“I passed quite the protests outside against your operation, Professor.”
“Sparkle. Twilight Sparkle. And yes, they’ve been shouting for a week.” A purple-haired woman in a lab coat extended her forearm awkwardly, though she immediately retracted. “Sorry. Pandemic. Force of habit.”
The grey-haired monocled man beside her smiled slyly. “Affecting even you? Astounding. And I’m well aware of who you are, Professor Sparkle.”
Twilight smiled with vague strain and unfocused eyes as she stared through the one-way mirror in front of the duo, peering into an observation room. “Pleased to meet you too, Dr. Q. Your reputation precedes you.”
The doctor smirked. “Oh, I know. But–” He raised an aged finger skyward. “We lack time for pleasantries. I’ve come for a briefing on your little experiment.”
Twilight’s eyebrows arched. “Official business? Are we being audited?”
An honest question, though it elicited a chuckle and a dismissive wave. “Oh, nothing so severe; my department firmly upholds the right to self-regulation. I’m confident you have patients’ interests at heart regardless of lucre. Isn’t that right?”
The professor sighed. “Of… of course.”
“Now! Tell me everything.” The doctor’s left eye glistened a reddish yellow. He gestured towards the glass. “For starters, why keep a small horse for observation in a routine vaccine trial?”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t know? While this is secretly a front for a novel vaccine, we advertise as a human-to-pony transformation regime.” Twilight tapped the glass, and the ears of the listless earth pony within tilted, her eyes crawling towards the glass. “Subject #71. She calls herself Rainbow Glimmer, and three weeks ago, she was a human with male primary sex characteristics. And–” Twilight grinned manically– “Little does she know, but thanks to a certain ‘side effect’ of the injection she received, she is now immune to all coronaviruses, SARS-CoV-2 included.”
Dr. Q. stared at the pony in contemplative silence. “Brilliant. But why?”
“Why study COVID-19 when my degree is in theoretical physics?”
“No, I don’t care about your qualifications; it’s for science anyway.” The doctor paused, still staring at the subject. “Why ponies?”
Twilight deadpanned. “Because I’m dating one. Inspiration is diverse.”
A frown. “Do I really need to lecture you about using university resources for personal desires?” As Twilight opened her mouth to defend herself, he continued, “You should have asked me so I could sign off on the project’s grants in the first place! Nothing like spending public funds on a titillating experiment.”
Twilight’s mouth hung open, eventually forming the words, “Regardless, it isn’t personal. But within each of my friends is Equestrian magic. Read my PHY484 lecture notes if you’d rather skip the papers.”
An eye roll. “Yes, yes, you’re not the first to extol the magic of friendshipping. But please make the diatribe short; I could be busy scaring try-hard first years.”
Twilight sighed. “A friend contracted COVID-19 and was quarantined successfully until her significant other – in a remarkably idiotic display of loyalty – visited her anyway.”
The doctor materialized a deck of playing cards mid-speech and was occupied playing solitaire on a nearby table. “And he fell ill, too?”
“No,” Twilight corrected through gritted teeth. “She did not. She and her girlfriend did pony up – no, they’re not in my drug trial, it isn’t like that – and the symptoms faded in the coming day.”
Dr. Q. flipped an ace of hearts off the top of the deck. “How magical.”
“Exactly, and a brilliant catalyst to my hypothesis. So I exposed myself to live samples of the virus.”
The cards dropped. “You what?”
“I couldn’t ask anyone else to be subject #1, so it was the fastest ethical option. I also injected myself with dexequisol, synthesised from Equestrian magic concentrate. And indeed – no symptoms.”
The doctor swept the cards back into his hand. “While horrifying stupid, Professor Sparkle, we both know there are swaths of asymptomatic cases in the wild, and since n = 1 for your little experiment…”
Twilight grinned. “No asymptomatic cases at the viral load I induced.”
“Oh dear Pythagoras.”
“…So onto the big experiment! I prepared a batch of equisol, recruited your department’s top physicians, got emergency ethics approval–”
“–Superfluous bureaucracy to me but the university insists–”
“–And began advertising a human-to-pony transformation trial.” Twilight punctuated her sentence with the proud smile of a child taking home a stellar report card.
Hesitation brewed. “Then the transformations were known and consensual? Who would possibly volunteer for something like that?” He adjusted his monocle with a sigh. “Your subjects are furries, aren’t they?”
Twilight smiled tenuously, fiddling with her hair. “Some are, but mostly no.”
“Then who?”
She placed a hand on the glass, fogging it with her breath. “They call themselves… bronies.”
“Hm.” Dr. Q. stroked his chin. “And these brownies–”
“Bronies.”
“–know the purpose of the experiment?” He pressed his tongue against his lip, creating a bulge. “Wait, better question. Why exactly are there antivaxxers outside protesting you if the fact this is a vaccine is kept secret?”
Twilight grimaced. “The protestors aren’t antivaxxers.” A beat. “They’re anti-bronies.”
Dr. Q. cocked his head. “Nothing wrong with brownies if you ask me, but I do prefer smores, so I understand somewhat. Regardless, the patients do know, yes?”
Twilight pursed her lips. “I try to tell them.” She sighed. “But for the most part, no.”
A gasp. “Your patients don’t know?” He squinted. “I ought to get your medical license revoked for such reckless human experimentation.”
