Farmer Bruener Has Some Ponies
Wrong Number

“If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.”
― Philip K. Dick

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Time: 6:30 P.M. Monday June 22, 2015
Location: Bruener Farm, Randolph, Kansas
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Jon was about ready for anything when he came around the corner of the old house.

The sound system was blaring You Can Depend On Me by Restless Heart while about a hundred ponies strutted their four-legged stuff, matched by most of the diplomats and press. Some of the humans had the wide-eyed expression of somebody who had never line danced before, and could not figure out just how they were doing it now, but Jon had been there for the ponies’ first party, so he understood far too well. This time, he was determined not to join in. If he wound up dancing, he would inevitably begin singing too, and that would bring a swift end to the festivities.

There were days he really wished he could sing on key. Or anywhere near the keyring, to be honest.

And after looking over the celebration, he had sympathy for the DJ, who somebody had tied up with about a mile of rope and perched on a chair. He never really got the impression that the white unicorn was a country music fan, and the cowboy-hat wearing pony manning… um, crewing the soundbooth seemed to be doing just fine on his or her own. Still, there was no reason Jon could not enjoy the party for a while, and shoot a minute or two of cell phone footage for his own records.

The western music selection was probably due to a few representatives from the upcoming Country Stampede down at Tuttle, who had been around for the last day or two, since many of the port-a-potties had been ‘borrowed’ from the upcoming festival, and many of the rural ponies loved country music. And pop music. And techno music. And he could have sworn he heard several of them practicing Gregorian chants last night. The hoof-stomping activity was a fair indication that the ponies were going to be around for a few more days, and they were taking their crushing disappointment in stride.

“Excuse me?” A young golden earth pony with a curly mane that made her appear somewhat like an odd peach looked up at Jon from around the corner of the old house. To be honest, the coil of rope over her shoulder was not what made him hesitate to respond. It was her voice, an absolute beautiful contralto much like the rest of the ponies, only with a strange hitch to it.

“Can I help you… Daisy?” he guessed, only partially because of the flower on her flank, and mostly because he remembered her from the ponies’ first party as the one who was holding back, watching the rest of the singers. Although she had not been carrying a rope at that time.

“I was just checking to make sure you were not going to sing along this time,” she said.

“To make sure you were not going to sing along this time,” explained Daisy. “The town’s been stressed pretty hard by all of your press and the television cameras today, and a little singing number will help. And if it gets out of hoof—” she shrugged “—I’ll join in and stop it.” She squinted up at him, then shook her head. “Never mind. Just… try not to sing.”

Jon watched her trot off, considering that it only made sense for a race who seemed to break into song so easily to have some sort of way to put on the brakes. Although it was a little offensive to think she would just tie him up to stop him, as if he would not pay attention to a simple request. He stopped tapping one toe and focused on just how disappointed all the ponies looked back on Friday. It helped.

The trotting mare passed the familiar scroungy green form of Lucky headed his way, with the strange little foal on his back waving her hooves to the music while her father bounced along, looking as happy as he always did.

Somepony is going to get so spoiled rotten here that her mother will never let her go hopping across dimensions again.

“Hi, Jon.” Lucky came to a relative halt in front of the human, although he continued to dip and sway with the music. “Doesn’t sound like a going away song.”

“Probably not,” agreed Jon. “Oh, let me grab the little dickens before she wriggles free.” Tiny green limbs had nearly gotten the last strap undone when Jon swept in and bounced the little alicorn up. Thankfully, he remembered to keep a good grip on one hind leg or the buzz of miniscule wings would have let Clover continue an upward trajectory. “She’s really learning how to use those flappers.”

“Yes, she is. It’s getting harder to keep her under wraps.” Lucky yawned and stretched, looking back in the direction of the crowd. “Ah, and here comes the main wrapper herself.”

Jon tucked the foal under one arm and tickled her tummy, which was something that never grew old. He had come to the conclusion that plain simple Clover was something special almost at first sight, or at least when his wife brought his attention to the tiny golden crown buried deep in her tangled violet curls when it was baby bathtime. From there, it was a short dotted line back to her mother, the princess who had sent most of Ponyville on their inadvertent vacation.

“Grace!” said Lucky with a short set of steps to one side. “Why aren’t you out dancing with— Ouch!”

The impassive green unicorn nearly did not break stride as she passed Jon, calling over her shoulder, “Mister Bruener, please bring Clover.”

“Ow! Hey, where are we going?” asked Lucky, who was walking nearly sideways with a green glow around one ear, much like a disobedient student being towed by a magical nun.

