Doctor Roselyn Pastern had finished the visual examination, taking note of Tib's sync ports as well as her onboard music player.
"You'll have to remove them, right?" Not that Tib minded saying goodbye to the temple ports, but she would miss her music. She'd miss it a lot.
"No need. Any foreign bodies, including implants, get ejected during Conversion." Pastern touched a few keys on her notepad. "We're only really concerned about artificial organs, valve implants, that kind of thing. Those can cause problems." Pastern looked at Tib over the rims of her glasses, quirking her eyebrows.
Tib shook her head. "Nope. All my parts are original, except for the augments you already know about."
"Good enough."
Tib shivered a bit. Even sitting on the synthcotton cover between her bare butt and the bare metal, the examination table was cold. In fact, the room itself wasn't exactly warm.
Dr Pastern took note of her discomfort. "You can get dressed now, Tib. I just have a couple more questions and then you're free to go."
Gratefully Tib pulled on the shift and underpants folded neatly on the table. "How do you stand it? It's freezing in here!"
"It's sixty degrees Fahrenheit. Anyway, refrigeration preserves youth." Pastern flashed a quick half-grin. "Seriously, the labs and exam rooms are strictly climate-controlled. We work with a lot of substances that are temperature sensitive."
"Like Potion?"
Pastern scoffed. "Nope. You could probably take a blowtorch to that stuff and it wouldn't affect it–though I don't know anyone who'd be willing to risk it. The requests for Conversion are coming in faster than we're getting doses delivered. Pretty soon we're going to have one hell of a waiting list." Pastern looked at her with a comforting smile. "No worries though. You've already got your dose waiting for you. After your two weeks of orientation, of course. "
"Right." Two weeks. It sounded like forever, yet like no time at all.
Pastern looked up from her pad and gave Tib another over-the-glasses look. "Having second thoughts?"
"No!" Tib realized she was shouting and dialed down. "No, not at all. I kind of like what I've seen so far, actually."
Pastern seemed to relax a bit. "Most people do, once they bother to look."
Once Tib was dressed, Pastern gestured her to a chair which was marginally more comfortable than the exam table. "So, you're from the Gulf Coast? Gulf of Mexico?"
"What's left of it. When the waterfront started eroding from the melting ice caps, New Orleans and Mobile kind of gobbled up all the towns in between and moved north. Theyn't–there aren't any real states anymore, but Louisiana is still Louisiana." Tib said this with a certain amount of pride.
Dr Pastern was really grinning now. "Pardon me, your patois is showing."
Tib chuckled a little. "Almost nobody talks like that anymore. I think my father clung to it out of what he called 'hard-down cussedness', and he passed it on to me."
"Good for him. We all need a little more 'Nawlinz', 'Mohbeel' and 'Loozyanna' in our lives."
Tib laughed with the doctor. Pastern had a way of putting you at ease.
"So. Any allergies?"
"Pancillin. Oh, and seafood. Not that there's any left. We had some crawdads in a patch of bayou down in Mobileans when I was little, and I couldn't touch 'em. Theyn't no–there aren't any left now. I think the swampland dried up, even." That was twice she almost lapsed into the Cajun dialect she'd shared only with her father. Pretty soon she'd be speaking Bayou French. And after all the effort Mother had put into teaching her to speak properly!
"Noted. Okay, that's it." Pastern reached out a hand. "It was good talking with you, Tib. And thanks for not making me fight my way through your full name."
Tib stood and shook the doctor's hand warmly. She flashed a saucy grin and deliberately laid her native accent on thick. "Don'choo worry yo' haid 'bout it, dollin'. De pleasure, she be all mine. I got no worries, me."
For the first time in too long, Tib was speaking the truth. She walked out of the exam room with a bounce in her step that would have made Lilac look like a model of restraint. By the time she reached the residential hallway, she was whistling "Jambalaya".
***
Tib's good mood lasted until she got to her sleeping quarters…and found out who she was rooming with.
"You keep your stuff away from mine." It was the sour-faced woman from the tour. She'd had her exam before Tib, and somehow Tib thought that the lady had discovered that during the Conversion process anesthetic was not optional. "I check my stuff all the time. Every day. If anything goes missing or even gets messed with, you'll be sorry."
Tib was used to people being proprietary about their possessions. It was one of the reasons she traveled light and had limited interaction with other people for so long. But after lunch with Lilac, after the easy banter with the good doctor, the older woman's abrasive behavior rubbed her raw.
Theyn't no way I'd touch yo' shit, ma belle. I be scairt o' gettin' yo' bitch cooties, me. She bit back the retort and put her small backpack under the unmade bed. She strove to remember her mother's lessons in manners.
"You stay on your side," the woman continued. "Some people try to claim everything for themselves. I hate people like that."
"Me too." The words seemed to come out of her mouth of their own accord, and it stopped the woman's ranting cold. She stared with a sort of confused apprehension.
Tib shook out the sheets and began making her bed. "I'm Delphine Thibodeaux, but I go by Tib. What's your name, ma'am?"
"What you need my name for?"