“My medical license?” Twilight snorted. “I’m a physicist, not a physician. I discovered equisol, but as soon as I determined its medical implications, I enlisted actual doctors for the trial.” She brought her hand to her chin, allowing her gaze to creep to the corner. “I’m more of the project’s creative visionary.”
“Hmph,” the doctor pouted. “Then I’m revoking your creative license.”
Twilight shrugged with a toothy grin. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
The ensuing lull in conversation was finally broken by the doctor quipping, “How do you try to tell patients about the trial’s nature, and yet they still do not know? Surely you aren’t–” He grinned suspiciously– “hiding anything, are we now?”
“No, no!” Twilight’s eyes grew centimeters. “It’s just…”
Twilight sat at a desk in a small office. Outside the room a crowd stood in line. A woman of short pink hair with a blue streak waited patiently at the office’s threshold. Upon her head was a headband with cotton horse ears and a cartoonish horn protruding from the centre, and pinned to her blouse was a small rainbow infinity.
Twilight scribbled onto a paper on the desk, then looked up at the woman. “Next, please.” As she entered, Twilight idly asked, “Full name and date of birth?”
A deep, soft – almost restrained – voice responded. “Sapphire. February 3, 1996.” Her fingers tapped against her shaking leg, a smile decorating her lips.
“Last name?” Twilight’s eyebrows arched.
A frown. “It’s just Sapphire, now.”
Twilight shrugged. “Okay, thank you.”
“I’m here for the pony patch?”
“What?” Twilight blinked. “Oh, we’re not testing a patch; that is a rather complicated administration route for what we’re developing. The medication itself is a racemer of equisol, plus an estrogen additive. It will transform your body, bu–”
“Sweet!” Sapphire beamed, curling a lock of hair around one of the cotton ears. “Count me in.”
Another frown, from Twilight’s side. “But equisol is chiral, and the primary function my team is studying is not from levequisol – the enantiomer responsible for equestrian transformation – but rather dex–”
“–Sure, sure.” Sapphire grabbed a pen out of a pocket of her blouse. “I assume you have an informed consent form. Where do I sign?”
Hesitation brewed. “Is it informed consent if you are unaware of the intended effect of the medication, to immu–”
“Look, I get it you, you want to save the world from us pesky humans, and I volunteer for the cause. Now where do I initial for the horse pill?”
“More like horse injection, really.” Twilight’s frown deepened, though Sapphire’s excitement only spiked.
“Oh, so there is a horse injection after all!” She bounced in her chair with a squeak of delight. “Best day ever!”
Twilight simply groaned and produced the paperwork.
Seven patients in and only one cared enough to hear about the medical purpose.
Dr. Q pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose. “I see. And what of the actual experiment? Not that I wouldn’t love a good shaking up of the human race, but I do wonder about the marketability of a vaccine with such a side effect. To audiences beyond brownies, anyway.”
“Bronies.” Twilight blinked. “And, I haven’t turned equine either. Dexequisol alone confers the virus immunity as predicted by my electromagic models. That my patients received the racemic mixture was overwhelmingly by request. Of the subjects who bothered to listen past ‘horse pill’–” Twilight scrunched her nose– “All but one wanted the mixture.”
“And the one?”
“Eh, she thought our recruitment was a student prank, but she was more than happy to help with a vaccine trial.” Twilight shrugged. “Per request, she received the enantiopure dexequisol injection designed for mass use, with stunning results and no observable side effects.”
The doctor nodded his head. “So all the ponies running around what used to be a pristine medical facility…”
“…were just a happy medical accident for me and wish fulfillment for them? Yeah.” Twilight giggled, quickly stifling the noise. “Su– Someone special to me might have put me up to it. Honestly, I didn’t think anyone who passed the preliminary psychological evaluation would sign up, let alone that we would have a waiting list.” Twilight smirked. “Yet here we are.”
Dr. Q. stayed in contemplative silence. “I wish I could say I was surprised. Indeed, this tops my own experiments. Mostly. It’s pretty good work, for a physicist.”
Twilight squinted. “Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, nothing.” A devious, almost angelic grin came to the doctor. “Only that you should be grateful you’re tenured. But I’m impressed, really. Though I don’t quite understand the need for estrogen supplements. Wouldn’t that cause, ah, side effects for the males?”
“Oh!” Twilight sparked up. “Due to its interdimensional origin, we worried levequisol could have uncontrollable or explicitly harmful side effects on some native humans. Beyond turning into ponies, I mean. The fear of patients becoming dragons, for instance, dominated what little ethics review we had. By supplementing with medication to ground the transformation in Earth ponies, the risks are minimized.”
A curt nod. “But why estrogen?”
“It’s cheap, and available off-the-shelf in conjugated form – of equine origin. Plus, it turns out many of the women here were taking prescribed estrogen anyway, so swapping estradiol for CEEs is hardly invasive in retrospect.”
“The patients appear far too young to require estradiol, no?”
Twilight bit her lip. “Many of our mares were going through these transformations anyway, minus the species shift. As for CEEs, apparently we’ve been extracting the stuff from pregnant mares – of earth origin – for years.”
Dr. Q paused in the revelation. “So as for this trial, the P in PONID…”
“…is from Pre-mare-in.”