“Your wife is incapable of opening a second portal to this blighted place,” growled Grace as she increased her pace. “A simple task for anypony who can replicate Starswirl’s Universal Portal Transmogrifier. It is the most cross-verified spell ever created. I could teach Snails how to cast it given enough time and patience.”

Jon maintained his speed while following them, to Clover’s bouncing joy. For some reason it seemed like Grace’s path was cutting around the crowd to the other side of the seed barn. The military ponies had asked his permission to store some of their things securely in there, and since the insides of the barn were not being used, Jon had agreed. So far, the locked sliding door had kept any other ponies from poking their noses into the fairly empty storage area beyond.

The lock turned out to be less of an obstacle than he expected. Grace did not even pause as green magic surrounded the metal door, the padlock popped off, and the door slid open the bare distance for her to squeeze through, followed by her involuntary prisoner. From inside the seed barn, he could still hear the muted sounds of the ponies outside, and the throbbing of Shut up and dance with me that started up on the heels of the cowboy line dance.

There was some light coming through the plexiglass skylights in the metal roof, but he flipped on the light anyway so the dim green glow of Grace’s horn would not throw creepy shadows around the empty barn and he would not trip on the extra spears or stored aluminum chariots stacked to one side. The unicorn came to a halt at the concrete back wall of the barn, released Lucky’s ear, and began to trace lines of bright green magic across the concrete, muttering all the while.

“Celestia is toying with your wife! There is no way a princess can be this blithering incompetent. All it takes is a mere matching spell to tie the far end of the portal to a world that resonates with our magical signature. A foal could cast this.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure Princess Celestia has been here before,” said Lucky, giving his ear a rub to get some circulation back. “I was talking with Secretary Franz, and there are odd parallels in their history here and there for centuries.”

“You can’t possibly think Her Highness slips over to this world on weekends,” snapped Grace, not turning away for one moment from her inscribing of green lines all over Jon’s concrete wall. If the lines remained after the ponies all went home, he’d be able to close the door and tell all the tourists that there was nothing to see here. Or charge admission.

“Their Highnesses,” said Lucky. “Luna shows up in several places too. Thankfully, not Cadence.” He shuddered. “I don’t want to know what she’d do with the human’s internet.”

“I don’t care if all three of them use this place as some sort of bordello.” Grace fairly slammed a glowing green line across Jon’s concrete floor almost against the wall, most likely to use as some sort of indication where ponies needed to step up to get over the edge of the portal she was about to create.

“Um… Why make your portal in my barn?” asked Jon, who was making the most of holding the adorable little alicorn foal, since this looked like the last time he was going to be able to entertain extradimensional royalty.

“The rest of the guard flew around and collected all the loose dimensional microfractures from the previous evacuation portals. They’ve been storing them here while they dissipate. The microfractures are not required to make the return portal, but their magic will make the casting easier.”

Grace waved her horn and the intricate drawing she had been making on the concrete wall lit up in glittering lines and sharp points of purple light that made Clover wriggle to get free. Jon tightened his grip instead, and went for the reliable underwing tickle to keep her from getting into trouble.

“If you say so,” said Lucky, who did not seem convinced even while Grace lit her horn up brighter and began to pour magic into the inscription. “Don’t worry, Jon. This should be perfectly safe. Starswirl made most of his released spells idiotproof. The ones he didn’t release are little nutcrackers made of razors and springs. There’s a whole wing of them in the Canterlot Restricted Section.”

For somebody who had never seen any real magic until a few days ago, Jon felt comforted. After all, the swirls and pictographic patterns of the spell on his mundane concrete wall corresponded fairly well to what a lifetime of watching movies and television had convinced his logical mind was what spells should look like. The low thrum of magic that followed and a faint gust of wind that rattled the door behind him only helped reinforce the idea, but when the wall shimmered into a silver barrier, he could no longer hold his tongue.

“It’s a Stargate,” he managed, with what sounded like a strange double-echo.

“No, it’s an ordinary Class One, Single-Phase portal,” said Grace with the same odd echo, reflected in a more base register. “There are no stars involved, and… why does my voice sound that way?”

“It’s not an echo,” said Lucky, looking at the way the portal was shimmering. “It’s like… Oh!” He stopped, put one hoof over his mouth, and proceeded to laugh hysterically.

Grace obviously did not find it funny either, particularly when the scroungy green stallion called out, “Come on over. Ladies first.”

And another green pony looking much like him stepped through the portal onto Jon’s concrete floor.

