Inside the busy building that was the NYC Security Courier, an Indian man in a plain t-shirt and shorts was struggling to take the many calls that were coming into his office. The inside of the building looked more like a bicycle shop than anything, bikes of various types hung all around the inside of the building, along with an entire repair shop in the back where even more bikes hung.
People of all various races and ages were inside, either repairing their bikes, lounging after a long ride, or going out for another job, which the Indian man would send them out for. His entire day consisted of taking calls, making orders, and ensuring that his couriers would fill out his orders for them. As he pressed the answer button on his telephone, he would address the customer through his headset.
“Security Courier,” he answered.
“Yes,” spoke a motherly female voice. “I was wondering if you could take a... special type of delivery for me.”
“What'cha need?”
“I need you to lower your voice, because what I'm about to tell you might come as a shock to you.”
“Try me.”
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Despite the normally congested streets of New York, that didn't stop a red-shirted young man from weaving through the heavy traffic on his white road bicycle. He also wore a pair of graphite-grey shorts with a rather large chain and lock wrapped around his waist. He was equipped with a single-strapped backpack that was the same color as his shorts, along with a light grey helmet on his head. The man was slender in build, making him agile enough to dodge vans, trucks, and taxis left and right.
His bike was about as simple as one could get, minus the many stickers plastered on its frame and wheels. There were no gear-shift on it; just a chain that spun the back wheel. Another odd and unique fixture on this man's bike was that there were no brakes equipped to the bike. This proved to be unnecessary for him, however, as he zipped through every red light that he passed, dodging the traffic coming from the sides.
As he rode through the crowded streets, he heard a ringing in his left ear, recognizing it as his phone that he kept in a pouch on his backpack's strap. He pressed a button onto the cord for his earpiece, allowing him to talk to whoever was calling him.
“Who's this?” asked the young man.
“Wilee,” spoke the voice of the Indian man. “It's me, Raj. You finished with that last delivery yet.”
“Just finished.”
“Good, because I need you to–”
The call was cut short, followed by the familiar sound of his phone powering off.
“God dammit,” shouted Wilee, “you piece of shit!”
With his phone disabled, Wilee took his earpiece out and tucked it in between his chest and strap. He quickened up his pace, hoping to explain to Raj about his phone dying yet again.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Upon making it to his destination: the intersection of 28th St. and 11th Ave., Wilee parked his bike at the rack placed in front of Security Courier, not even bothering to lock it up. He also hung his helmet on the handlebars, revealing his short, fuzzy, brown hair. Upon walking in, he made a beeline towards Raj. Upon seeing his trusted courier, Raj addressed him.
“There you are,” he called. “Why'd you hang up on me, man?”
“My phone's dying on me,” defended Wilee. “I can't really do my job if I don't have a working phone.”
“Well, good,” said Raj, tossing a phone to Wilee. “Merry Christmas.”
Upon seeing the new phone in his hands, Wilee was visibly very happy.
“Aww, Raj, you shouldn't have,” he responded with canned sweetness as he replaced his SIM card inside it.
“But I needed to. Anyways, here's the job. It's a bit tricky, but I think you can handle it.”
“Really? Even trickier than that one Nima job?”
“Here's what you need to do. First, I need to you to go the Barnes and Noble on 555 5th Avenue. This person wants these books picked up.”
Raj handed Wilee a list, which the latter read. On it were the books:
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The Hounds of Baskerville by Arthur Conan Doyle
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
“Must like the classics,” said Wilee.
“Yeah,” responded Raj, half-hearing him. “Also, very important, she specifically requested hardcovers. Then you just need to take them to the address on that phone I gave you.”
“That's it?” asked Wilee, looking up the address.
Wilee, having ridden through most of Manhattan during his years as a courier, could recognize the address. It was just north of Central Park. Easy.
“That's it,” finished Raj, handing Wilee a stack of cash. “Here's some money for the books. Keep the change. Now go! You're getting sixty if you can pull this off.”
“Sixty?” asked Wilee in shock.
Most jobs he did paid only twenty to thirty dollars. To be offered sixty for his services was not only unusual, but borderline insane.
“You got it,” said Wilee, as he walked back out for the door.
Without a second's hesitation, Wilee grabbed his bike from the rack and headed off to his first destination.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Having taken five minutes to reach the bookstore, and another ten to find and purchase the books and a muffin and water from the café, Wilee was back on track towards his final destination. With the prospect of a sixty dollar job, Wilee was in high spirits, making him alert on the road as he dodged traffic and blew every red light he came across. With the wind flowing onto his body and the adrenaline rush it gave him, he had no reason to stop either.
