//------------------------------// // I hate to go home to that lonely room // Story: Into the Mind of a Simpler Mare // by harrytheneat //------------------------------// Into the Mind of a Simpler Mare Story based on Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Edit by me I hate to go home to that lonely room. PROGRESS REPORT 10 April 21 - I figured out a new way to set up the sorting machines at the post office to speed up delivery. Grumpy says he will save labor costs and increase profits. He gave me a fifty-dollar bonus and a ten-dollar-a-week raise. I wanted to take Swifter, Kick, and Stamps out to lunch to celebrate, but Kick had to buy some things for his wife, Swifter was meeting his cousin for lunch, and Stamps had a date with Big Macintosh. I guess it might take time for them to get used to the changes in me. Everypony seems frightened of me. When I went over to Grumpy and tapped him on the shoulder to ask him something, he jumped up and dropped his cup of coffee all over the floor. He stares at me when he thinks I'm not looking. Nopony talks to me anymore, or foals around the way they used to. It makes the job kind of lonely. Thinking about it makes me remember the time I fell asleep standing up and Kick knocked my legs out from under me. The warm sweet smell, the white walls, the roar of the sorter when Olive Garden opened the hatch to shift the packages. Suddenly falling... twisting ..everything out from under me and my head cracking against the wall. It's me, and yet it's like somepony else lying there-another Ditzy. She's confused... rubbing her head, staring up at Kick, tall and thin, and then at Grumpy nearby, massive, hairy, gray-faced. Grumpy with bushy eye-brows that almost hide his blue eyes. "Leave the kid alone," says Grumpy. "Jesus, Kick, why do you always gotta pick on her?" "It don't mean nothing," laughs Kick. "It don't hurt her. She don't know any better. Do you, Derpy?" Ditzy rubs her head and cringes. She doesn't know what she's done to deserve this punishment, but there is always the chance that there will be more. "But you know better," says Grumpy, clumping over on his orthopedic boot, "so what the hell you always picking on her for?" The two men are both sitting down at a long table, the tall Kick and the heavy Grumpy still punching ink on the stamps stuck onto the letters that are to be sent to waiting ponies all over ponyville. They work in silence for a while, and then Kick stops and tips his white cap back. "Hey, Grump, think Derpy could learn to stamp letters?" Grumpy leans an elbow on the worktable. "Why don't we just leave her alone?" "No, I mean it, Grump- seriously. I bet she could learn something simple like stamping." The idea seems to appeal to Grumpy who turns to stare at Ditzy. "Maybe you got something there. Hey, Derpy, come here a minute." As she usually does when ponies are talking about her, Ditzy has been keeping her head down, staring at her hooves. She knows how walk to them. She could stamp letters. She could learn to press, roll, pound, and push the ink into the small square stickers. Kick looks at her uncertainly. "Maybe we shouldn't, Grump. Maybe it's wrong. If the moron can't learn maybe we shouldn't start anything with her." "You leave this to me," says Grumpy who has now taken over Kick's idea. "I think maybe she can learn. “Now listen, Derpy. You want to learn something? You want me to teach you how to stamp letters like me and Kick are doing?” Ditzy stares at him, the smile melting from her face. She understands what Grumpy wants, and she feels cornered. She wants to please Grumpy, but there is something about the words learn and teach, something to remember about being punished severely, but she doesn't recall what it is-only a thin white hoof upraised, hitting her to make her learn something she couldn't understand. Ditzy backs away but Grumpy grabs her arm. "Hey, kid, take it easy. We won't hurt you. Look at her shaking like she's gonna fall apart. Look, Derpy - I got a nice new shiny good-luck piece for you to play with." He holds out his hoof and reveals a brass chain with a shiny brass disc that says STAR BRIGHT’S METAL POLISH CO. He holds the chain by one end and the gleaming gold disc rotates slowly, catching the light of the fluorescent bulbs. The pendant is a brightness that Ditzy remembers but she doesn't know why or what. She doesn't reach for it. She knows you get punished if you reach out for other pony's things. If somepony puts it into your hoof that is alright. But otherwise it's wrong. When she sees that Grumpy is offering it to her, she nods and smiles again. "That she knows," laughs Kick. "Give her something bright and shiny." Kick, who has let Grumpy take over the experiment, leans forward excitedly. "Maybe if she wants that piece of junk bad enough and you tell her she'll get it if she learns to stamp the letters. maybe it'll work." As the mailponies set to the task of teaching Ditzy, others from the office gather around. Kick clears an area between them on the table, and Grumpy pulls off a medium sized letter for Ditzy to work with. There is talk of betting on whether or not Derpy can learn to stamp letters. "Watch us carefully," says Grumpy, putting the pendant beside him on the table where Ditzy can see it. "Watch and do everything we do. If you learn how to stamp letters, you'll get this shiny good-luck piece." Ditzy hunches over