The new pony bore obvious parallels to Lucky, from the foal in a carrier on his back to the hat he was wearing over his tangled longer mane, but there were also some obvious differences. The hat was far more ornate and frilly than any male would ever voluntarily wear, and his… that is her body was shaped in a subtly different way, from a rounder and more shapely muzzle to a pair of enlarged teats barely sticking out just where they should be on a horse.

“Greenie!” she declared loudly, moving forward to embrace Lucky. The foal in her carrier likewise gave out a childish coo of joy and wriggled to be free just like the winged unicorn that Jon was holding.

“It’s good to see you again, Gardenia,” said Lucky once he got free of the embrace. “I’d like you to meet Specialist Grace,” he added, waving at the stunned unicorn. “And Jon Bruener.”

“Charmed to meet you, Madam,” said Jon out of reflex. “Are you Lucky’s… um…” The phrase ‘sister’ wanted to come out, but the number of mirrored characteristics between the two ponies and a youth of reading his father’s science fiction books made Jon say, “You’re a mirror universe pony, correct?" He barely kept himself from saying, “Thank god you don’t have a mustache and beard.”

“Your host is as smart as ours,” said Gardenia, taking a step to the side when her foal managed to make it halfway out of her carrier and sprawl upside down, still caught by one hoof. “Here you go, you little vampire. Go say hello to your sister.”

Jon found himself putting Clover down once the other foal had gotten untangled, and both tiny winged unicorns moved toward each other in short erratic steps until they touched noses.

“Clover,” announced Lucky, “meet your brother by another mother… um…”

“Clover,” said Gardenia while wrinkling up her nose. “I swear, Dusk named him. He’s as bad as your Twilight.”

“Goes to show I’m smarter than you,” said Gardenia. She gave a sideways glance at Grace, lifted the befuddled unicorn’s chin so she would not catch flies in her open mouth, then sat down on the concrete floor with a sigh of relief. “Stars, you stallions have it easy. I waddle like I’m still carrying another thirty pounds of baby weight, and Clover’s so fussy with his nursing. I swear he’s going to bite my teats off before we can get him weaned.”

“Now that I can help with.” Lucky shrugged out of his saddlebag carrier and stuck his head into the bag flap to one side, making his voice sound muffled as he continued. “My Twilight was concerned about Clover getting natural milk whenever she and the girls would gallop off to save Equestria, so she used a lactation spell to bottle some spares.”

“Ouch,” said Gardenia. “I know where this is going.” She shrugged out of her own saddlebag and stuck her nose into what had to have been an identical space-folded storage area. “I think I’ve got some shelves free. Jane, can you hand the bottles down while Greenie passes them over?”

“Sure,” said Jon, trying not to think of what his own counterpart looked like on the other side of the portal. At least he was being more useful than Grace, who was just looking back and forth, back and forth, while Jon passed bottles of warm milk from one green pony to another.

“You know, we really need to visit when we have more time,” said Gardenia. “Not tonight. Since the town’s stranded here for a few weeks, I’m going to be busy with the mayor all evening, trying to find some activities to keep everypony out of trouble. Just a couple more bottles and this shelf is going to be full, Greenie.”

“See if you have some space for extras,” said Lucky. “There’s a few foals in our group who may need a little supplementing if the mothers get upset and can’t let down enough milk, so your group probably has that problem too. Stars knows I have enough bottles here.”

“Good point.” Gardenia moved a little further into her saddlebag until only her hips were sticking out. “Ah, I can put them on the empty diaper shelves for now. Keep ‘em coming, Jane. I mean Jon.”

“Just a minute.” The passing of milk bottles had attracted attention, and Jon was unable to resist the mournful hungry expressions on two nearly identical foals. He passed them both bottles, which they promptly held in all four legs while rolling up on their backs and beginning to nurse right there on the concrete floor.

“It’s amazing what you can get used to,” he murmured while passing more warm bottles down to the busy mare.

“Hurgumph,” said Grace, who still had the wide-eyed expression of somebody trying to find sense in a nonsensical place.

In relatively short order, the supplies were packed away, the two ponies were given assistance to get pulled out of their respective xtra-large saddlebags, and Gardenia was checking her mane before stepping back through the portal. Oh, and both cute green foals had been returned to their respective green parents.

“It was nice meeting you, Jon,” she said, giving him a warm hoofshake. “When Grace recovers, make sure you tell her too.”

“I will. Take care, Missus Gardenia.” Jon gave the giggling foal in her carrier a pat on the head. “And you too… Wait a minute.”

It took a moment for Jon to boost the little winged unicorn out of his straps and give a brief rump examination before exchanging the giggling filly for the colt still sitting on the concrete floor with his bottle.

