After what Lyra had said about turning into a pony when going to this other universe, he had expected it to happen to him, but when he opened his eyes, he found that he was still as much gecko as he’d ever been. That was fine with him. It must only be humans who turned into ponies...or something along those lines.
He looked around. He seemed to be in some sort of library - there were shelves of books all around - and everything seemed pretty much...normal. At least at first glance, there was nothing to obviously indicate that he was in a world of ponies.
After a moment, he decided to look more closely at some of the books, figuring that they might give him a bit better idea of what kind of place he was in and how best to gain new customers from its inhabitants. So he climbed up a bookshelf and began to examine their spines.
Before long, even without opening any of the books, he had gathered that either this world had magic or the caretaker of this particular library had a thing for nonfiction-styled fantasy books. Given the miraculous nature of his own transport here, and the sheer number of books, he guessed that it was probably the former. He had also gained a basic knowledge of what he believed must be some of the world’s countries, or perhaps regions within one country - places like Ponyville, Manehattan, Saddle Arabia, etc.
Just as he had finally resolved to take one of the magic books out and skim through its contents, he heard footsteps. Climbing back down quickly, he looked in the direction they had come from and saw a purple pony with wings and a horn - perhaps this was what one of the book titles had meant by an “alicorn”?
The pony walked over to a shelf and her horn lit up with a light pinkish-purple aura. A book levitated off the shelf, surrounded by its own aura of the same color, and the pages flipped on their own. Hesitating for a moment, then steeling his resolve, Martin walked over to the pony and cleared his throat.
The pony dropped her book in surprise and looked around to see where the noise came from. “Down here,” Martin said. The pony looked down.
“Um...hello?” she said, a bit confused.
“I’m sorry to intrude,” Martin said. “And I hope I’m not trespassing, but could you possibly tell me where I am? These books certainly seem interesting.”
The pony’s initial expression of confusion was wiped away and replaced with a smile. “You’re in the Library of Friendship!” she said. “Twilight Sparkle, librarian.” She held out a hoof, and Martin pressed his hand onto it in the best shake he could do given the size difference. “And don’t worry - the library is open to the public. You aren’t trespassing! But if you didn’t know that, then...how did you get here?”
“Martin, car insurance saleslizard,” he said. “I work for a company called GEICO in...well, another universe, I guess.”
Now Twilight understood. “Oh, you’re from the human world!” she said. “Well, the world of humans and...other creatures like lizards. Sorry, I don’t mean to offend.”
“No offense taken,” Martin said. After a moment of thought, he said, “Would you by any chance be interested in car insurance? You could save fifteen percent or more by switching to GEICO.” Immediately after saying that, he considered that it might not actually be true here - after all, he didn’t know what their car insurance prices were like. But then he figured that even if it wouldn’t have been true otherwise, the company probably wouldn’t mind if he gave the first customers from a new universe a special introductory deal, so he didn’t correct himself.
“Car insurance?” Twilight said. “Um...I don’t even have a car…” This might be harder than he thought.
“Well, that’s alright,” Martin said. “We have a special plan for you, too. If you’ll commit now to getting GEICO insurance whenever you do get a car in the future, we’ll give you an extra fifteen percent discount whenever that time comes. Limited-time offer only.”
“Um...I don’t really...think I need to do that right now,” Twilight said. “Limited time offer or not, I’m going to have to say ‘no.’ Sorry.”
Martin considered pressing further, but decided to hold off for now. There were surely many, many other potential customers out in the wider world. He could afford to wait to sign Twilight on for now.
“Alright,” he said. “But, by any chance, might you happen to have a spell for making copies of documents? And maybe a bag that’s bigger on the inside than the outside?” He had read enough fantasy to guess that something like that might be a thing here. “I could pay you back for the spell service within a few days. I’d only need to borrow the bag, but I could pay you for that as well.” He had no idea what the conversion rates here would be like, but felt sure that he could work something out.
“Yes, to both. I’ll get you a bag in a minute, but first...” Twilight said. She pulled out a book and flipped the pages, apparently looking for something specific. “Ah, here it is - the document duplication spell. What do you need copied? And don’t worry about payment; I’ll do it for free.” She thought for a moment. “Well, so long as it’s not something evil or anything like that.”
