both had full tails and ears to boot. They were starting to grow fur, even though they tried hard to cover it. They had completely stopped talking about how this was God's punishment now. Now like the rest of the world they just wondered what would become of themselves.
For Matthew himself he had started a few days after his parents with the symptoms. While they both complained of headaches, which they all knew the meaning of now after watching what unfolded with others, Matthew was just dealing with weird sleeping patterns. He would feel sleepy in the middle of the day now no matter how well he rested, and he had trouble falling asleep at night. There were pictures people, or perhaps he should say ponies, had posted on the internet. There weren't a lot of them, yet, but there were ponies with what looked like bat wings, and they said they had gone pretty much nocturnal. Being up all night by themselves left them with a lot of free time to themselves and as a result they tended to be some of the few fully transformed that still made any attempt to use social media just so they would have someone to talk to.
He pulled up one of the more popular social media sites that the night ponies posted on frequently. The first one to start posting was a girl..mare..filly?-named Josie who lived where what was pretty much ground zero for the ETS epidemic. She had started posting soon after her wings had appeared and had gained a large following quickly. Others started posting similar pictures over the last few days, though Josie herself seemed to have withdrawn to mainly giving short one word responses on the site; trying to operate a keyboard with hooves was likely not any easy task. She had gotten a full body selfie up though and it was the first fully transformed night pony picture he had seen.
He stared at that photo now, taking in every detail like he had many times since he first started suspecting this was the fate he had in store. Despite the dire implications that this was a loss of humanity it didn't seem such a terrible thing, she looked actually kinda cute, in a cartoonist type of way anyway. He looked at her leathery wings and wondered what it would feel like to have two entirely new limbs attached; walking on four legs didn't seem as alien a concept as having six limbs. Did you even still count as a mammal if you had six limbs? Were the ponies they were becoming as a whole even something that could be classified under the normal taxonomy that existed or were they something completely different unto themselves? Everyone called them ponies, but their bodies clearly were put together in ways completely different from horses. The term pony was extremely misleading.
He looked at some of the messages that were posted up among the others like him that suspected that they were on their way to being night ponies. A common thread ran among all their lives, no matter how varied they might seem at first. Each had something that deeply terrified them that others might not understand, and that terror impacted their lives every day. For Josie the fear was night terrors when she slept, others had overwhelming social anxiety and shyness to the point they could barely stand to be in public without breaking down, others had life circumstances that led them to fear for their lives daily, but for all there was an element of fear that regularly impacted their lives. Matthew was no different in that aspect.
Realizing his thoughts were going to uncomfortable places he shut his laptop and resolved to distract himself. He needed to get out of the house and do something.
"Mom, Dad, I'm going down to the church shelter to help out for a while. I'll be back in two or three hours," Matthew called into the living room.
"They're saying we're supposed to stay inside," his mother called back out to him.
"I'm not going to stop anywhere else and everyone at the shelter is already infected so I can't spread anything to them. There might be one or two full ponies there now, a few were really close yesterday," Matthew called back.
"Let him go Charlotte, it isn't hurting anything and it is good that he is wanting to take care of those in need. It might not be too long before we all need to go down there as well and we should hope that someone will be good enough to come help us too," his father said.
"You're right...be home by dark," his mother said in a resigned tone.
"Um, actually, can I stay there a little bit later? I seem to be having trouble sleeping at night anyway. I might as well put myself to use if I'm going to be up. I promise to be back by eleven," Matthew asked hopefully.
"Nine, and no later," his father answered. "And I doubt they have any more, but can you check to see if they can spare any more canned vegetables? They might have some still, the food bank had been really full before all this started. I never thought the day would come I'd be eager to get a hold of a can of peas, but we're getting really low on food that doesn't make us spew our stomachs."
"I'm pretty sure they won't with all the mouths they're feeding, but I'll ask," Matthew replied. He was worried about it. All the fresh produce was gone at all the grocery stores, and the only sections of the stores that weren't completed empty of food were those that contained meat products. People had stood in line waiting for the delivery trucks to arrive at the stores so they could buy the food straight off the truck; at least they had until the trucks stopped coming.
Matthew put on his jacket wondering how long he would have until he couldn't wear it anymore. It wasn't too cold outside so it really wasn't needed, but he had a habit of wearing it all the time outside the house anyway, even in the hot southern summer. People sometimes mocked him for it, but he kept doing it anyway. He felt less comfortable if he wasn't well covered up, and he would rather put up with the sweat than the anxiety that came from being uncovered.
He stepped out of the house and took off at a brisk walk through the neighborhood. Summerville wasn't a huge city, but it wasn't a small town either. It was best described as a large town he guessed. The borders of the town ran straight into the borders of the neighboring towns of Goose Creek and Ladson, and those ran straight into North Charleston making it one large suburban-metropolitan area that if they weren't all separate towns technically would count as a fair sized city. There were small churches everywhere, but few large congregations. The church he was going to was an exception. It was a massive thing with a few thousand in it's congregation. It was actually visible from his front door. He could have reached it in five minutes if he just jumped his neighbor across the street's backyard fence. He wasn't about to trespass though, so the walk would take about twenty minutes. He didn't really mind.