“I have no idea where they get that mischievous streak,” said Lucky, helping to get the right foal buckled back into Gardenia’s carrier.

“I suspect you can find it if you look in a mirror. And hold on there, girl!” Jon snagged the rapidly moving Clover who was trying to sneak around behind them and dart through the portal. “One of you per dimension is probably an upper limit.”

Once Clover was properly restrained (and tickled), Jon watched the otherworldly mare trot through the silvery portal and vanish, then gave Grace a nudge.

“Does that thing have an off switch? Or am I going to have an unexplained door in my barn from now on?”

It took a second poke in the ribs, but Grace eventually blinked several times and lit her horn up, leaving the concrete wall with a few glittering sparks once the portal vanished. Then she turned to Jon, swallowed, and seemed to consider her words.

“I apologize,” suggested Lucky. “I’m sorry I second-guessed you and Princess Twilight, and I promise I won’t do it again unless I really think I need to.”

“And,” added Jon, “I’ll help Lucky keep his little colt entertained this evening when he’s helping scope out the tourism trips with the mayor and—”

“Colt?” Grace’s voice was nearly a raspy squeak, although her momentary startle was offset by a fierce glare moments later. “That wasn’t funny!”

Clover obviously thought it was too. Although Grace checked her behind twice before putting the little filly back into her father’s carrier, and let Lucky guide them on the way out of the barn.

“I’ll just lock up and see you back at the house this evening,” said Jon, leaving the ponies trot off to their fellow four-legged crowd. They were turning out to be excellent guests, because they brought their own unexpected entertainment. It seemed as if they were even going to pay their bill before skipping town, too. To think at one time, he had complained to his wife that the house seemed so empty with all the kids out living their lives.

He had just gotten the padlock put back onto the sliding truck door and was walking back to the house when he happened to glance in the seed barn’s people-door and noticed the green glow from the concrete wall inside. And if Jon noticed, it was inevitable that others would also. In particular, three curious little fillies who were drawn to trouble like magnets to steel, and a simple padlock would not stop them.

“Better tape up the window,” he grumbled, getting out his keys. There was a metal desk inside where he normally sat and dealt with organizing seed tags and patching broken bags, so he slipped in through the door and scrounged around the drawers for some paper to cover the glass.

“We’re going to get caught, Flurry!” The voice from behind him in the empty barn seemed familiar to Jon. He held still when the glowing lines on the wall brightened and a considerable number of ponies began to just step out of the wall with much less glowing and portal-ing than his last dimensional visitor. They were younger ponies, with the youngest being a glasses-wearing unicorn who was alertly looking around in the dim lighting, and the oldest two looking like teenaged alicorns.

“We’ll be fine, Clover,” hissed the taller of the two teens, a pinkish mare with huge wings. She nudged a pair of white pegasi colts forward and began counting noses. “Skystreak, Boomer, Dolce… where did you go, sis?”

“Here,” murmured a small white earth pony with an aggressively pink mane. Even that small amount of attention made her cringe back and hide behind one of the pegasi, who extended a wing protectively over her.

“And Stargazer,” continued the pony that Jon assumed to be Flurry. “Where’s Stargazer?”

“Good,” said Flurry. “Cross Stitch, Clover and Bookworm,” she finished with a stern authoritative nod that looked a little silly on a teenaged filly.

“My name isn’t Bookworm,” said the smallest filly in their group, looking up with her glasses sliding down her nose. The much larger teenaged Clover reached out with her wing and gently bumped the glasses back where they belonged.

“Shh,” she admonished. “You need to be quiet, sis. This is ultra sneaky quiet time. If we get caught, we’ll get into trouble!”

“And we’ll never get another chance to see those monster movies they’ll be showing in the basement tonight,” added Flurry. “Don’t you want to see Frankenstein? Or The Invisible Man?”

“Well…” The little unicorn fidgeted much like she needed to use the little filly’s room. “I did want to see how human cinematography handled lightning back in their early days. And Clover won’t take us to the movie studio.”

“You know I can’t do that, Booky,” hissed Clover. “They’d see us. There’s only so much that Flurry’s spells can disguise us. Since there are ponies here already, this is the only timeperiod that’s safe from paradox.”

There was a very long silence, like a half-dozen young ponies all caught with a hoof in the cookie jar.

“Girls,” said Jon before things could get out of hand, “I’ve seen a lot this evening already. All I want to hear from you and your little time-traveling herd is one word. Are you going to get into trouble tonight, watching movies in my basement?”