“Just this contract,” Martin said. “But without the signatures, initials, and date.” He handed her Principal Celestia’s GEICO contract.
Twilight unrolled it and quickly scanned each page. “Celestia?” she said. “Is this Principal Celestia’s signature? She signed up for GEICO car insurance?”
“Yes,” Martin said. “In fact, she was the last holdout. Now everybody in my entire world has GEICO car insurance, or at least a commitment to get it whenever they get a car. That’s why I came here.”
“Hmm…” Twilight said, contemplating that fact. “Well...hmm...if Principal Celestia signed up for it, and if it’s true that everyone else in your entire world signed up, then I suppose it must be a good value…”
“Oh, certainly,” Martin said. “The best.”
“If I took that second offer you suggested, the limited-time one about committing to GEICO car insurance ahead of time, would I have to pay anything now?” Twilight asked. “I mean, I doubt I’ll ever actually have a car, but I suppose just in case…”
“Yes…?” Martin said in anticipation. “Oh, I mean, no. No, you wouldn’t have to pay anything now. You’d just need to sign a contract, that’s all. There’s a copy of that one at the back of Celestia’s document - they get printed together - but she didn’t need to sign it since she got the full policy.” Twilight turned to the page in question and examined it.
“And I wouldn’t be committed to any more than a month, and I would get the discount off whatever the normal price would be at the time I got the new policy, correct?” Twilight said, reading the contract.
“Yes, you could drop the policy again after a month, but you would lose the discount and have to pay a cancellation fee. You could avoid the fee by keeping the policy for at least six months before cancelling,” Martin said. "Not that you'd ever want to cancel, of course."
“Well, again, I really don’t think I’m likely to get a car, but I guess if that doesn’t matter…” Twilight said.
“Great!” Martin said. “Um...if you could just make a copy of that contract…”
“Oh. Right,” Twilight said. “Actually, how many copies do you want in all? Ten? A hundred? A thousand?”
“A thousand would be great to start off!” Martin said.
“Well, I’ll have to warn you; I don’t really think you’re going to find many customers here,” Twilight said. “I’m taking that offer because I do visit the human world sometimes, and it’s possible that at some point I could buy a car there, but that’s not really the case for anypony else…”
Martin wasn’t fully paying attention; he was too caught up in thoughts of surprising the folks back at GEICO headquarters with another thousand customers. “That’s great,” he said absentmindedly. Twilight’s horn lit up and she copied the contract, leaving Celestia’s signature and associated handwritten info off the copies.
“Thank you!” Martin said. “Now just sign right here…and initial here...and sign and date here,” he said, pointing to each place in turn as Twilight levitated a quill to do as he asked. “Alright, that’s it!” he said, and took the contract. "If you ever do get a car, I believe you'll be very happy with your GEICO service."
“Thanks…” Twilight said, still a little unsure but not feeling like she’d really made much of a commitment. “Oh, the bag! Just a second.” She left the room for a minute or two and came back with a bag. “I bought a bunch of these at a place in Manehattan when they were on sale and they’ve been just sitting in my closet ever since. You can have one.”
She glanced at the bag, then back at Martin, then back at the bag. Realizing it was rather big for him, she cast a spell on it to shrink it to a more manageable size. The inside would still be just as big as ever.
“Thank you!” Martin said, putting his cell phone in the bag, then rolling up Celestia’s and Twilight’s contracts and putting them in as well. He began to roll up one of the copies, but Twilight stopped him.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” she said. “See, if you have the intention of putting something in the bag, it’ll automatically shrink to accommodate the opening. And it’ll grow back to size after you pull it out.” She levitated the entire stack of copies over to the opening of the bag, where they shrunk and she dropped them in. “See?” She added a few quills as well.
“Wow!” Martin said. “Well, thank you very much for all the help! I’ll talk to GEICO headquarters about whether we could give you an even better discount than the one you signed up for!”
Twilight led Martin to the castle’s exit, with him initially following her on foot and then her offering to let him climb on her back. He did. When they reached the exit, he hopped back down again.
“Good luck!” Twilight said, and he was off.