Making good time, he made it to Central Park, where his directions told him to continue. The park, just like any other day, was filled with people either lounging or playing in the grass, strolling along the paths, or just admiring the lush, green scenery. Wilee had no time to stop for such things; he had a delivery to accomplish with sixty dollars on the line.
Knowing the street that ran through the Park would take more time, Wilee decided to take a shortcut through the walking paths. While illegal, he didn't hesitate to continue going. As Wilee was about to pass under a particular bridge, he pulled his phone out of his backpack's strap to check on the directions again, knowing he was getting closer. However, as he was under the overpass, what he saw caused him to stop his bike with a drifting halt.
The arrow on Wilees's GPS told him to turn left into the wall of the bridge. Upon looking left at the wall of the bridge, he saw a tunnel inside the wall that was never there before. Wilee's face became contorted with confusion. In all of his life of living in the city, he'd never seen a tunnel like this under any bridge in Central Park. Checking his phone one more time, he noticed that the address changed again. His confusion was starting to transform into hilarity as he looked at the new destination: 234 Canter St., Ponyville, EQ. 73523-21
Wilee couldn't help but laugh at the childishness of this prank he was now apart of. Leaving the map function of his phone, he went to his phonebook and found Raj's number.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Back inside Security Courier, Raj continued to take calls, orders, and assign them to his legion of messengers on his desk. Another call came in, and he answered it all the same.
“Dispatch,” he answered.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
“What the hell is this, man?” replied Wilee with a giggle.
“Wilee? Did you make it already? Tell me, how does it look?”
“How does what look? If you're referring to my face right now, I'd say that the look on it is priceless. So come on, Raj, prank's over. What's going on with this phone you gave me?”
“So you're not there yet?”
“This phone is telling me to go to this place called...” Wilee then cupped his hands over the receiver and whispered his next word in the sentence, trying to avoid sounding like an idiot to any passing ears, “Ponyville?”
“Yeah? And?”
“Yeah, and? You're seriously going to go on with this–”
“Listen man,” interrupted Raj. “Whatever's on that phone is exactly where you need to go. If you want, I can have Manny pick up the order for you.”
As insane as Raj was sounding to Wilee, he was heavily considering taking him up on this offer. To Wilee, Manny was his biggest rival and pain in the ass. To give Manny this job just for him to find out that he was going to a fictional place called Ponyville, he would gladly give up sixty dollars to see the look on Manny's face over that.
However, there was one thing holding Wilee back from confirming Manny's participation as he looked at the tunnel in the bridge, and once again, it was about their rivalry. If Manny was going to take a job that he knew Wilee “pussied out” on, as he would taunt, he would gladly go under that bridge and complete the job if it meant that Manny would be able to one-up Wilee. His decision was clear.
“No,” said Wilee. “I'll do it. But seriously, if I find that some drugged-up junkie is going to attack me in this tunnel, I'll have your head on a platter.”
“Then I've got nothing to worry about. Next time, call me when you actually get there. Later.”
*click*
Now Wilee was in it no matter what; his reluctance was at an all time high.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
Looking both ways to make sure that no one would see him if this tunnel turned out to be a well crafted illusion and he ended up just bumping into a wall, he walked his bike towards the tunnel. Upon being just inches from the entrance, he stopped, assessing the craziness of what he was doing for a mere sixty dollars.
“Raj, I swear to Christ...” he whispered.
Wilee pushed the bike forward, only to see that it entered the now very real tunnel. Wilee, seeing that this was no longer an illusion, continued forward into the tunnel, slowly and carefully. Just to make sure that a junkie wouldn't jump him, he held the screen of his cell phone out towards the darkness, giving him just enough illumination to see out in front of him.
As he continued to walk, he noticed that the brick-lined walls and ceiling of the tunnels were becoming more rugged, like the inside of a cavern.
“What the hell have you gotten me into, Raj?” he whispered again, the echo of the cave bouncing his words around.
As he slowly continued down the path, he saw a light at the end. Trying to cling to his last bit of sanity, he assumed that he would walk out of the cave just to be inside Central Park again, only for Manny to be there to confirm that it was all a prank and he was stupid for thinking it was real.
Wilee sped into a power walk, wanting to get this possible scenario out of the way. What he found at the cave's exit shocked him even more than anything else did that day.
He was back outside, but not back in Central Park as predicted, but he found a small, medieval-esque town about half a mile from where he was. Most of the buildings were white with straw-thatched roofs and wooden frames, almost like an old German house.
“What the fuck?” he half-spoke, half wheezed. “Where am I?”
Upon stepping out of the cave, he turned around and looked up, seeing that his cave was at the bottom of a grassy hill.
“Hey,” called a treble female voice. “You're that guy on the poster.”