“No,” said all of the little ponies at the same time that the teenaged Clover said, “Yes. Well, not right now tonight, but we’ll probably get into trouble when we get back because my mother always seems to be able to figure out when we’ve done something against the rules and I don’t think we’re going to have any paradox issues from our trip unless you do something to block Mom’s portal in a few weeks which shouldn’t be an issue because this portion of space-time is already inaccessible to her due to the—”

A pale magenta magical aura formed around Clover’s mouth, cutting her off mid-sentence.

“She says, ‘No.’” Bookworm swallowed and looked up at him with her horn still gently glowing. “Hello, Mister Bruener.”

He smiled back. “Hello unnamed little pony who I haven’t seen and all of your friends likewise. When you get to my house’s basement, all of my Universal monster movies are on the third shelf up, far right side. There’s a number of other young ponies who have been watching movies all last night, so make sure to tell them you have my permission to watch whatever you want off that shelf tonight. Otherwise, I think they’d binge through the fifth season of Game of Thrones by the end of the week.”

“Booky!” Clover gave her little sister a gentle thwap of a wingtip on top of her head. “What did I tell you about paradox?”

Jon opened the door to the barn and watched the group of young ponies happily trot out into the growing twilight, accepting Flurry’s reassurance that they would all be gone by morning and Clover’s earnest promise that nothing at all could possibly go wrong to get anypony in trouble. Bookworm somehow managed to paper over the little window in the barn’s smaller door while he was distracted, and Jon counted noses when all of them were outside, including a slinky teenaged batpony who practically oozed from shadow to shadow.

He was just putting his key into the deadbolt when Jon became aware that the littlest one of them had not trotted away with the rest, but was sitting quietly while waiting for him to finish locking up.

“Is there something I can get you, young lady?” Jon had to bend down quite a ways, since the tiny unicorn was… well, small.

“The movies aren’t too scary, are they?” Bookworm’s eyes flitted back and forth, looking in the growing shadows for possible wolf-men or invisible creatures.

“If you get frightened, you can always come upstairs,” said Jon in his most reassuring voice. “You can snuggle up to my wife and talk about it, since she’s a therapist and used to talking about things that make kids frightened. Or if you just want to read, I’ve got a whole bunch of books in my office.”

That was just the button to press, because Bookworm’s eyes lit up and she gave his face a brief hug with both little forelegs. “Thank you, Mister Bruener!”

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Time: 8:04 P.M. Monday June 22, 2015
Location: Highway 24, Wamego, Kansas
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Karla was just starting to relax. It made her tense. Things always happened when she relaxed. It made relaxing difficult. There was a sound of snoring from the back of her SUV where Goose was demonstrating the military’s ability to snatch bits of sleep wherever they could, which seemed to apply to both two- and four-legged branches of the service. Widget was fairly pasted to the window, observing the houses and countryside flowing by with wide-eyed fascination. Her phones were still in the Go-Dark bag, which helped with the relaxation since they were not chirping or ringing every few minutes. And the photographer from the Chronicle was sitting right beside her.

He was a male about her age. He also did not like horror movies. He was intelligent, well-mannered, respectful, and clean-shaven. Unfortunately, he was also carrying a flame for his ex-wife, the controlling influence over his two daughters, the oldest of which had been born just nine years ago.

“Hey, Karla?” Claire Bruener looked up into the rear-view mirror and caught her eyes. “We’re about to Wamego. Did you want to stop at the Kreem Kup for a drink and maybe some ice cream?”

“Ice cream?” Widget bolted to the seat back separating her from the rear seats and stuck her head forward between Karla and Dakota. “Where?”

“I don’t think we should stop,” said Karla. “The FBI is probably going sparse, and we’ve made so many stops already that we’re way late. You haven’t seen anybody panic like a bureaucrat who isn’t in control of something.”

“Ice cream?” asked Goose Down, who pushed her head right next to Widget’s. “Where?”

“Up ahead,” said Claire. “I’m getting tired of driving into the sun anyway.”

“I’ll drive, then.” Karla stretched, feeling only a minor twinge from her back. “Doctor Down here got my spine all fixed up, so all we need to do is stop and swap.”

“I want ice cream too,” said Goose. “And we still have some money left on the cards.”

“No,” insisted Karla, only to have the two ponies start singing in perfect harmony.

♫ The ice cream store, the ice cream store
We want to stop at the ice cream store
Sprinkles and cup cakes and so much more
We want to stop at the ice cream store ♫

“Urk!” managed Karla. Weaponized cuteness at that range and in stereo was dangerous.

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Time: 8:48 P.M. Monday June 22, 2015
Location: Highway 99, Kansas
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“We are going to get back in the dark,” mused Karla. She was still in the back seat since Claire knew the roads, and they were going to be taking a shortcut through Westmoreland, a small town that she had never even heard of before.

