Darkness.
"H-hello? S-sir wha-...?"
"..."
"Are you okay? Please, just say somethi- ..."
"..."
"Ohhhh what do I do what do I do-..."
"... Ow." Ryan groaned softly. As he came to, he felt the cool touch of tile on his face, and he quickly realized he had fallen on his side at some point. He squeezed his eyes tighter and reached up to rub the back of his head, which twinged with a slight throbbing pain, possibly from where he hit the ground. Did I seriously pass out from exhaustion? And what am I doing in the bathroom? Ugh, I really need to take better care of myself.
"A-are you okay sir?"
Ryan blindly waved off in the direction of the apparently female voice, still massaging his still aching head. "Yeah, I'm fine thanks." He sucked in a bit of air through his teeth. "Yeeesh, I must have fallen over or something."
Did one of his neighbors come in to check on him or something? It was a kind, heartwarming thought, but mixed with a bit of concern as he swore he remembered locking his door. "Well, thanks ma'am for checking in on me by the way, but, uh, how did you get in here again? I don't recall giving any of my neighbors a spare key."
"Get in where? I'm still here, sitting in my bathroom."
Your bathroom? Wha- ... Ryan groggily opened his eyes to take in his surroundings. He was still in his bathroom, though he had indeed fallen on his side directly in front of his shower. He still loosely clutched his toothbrush in his right hand, and, to his dismay, his shirt was a little wet from him having laid in some of the spilled water from his shower. At least the floor was dry now.
"Are you sure you're alright? I can't see you or anything, but it sounded like you fell pretty hard over there."
Ryan narrowed his eyes in confusion. "What do you mean you can't see me? I'm right next to-..." He turned his head to face his would-be helpful neighbor, only to be met with an empty shower, his shower curtain hanging over and covering its entrance entirely. He turned around and noted his open bathroom door. Maybe she was just outside? Sound can bounce in funny ways in enclosed rooms after all. He slowly started to climb to his feet so he could-
"All I can see is the shower curtain in my bathroom, I have no idea where you are."
He blinked. He was very familiar with funny bouncing echos, and that was no echo. The voice was indeed coming from right behind him, from his shower. He turned once more to face his shower and, after finally standing up, approached it with toothbrush in hand. He very slowly pulled back the curtain and peeked his head inside, confirming the absence of any helpful neighbors in his shower. "Um, can you say something again? Like, just anything."
"Uh... sure?"
The voice was practically in his ear. With an embarrassingly girlish scream, Ryan jumped back from his shower and threw his toothbrush at it. It bounced harmlessly on the hanging curtain and clattered to the tile floor.
"Hey, what was that?! What's going on over there?"
The minor jump scare had properly woke him up from his groggy state. With the fog now lifted from his brain, the full memory of the last half hour or so rushed back into his mind hard enough to make him recoil.
Oh.
OH.
His eyes widened as he remembered where the voice was coming from and once again creeped up to his shower curtain, picking up his fallen toothbrush in the process."W- wait, that was all real? You're... real?"
A quiet scoff sounded out from behind the curtain. "Yes, I am real, we went over that already."
A wave of pain rippled across the back of Ryan's head. He winced and instinctively rubbed at it with a free hand. Carefully, he reached out with his toothbrush and gave the shower curtain a slow poke. Then a quick one. Nope, this is it, isn't it? I've worked myself to the bone and now the voices have come to break my mind. I can already feel the padded cell. He whined internally. But I don't want to wear a strai-
"Helloooooooo? Is something wrong? You keep going quiet."
Ryan continued to poke the curtain. "Oh no, everything is fine, voice-in-my-head. Let me guess, you're in my walls too, huh?"
He heard what he could only imagine was an angry stomp. "Wha- I'm not a voice in your head, I am a pony! I even told you earlier, I'm a unicorn!"
"Oh yeah? Prove you're not in my head."
There was a pause. "Well, uh, hmm... Is there some experiment you had in mind that could convince you?"
Ryan cocked his head. "An... experiment?"