on her stool, intently watching Grumpy pick up the stamp and press in on the ink pad. She studies each movement as Grumpy presses the stamp firmly on the funny-shaped sticker, lifts it up and presses it again on the felt pad. "Now watch me," says Kick, and he repeats Grumpy's performance. Ditzy is confused. There are differences. Grumpy holds his elbows out as he pushes just enough ink on, but Kick keeps his arms close to his sides and uses much more ink. Grumpy uses his whole hoof as he presses the stamp, but Kick works with the flat of his hooves. Worrying about these things makes it impossible for Ditzy to move when Grumpy says, "Go ahead, try it." Ditzy shakes her head. "Look, Derpy, I'm gonna do it again slow. Now you watch everything I do, and do each part along with me. Okay? But try to remember everything so then you'll be able to do the whole thing alone. Now come on - like this." Ditzy frowns as she watches Grumpy press out some ink and push it onto the letter. She hesitates, but then she picks up the stamp and presses onto the ink pad and sets it down in the center of the table. Slowly, keeping her elbows out exactly as Grumpy does, she presses it on the stamp. She looks from her own hooves to Grumpy's, and she is careful to keep her hooves exactly the same way, hooves flat and elbows out. She has to do it right, the way Grumpy wants her to do it. There are echoes inside her that say, do it right and they will like you. And she wants Grumpy and Kick to like her. When Grumpy has finished working his ink on the letter, he stands back, and so does Ditzy. "Hey, that's great. Look Kick, she did it, flat on the letter." Kick nods and smiles. Ditzy sighs and her whole frame trembles as the tension builds. She is unaccustomed to this rare moment of success. "All right now," says Grumpy. "Now we’ll stamp another letter." Awkwardly, but carefully, Ditzy follows Grumpy's every move. Occasionally, a twitch of her hoof or arm mars what she is doing, but in a little while she is able to press out enough ink into the stamp and fashion it flat on the letter. Working beside Grumpy she stamps six letters. She sets them carefully alongside Grumpy in the large duffle bag. "All right, Derpy." Grumpy's face is serious. "Now, let's see you do it by yourself. Without me. Remember all the things you did from the beginning. Now, go ahead." Ditzy stares at the pad of ink and at the stamp that Grumpy has put into her hoof. And once again panic comes over her. What did he do first? How did he hold his hoof? His arms? How hard did he press...? A thousand confusing ideas burst into her mind at the same time and she just stands there smiling. She wants to do it, to make Kick and Grumpy happy and have them like her, and to get the bright good-luck piece that Grumpy has promised her. She pushes, wooden stamp on the pad, but she cannot bring himself to finish. She cannot press it on the letter because she knows she will fail and she is afraid. "She forgot already," said Kick. "It don't stick." She wants it to stick. She frowns and tries to remember: first you press on the ink. Then you find the weird sticker. But how does it get to be a squiggle like the ones in the bag? That's something else. Give her time and she'll remember. As soon as the fuzziness passes away she'll remember. Just another few seconds and she'll have it. She wants to hold on to what she's learned-for a little while. She wants it so much. "Okay, Derpy," sighs Grumpy, taking the stamp out of her hoof. "That's alright. Don't worry about it. It's not your work anyway." Another minute and she'll remember. If only they wouldn't rush her. Why does everything have to be in such a hurry? "Go ahead, Derpy. Go sit down and look at your comic book. We got to get back to work." Ditzy nods and smiles, and pulls out her comic book. She smooths it out, and puts it on her head as a make-believe hat. Kick laughs and Grumpy finally smiles. "Go on, you big baby," snorts Kick. "Go sit down there until Grumpy wants you." Ditzy smiles at him and goes back to the crate stacks in the corner near the sorting machine. She likes to lean back against them while she sits on the floor cross-legged and looks at the pictures in her comic book. As she starts to turn the pages, she feels like crying, but she doesn't know why. What is there to feel sad about? The fuzzy cloud comes and goes, and now she looks forward to the pleasure of the brightly colored pictures in the comic book that she has gone through thirty, forty times. She knows all of the figures in the comic-she has asked their names over and over again (of almost everypony she meets)-and she understands that the strange forms of letters and words in the white balloons above the figures means that they are saying something. Would she ever learn to read what was in the balloons? If they gave her enough time-if they didn't rush her or push him too fast she would get it. But nopony has time. Ditzy pulls her legs up and opens the comic book to the first page where the Batmare and Robin are swinging up a long rope to the side of a building. Someday, she decides, she is going to read. And then she will be able to read the story. She feels a hoof on her shoulder and he looks up. It is Grumpy holding out the brass disc and chain, letting it swing and twirl around so that it catches the light. "Here," he says gruffly, tossing it into Ditzy's lap, and then he