A few days passed since I started living and working in Canterlot. In that time, not much had changed besides the massive leap in quality of life I experienced. A few Ponies that frequented the areas I would pass while on my way around the castle appeared to have gotten somewhat used to my presence. But for the most part, it was business as usual for me.
I worked far less than ever before at the behest of the Canterlot’s Institute of Alchemy — They clearly didn’t want me overrunning the market for potions with my ability to replicate hundreds or thousands of Ultra Premier Grade products — and when I was done with what little work I needed to get done in the day, I spent the rest of my time messing around with my Abilities to build my projects.
I got paid at the end of every day and I got paid big, so I had already acquired all the materials that would go into my next project.
I was going to make myself a motorcycle.
…
For Celestia, the day started out like any other. Her decision to employ Victor at the castle had come to pass exactly as she had imagined. His inclusion had yet to show any malignant signs beyond the protests of the capital’s greatest alchemists lobbying against him, but that was par for the course in the political hellscape that pervaded Canterlot in general.
So far, all the man had done was work, sleep, eat, and seclude himself in his room. He hadn’t even put up a protest when the maid that attended him and his room offered the castle’s priority delivery services, when he had asked where he could go to requisition the materials for his “projects.”
Nothing he had asked for was dangerous by any means, so Celestia had yet to inquire of him whatever it was he was building behind closed doors. She hadn’t planned on even bringing him to the forefront of her mind for at least a few more days as she was as swamped as always with work from Day Court.
But then came along Twilight Sparkle…
“You are mistaken,” Celestia said with a shake of her head. “Victor is not some malformed or disfigured Minotaur. He’s a Human, an entirely different Race of beings entirely.”
“A what? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them,” Twilight said with an expression clear with confusion.
“He’s…” Celestia raised her head from her paperwork and heaved a heavy sigh, “unique. He claims to be from a world unlike our own and I’m inclined to believe him. In all my years he’s also the first of his kind that I’ve come across and then there’s also the fact that his body is entirely devoid of thaumatological pathways. He’s the only living being I’ve ever seen that can live without the aid of Magic.”
“...We have an alien in the castle?” Twilight eventually asked after taking no less than a minute to recover enough of her mental faculties to speak. When Celestia nodded, she further asked, “Can I—”
“Yes,” Celestia sighed again. “Just try not to overwhelm him. Please?”
Without another word, Twilight ran out of the room in search of the closest pony that could point her in Victor’s direction. She didn’t think anything could excite her more than the prospect of learning from an otherworldly alien.
…
Knock, knock, knock…
I heard a knocking at my door and promptly set aside the notebook I was writing on. It wasn’t like I wasn’t already used to being called upon to discuss my alchemy work or accept some of the materials I asked to be delivered, so I didn’t think much about going to meet whoever it was that needed something from me.
After opening the door, however, I wasn’t met with the usual maid who brought things over to me. In fact, before me, there was a Unicorn I’d never even met.
“Hello?” I asked with some hesitation as the Unicorn had this disturbed look in her eye. “Do you need something from me?”
“Yes! Information! Please! I want to talk to you and learn about you, and your kind, and your history, and your culture, and—”
“I think I get it,” I cut her off before she started frothing at the mouth. “Though, I have to ask: Who’s putting you up to this? I mean, I can’t say I wasn’t expecting someone to do this. I just thought it’d be done, you know, sooner.”
It had been well over a week and this crazed unicorn was the only one interested enough to come to me with questions. All the other ponies I regularly interacted with, at best, only tolerated having to speak to me by way of professionalism. Even the most accepting of me in Pony society only asked what I was and what my name was; that latter bit being more of an afterthought than anything.
“Nobody told me to come here. I did so on my own. How could I turn down an opportunity this good? To get to be one of the first to learn about an alien! Oh, there’s just so much I want to learn about you!”
“Really? Well, I guess I can answer some of your questions and maybe also learn more about this world and you Ponies from you as well.” Waving her into my room I added, “Just, don’t be surprised if it turns out all I have to say isn’t very interesting. If you didn’t already know, where I come from we don’t have magic.”
“How does that work?” Twilight asked as she summoned a notebook and pen, and looked at me expectantly. “How is life in your world sustained without magic?”
“...If you’re asking how life came to be in my world, I don’t have a definite answer. But, I do know that the best guess our scientists had was that billions of years before we came to be, life started to form in the ocean. As far as I know, the world back then was really chaotic and unstable, and the conditions were just right for the first kinds of protobacteria to emerge. After that, I guess it just came down to evolution and darwinism picking out the most fit organism to survive and reproduce.”