"Precisely! Last year, there was a brief, weird conspiracy spread around town by some wackos about whether we were all living in a giant shared dream created by Princess Luna. Finally they decided to conduct an experiment where they picked a random page of a massive book they all had copies of and had never read before. They each then read the first word at the top of that page and recited it one after another. If they were in a dream, they would've likely all said different words, but since they all said the same thing, they figured that they were all indeed awake and were satisfied, albeit extremely embarassed."
Ryan blinked. Doubt began to creep through the back of his mind. He'd never heard of anything remotely like a Princess Luna. And that whole experiment idea was... pretty smart actually. He doubted his mind could've come up with that so quickly and on the spot, not to mention to that level of detail. He thought back to what the voice had said. "That... does give me an idea for an experiment actually. Can you, um, wait right there a second?"
"Oh? Well, okay."
With that, Ryan scrambled out of the bathroom, but not before sparing a quick glance at his shower curtain, half expecting it to disappear the moment it left his line of sight. When nothing happened, he ran over to his work desk and grabbed his phone from where it sat charging. He then ran over to one of his moving boxes and dug around a bit before pulling out a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. He had purchased them so he could relax to music even in a crowded area, but today it would serve a more... interesting purpose.
Now holding both items, Ryan walked back to his bathroom and peeked inside. The shower curtain still hung uninterestingly from its metal bar, silence filling the room. He awkwardly coughed to clear his throat. "Um... you still there?"
The response was immediate. "Oh! Yes I'm still here!"
Dang it. Ryan sighed and entered his bathroom, walking over to the shower and sitting directly in front of the curtain. "Okay, so this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to play a random piece of music for about a minute or so while wearing headphones so I have no idea what's playing. After that, you'll need to briefly describe the music you heard. Then, I'll double check what was playing and compare it with your description. If you're really in my head, then there should be no way for you to know what's playing if I don't either."
The voice was silent for a few seconds. "Hmm, that's actually a really neat idea for an experiment! Sure, let's do that!"
Ryan had to stifle a laugh; the voice sounded unusually excited about it. Despite sounding like an adult woman, it carried the sort of bouncy cheer he'd imagine a child would have after being told they were going to Disneyland. "Alright, first I'll do a quick test to make sure this even works."
He opened YouTube on his phone and searched for "Rain sounds for sleeping". After selecting a random video from the list, he pressed it and was immediately assaulted by the torturous, unbearable, inhumane sound of a mobile game ad.
For the love of- "Sorry give me a moment!" Ryan quickly lowered his volume to zero and impatiently pressed at the Skip button for a painful five seconds before it was finally over. With that, the video changed to a looping scene of a closeup of rain hitting and sliding down a glass window. Satisfied, he turned the volume up to 75% and placed the phone screen down on the floor. "Are you able to hear this?"
Again the voice was silent for a few seconds. "Woah, did you just make it rain over there? How are you-, uh, I- I mean yes I can hear that perfectly clear."
"Alright then, here goes." With the confirmation he needed, Ryan put on his headphones and gave a moment to confirm he could no longer hear anything from his phone. He then closed the video and navigated to his various playlists. He had accessed his music playlists so often he could practically do it blindfolded.
Turning his phone around so to no longer see the screen, he performed a series of memorized swipes and presses that would take him to a random playlist, shuffle it, then play the video that was moved to the top of the list. He placed the phone on the ground, screen down once more, and lightly brushed his finger against its speakers. Once he felt the telltale vibrations indicating audio was playing, he stood up and left the bathroom for his desk. "I'll be back in a minute to check on the results!"
With his headphones preventing him from hearing any sort of response, he just shrugged and sat down in his work chair. He opened up his laptop's clock and stared at it in thought as the seconds slowly ticked up. This is so stupid, why am I even doing this? He sighed to himself and spared a glance at his bathroom, door still wide open. I... I have to be crazy right? Voices aren't supposed to come from shower curtains, so it has to be coming from my mind. He leaned back and looked up in contemplation.
If I'm hearing the voice in my mind... shouldn't it be able to follow me wherever I go, regardless of headphones?