The street through the neighborhood was completely clear of anyone driving or outside. There were no kids playing outside, people mowing lawns, nothing at all. Everyone was hunkered down inside their houses afraid to go out. Most stores were closed right now anyway, too many people out sick or afraid to be out to keep them open; though he heard that the Waffle Houses somehow were still open through all this.
He walked out of the neighborhood and out onto the frontage road. Looking out past the fence at the interstate he saw that similarly empty of cars for the most part. At this time of day the interstate should be packed with cars of people returning home from work, instead all he saw were a few stray cars going far over the interstate speed limit. The police didn't seem to care about the cars pushing ninety in a sixty-five mile per hour speed limit area though.
A quick two or three minutes walking through down the road brought him to the church. The church unlike everything else was a huge hub of activity right now. While the local schools had been converted to shelters as well, they simply didn't provide near enough space. Since this was a large church it became a shelter as well, but even it was holding far more than it should. All the sports fields around it had their own small towns of tents affected within them, and people in various later stages of transformation could be seen milling about.
What caught his eyes was the fact that for the first time he had come here there were now a few full ponies walking about as well. This was his first time actually seeing a fully transformed pony in anything but pictures or videos. He expected there might be one or two today, but he counted at least four or five just outside, which almost certainly meant more inside. Were the transformations speeding up?
He cut through the grass onto the church grounds and caught sight of her. The one person he really wanted to see, who had been close yesterday, was now a full pony, and she was the center of a lot of excited attention by several medical personnel. She was now a light orange pegasus with a bright purple mane who despite the constant pokes and prods by the ETS infected doctors seemed to be simply glowing with pride. He could guess why that was easily; today she had validation, because until a week ago Tonya had been biologically a guy despite insisting he was a girl. She was clearly now a mare.
"Tonya? That is you right?" he asked cautiously as he approached where the doctors had her all but surrounded.
She was standing up on a table where doctors could get a good look.. at her more personal areas. Still completely unperturbed, and even proud looking, that her business was being inspected she looked at him and gave a big smile and wave of her hoof.
"Matthew! I'm glad you came by today. How do I look?" Tonya called out happily. Then she struck another proud seeming pose. He could see one of the doctors roll his eyes at the strutting she was doing.
"You look different, that's for sure. It must be nice to move around again without help. How do you feel?" Matthew asked with bemusement, deciding not to bring up the very obvious change in sex. The fact that she was clearly now a she made him deeply uncomfortable, but he tried his best not to show it.
"Yes, it's great being able to get around on my own again, but these bozos won't let me try flying. There's another pegasus mare here too, and she got to fly, but they won't let me. They didn't really let her either, but she at least got to for a minute," Tonya said with a tone of excitement laced with a small undertone of annoyance. Matthew had caught a slight drop in her ears towards the end of her speaking.
"You didn't answer how you feel? What's it like being like what you're now?" He had read the stuff on the internet from the night ponies, but he wanted to hear from her about it.
"It feels great, like it's what I was always meant to be. Plus I had at least one thing I knew before this confirmed for every pony to see," Tonya said with a little prance in place. The doctors gave her annoyed glances as she did. Matthew guessed that the prancing made it harder for them to examine her.
Unfortunately annoyed glances weren't all she was getting. Some of the people who were the least far along on their transformations were looking at her with baleful expressions. None of the people further along with transformation were, but it was clear that many of the most human of them were not as pleased with her having been right all along. Tonya didn't seem to care at all that she was a pony now, she was basking in the fact she was right all along. Matthew was not
"So you aren't upset you aren't human anymore?" Matthew asked as he gazed at her quivering wings.
"Why would I be?" she asked with confusion. "Sure it's different, but it feels natural. I can fly, if they ever let me, and I'm at peace with my body for the first time in my life. I'm not just going to accept this, I'm going to embrace this; as it's the best thing that ever happened to me. Upset about not being human? I don't want to be human."
He had heard that the fully transformed had an unnatural acceptance of their new form, but with Tonya he wondered if she really would feel this way no matter what. It was hard to really counter what she was saying with any firm logic. All that came to mind immediately was you should want to be human, but it fell a little flat in this case. He also was not sure how she dealt with the people staring at her. It made him want to add another jacket on just thinking about those eyes on him.
"Well, I guess I'm happy for you then," he said warily.
"You'll be happy for yourself too when the time comes," she responded with a tone of certainty that was a little bit creepy. "I had the most vivid dream last night. I can feel that everything will be alright. All of us will be happy and we will take better care of one another than humans do. Once we're all ponies we can make a better world than humanity ever did. The day is coming soon."
That was extremely creepy. She had already defined humans as something else and she was also defining everyone as a pony like it was a foregone conclusion that no cure would be found. She sounded like she didn't want a cure to be found, and instead have the whole world transformed. She had a tone of religious zeal to her that made his flesh crawl.
In the few minutes that they were talking his ears had started to have a low buzz in them. That was another in the progressive signs of ETS. He would likely be sporting a pair of pony ears by tomorrow. It was a strong reminder that soon enough he too would be a pony. Would he feel the same way then?