Red asked, "So what was in those letters you sent, anyway? Coded messages to secret agents who might help you regain control of the Dairy?"
"Some, yes," I agreed. "Some - not so much."
"Whaddaya mean?"
"Well - remember that gold I got from the dragon? I didn't have a chance to grab it before we left Canterlot. It's not doing me any good just sitting there, so some of those letters were instructions to invest it in a certain way. If it all goes well - then, very soon, several publishing houses in Canterlot will be releasing some new board- and card-games: Settlers of Catan, Carcasonne, Civilization, Ticket to Ride, Fluxx, Chrononauts, a few more. If all goes well - then I'll have at least a small stream of income, completely independent of the Dairy. Even if it turns out to be a flop as a business, or I never manage to lay hold of the bits - then, at least, some ponies might get a better feel for how to plan ahead with scarce and unpredictable resources, how to both cooperate and compete at the same time, and so on. I thought about adding a game called 'Diplomacy' to the mix, but decided-"
Blanche swooped down from the sky, and I trailed off as she landed. "I just got word from Amethyst," she said. "It seems that the unresolved disputes between Ponyville and the Diamond Dog pack have suddenly been mysteriously resolved."
"Good to hear," I sighed in relief. "That knocks off one item in my checklist, and frees up my afternoon." I looked at Blanche, and pursed my lips. "And since you're here - I'm bumping you to the top of my list. We need to talk - and I'm not sure you're going to want to hear what I want to tell you."
"I want to hear everything you have to say!"
"Even if it's about your love potion?"
That brought her up short. She shuffled her feet nervously, then looked me straight in the eye. "Let me worship you for a time - even worship just your hooves - and I will listen to all that you wish to speak of."
"... This isn't going to become a regular thing, is it? It would be pretty awkward and impractical if I had to agree to anything of this sort anytime I wanted to discuss something with you."
"Just this once - just for this one thing. You were gone so long, when I didn't even manage to get the smallest glimpse of you..."
I sighed, and rubbed my forehead. "Red - looks like I'm going to have to cut this short, and go find somewhere private to... um, talk with her. Maybe the railcar."
Once the curtains were drawn and the doors locked - I stretched out on one of the couches, and Blanche happily settled down on the carpet before me. I wasn't exactly sure how this was supposed to work, so I simply stretched out my left foreleg down to the floor. Blanche's eyes half-lidded, she delicately placed her nose next to it and inhaled; started rubbing her cheek on its side, gave the tip a kiss - and, well, continued from there, in ways that I don't feel comfortable describing now, nevermind feeling comfortable when they were actually going on. Let's just say there was lots of saliva involved and move on.
Once she'd gotten started doing her... whatever, I started speaking. "I know that I can use every pony I can - but I'm getting increasingly uncomfortable making use of you. If the effects of the love spring were removed from your mind... then I'm reasonably confident you'd have no interest in putting your life at risk to help me. Given what happened the last time you were in front of the Princess, I can't think of what I can do to get you to go back to see her if you don't want to. So - what would it take to get you to go before her, willingly?"
She looked up at me, and stopped her activities long enough to say, "I've heard you talk about 'existential risks' - dangers that threaten all life in Equestria, and on Equis. And that you're working to fight these risks. Given those stakes, if my help helps you with that, then isn't it worth it?" She went back to her licking.
I grimaced a bit at having my own ideas used against me. "If Equis were the only world with sapience on it, then that might be able to persuade me in and of itself - but I have evidence that even if all life on this world ended, it would continue just fine elsewhere. But in addition - one of the most important things about sapience, is that sapient beings are able to exercise free will, to explore all the different options that life has to offer them. If I accept the removal of your free will like this - then the next time the option comes up, I'll be that much more willing to consider it as a viable strategy, and so on. In a large sense, even if I win the war to keep everypony alive, I'll have lost it, by becoming the most terrible form of tyrant imaginable."
"Do you really have free will about love? Did you choose to love Cheerilee?"