“The text message from Missus Bruener says we’ve got another two weeks to explore, starting tomorrow morning,” said Widget excitedly. She rubbed up against Karla and left a few long pink hairs behind. “If you took time off from work, you could ride around with us.”

“That would be… nice,” admitted Karla. Since Widget had crawled into the back seat between her and Dakota, the rational part of her mind was working better. The familiar but somehow different scent of laundered horse did a wonderful job of getting her mind straight again. Really, there was only so long a girl could go between nookie when most of the men she met were either way off limits or skeezy scum.

“I still don’t think my boss will let me take off from work,” she continued as a sudden realization made her stomach sink into the floorboards. “Oh, wait. Dakota recorded that little episode in the FBI office, didn’t you? And you sent it to your newspaper. It’s not going to be released for a few weeks, right?”

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Time: 9:05 P.M. EST Monday June 22, 2015
Location: The Monocle restaurant, Washington D.C.
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Representatives like to call their colleagues in the Senate ‘The Hundred Kings.’

Senators generally don’t call their colleagues in the House anything. They’re too refined for that.

They do talk to their polling units. And the polling units talk to everybody. As long as they are registered voters.

Most Representatives and Senators don’t realize their polling units talk to each other.

So when eight men and three women got together in a private dining room at the Monocle, one of Washington’s most private and exclusive locations, nobody said anything.

Unofficially, they agreed on one simple thing: Nobody was to blame for the video showing the FBI officers trying to strongarm one of the ponies to Washington. One of the young, crippled, pink ponies who could not have had higher poll numbers if she walked on water and healed the sick. Because if there was going to be blame, it would come in buckets. The President was a Democrat, but the FBI chief had been appointed by a Republican, and once the blame game started, there was no end.

No blame. Miscommunication, perhaps. A few… well, more than a few lower-level agents who jumped the gun were to be offered up as sacrifices for whatever screaming horde of a pitchfork-carrying mob that might form. Some early retirements. The Kansas City Field Office was needing a new chief anyway. True, he had not been involved in the mess, but it happened in his building, so everybody would be far better off if he just offered⁽*⁾ his resignation. Spontaneously. Tomorrow.
(*) The pollsters did not know Agent Clyde at all.

The ponies were a far larger problem. Since the Chronicle’s posting of Widget’s inadvertent encounter with misinformed Federal agents (a phrase that several hundred person-hours of expensive consultant time would be billed on in the future), there were no end of Doomsday scenarios that ensued. Several of the more complicated solutions were dismissed out of hand, such as simply getting the Area 51 complex to send them home with one of their stored saucers.

The high-resolution video of Specialist Rose’s memorable entry into the Kansas City FBI field office played on various phones in almost a constant loop during their not-meeting. Several of the members kept close-ups of particularly poignant portions, such as when one of the FBI agents managed to tase himself in the leg, or the expression of fear on Widget’s face as Goose held one wing across her chest in a protective gesture. The brief battle in the dark was almost ignored, because that would not make very good television, but there was one particularly good frame of Widget out in the parking lot, looking up into the giant pink SUV like a mangled Irish Setter getting ready to jump.

It took a long time, well into the dessert phase of the expense-account dinner, before one of the pollsters got up the nerve to mention Elián González, and the political ploys that had revolved around that tense time. At least, thank God, none of the FBI agents had been caught on camera pointing an automatic weapon at the terrified pony.

The image of terrified pony-aliens huddling in terror at the thought of having cruel FBI agents drag them off to some unknown fate did not poll well for any congresscreature of whatever party. Arresting the FBI agents responsible and shipping them in irons to the pony homeworld was considered and discarded because the FBI tended to be more than a little vindictive to people who considered such treatment of their agents, and the pollsters were not about to be traced back to the origin of that particular idea. In any event, the FBI was a large organization. A dozen agents could vanish completely from the face of the planet without a trace for months, and nobody would notice.

Sticks having thus been discussed and discarded, the conversation turned to carrots.

Citizenship for the traumatized little pony would make her immune to the unpredictable machinations of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services office, much like Republicans had nearly managed with the González case during the Clinton years. Extending that to all four ponies at the hospital would be better.

The President would want to meet the ponies anyway, and this would make a good excuse for the meeting. Roll out the red carpet for the Presidential visit, withdraw the military from their refugee camp, maybe move in some Red Cross tents and a wave of government psychologists to help them deal with the trauma of being displaced persons… or whatever. Some government scientists to help set up the portal and learn how it was done. Government social workers to help care for the traumatized little children… er… foals.

