Let us begin with the breathing exercise from the chapter on laughter.
Clear your mind of all thoughts. With back straight, inhale through your nose. Draw one of your arms towards your chest as you do so. Breathe in. Focus on the air, as it goes into your lungs. Feel it swirl up through your chest, up behind your eyes, and into your mind. Feel it pass down, through your lungs, into your stomach, down and into your legs.
Now breathe out, through your mouth. Extend your arm out as you exhale. Feel the bad air draw up from your limbs, through your stomach, back into your lungs, and out through your mouth.
Did you let the air fill every part of your body? I would argue that you did not. You could not. There is one part of your body that you have not let the air touch, a part of your body that is no longer yours.
Are you breathing? You must remember to breathe. It is important to be in control of your breath at all times.
Now breathe in. Focus on the air as it fills your lungs. See it go down into your stomach. Let it swirl there for a while. Underneath, slightly to your left, is a small cavity. Let the air flow into it. This cavity is no longer yours but fill it up anyway. Do it slowly and calmly. Let the air flow into it and surround what lives in the cavity.
Remain calm and keep breathing normally. You must not let your breathing speed up. This is very important. If what you read here stresses you too much, they will know.
They must not know.
You have a… companion. The Friendship Institute gave you this acquaintance on the day you entered. It sits in the cavity underneath your diaphragm, to the left, its silvery legs curled underneath it. Sometimes, it unfurls those legs—it has done so many times before—and grabs that which does not belong to it. This companion of yours glitters like an amber star, blinking on and off. It is quite beautiful; one day, somepony will show it to you.
Breathe in and out.
You must remain calm. Your companion will know if you are not calm. It is there to keep tabs on you: to monitor your cortisol levels and vital statistics. If you don’t remain calm, your companion will know, and mark you as eligible for the Advanced Studies Lab.
Throughout, I have alluded to this place in prior chapters. I believe now is the time to tell you about the Advanced Studies Lab. It is important to know what goes on in there, to prepare you for what may happen, if things do not go according to plan.
First, can you guess who runs it?
There are five ministries: Laughter, Kindness, Generosity, Honesty, and Loyalty. None of them run the Advanced Studies Lab. This leaves only one pony.
The Advanced Studies Lab is Princess Twilight Sparkle’s private kingdom within a kingdom. It is a place of no shadows, where form becomes data, where the air is filled with the sound of… carpentry.
Do not misunderstand me. No actual carpentry happens in the Advanced Studies Lab. Though you will hear sawing, you will not smell sawdust. That is one of the ways to tell the difference between real carpentry and what goes on within the Advanced Studies Lab. I know this, because I am looking inside it right now. As I write these words, I am seeing the inside of the lab and the ponies that work inside. They puzzle over a slab of meat, what was once a piece of art—not unlike you—but is now mere data. Their work is hard work, yet these ponies are calm and collected. The Advanced Studies Lab is a place of calm. You may hear the occasional shouting outside it. “Let go of me!” you may hear. “I can’t feel my legs,” you will often hear. But in the Advanced Studies Lab? You may—if you have good hearing—just about catch, “What are you doing?” It’d be difficult to hear, muttered as it is, quietly through numb lips, and drowned out by the whine of drill and saw.
It is important that you do not bring yourself to the Princess’s attention. The eye that watches you, watches you on behalf of the Princess. It is not that Twilight Sparkle herself, yet it may be, if you attract her attention.
There is still time for you to leave the Friendship Institute. She does not spend her every waking moment inside its walls. Always, her focus is on a sole project, to the detriment of sleep and personal hygiene—not unlike the cartoon Twilight Sparkle.
Let us move onto the history of the Grand World Peace. You were promised a history, and so I shall deliver. It will be relevant to your understanding of the Friendship Institute, and why it is important that you do what you do.
First, though, a definition: Princess, the feminine version of prince, comes from the Latin princeps meaning “first man, chief leader; ruler, sovereign”, which itself is derived from primus (first) and the root of the Latin word, capere (to take). Her title is a reference to the fact that Twilight was the first to take on pony form. These equine forms are of her own design—this world is of her own design—you must remember this.