"Well - of course I did," I said, brow furrowing.
"Are you sure?" She gestured at my other forehoof, and with a sigh, I moved it down and within her reach. She continued, "No, really - how would you go about telling whether or not that was true?"
"Well," I said, trying to treat her question seriously, "If I suspected that my brain might be playing more tricks on me than usual, one of the best techniques I can think of is to try to 'take the outside view', and see if what I think about myself still seems true if somepony else were looking at the same evidence."
"Okay - so convince me."
"That's not exactly how it's supposed to work... but I guess it wouldn't hurt. I want Cheerilee to be happy, and to be safe, and to be able to do what she wants to do, and I try to help her with all that, and she does all that with me. I want to be with her; we spend as much time as we can together, given our jobs, and we share meals, and, um, enjoy adult recreational activities together..."
"That sounds pretty dry and dull - not like you really love her, the way I feel about you. I know since you told me, but I'll ask anyway: When did you first start thinking you loved her?"
"Well - we sang a song together. My psychiatrist says that's a perfectly ordinary way for romances to start in Equestria."
"I once heard you say most mind doctors are quacks. Do you believe him because you know he has good reasons to back that up, or just because you want it to be true?"
"... Are you going somewhere with this?"
"Missy - I know I love you, and you're a dear... but I think you've forgotten a teensy weensy little immensely important relevant detail."
"Which is?"
"Not all magic that affects mind has to be as blatant as love poison. It can also make teensy weensy little nudges that are just enough to do something. Like get ponies to start dancing in step together. Or, you know, get them to think they're in love with each other, and ignore any evidence to the contrary..."
"... I find myself not wanting to believe that what you're saying could possibly be true."
"That doesn't-"
I held up a damp hoof to interrupt her. "I know that - the point is, I don't want something to be true. That's... not the way I usually deal with truths or falsehoods, and it's the opposite of the way I try to deal with truth, it's the cardinal flaw that undercuts everything I know about how to identify what the truth actually is." I have no idea what my facial expression actually was, but it wasn't a happy one. "And now I'm discovering that while I know that it's something I should be doing - I can't remember what it is I'm supposed to do to deal with it once I identify it."
"That's what I was getting to. You can't change your own brain from the inside. You love Cheerilee, even though you only do because of a magic song."
"Songs."
"Hm?"
"We sang more songs about each other than the first one."
"Fine - so you've had your brains whammied more than once. And I got mine super-whammied. You don't want to not love Cheerilee, so why is it so important to change my mind?"
I was grimacing, at the least. "Except - I think it is important to un-whammy you. Which means... maybe I should try to stop being in love with her?" I was about to bring my hooves up to rub my temples, as I was getting a headache, but I reconsidered in time. "Dry me off, please - one way or another, I need to talk with her, at the very least."
"... and so," I finished saying to Cheerilee, "in at least a certain, abstract sense, which is compatible with the methods for truth-finding I try to subscribe to, she makes a valid case - even though I don't want her to."
"Are you sure she's not just trying to break us up, so she can have you all to yourself?"
"Not at all. But whatever her motivations, we still have to deal with what she raises. One way or another. To start with - on my way here, I was thinking, there are some things I've been keeping secret from you that I don't really have to, but which could have a significant impact on our relationship... and so not only have I been keeping them secret, I've been trying to avoid even thinking about them too much."
"Whatever they are, I'm sure they won't have any impact on how I feel about you."
"They're about who I am - or was, or whatever - before I woke up near Ponyville, three months ago. The only ones I've told are the Princesses - and even they don't remember most of the time, because of a memory charm, to keep them from behaving oddly. But since you're already a target by being so close to me... before Day Zero? I wasn't a cow - I wasn't even a quadruped. And while I was enough of a science-fiction fan to be able to at least abstractly entertain the idea of a cross-species relationship... I never really expected to. Also - I was male. I've been assuming that I've simply gotten used to being female, but if the love-songs we've been singing have been affecting my mind, then maybe, if those songs hadn't been sung, I'd have been trying a lot harder to get back to being male, or... I don't know. Which is the problem - how can I know?"