Ryan looked back to his clock to see that roughly 86 seconds had passed since he sat down. Alright then, moment of truth. He got up and confidently walked back into the bathroom. He reached over to his phone and turned it off, effectively cutting off its music. He felt around the speakers to make sure it was indeed no longer playing before finally taking off his headphones. "Hello? Can you hear me?"
No response.
"Are you still there?" Ryan leaned a little closer to the shower curtain and raised his voice slightly. "Hellooo?"
He heard a quiet gasp. "Ah! Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry I must have dozed off! The music was just so soothing and it's already getting late and-"
"Hey hey hey, calm down, it's okay!" Ryan cut the voice off before it could continue rambling. "Do you still remember the music?"
"Mhm, yes!"
Ryan took a deep inhale and steadied himself. "Can you describe it for me?"
There was a brief pause. "Well, I never really studied music so I don't think I can describe it in that way, but it sounded like there was a single cello playing. The melody was also really beautiful..."
Ryan's eyes widened. A solo cello piece? There's only one like that across all my playlists. He fumbled to open his phone to read title of the currently open video. "Bach - Cello Suite No.1 i-Prelude", he whispered to himself. Out of the hundreds of songs and pieces on his variously purposed playlists, the voice had successfully identified the one and only piece that consisted of nothing but a single cello.
"O-okay, well let's do one more then."
"Sounds good to me!"
Putting his headphones back on, Ryan shakily swiped and pressed around his phone blindly to pick out another random video before placing it face down on the tile. This time instead of leaving, he just remained seated beside the shower, his eyes blankly staring at the opposite wall. Is this... for real? Am I really talking to someone through my shower curtain? A... Ryan strained to remember what the voice called itself earlier. ... A unicorn no less? Or, maybe it's an alien. But if so, how is it speaking English? Agh this is making my head hurt.
Once he was fairly confident a minute had passed, Ryan reached forward and shut off his phone once again before taking off his headphones. "Hey, you there?"
There was an unusual hint of confusion in the response. "Y-yeah I'm still here."
"Alright, can you describe this new song you just heard?"
The voice hesitated. "I- I couldn't hear anything. I'm sorry, was the music supposed to be really quiet?"
What. Ryan unlocked his phone once again and gazed at the screen. He had successfully navigated to an Imagine Dragons playlist, but it seemed due to how much his hands were shaking, his finger had completely missed the video, and he had forgotten to check the speakers for their vibrations. Nothing had been playing.
He hadn't even considered the possibility of accidentally not playing anything. Sure there was a very, very, very small chance the voice could have randomly guessed which of his many videos he picked the first time, because he knew something was going to play. But to correctly guess something that wasn't even supposed to happen? Slowly but surely, the veil of doubt washed away from his mind. When he spoke again, his voice barely came above a whisper.
"Y-you really are real? I'm not imagining this at all? You really are talking to me through my shower curtain?"
There was a pause. "Well, from my end, you're also talking to me through my shower curtain, so... Yes! I suppose that's true."
The last wall of denial came crashing down in Ryan's mind as he accepted the strange reality. He laughed softly. "Well, in that case, um, sorry for the really awkward first impression then. I was so certain I was going crazy."
A gentle chuckle mirrored his own. "Oh, no worries, it's completely fine. I was honestly more worried about you. We were talking for a bit when you started asking me to repeat stuff, then it sounded like you collapsed! You weren't responding for nearly a minute, I thought something happened to you!"
Ryan awkwardly looked away. "Yeaaah, sorry for that, I was really tired, and I think the shock of learning that someone was somehow talking to me through my shower curtain was a little too much for my brain to handle."
He paused in thought, his curiousity now more than happy to fill the gap left by his fears and worries. "By the way, where are you talking to me from? I'm..." He hesitated, wondering how much info he was willing to share to this complete stranger. "... in my apartment in California, in the United States."
There was a pause. "Oh? I've never heard of either of those locations. I'm in my bathroom at the Golden Oak Library in Ponyville, which is in Equestria."
Ponyville? Equestria? What's up with the horse puns? Oh wait... Ryan racked his brain as he tried to remember what the voice had call itself earlier. "Youuuu said you're a... pony unicorn?"