Turning back around, hardly anything could have prepared Wilee for what he saw next. Flying in front of him, was a small grey horse, roughly four feet in height, five and a half if it were to stand on both hind legs. It had a lightly brushed, sandy-blonde mane that was extended onto its head like it had hair.
While it had a strange marking on both sides of its rump that resembled bubbles, it wasn't the mane focus for Wilee's freakout. The pony was sporting a pair of wings that it was flapping, keeping itself about eight feet off the ground. Another odd feature about it was that it had wall eyes, both yellow irises aiming in opposite directions.
Overcome with fright and confusion, Wilee fell limp to the ground, causing his bike to fall as well. As Wilee tried to pick himself up and run back into the cave, his muscles only allowed him to crawl. The pegasus, seeing the fear in Wilee, grounded herself and walked back up to him.
“Listen, mister,” she assured him. “I'm sorry if I scared you.”
“Holy shit,” Wilee gasped. “And it talks too!”
“Well, of course I can talk,” she responded matter of factly. “What do I look like, an idiot?”
Wilee at first didn't know how to respond, but using his willpower, he mustered the best answer that he could.
“Horses can't talk!” he spoke. Upon remembering where he was and where he came from, he wasn't too sure about what laws of reality could be applied anymore. “At least, they can't where I'm from.”
“Horse?” responded the pegasus, now sporting a smile. “You silly person, I'm not a horse. I'm a pony. Speaking of, where are you from, mister? You act like you've never seen a pony before.”
“Not one that could talk... or fly for that matter.”
“Ponies can't talk or fly where you're from? How about magic?”
Wilee, while still trying to recover from his shock, was again at a loss for words. How did this pony, this talking, flying pony, go from ponies who talk and fly to those who can use magic?
“Well, they certainly can't do that,” was all Wilee could respond with.
“Wow.... Where did you say you were from again?”
“I'm from New York.”
No answer from the pegasus.
“United States of America?”
Nothing
“Planet Earth?”
The pegasus cocked her head to the side, still confused.
“I'm sorry,” she spoke sympathetically. “I don't know where that is. You're in Equestria, mister.”
“Alright then,” exclaimed Wilee, throwing his hand up only for gravity to drop it back to the ground, “Raj sent me to a world with talking, flying ponies who can use magic. Of course, magic. How else would I get here?”
“Raj?”
“He's my soon to be murdered boss.”
With a gasp, the pony responded, “What? You can't kill him! That's so wrong!”
“Listen, it's just an expression,” sighed Wilee. “All I know his is that once I get back to New York, I'm going to give that asshole an earful.”
“Oh,” exclaimed the pegasus, trotting up to Wilee and wrapping her arms around his torso.
“What the hell are you...” began Wilee as he was lifted up to his feet by the flying pony, being set back down. “Oh... Thanks.”
“No problem,” she responded, going towards his bicycle.
“Wait, wait, wait!” he shouted, sidestepping to his bike and picking it up. “I got it.”
“Oh, okay then!” she happily responded. “Anyways, I completely forgot to introduce myself.” She stuck her right hoof into the air up towards Wilee. “I'm Derpy Hooves. But you can call me Derpy.”
Her eyes are fucked up and her name is Derpy? thought Wilee. I shouldn't bring that up. Plus, I guess she seems nice enough...
“Wilee,” he answered, grasping her hoof and giving it a firm shake. “You wouldn't happen to know where this Ponyville is, do you?”
“Silly, Wilee!” Derpy exclaimed. “It's right over there!” She pointed to the town that he first saw upon exiting the cavern. “I bet you can't guess why it's called Ponyville.”
“Because a lot of cows live there,” said Wilee, his answer sarcastic, but his delivery straight.
“Heeheehee,” giggled Derpy, catching up on Wilee's purposfully wrong answer to her purposefully obvious question. “You're funny, Wilee. I like you. Well, I'll see you later.”
With a final wave, she flew off back towards the town.
“Great,” he responded, pulling out his phone from his shorts pocket.
Knowing that this supposed Ponyville existed, he decided to finish his oblong job and collect his earnings. Upon checking the address once again, he was surprised to see that despite being in a different world, his phone had just as serviceable GPS as it did in his home world, complete with a “street view” function that allowed him to see the building he needed to get too.
Upon using it for his intended address, his amount of surprises today continued to pester him, as he was greeted with an image of a large tree that was seemingly made into a building.
“Man,” said Wilee, mounting his bike again, “if I wasn't going to sound crazy, this would make one hell of a story to talk to Vanessa about.”
With a push off the ground, Wilee placed his feet onto his pedals and traveled towards the town of Ponyville, determined to complete his delivery.