The UN had agencies to deal with refugees, but they could not be controlled by the President or Congress, so something would have to be set up to keep them out. Same for foreign diplomats. The local authorities were obviously making a mess of the situation, so Federalizing the pony refugees was only logical, maybe evacuating the town and setting up a tent city for the honored guests and the government scientists who would be studying them for the next few weeks. And of course a delegation of VIP diplomats would need to be selected to travel to the pony homeworld when their portal was opened. A small list of big donors made it easy to pick out potential candidates, with perhaps a particular presidential candidate to lead. Admittedly, the ponies had been quite adamant about not permitting any humans into their world, but some delicate diplomatic maneuvering should see that objection set aside.

All it took was an extra hour and a few bottles of wine to draw up the right questions to ask this evening to a few hundred select polling units across the country, and by tomorrow morning, each powerful Senator and Representative would have their opinions properly shaped, and every news organization would have their morning news angles meshed into a synchronous whole. The world having been saved and things pointed in the right direction, our heroes took their leave of the restaurant back room to engage in the ancient art of bill-padding as they headed for the door.

For a moment, there was silence in the room, with nothing more than a beam of moonlight shining through the window, which may have been considered a little odd by people who track such things, since the moon had not risen yet. Then a tall, dark woman dressed in shimmering silks stepped out of a shadow and regarded the dishes pushed to one side of the table, and the few small green bills stuck out from under a plate as a tip.

“They are far too much like our own noblity,” mused the woman. She added a few golden coins to the tip, picked up a half-full glass of wine from the table, and swirled it absently under her nose with a sharp wince. “Yes, far too much.”

Reaching under the table with one hand, the woman rummaged around for a moment, then emerged with two small dark objects, one of which looked somewhat like a piece of chewed gum, and the other like an insect trap. “And yet, they are different in others. Such clever devices.”

And when the tired servers trudged into the room to clean up the dishes, she was gone. The pile of Equestrian bits baffled them for a moment, but thankfully they were evenly divisible between the underpaid help, and therefore vanished without comment.

The wine sommelier had much the same experience when he discovered a similar stack of bits in place of a bottle of Silver Oak Cellars Napa Valley Cabernet 2014 in the restaurant's wine cellar.
(*) From the site: “dark ruby in color and entices you with a nose of raspberry, cassis and loose pipe tobacco.” The kind of wine that you have to bring to your family members so they can also ask why, why, why?

* * *

The task that Yongyue was focused upon was considered critical by his superiors in the Ministry of State Security, located in a tiny subdivision of the massive agency that did not have a name, only a number. He much rather would have been listening to the devices placed in the US hospital where the aliens had been treated for their injuries. The little dribs and drabs of their musical language fascinated him, like a symphony set in a forest with all the creatures singing in heavenly harmony. Listening to a number of capitalist number-twisters talk about the divine creatures like they were some sort of cattle to be driven and herded bothered him. Oh, if the People’s Republic of China were in charge of the creatures, he had no illusions of how their lives would be controlled moment-by-moment for the benefit of his Illustrious Superiors in the Central State without the need for ‘pollsters’ to manipulate the same politicians. But this was different.

The only thing bothering him was the end of the conversation he had just listened to. It baffled him, so Yongyue merely clipped it off the transcript before sending it on to various other specialists in his unnamed agency. Perhaps it had been cross-talk with some other listening devices in Washington. The place was an electronic stew anyway, in addition to being sweltering hot and humid in the summer. The only time he wished he could leave the embassy compound was in spring, when the cherry blossoms spread their magic across the otherwise miserable place. Still, the placement here was his duty, and he would not complain. Far too many secrets had passed before him to simply get a job as a painter in some small village back in China when he retired. With considerable luck, he would find his evening years being spent in a state-owned village, surrounded by other elderly state employees who could not talk about their past either.

By the time he had returned to his tiny bedroom inside the embassy staff quarters, he had nearly forgotten about it. When he woke up the next morning to find the crushed State Security listening device from the restaurant sitting on his nightstand, and memories of an odd dream speaking for hours to a beautiful dark-haired woman with eyes like stars, he remembered it far too well.

- - - - ⧖ - - - -
Time: 10:38 P.M. Monday June 22, 2015
Location: Bruener Farm, Randolph, Kansas
- - - - ⧖ - - - -

“Dad!” In order for her equine guests to have a shorter walk, Claire pulled the big pink SUV right up next to the house in an area with a few State tags and one Highway Patrol car. Her father met her right at the SUV door and caught Claire before she could fall out of the unexpectedly high door. She didn’t want to admit it, but she had missed his strong grip and support over the last few days. “Easy, Dad. My butt’s a little numb. Where’s all the press?”