limps away... I never thought about it before, but that was a nice thing for him to do. Why did he? Anyway, that is my memory of the time, clearer and more complete than anything I have ever experienced before. Like looking out of the office window early when the morning light is still gray. I've come a long way since then, and I owe it all to Twilight and Spike. But what must Kick and Grumpy think and feel now, seeing how I've changed? April 22 - Everypony at the post office is changing. Not only ignoring me. I can feel the hostility. Grumpy is arranging for me to join the mailmare's union, and I've gotten another raise. The rotten thing is that all of the pleasure is gone because the others resent me. In a way, I can't blame them. They don't understand what has happened to me, and I can't tell them. Nopony is proud of me the way I expected-not at all. Still, I've got to have somepony to talk to. I'm going to ask Dr. Whooves to go to a movie tomorrow night to celebrate my raise. If I can get up the nerve. April 24 - Twilight finally agreed with Spike and me that it will be impossible for me to write down everything if I know it's immediately read by them at the lab. I've tried to be completely honest about everything, no matter who I was talking about, but there are things I can't put down unless I can keep them private-at least for a while. Now, I'm allowed to keep back some of these more personal reports, but before the final report to the Home, Twilight will read through everything to decide what part of it should be published. What happened today at the lab was very upsetting. I dropped by the library earlier this evening to ask Twilight or Spike if they thought it would be all right for me to ask Dr. Whooves out to a movie, but before I could knock I heard them arguing with each other. I shouldn't have stayed, but it's hard to break the habit of listening because everypony has always spoken and acted as if I weren't there, as if they never cared what I overheard. I heard somepony bang on the desk, and then Twilight shouted: "I've already informed the convention committee that we will present the paper in Canterlot." Then I heard Spike's voice: "But you're wrong, Twilight. Six weeks from now is still too soon. She's still changing." And then Fluttershy: "I uh... I’ve predicted the pattern correctly so far. I think we are justified in making an interim report. There's nothing to be afraid of. We've succeeded. It's all positive. Nothing should go wrong now." Spike "This is too important to all of us to bring it out into the open prematurely. You're taking the authority on yourself-" Twilight: "You forget that I'm the senior member of this project." Spike: "And you forget that you're not the only one with a reputation to consider. If we claim too much now, our whole hypothesis will come under fire." Twilight: "I'm not afraid of regression any more. I've checked and rechecked everything. An interim report will do no harm. I feel sure nothing can go wrong now." The argument went on that way with Twilight saying that Spike had his eye on the Chair of Psychology at Manehatten, and Spike saying that Twilight was riding on the coattails of her psychological research. Then Twilight said that the project had as much to do with her techniques in psychosurgery and enzyme-injection patterns, as with Spike's theories, and that someday thousands of neurosurgeons all over Equestria would be using her methods, but at this point Spike reminded her that those new techniques would never have come about if not for his original theory. They called each other names-opportunist, cynic, pessimist-and I found myself frightened. Suddenly, I realized I no longer had the right to stand outside their office and listen to them without their knowing it. They might not have cared when I was too feeble-minded to know what was going on, but now that I could understand they wouldn't want me to hear it. I left without waiting for the outcome. It was dark, and I walked for a long time trying to figure out why I was so frightened. I was seeing them clearly for the first time-not Alicorns or even heroes, but just a unicorn and a dragon worried about getting something out of their work. Yet, if Twilight is right and the experiment is a success, what does it matter? There's so much to do, so many plans to make. I'll wait until tomorrow to ask them about taking Dr. Whooves to a movie to celebrate my raise. April 26 - I know I shouldn't hang around the library when I'm through with the tests, but seeing everypony going back and forth carrying books and hearing them talk about all the things they're learning in their classes excites me. I wish I could sit and talk with them over coffee at Doughnut Joe’s (I’m over that asshole but the coffee is great). Like when they get together to argue about books and Equestria and other ideas. It's even more exciting to hear them talking about poetry and science and philosophy-about Shakehorn and Maneton; Newtlaw Apple and Einstegisis and about Platoof and Kuchen and all the other names that echo like great church bells in my mind. Sometimes I listen in on the conversations at the tables around me, and pretend I'm a college student like them, even though I'm older than they are. I carry books around. It's silly, but since I belong with this experiment I feel as if I'm a part of the library. I hate to go home to that lonely room.