Derpy entered the room awkwardly, tripping slightly on the edge of the rug on the approach to an extremely comfortable floral-patterend chair. Upon sitting in it, however, she realized that it was in fact a trap—and the squishyness of the chair caused her to slowly sink between the back and the cushion.
“Help, I’m being ingested...”
She was pulled upward slightly by a gentle touch of magic until she was no longer descending, at least not quickly—and she found herself facing a familiar and exceedingly handsome unicorn.
Dr. Horse checked his notes, pausing to take a sip from his levitating coffee.
“You look tired, Doc.”
“I am, but it’s not a problem.” He looked up over his notes. “The patients are for the most part recovering, but it was a great deal of work getting them back in order. That, and removing several embedded gold bits from two of my nurses. It took all night...” He sighed and set down his coffee, but then smiled, kindly. Derpy felt a familiar warm feeling, one she remembered well as it had somewhat preceded both the births of her two unicorn daughters decades earlier.
“But I’m glad you came. Although...I’m honestly a little surprised.”
“I had Doctor Hooves read the letter for me.”
“Time Turner is not actually a doctor but that’s not the point. I did not mean the reading of my letter, but rather that you were willing to volunteer for this consultation.”
Derpy steeled herself. “I'm tired of being the dummy,” she said. “I can’t understand my daughters anymore and I can’t help them...and I can’t even take care of myself. And I’m hurting ponies even though I love them because I just can’t figure out what goes wrong. Every. Dang. Time.” She sighed, looking down at the oaken desk—and then back up. “And the worst part is I can remember. What it was like to be smart. Doc, do you really think you can fix me?”
“I would say you are not really broken. Just injured. No different from a broken wing or a disconnected leg. And I specialize in fixing injuries.”
“But how do you fix a brain?” Derpy paused. “I tried eating walnuts, but I had that a nap-o-leaky reaction and stopped breathing. Twice. Dinky had to take me to the hospital. But they’re shaped like brains, so will that help? Should I try again? I have some in my bag...”
The doctor smiled and levitated a plasticy film image toward Derpy. It was a picture in black and white.
“This is your brain.”
Derpy stared wide eyed at the film—or rather to both sides of it—looking from it to the doctor with her jaw open in amazement. “You already got it out? Wow! You’re so fast!”
“No, Derpy, I mean it’s a picture of your brain. An x-ray.” He levitated a stick and pointed at several areas on it, back-lighting it with his magic. “This is coagulation necrosis, essentially scarring of the brain, following these bright spots, which are metal. Based on your history, you received a traumatic brain injury from a close-range shrapnel burst, aggravated by oxygen derivation while the medic-scouts searched for you. See here? This is where they put a metal plate in.”
“I still can’t use the microwave without seeing pain,” sighed Derpy.
“Yes. Well, that is not normal, surely, but not the issue at hoof. Here.” He pointed. “You have a remarkable amount of neural tissue still intact. The new procedure we have been developing will utilize this to regenerate the damaged areas.”
“How?”
Derpy would of course not understand even if he told her, but Dr. Horse seemed all-too-willing to demonstrate. He produced a small box, like the kind jewelry came in—as well as a rather ominous looking tool with a small retractable claw. He opened the box and Derpy was immediately struck by the sheer glimmering beauty of the crystal inside—and Dr. Horse gently picked it up with the tiny claw.
“With this,” he said, smiling.
“It’s so shiny.”
“It indeed is, Ms. Hooves. Quite shiny.” He held it up. “This is a new product exported from the Crystal Empire. A sort of magically compressed quantum computation system. A computer equivalent to an entire city of our greatest vacuum-tube computer systems held in a single shard, so advanced that it is very nearly alive.”
“Is that what makes it shiny?”
“No, it is simply very well polished. Which it needs to be, considering it will need to bind to the remaining living neurons in your brain.”
“In my...brain?”
Dr. Horse’s smile widened as he stared past the computational crystal and into at least one of Derpy’s eyes. “Yes, that is the nature of the procedure. It is actually quite straightforward and anticipated to be amazingly painless. I will surgically insert this crystal into the center of your brain, at the nexus of the majority of the functional tissue. It can then be externally tuned to slowly stimulate the remaining neurons, essentially reprogramming them. Reconstructing pathways around the damaged portions of your brain, optimizing the remaining portions until your intelligence approaches normal.”
“I don’t know...”
“I assure you, based on all mathematical models, this is a vast improvement over the Algernon procedure and even Twilight Sparkle’s recently declassified L.A.W.N.M.O.W.E.R. initiative.”
“The one that made all the telephones go off?”
“That one exactly!”
Derpy felt ill—but took a deep breath. “Is it going to hurt?”
“You will of course have a local anesthetic, so no. It will be nearly painless.” He paused. Then he sighed. “There are of course risks. To any medical procedure, but especially to ones involving experimental archeotechnology. Animal testing is of course banned, so I have no idea what side effects this might have in a pony...although I believe it to be quite safe. Nopony has ever experienced a negative outcome.” He chuckled.
“I know,” lied Derpy. “But I’m tired of this. Of all this. I just want to be me again. Please, doc. Make me smart.”