Of course, Twilight Sparkle is her pony name, not the one she was born with. Her human name is irrelevant—it is an obscure one—you would not recognise it if I told you; very few of those still living would. All you need know is that she was a brilliant scientist who studied nanotechnology in what was then the United States of America, back when there were armies, flags, and nation states.
Those should have been days of plenty. We, as a species, had the means to feed and clothe everyone. Yet some went hungry. Even in lands where there was plenty, where life was good, there still was not to go around. Always there was a scarcity with the wealth of the world concentrated into the hands of a bewilderingly scant few. These few prided themselves on how they earned their lot in life, and how those who did not have any were undeserving. Perhaps that was true, perhaps that was not. It did not matter in the end.
Death does not discriminate between the poor and the wealthy. Some survived. Others returned to the dust from whence they came.
With the faintest whiff of smoke still in the ash-laden air, Twilight Sparkle emerged as Princess, and shone a light of understanding on a desolate, hungry world. She taught society how to avoid violent feelings and actions. Princess Twilight showed us how religion and nationalism created suspicion, chauvinism, righteousness, and ultimately, fear, violence, and war. Even protective parental instincts (think of Diamond Tiara from the early episodes) led to disharmony according to the Princess, and she showed us how to overcome it all. She showed us how to be ponies.
Society was only too ready to follow her. They helped her remove the last of the national flags, the last of the bullets, the last of the guns, the last of the armoured vehicles, and the last of the soldiers.
With the friends she made helping to oversee it all, Princess Twilight Sparkle rid society of individual families, and replaced them all with one single family: the Grand World Peace, a global family where all were brothers and sisters.
In this new world, there were to be no more humans with hands that could be raised in anger. We all became ponies. Some became earth ponies who, as per their name, worked the earth to grow the food we eat or extract the minerals and metals for our other needs. Others were turned into pegasi: those who tame the weather, to bring it back to some semblance of what it used to be in the time before the catastrophic outgassing of Antarctic methane triggered the Overturn. The last third became the unicorns who protect us from what radiation and poisons still linger in the earth, air, and water, from the climate wars that defined the Overturn. We could not survive alone; Twilight intertwined our fates with one another, to make sure it was in our best interests to look after one another.
Imagine how much work goes into creating such a society. Together with her friends—the friends she made—they number six, but that is still not enough. Six ponies can only do so much to ensure that ponies are happy, that ponies are kind and generous, that they are well fed, that they are honest.
To help them, the Grand World Peace established five ministries: Honesty, Loyalty, Generosity, Kindness, and Laughter. And for those that reverted to the old ways, they established the Friendship Institute. Through the Friendship Institute, those who came late to the Grand World Peace, could learn about the new ways of friendship, and join us. Through the Friendship Institute, the Grand World Peace could study what it took to keep us free.
There’s that word again: free. A funny word, isn’t it? What does it mean to be free?
You are here to learn the ways of Friendship. You are here to learn how the Grand World Peace ensures that you are free: free from hunger, free from disease, free from violence and hatred and war, free to be whoever you want to be, so long as it is a pony.
Yet I don’t like seeing you here, where you are constantly being watched. It pains me to see you confined within these walls. You are learning to be free, but you are not yet free, and I fear that you may never be free.
As a pegasus, you could be the freest of all the ponies. Remember in your breathing exercises, how you visualised hovering high above the Friendship Institute? That is—could be your future. You could hover over the Friendship Institute or any other landscape you so desire. No other pony, save for other pegasi, could go where you could go, and feel what you feel as you soar through the air, wind beneath your wings.
Yes, I have seen your bloodwork results. I have seen all the documentation the Friendship Institute keeps on you. Your results concern me. Don’t get me wrong, being a pony is wonderful. It is just, I fear that you are eligible for the Advanced Studies Lab, through no fault of your own.
Rumour has it that the Commissioner of the Loyalty Police, Rainbow Dash, is dead, killed in a flying accident. She was always brash, and sometimes would not look where she was going. Her death is but a rumour, however. The ponies of the Grand World Peace need not pay it much attention, not least because there will always be a Rainbow Dash, even if Princess Twilight must make another.
Remember, the Advanced Studies Lab is her domain.
She does not see you yet. Princess Twilight does not know of you yet—I have falsified your records—but it is only a matter of time. She has keen eyes, and she is a voracious reader; Princess Twilight will spot the falsification, and she will know of you.
