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// 18- Breakdown... at long last. 
// Story: Still No Signal 
// by Axel Azabash 
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There were a few relaxing days of routine. Nothing interesting happened (knock on wood, these ponies are crazy). For a week I did more or less the same thing. I got up when the sun did his thing, then had breakfast with Purplesmart and the small lizard, had some interaction with them, the purple pony would ask, or try to ask some questions and then I would be left alone to study the language. After lunch I got out for a walk. I was getting some freedom in that lately, and I needed to get some exercise and some fresh air. The locals were starting to get used to me, they wouldn’t panic anymore, some of them would even wave a hoof at me.

I was now able to say ‘hello’ to them and some basic words, some of them would answer back and to some extent, exchange a couple of phrases, but nothing too remarkable or interesting, as I mostly had to guess what they were saying to me and then the awkwardness used to kill the conversation. After that, I would go back to the castle and then to Smiley’s house for my daily classes.

The arrangement for the lessons was the same as the first one I got. I would come to her house, then she would take me to the proper classroom, bring a chair and teach me about some topic. I was starting to get the basics of their language, but for now, just a few sentences and some basic vocabulary that were the bare minimum to survive. Asking for directions, telling where did I live, ask for help, the name of the different items I could purchase at the market, how to say I was thirsty, hungry or feeling ill, market, store, hospital, restaurant, and so on.

Despite that being my daily routine, I was getting a very weird sensation, it was similar to that mounting pressure you get when you procrastinate an important issue, but I wasn’t sure what it was, and the irrational fear I got day after day was slowly but steadily increasing. In order to try to silence or drown that weird sensation I decided that I should also occupy myself in something else in my free time, something easy and familiar to put my mind into. 

I started a little quest to find a good ink to put into my fountain pen. As I used to love those things, having yet another gadget from home ready and working would be very comforting. And useful too! No more open inkwells and dipping the tip of the quill every now and then while taking notes, no more silly pencils, I wanted my old trusty pen working again.

I went through the library and a few offices. I checked Smartylock’s room (with her permission and supervision) and Purplesmart’s bedroom (Gosh, that was awkward). I took a piece of paper and a quill, and then tested all the inkwells I could find and proceeded to check if the inks were water resistant. Most of them were, but a couple of them weren’t.

If they could be washed by water, I could probably wash them out of the pen to maintain it. Not the most scientific way to know if I could use the ink, and there were a lot of factors, but it was kind of good enough. After all, these ponies used quills, so, finding an ink formulated specifically for a fountain pen was impossible.

Both Purplesmart and Smartylocks were busy reading or studying, and the little lizard kept an eye on me through the whole process. I was going to head back to my room to test my freshly filled pen when something caught my attention in the library.

An Earth globe.

Suddenly I felt the urge to inspect it and an idea came to my mind. I could point home in the world and ask for directions!

I walked excitedly towards the object and started to spin it. It was a medieval looking thing, probably handmade and the maps were really crude, practically impossible to recognize. After a few minutes of inspection, I started to feel the rising fear inside of me again as the idea of asking where I was slowly faded away. It was all wrong! I couldn’t recognize the most basic thing of it, it was like a child had put some garbage on a globe!

I hadn’t noticed Purplesmart approaching from behind and she startled me despite the clip-clop of her hooves that announced her presence, I was too stunned to notice her anyways. Looking at me she asked something that I didn’t understand.

“This… this is all wrong!” I gestured to the offending globe.

She didn’t understand me either, but looked concerned about me because of my apparent agitation. After a few moments exchanging nonsense between the two of us I found a large piece of paper and drew a crude representation of a world map. Africa, America, Asia, Europe… Australia and all the things that came to my mind, and through the whole process, she watched attentively.

I pointed to a few locations and named them. Actually, I wrote the names on the paper just to get the point across, and then pointed at the offending globe. Something was very wrong about this whole thing. Something scared me, and I didn’t even want to acknowledge it, but in my mind all the pieces were coming together, despite something irrational telling me to stop, to not continue, to run away, but the pieces were already falling by their own weight and wouldn’t be stopped.

Carefully, Purplesmart went to the globe and started to do the same carefully, like if she expected me to become violent or something, she just pointed at random places and named them in their sing-songy language, looking back at me to see my reaction, she looked scared about me. Finally, pointing at one last location, she named that and pointed straight down, smiling proudly, puffing out her chest, but a little bit awkwardly, and her smile disappeared in a frown when she looked back at me. I tripped over my own feet and almost fell, but hastily came near her and took a look at the place she had just pointed.

Of course my phone couldn’t get any blasted signal, of course the bloody GPS wasn’t working… there were no antennas, there weren’t any satellites, and that was because this damned place was no Earth.

