//------------------------------// // 8.) Overflow // Story: Multiverse // by Patience //------------------------------// Twilight passed through the portal and landed on the other side. Once she gathered her bearings she looked around but the police office wasn't there, or so she thought. She made to step forward and nearly tripped on his still body. She immediately started tending to him. She lightly tapped his face and kept saying 'mister officer' again and again, but he would not wake. She pulled back his eye lids and his pupils were blown all the way open, and his hands were shaking fiercely. If Twilight didn't know better she would say he was having a seizure, but the symptom's she recognized and she knew she only had a small window of opportunity to save him. In a flash the officer and her were in the immaculate white halls of a hospital. Doctors, who decided to work despite The Change, rushed to Twilight and the officer as they came into being. The various nurses and doctors levitated the officer onto a stretcher a began to ask various questions, but Twilight, despite strained panting, was eager to put in her own words. "He's experiencing Magical Induction Overflow Syndrome." She eagerly explained to the nearest doctor. He just scoffed. "Leave the diagnosis to the experts, miss, MIOS is a foals sickness. Last time an adult experienced it was a guard near Celestia when she was at battle with Nightmare Moon a thousand years ago." Twilight frowned. "How about you instead tell me his name." "I don't know it." She pointed at his chest. "It looks like he's got a name tag though." "Oh right, Godfrey," the doctor dictated to a nurse, who penned it down on a clipboard. "So you don't know him at all?" "No. We just met a few moments ago." "What happened?" "Well I tried to teleport home and missed my target and ended up near a little grotto of tree near my house. In the grotto was a portal. I went through the portal and, what are you doing?" The doctor was now shining a light in her eyes. "Never mind." He stopped probing her. "Go on." "I went through the portal and met him." She decided to omit her assault of an officer and aiding a suspect in escape. "He thought I was crazy, but I pointed out the portal. He went through it and when I got back on the other side he was like he is now." The doctor scribbled on the clipboard some more. "Ok well I need you to go out and wait in the hall until we can stabilize him." Twilight rolled her eyes. "I'm telling you he has MIOS." She turned to Godfrey and began to cast her magic. Soon he was floating and a raspberry wall of magic formed around him. The nurses and doctors didn't dare stop her in case she drop him on the floor. "Miss! You can't do that!" The doctors pleaded with her, but a nurse suddenly declared that his vitals were stabilizing. The doctor looked incredulous. "What in Celestia's name?" "Speaking of Celestia, someone get me a guardspony. I believe this man is a foreign dignitary." Twilight said simply. Godfrey laid unconscious for a very long time. Days and days had passed. Twilight remained a sentry, by his side, sometimes administering treatment herself. A nurse had to be posted with him at all times. The nature of his condition required constant therapy. Twilight had gotten the attention of a guard quickly and sent for Princess Celestia, who arrived at the hospital days later, confusion in her student's actions apparent. "Hello my faithful student." Celestia smiled to Twilight, who she had woken. Twilight bowed to Celestia and then made to explain how she had met Godfrey and how he ended up in the hospital with MIOS. "So you think this portal is an entry way to somewhere entirely new." Twilight nodded vigorously to Celestia's intuition. "Yes I do. An Equestrian native wouldn't develop Magical Induction Overflow Syndrome so suddenly." "Very well. Until Officer Godfrey is conscious I am going to post guards at this portal, if it is still there. Once he comes to he can tell us if we have any reason to fear his world." Twilight agreed with Celestia's forethought. Godfrey awoke with a throbbing headache and soreness in all his limbs. He recognized his surroundings as a hospital and mumbled for water. The nurse posted to him looked up suddenly, and began to call for a doctor. Some poking, prodding and question asking Godfrey was sitting up in the hospital bed, sipping on water and munching on hospital food. Twilight entered the room, happy to see he was awake. "Not you again. First I'm in a strange hospital, no one can seem to tell me where I am. No one seems to know how to explain what's wrong with me and they won't let me leave." Godfrey pouted. "What's wrong with me?" She asked him mirthfully. "I have the answer to all those questions, you know." "In that case, nothing. So how about some answers." "Well I'm sure you already know, but you're in Canterlot General Hospital. Which-" He