Dr. Horse stared at her, then smiled. He slid a page toward her, and an ornate ink-blotter for her hoof. “I promise I’ll do my best, Derpy. And who knows? If this goes well, you might even be able to take my job in a few years.”
He laughed. Derpy did not—but stamped her hoof on the form regardless, one of her eyes never leaving the crystal. It seemed, for a moment, to stare back at her. She dismissed it, though. It was just a shiny—and nothing to be afraid of. She was sure of that, at least.
It was not nearly as scary as Derpy had expected. The nurses were very nice and had given her ice cream and a haircut. Admittedly the special chair she found herself strapped into was a little bit ominous, but at least it was not trying to eat her.
The funnest part, in her opinion, was that she could not move her head. It had been attached to a bunch of metal things that made it impossible for her to turn it, even slightly, no matter how hard she tried. It was like a giant metal hat. Then they had given her a shot, which had made her afraid but barely hurt. It just sort of felt cold.
Derpy hummed to herself as nurses in white and with masks on moved around her, carrying metal things she did not know the names of. Dr. Horse was also there, but standing behind her; since she could not see him, Derpy would periodically forget he was even there. She had not realized that he was also a dentist, and did not really understand how he was doing some sort of magical dentistry behind her instead of in her teeth. But she definitely heard a really big dental drill.
Then the drilling stopped. Dr. Horse said something to one of the nurses, and Derpy heard a strange wet sound.
“What was that, doc?” she asked, looking upward but not being able to look back.
“Just part of the process, my dear,” he said. “Nurse, the retractors, please.”
“Yes, doctor.”
“I used to brush my teeth every day,” said Derpy. “Until I swallowed the brush. You were there for that part. And then when Sparkler found me turning blue because I used the floss wrong.” She sighed. “That made her cry really hard, even though she thought I didn’t see...doc, why do I taste the sound lilacs smell like?”
“Sorry, a bit too far.” He paused, and the tone in his voice had shifted.
“Doctor...”
“I see it,” he said. “The shrapnel is much more extensive than we thought it would be, the plate in your skull was hiding it on the x-ray. This might be the source of your problem.”
“Oh. That’s nice. Can you pluck it out?” Derpy paused. “Or push it back in?”
“Not without compromising the circulatory system. Or what's left of it. I’m going to have to work around it. Nurse, the processor.”
“Yes, doctor.” One of the nurses brought it forward on a small rolling tray. Derpy saw Dr. Horse’s magic swirl around the tool that held it suspended, and then it vanished from her sight.
“Alright, Derpy. This next part is very important. I need to assess your mental acuity, to know if I’m going too deep. It needs to be in functional tissue, but the actual level is deep in your frontal lobe. Going too far would have negative consequences.”
“I have a lobe?”
“Mostly, yes. But you need to listen. Are you listening, Derpy?”
“I think so?”
“Good. I need you to recite something you can remember, something you’ve memorized.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure. What is it you like to do?”
“I like spending time with my daughters, and my friends, and laughing, and playing with clouds, and flying...oh! And muffins! I really like muffins, and making them for all my friends and family!”
“Excellent, Ms. Hooves. When we’re done, perhaps you can make some for me?”
“Or course, doc! And all the pretty nurses too!”
“Why don’t you tell me the recipe for your favorite muffins?”
“Oh, that’s easy!” said Derpy. “It would be blueberry, but I put chocolate chips in half of them as a special surprise! Let’s see, you start with flour, which for one batch would mean four cups, and you have to sift it. That’s the secret to making them smooooth...then you need to get the sugar too, but you won’t mix that with the flour, because it’s a secret wet ingredient and those go last...”
Derpy felt an odd sensation. Like her body was tasting itself and finding itself to taste like roughly what an old bar floor smelled. She did not feel anything, but heard something wet moving somewhere in her head.
“Keep going, Ms. Hooves."
“You need two sticks of butter, and you need to keep those away from Trixie because she will eat them. You have to leave those out overnight so they are nice and soft. You mix that with three eggs. The best ones come from Elizabeak. Then while you’re doing that, you need to measure out the blueberries! You need to get a cup and...and...” Derpy frowned. “And you need...blueberries?”
“Doctor, her vitals are dropping.”
“And blueberries because they...and you need to mix them with flour...flower...three cups...sugar should be...milk and...and...some amount of flowers? I don’t...I don’t...why can’t I...doc, I can’t remember wh...ffll...ffflll….”
“Doctor!”
“I don’t know what’s happening, it isn’t integrating, I can’t stop the startup procedure!”
“Doctor, we have to abort!”
“If I pull it now, she—dang it, she's crashing!”
“Three cups of...flour...two cups? Just one, maybe, I don’t...don’t remember...”
Derpy suddenly felt tired, and distantly heard a machine that had previously been beeping suddenly accelerate.
“She’s seizing! Get the—”
The sudden beeping stopped and became consistent. The last thing Derpy heard was somepony shouting for a code blue—and then nothing but blackness. She smiled internally as she slipped into it, knowing that she would at least not be a disappointment to anypony anymore.