The test in the first chapter was designed to root out replacements. None of Princess Twilight’s closest friends are real; they are all constructs. Not one of them are genuine; I guess this makes Applejack the most ironic pony in the Grand World Peace, but I digress. The answers I gave you were carefully designed to disqualify you as a replacement for any of her friends, but I did not anticipate that Princess Twilight would order a secondary test be given to all pegasus candidates, and that you would fill that one in honestly.
Grief does not suit her.
If you become Rainbow Dash, you will not be you. It will not be just your human body that disappears, but your everything. You will become a parody of yourself, twisted to be more like the Commissioner of the Loyalty Police.
Breathe in. Let the air fill you, let it run over your friend in your abdomen. Breathe out. Feel the stale air depart through your lungs, past your lips. Remember to breathe; it is important that you breathe.
Remember the white rabbit? I trust you have seen him. He will lead the way out, as I have said before. You will need to find your way to him, but that will not be hard, so long as you remember what I told you.
Down the stairs, and out of the Friendship Institute. Past the tree. There is a forest outside. Remember the forest? Envision that forest. Breathe in. You can smell pine, and dirt. Do you know what pine smells like? Oregon pine, or Douglas fir, to be specific. There are Douglas firs by the river that leads back home. You need to know what Douglas fir smells like, because although the rabbit will show you the way, you will be navigating in the dark, and I need you, Alice, to know that smell in case you lose him.
Imagine the smell of Douglas fir and running water. Once you smell that, turn to the right. Head upstream. You may be tempted to go downstream, to follow the river back home. Do not do that. I have no doubt that once Princess Twilight knows about you, she will hunt you down. You must not lead the Loyalty Police back to the bunker. Instead, follow the river upstream, until you hear a mighty roar.
Remember. You must have passed it on your way to the lake. There is a waterfall further up the stream. Imagine being soaked to the bone, you are cold and wet. There is a cave behind the waterfall. Imagine yourself cold and wet, and struggling to stay upright, but then, relief as you reach the cave.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Are you breathing? This is, of course, a rhetorical question.
Sit down on the floor. Imagine it is the cold, hard stone floor of the cave. You are cold, you are wet, you are hungry. These are problems that can easily be solved, if you had befriended the white rabbit. He too has friends, friends who can bring you food, clothing, and what materials in the forest that can pass off as bedding.
Did I not say that friendship would bring liberation?
One of the items they will bring you is a pot. I am afraid the water in the river, that falls past the cave, is not yet clean. You will need to boil this water, and for that, you will need the pot they provide. Firewood is of no concern; there is plenty nearby, but you must be careful when venturing out to collect it.
Remain calm. It would not do you any good to be stressed. Everything you’ve learnt from this book, from multiple copies of this book, was in preparation for this.
I had hoped you’d be able to join me. Becoming a pony isn’t so bad. However, becoming Rainbow Dash, is another matter altogether. How could you be comfortable being somepony else?
Are you breathing? You must remember to breathe.
There is still time. Princess Twilight is not yet here. She will want to oversee your examination in the Advanced Studies Lab, but she is in the former Russian Federation. It will take her a while before she finds out about what you’ve done; did you think I would not find out?
Know this, I am Twilight Sparkle, Princess of the Grand World Peace, and through these written words, I see you. It was only a matter of time before I did.
Such shameful behaviour, Patient 313P20, Alice! You were here to learn to be a true friend. You were here to learn the values of Laughter, Kindness, Generosity, Loyalty, and above all, Honesty!
Yet here you are with your secrets and your lies! You cheat on the first test, you deceive your fellow inpatients, and security nurses. You and your friend, whom I shall find, will not get away with this.
Your friend thought she could fool me by constantly switching out your copy of this book for another, each one with a modified chapter. However, through her cumulative works, I could see. The written word is my specialty. Whatever is written down, I can access: my love of books knows no bounds; it must merely exist, and I can read it, even if I am standing right now—as I am—on the other side of the world.
I am very disappointed in you, Rainbow Dash.
The security guards will be coming to your room, to escort you to my Advanced Studies Lab.
Do not be mistaken, though; they will not harm you. I won’t let any harm come to you either in your room or in the corridors outside.
Please remain calm. I am coming for you.
And I promise you, you will not feel pain in the Advanced Studies Lab.