"What were you?"
"Pardon?"
"Before you were a cow - what species were you?"
"We usually called ourselves 'humans' - think of a diamond dog, without the claws, as hairless as a pig, and with faces like monkeys."
"I don't think I've seen anything like that in any of my zoology books. It sounds like you got the better end of the deal by being changed. Do you know what caused it? Was it poison joke?"
"No - not poison joke. You know the whole world-saving thing I'm working on? A powerful being, I think at least on the level of the Princesses if not moreso, thought I'd be able to help with that... so she took me from my home, turned me into this," I waved a hoof at myself, "and dropped me off nearby. Or something to that effect."
She thought about this for a few moments. "So when you said you grew up near Neighagra Falls, that wasn't true?"
"Well - I said 'Niagara' Falls, and I really did grow up near a really big waterfall called that. My home town is at one end of the canal that lets ships get around the waterfall. Good grape-growing there, even have an annual wine festival, though I've never touched a drop. My dad was once an alcoholic, stopped being one when I was a kid, and I guess all the support meetings he went to rubbed off on me. You know - it feels kind of nice, to be able to start telling you stuff like that about myself."
"And I'm glad to hear it. Are you going to try to get back to being one of those humans again, or a male?"
I awkwardly rubbed the back of my head. "I don't know if it's the music muddling my mind, or an actually logically-valid conclusion, but... it doesn't feel like that big of a priority to me. Being a cow in a pony's world is tricky enough - trying to get anything done while I'm some sort of freakish alien would be practically impossible - and I've still got a world to work on saving. Maybe after Equestria isn't in danger of becoming a sunken continent anymore, I can waste time with that sort of light stuff. Or maybe I'll have gotten even more used to being this me by then, and won't care about it anymore anyway. In the meantime - I think we should try to stop singing. Um... love songs, anyway. I don't know if our minds have been muddled - but if they have, then even if I don't know how to un-muddle them, it seems to make sense to avoid making the problem - if that's the right word for it - even worse."
"I did kind of feel like singing some sort of good-bye song when you left this morning, but couldn't think of one, so I didn't..."
"Welp - if you ever do get the urge, try thinking of a different song. Completely different. Maybe a science song, or one that tells a different story, or something that's quite completely nonsense. Here's one that comes to my mind...
I'm going down to Cowtown
The cow's a friend to me
Lives beneath the ocean and that's where I will be
Beneath the waves, the waves
And that's where I will be
I'm gonna see the cow beneath the sea
The yellow Roosevelt Avenue leaf overturned
The ardor of arboreality is an adventure we have spurned, we've spurned
A new leaf overturned
It's a new leaf overturned
And so I'm going down to Cowtown
The cow's a friend to me
Lives beneath the ocean and that's where I will be
Beneath the waves, the waves
And that's where I will be
I'm gonna see the cow beneath the sea
We yearn to swim for home, but our only home is bone
How sleepless is the egg knowing that which throws the stone
Foresees the bone, the bone
Our only home is bone
Our only home is bone
And so I'm going down to Cowtown
The cow's a friend to me
Lives beneath the ocean and that's where I will be
Beneath the waves, the waves
And that's where I will be
I'm gonna see the cow beneath the sea
Yes I'm going down to Cowtown
The cow's a friend to me
Lives beneath the ocean and that's where I will be
Beneath the waves, the waves
And that's where I will be
I'm gonna see the cow beneath the sea
Yes I'm gonna see (I'm gonna see)
The cow (the cow)
Beneath the sea
"Well." Cheerilee blinked. "That was even less relevant than most of Pinkie Pie's songs. And that says something. So - what happens after that? Do we just fall out of love after a while?"
"I... don't actually know. I want us to be together, to stay together, to try building a life together - but I also want us to know we want to be together because we want to be together. And the only way we can do that - is risk finding out that we don't."