I kneeled down on the floor, my hands shaking. If this wasn’t Earth… Then where I was? Was I dead? Was this another universe, another dimension? Had I just hit my head and I was in a hospital and this was just a dream? All those thoughts came back to my mind, but the worst thing was that I couldn’t even discard a single one of them. This wasn’t a wild dream as I thought at the beginning, this wasn’t a febrile hallucination, as it could have been after the fever I had back then when Yellowings was taking care of me. This was real.

If this was real, then one thing became clear, this was a different planet, I wasn’t on Earth, so I had no immediate way to go back home by any normal means, therefore I was going to spend a lot, A LOT of time here. Unless I could find a magical way to go back. I was stranded here in this world of Technicolor tiny horses, and I was alone. What did I do to deserve this!? This was not fair!

I realized that some comforting warmth came through my shoulder. A purple wing was resting on my back and the purple pony looked at me, concerned and slightly confused. She probably didn’t understand what I had just discovered, and I needed to keep it together if I wanted a chance, as remote as it could possibly be, to get back home alive. Probably I wasn’t going to get back home at all, and panicking here was not going to help. Of course, I panicked anyways, I started to hyperventilate and feel sick, because I’m just me, a regular human, not a hero or an astronaut, and I just wanted to go back home.

I was crying, and suddenly I found myself protected by a purple feathery blanket. Purplesmart held me with her forelegs in what felt like a hug, providing support, and then her wings covered me, providing warmth. Now that I was knelt down on the floor, we were at similar heights. I rested my head on her shoulder and cried. I lost track of time, and cried until I felt kind of numb.

Why couldn’t this happen to another person? If I could get back, I wouldn’t mind losing my job, I could find another one and have a story to tell about my time here, that would even be nice. My job in exchange for going back home. I wanted to see my family again, I missed my parents, and my cousins, and my brother… If only I could go back, just enough time to tell them goodbye… Just that! At least I wanted them to know I was alive!

I couldn’t stay crying like that forever, I needed to do something, anything! I stood up on shaky legs and went to the big table in the middle of the library, where my crude drawing was. Purplesmart followed me closely, reminding me of Yellowings’ behavior, at least the first days. She seemed shocked, but at the same time confused, and deeply concerned about me.

Getting a new sheet of paper I drew the spiral silhouette of the Milky Way, then a little square in it and an arrow, like a little amplification, and drew the solar system. After that, another arrow pointed at the third planet and I drew a crude globe of the planet Earth, with enough continents and details to make it kind of comparable to the crude world map that I had just drawn.

The part of the milky way seemed to confuse Purplesmart, so I tried to draw a lot of dots representing the stars, and around some of those dots I drew some tiny orbiting planets. I didn’t know if I got the point across about what a galaxy really was, but the stars and planets got the purple mare excited and a hopeful expression replaced her shock. She darted around the library gathering books and after a few seconds an army of tomes were swirling around us in that wingardium-leviosa glowy thing she did with her horn.

Selecting a few books and opening them on certain pages in front of me, she took a quill and another piece of paper and pointing at the different pieces of pony writing gibberish and some illustrations, she drew a representation of her own view of the universe.

Given the amount of material I kind of expected some ground-breaking development, but it all came down to a simple geocentric model of universe, with the sun and the moon orbiting the planet and all the stars assembled on a dome around the three heavenly objects. When she finished her little lecture that I didn’t understand a single word of because I was in no mood to really be attentive, I looked at her work.

Welp, that was kind of disappointing, but also cute. She stood there proudly with her chest puffed, a confident smile and a ruffle of wings.

It made sense. Their appearance was kind of medieval, so probably their knowledge of the universe was also limited too. At least they didn’t believe the planet was flat. We could work something from there.

As an answer, I drew a more detailed version of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun and how the moon orbited around the Earth, and that got an eye twitch from her. She exclaimed some more pony gibberish and some books were replaced by others, and flicking through the pages she presented to me an illustration of the planet orbited by their Sun and Moon and what looked like two idealized ponies with both wings and horns doing the wingardium-leviosa to the Sun and Moon.

Welp, that was kind of bullshit. But Purplesmart probably had been studying it this way for her whole life. By the look of it, they still included some myths in their view of the universe. She wasn’t going to agree with me, and I knew for sure that she was wrong, so no point in continuing this discussion. Or was she? Wait a minute… that thing the sun did was kind of weird. I would continue this track of investigation that was presented to me in normal circumstances, but… I couldn’t take it anymore. I felt drained.

Still shaken as I was from the recent discoveries, I said my farewell as politely as possible. I needed some time alone, some time away from these ponies, the constant reminders that I was in a very wrong place. Purplesmart followed me and made sure I was alright until I arrived into to my room, bless her cute little adorable face. I told her I was alright, and she kind of got the message and gave me some space. I closed the door and when I was sure nobody was watching I crashed on the bed and punched the pillows, cried and curled into a ball until I fell asleep.

There was no need to check my phone anymore, I already knew the answer to this whole mess. I was never going to get a signal no matter what.