Tib didn't know where she was getting this–she sucked at dealing with people!--but she persisted in her efforts to be pleasant. Maybe Lilac was rubbing off on her. "Well, it would be an improvement over 'Hey, you', wouldn't it?"
The dark eyes narrowed at her. Tib shrugged mentally and concentrated on getting the sheet fitted onto the bed. It wasn't as easy as she remembered. She hadn't actually made a bed since she left home. She tugged and straightened and fussed with the corners, but no matter how hard she tried the sheet bore a startling resemblance to a topographical display of the Appalachian Wastelands.
"Jejeongsin-iya?!" The older woman took three steps forward and shoved Tib firmly back. She whipped off the sheet, gave it a disciplinary shake, and spread it over the mattress, darting back and forth to tuck in the corners even as it settled. She spread the top sheet, then the blanket. Not a single wrinkle dared present itself. Within minutes the woman snatched the pillow up from the floor, fluffed it aggressively, and pitched it carelessly on the bed. It landed dead center at the top, perfectly placed.
"...Thank you?" Tib had never seen a bed so definitively put to rights. Not even by her own neat freak of a mother.
Her roommate slowly turned around to face her. She moved with deliberate slowness until she stood directly in Tib's personal space. Tib steeled herself against moving back. Somehow she knew that would count against her.
"Hal meon nee." Each syllable was clipped and precise, leaving no margin for misinterpretation.
Tib offered a small, desperate smile. "I'm sorry, I don't underst–"
"That what you call me. Halmeonee." She turned briskly away and went to the other side of the room. "I make my bed now. You come help and next time you do bed yourself."
Tib felt like she should feel insulted, or offended, or at least slightly put out. But she was grinning happily as she went to assist Halmeonee. "Yes, ma'am!"
***
The first week flew by. Tib ate the best meals she'd ever had in her life, including fresh fruit and greens shipped directly from Equestria. Quickly she learned to get in line early at the caff to have pick of the best stuff; it went out quickly. Even when she was late, Lilac usually managed to save some lettuce or a few grapes or some other good thing for her, and they always shared with Halmeonee, who joined them at their table now.
By the end of the week Tib had managed to learn that her roomie's real name was Park Eun-sook. "Halmeonee" was the Korean word for "grandmother".
Eun-sook was a native of what she called "the City", as though San Francisco were the only place worthy of the name. To her, it probably was. She had two children, both of whom had left the coast to seek their fortunes elsewhere. She hadn't heard from either of them since. Her husband had been a Blackmesh killed in the line of duty years ago, and she wouldn't provide any further details.
Tib didn't press her. She knew better.
***
The more Tib learned about Equestria, the more confident she became that she'd made the right choice. It sounded like paradise, a Garden of Eden where no one need fear being cast out by an unforgiving deity.
There were two deities in Equestria, though they sought neither worship nor unquestioning servitude. There was Princess Celestia, of course; ponies she spoke to seemed to think the sun rose and set on her, though she learned that Celestia actually made the sun rise and set.
Much less was known about Luna. The dark Princess controlled the night, drove the moon and commanded the stars, but only bare glimpses of her had been caught, always in her radiant sister's shadow. Rumors about her were rampant, some almost too outlandish to consider plausible. But in a world where humans could turn into ponies, what was truly impossible?
Tib scrounged for all the information she could gather. She found herself drawn to the lesser known diarch for reasons she couldn't quite explain even to herself. She'd surprised herself a lot since learning of Equestria's emergence, doing things she'd never imagined herself capable of. She'd left home, traveled across the continent, made the choice to abandon her humanity forever. She'd discarded her first and only companion (and COREy's loss was one she still hadn't gotten over, and likely she never would).
One rumor about Luna carried an unexpected sting. It was said that the dark princess considered any cognitive entity worthy of sparing…even artificial intelligence. There were early reports of biomech animals being taken through to Equestria and becoming real, living creatures. Even fully robotic entities were made flesh, and lived new and real lives as dogs or birds or…well, just about anything.
But COREy's housing lay at the bottom of the Mississippi. Lost, discarded, and irretrievable. Even if he hadn't self-termed, there was no going back to retrieve what she'd quite literally thrown away.
She tried not to beat herself up over it. She hadn't known. How could she have known about Luna's plans for AIs? Besides, it was just another silly rumor.
Tib tried to focus on the positive changes in her life. At last, she had friends. Real, live, flesh and blood friends. There was Lilac, of course, but as the number of newfoal grew, so did her circle of acquaintances. So many ponies knew her by name now that she honestly couldn't keep their names straight. Not that she couldn't tell them apart–every pony had different coloration, and there were some coat colors she hadn't known existed–but when a bright yellow pony greeted her in the hallway with a cheery "Hi, Tib!" she had to stop and think fast. Haystack? Or maybe Buttercream? No, wait, this one had a chocolate brown mane and tail. It was Chocolate Chip Muffin! "Hey there, Chip! Where y'at?"
It was a good time, possibly the best time of her life.
It was inevitable that things would take a sudden and wrenching turn for the worse.
***