"Almost. I'm a-" The voice paused. "Well my species is pony and my race is unicorn, so I'm a unicorn pony!"
Ryan deadpanned. Ah yes, that definitely clears things up. "Well, I should probably clarify what I said before. Asian was my race; my species is human."
There was an audible gasp. "Oh wow this is amazing! I've read through the entire Canterlot Archives front and back and there's not a single reference to any species called a 'human' anywhere! It's been centuries since the last documented discovery of another sentient species!"
Ryan took an involuntary step back at the voice's sudden upwards shift in pitch and volume. Despite being the only one physically in the room, it somehow felt like his personal space was being harshly violated.
"Where on Equus do all of you live?! Is your United States a small island chain overseas? We've mapped out almost the entirety of the planet, but there's probably a few islands here and there that have yet to be discovered."
Ha! The United States as a small island chain? Cute. "Actually, it's pretty huge. It takes up a huge chunk of the continent we're on."
Confusion laced the voice's tone. "What? A huge part of a continent? That's nearly impossible. Unless you're all extremely sparsely distributed, there's no land on the planet that large that hasn't already been explored and mapped."
Ryan laughed as he stared at the wall immediately separating his bathroom from the next door apartment. "Oh no, we're hardly spaced apart here. Or at least, the region I live in."
"Well, how many of you humans are there in the United States?"
Ryan paused, thinking about the implications behind the question. "Do you want to know how many humans live here in my country? Or across the whole world?"
"... there's more of you everywhere?"
Ryan chuckled. "Yep, we're pretty much all over the w-"
"The whole world then! How many of there are across the whole world?"
Ryan blinked and shook his head to regain his train of thought after being cut off. "As a rough estimate, the world population is somewhere between seven to eight billion people right now."
A whole minute of silence.
Starting to get worried, Ryan grabbed his toothbrush and began repeatedly poking the shower curtain. "Hey, you still with m-"
"BILLION?!"
Ryan jumped at the outburst, quickly scrambling to a standing position.
"No, this isn't scientifically possible. YOU are not scientifically possible! The pony population of Equestria alone doesn't even come up to ten million, even after adding the combined populations of all the other nations! There's no way a population THAT large can remain so undetected, there's not a single reference to it across all of history! Unless..."
At the same time, Ryan's head was also going in overdrive. Nearly ten million? Mapped and explored almost the entire world? Without us knowing? There's no way a civilization can hide that well with all of us all over the place. Either Atlantis is real, Antarctica is hiding something big, or... or...
They both came to the same realization at the same time.
"We're not on the same world."
"We're not on the same world."
"..."
Ryan opened his mouth to ask something, but was cut off by a quiet gasp from the other side. The voice returned, but much quieter this time. "Oh my gosh, I completely forgot about Spike! I don't want him finding out about this yet."
Spike? Ryan went to ask who that was, but was cut off before he even started to speak.
"I'll make sure he doesn't come in here, but I won't be able to talk with you again until he leaves tomorrow at noon to go help Rarity."
What's with these names? There was a brief silence, and when the voice came back it did so with a trace of worry.
"Wi- will you still be here?"
Ryan nodded, despite knowing the speaker couldn't see him. "Yeah, I'll still be around, don't worry." He paused. "I'll leave my bathroom door open too, so I'll be able to hear whenever you're back."
He heard a sigh of relief. "That's great to hear, I have sooooo many questions to ask and-" There was a pause, during which Ryan swore he could very faintly hear the sound of a door closing. "I have to go. Talk to you tomorrow?"
"Yeah, talk to you tomorrow." He could hear the sound of hooves on wood begin to fade away, and he was about to leave as well when a thought suddenly occurred to him. "Wait!"
The hoofsteps stopped and quickly came back around. "What is it?"
Ryan swallowed and inhaled slowly. "My... my name is Ryan, it's nice to meet you."
There was a soft giggle, and Ryan could practically hear the warm smile from the other side of the curtain.
"My name is Twilight Sparkle. It's nice to meet you too, Ryan."
With that, the hoofsteps once more faded into the distance before being silenced by a closing door.