“Fascinating,” Twilight furiously scribbled telekinetically without even looking at her notebook as she explained, “After only one question you’ve already provided evidence for Knighting Gale’s Alternate Origin’s Conjecture. If not for the fact that we have records of the Original Gods and the passing of their knowledge to the successors about the origins of our universe, many scholars have stated that they would fall back on Knighting Gale’s Conjecture as a theory of how life might have come to be on Equus.”
“You have records of “the Original Gods?”” I honestly couldn’t tell why I was so hung up on this particular detail. I probably had to do with the fact that there was literally no piece of media I’d ever come across where “Original/”Ancient/Elder Gods were anything but eldrich monsters you were better off not knowing about.
“Mhmm,” Twilight nodded at me as she explained, “The Source God of our reality was an entity named Faust. She made the universe and populated it with the stars, planets, and all other objects that made up the cosmic background. But that world was devoid of any meaning or change, so she made the rest of the Original Gods with the rest of her powers. The rest of the Original Gods sacrificed themselves to allow for mortal life to begin and thrive and the remnants of their powers are passed on to their successors.”
I would have asked more about the topic, but Twilight was quicker on the draw and said, “Anyway, tell me more about yourself.” She all but whined, “Tell me about your life before coming here and what your world’s culture was like. Tell me about how you managed your relationships and what you did for a living. I want to know—”
“Alright, alright,” I huffed. This unicorn probably wasn’t going to leave me be for a while, though, so I added, “I’ll be working on my project while I answer your questions though.”
So I picked up my notebook and continued writing where I’d left off with one of the split pieces of my consciousness while starting what was destined to be a long, long conversation with Twilight, “Where to even begin? I guess, I’ll start with my former occupation. I was actually the owner of a couple small software companies. I’d gotten into programming to make my own games when I was sixteen, so by the time I graduated college, I had more than enough experience and know-how to find a job at any company…”
“...So I can’t really tell you how different my world’s culture is from yours just yet. You see—” I’d been talking with Twilight for so long that I’d finished making all the calculations needed to move on to the prototype phase of building my future motorcycle’s engine. Consequently, even as I continued talking I started working with the metals and tools strewn all around the room, “—I haven’t really been exposed to much since I started working from inside the castle. The only real difference I’ve noticed so far is that you ponies aren’t as integrated with technology as my kind back on Earth are. Though, I guess it makes sense since you have magic and we don’t.”
“In what ways would you say that our lesser connection with technology separates our culture?” Twilight asked. Even hours later, she was still as enthusiastic as she’d been when I first let her into my room.
“Eh,” I finished using my Abilities to create the parts and compounds that would go into a working engine and started the assembly process, “In pretty much every way imaginable. I mean, humans pretty much depended on technology for everything; computers especially. All but the jobs that required manual labor were done on computers and even those that weren’t were probably automated with heavy industrial machinery. Computers were where we mostly got our sources of news, communication, and entertainment too.”
After that, for the next several hours she had me list out just about every way I could think of where computers could be used and to my shock, the overwhelming majority of them seemed to have blown her mind.
By the time I ran out of ways to exhort the myriad benefits that came from using computers, I’d nearly finished building the rest of my motorcycle prototype. More importantly, half the day had come to pass with the moon hanging ever closer to its zenith.
Even Twilight, despite her overwhelming excitement, had to admit that she was getting tired and needed to leave to go to bed. It didn’t stop her from stating that she’d be back as soon as possible to continue asking me more questions. Not that I really minded.
It was nice to be able to just talk to someone as I did with her. Even if it was just about mundane aspects of humanity. To Twilight, I imagine every new bit of information was as fascinating as the little bits of “lore” that she slipped in about Equus when she sometimes commented on the similarities and differences between our worlds.
Whatever the case, it was nice talking to someone who seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. It was nice talking to someone who didn’t evoke a sense of existential dread simply by being in their presence or express emotions at their extremes when we met. Twilight was neither a Changeling drone nor the average pony.
Twilight was… someone I could see myself eventually befriending. It’d all depend on how her attitude changed the moment I ran out of new things to tell her. Only then would I see whether she’d be true friend material or just another smiling face that was content with acting friendly until they got what they wanted.
For as young as I was, I’d learned a lot from managing the businesses I’d built up or bought, so this wouldn’t be the first time I came across that personality type.