started to complain but she silenced him with a wave of her hand. "Which is in Equestria. If my suspicions are correct you are from an entirely different world. The portal we went through connected those worlds." She smiled at his dumbstruck expression. "As for what is happening to you. It's called Magical Induction Overflow Syndrome. Usually it only occurs in infants and is easy to treat when caught." She paused to gauge his reaction. "Magical? What?" "I assume you don't have magic where you're from." "The unicorns light stuff on fire occasionally. We haven't been like this for long." "What do you mean?" Twilight inquired, eagerly. "You first." "Well MIOS is when the flow of magic through your body is more than your body can tolerate. Normally the body picks up ambient magic, stores some of it away and filters out the rest, but with MIOS the magic flows into the body faster than the body is capable of purging it. The magic flows through the body continuously messing with the nervous system, in various degrees depending on how much magic is in you. The symptoms can be as mild as headaches and as severe as coma and death." "Death?" Godfrey's face paled "I figured out what was happened to you immediately and got you treatment quickly enough to prevent any long term damage." "That's good." "Yes it is. The treatment was to cut you off from ambient magic and to slowly purge the magic within you. Unfortunately if you were to leave, or even if this nurse stopped shielding you the symptoms would reemerge, endangering you again." "So what can be done?" He said with apprehension. "For now we will control the amount of ambient magic allowed to flow through you until your body can purge it on its own. To speed that up you will have to learn how to actually use magic, namely through flying." "F-Flying?!" He said incredulously. "I'll be able to fly?!" "Yep!" "But I don't know how to..." "Oh don't worry about that; I know just the mare to teach you." Twilight told him, smiling at his bemusement. "But, now it's your turn. What did you mean when you said you 'haven't been like this for long'? "Well around 6 months ago, December, I wasn't covered in fur, I didn't have wings, and I didn't have hooves. We all went to sleep on December 21st and we woke up completely changed." "We?" "Yeah, my entire race. All 7 billion humans on earth became ponified." "Seven billion?Twilight gaped at him. "Wow." "It's safe to assume that your numbers don't reach that high?" "We're prolific but not that prolific." "Heh, well. Given an ounce of space and we try to make it two ounces." "Oh. So what do humans look like?" "I could show you, where's my belongings? I have my old ID in my wallet." Twilight fumbled with a container underneath his bed and brought it forth, passing it to him. He rummaged around inside of it and finally drew a small black wallet out from within it. He flipped it open, perusing the items within before finally drawing out a thin plastic card and passing it to Twilight. She gasped when she saw what a human looked like, her intellectual mind instantly drawing conclusions. An inkling of that which was coming drawing into the recesses of her mind. Godfrey broke the silence. "Something like that happened to you too, didn't it?" "Yeah. We were different too. Yesterday I was a pony. Now I'm... I don't even know." "Yesterday? That can't be right... I've been like this for months." "Perhaps time flows differently there than it does here." "Oh right. Perhaps. What did you look like before?" Twilight brought out a book, a heavy tome filled with descriptions and diagrams, rendered irrelevant by the change, of the various ills and diseases that can strike a pony. She flipped through the pages till she found a group of sketches, detailing the three races of ponies before the change. She guided the book, enveloped in her aura, to Godfrey, who took it and drunk in the sketches before him. "This is so... surreal." Twilight could only nod in agreement. "It's like we crossed. Like some mad scientist spliced our genes together. Human body, pony features." Godfrey tore his eyes from the sketches and looked to Twilight for some kind of confirmation. She wore a pensive look, and was indifferent to his gaze. Godfrey closed the book, making it snap slightly, bringing Twilight back down. She took the book back into her, magical, grasp and placed it back onto the shelf. Godfrey laid back, the thoughts weighing heavily in his mind. He felt a headache inching it's way into his cranium. The headache's presence was from a combination of the confusion in his mind and the magic racing through his body. A nurse stepped into the room, clearing her throat to draw attention to herself. Twilight excused her self and the nurse erected a barrier around Godfrey, his therapy resumed. He felt his headache slipping away and sleep ebbing in. He closed his eyes and let sleep seep in.