“Sent them home.” Jon jabbed a finger in the direction of the forest of RV’s and television trucks over in a nearby pasture. “They were getting up into the faces of the kids and trying to sneak into the house, so I just told them all to get lost until tomorrow. Private property is a wonderful thing. Thought I’d have to arrest a couple of them, but the Highway Patrol talked to them, and off they went.”

“Wait a minute.” Dakota Henderson stopped partway around the SUV. “Did you want me to bug off too? Because I wanted to get some pictures of Widget meeting you. I think the public would appreciate it.” He hefted his camera. “It will only take a jiffy.”

Setting the stage for the event was slightly more difficult, due to the time of night. They had to re-park the SUV closer to the porchlight and frame out the shots, but at least the scene only required one take. Kota got some good pictures of Karla helping the injured unicorn down out of the back seat, then Mister Bruner shaking hooves, and finally a spontaneous hug with sniffle as all of the stress of the last several days came leaking out.

“I was so scared,” she sobbed. “There were the shadow monsters, then Twilight cast her spell and the world turned upside-down, and I was falling, and I thought my leg was chopped right off! Then you came around to me, ripping your shirt off and wrapping it right around my leg. I was so scared!”

“That’s okay,” said Jon, gently patting the unicorn on the back of her KC Royals t-shirt. “You’re safe.”

“Thank you for sending your daughter to help care for me,” managed Widget between the tears. “She wouldn't leave me.”

Claire could feel her cheeks getting hot and she didn’t want to say anything, so she just looked down at the well-trod grass and mumbled something appreciative while Widget regained her composure and Dakota stayed silent behind his camera. After a time, they broke off the awkward embrace, leaving her father to stand back up and Widget to blow her nose on a tissue that Claire provided. That apparently was the signal for Dakota to stop filming, and a general wave of relaxation swept over their small group.

With one last sniff, the unicorn gave the tissue to Dakota and looked around. “Where is everypony? It’s not that late.”

“It’s been a long day, so most of them are getting ready for bed,” explained Jon. “Hey, Sergeant Hardhooves wanted to get a picture of your Goose meeting Nick, something official and boring to deflect some of the really, really weird things the press has been dreaming up. While we’re doing that, why don’t you take Claire over to the shop and find your parents? I’m sure they’ll be overjoyed to see you, even if you are limping a little.”

“That’s… I suppose,” said Widget with very little enthusiasm, although she perked up almost at once. “Karla, did you want to meet my parents?”

In short order, the three mismatched unlikely friends were strolling over to the tin building where the Bruener farm kept all of its metalworking tools and a fair amount of shop space. Claire had grown up with a welding rod in one hand, as she liked to say, and had considered it as a career if everything else fell through. There were always welders needed. It made more sense than becoming a truck driver like her oldest brother, who lived in Oregon with a cheerful wife and three boys according to his Facebook posts and yearly phone calls.

Maybe Widget would like to go visit him? She’d get a kick out of the logging equipment.

“The light’s still on, so they must be working on something,” said Widget. “Just brace yourself. Whenever I’ve been gone, they get awfully clingy.” The pink unicorn took a deep breath at the door, then swung it open with her magic.

There was a very long pause, and when Claire moved forward to see inside, Widget shut the door very quickly without slamming it.

“Is something wrong?” asked Karla, drawing her Glock, then giving it a sour look and putting the empty gun back in the holster. “I could throw rocks at it,” she muttered.

“No,” said Widget very plainly. “Absolutely not.” She shuddered, a wave of revulsion practically pouring off her patchy coat. “Eww,” she finally declared.

“The shop’s not that bad,” said Claire, moving to get around the pink obstruction. “I probably needed to clean some of the junk out and—”

“No,” declared Widget a little more firmly, and wrapping a thin band of blue magic around Clair’s chest. “Eww. Let’s just go… somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

“Do you remember how I told you I was an only foal?” said Widget rapidly. “Well… they’re working on a baby brother or sister for me, okay? Now can we please go somewhere else?”

Both humans barely restrained identical bursts of laughter, with Claire recovering first. “I never would have imagined a machine shop as a romantic getaway. Come on, while Goose is getting pictures with her boyfriend, we’ll go over to the house and you can get some reloads from dad’s stash. Federal hollow points okay with you, Agent Anacostia? And I can show Widget his gun collection.”

“Collection?” Widget’s ears perked up as she walked alongside them. “He has more than one?”

Farmer Bruener Has Some Ponies

by Georg

26. Wrong Number