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// Chapter 1: Take A Look Around 
// Story: Don't Forget The Music 
// by Les Pony 
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Take A Look Around
        
This morning was no different from any other. I started coughing until I felt like I needed to throw up. With the huge amount of pollution in the atmosphere, it wasn’t a great day and age for being asthmatic. Even healthy people had trouble with the smog. I was lucky, I never needed serious treatment. My dad always said I inherited it from him. He claimed it never bothered him, since there wasn’t as much pollution when he was young. He told me how the environment started to go to waste after a big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The people in the green movement were the only ones who thought anything worse would come of it.  That “movement” didn’t last long. During the panic of the 2012 doomsday such groups weakened, which allowed large corporations to overpower and crush them. With no environmental activists in the way, countries all over the world just kept on polluting. By the time my dad was in his late twenties, the sheer volume of chemicals polluting the water had made many beaches unstable. 

I was born on May 5, 2035 into a world straight out of one of my dad’s old post-apocalyptic thrillers. The growing pollution and scarcity of natural resources had scientists convinced that the Earth was dying, and that our population of 15 billion was just more than the planet could handle. 

I turned on the news while I ate my government-issued breakfast: cold cereal and freeze dried fruit. The stuff was utterly terrible. Ever since businesses realized they could make synthetic foods cheaper than real food, they’d been pumping out as much of it into the market as they could. On top of that, the soil and water became to toxic to grow food. The organic food’s industry tanked, and before the world knew it, synthetic crap was all there was to eat. I remember my mom had a garden when I was just a little kid. She grew the most delicious food I had ever tasted.

The news was the same every morning: another disease turned pandemic, another animal extinction, another Conversion Bureau attacked by the Human Liberation Front (HLF).  Death was everywhere. Smeared across every tenement wall. Crammed into every package of disgusting, government-issued food. It covered that damned city. I could hear it laughing in the streets and smell it on every square in of my apartment. No matter where I went, no matter what I did, I couldn’t escape it, couldn’t pry it’s cold, hard grip off my neck. I hated it. And so, like every other morning I sat around asking the same question to nobody in particular. 

“Should I get converted today?”

Around five years ago a ‘bubble’ was discovered in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. When a government team was sent to investigate, they vanished without a trace. No scientist understood what it was, where it came from, or what was in it. Those questions were left unanswered until one fateful, world shaking event. On a quiet gloomy day, a creature emerged from it. It was an animal of unmatched majesty, unlike anything on Earth. She resembled a horse to some degree, but she had an almost heavenly glow to her coat. Her mane was impossibly vibrant; it was as though all the colors of a coral reef had come together into one swaying wave. She had a horn, as well as a pair of wings. A horn and wings!  It was like some sort of mystical fairytale creature. But what surprised everyone the most – when she was confronted by humans, she spoke.

She called herself Celestia, the ruler of Equestria. The press went to her faster than a heartbeat. Every news station made her their top story. Even in the face of the media, she gave off an god-like aura of confidence. She went straight to the world leaders and gave them a message. The result sent our already unstable world off into a spiral of absolute chaos.  On a live worldwide broadcast she told humans about her land, Equestria. She told how the bubble was a link between our worlds. She knew our world was in dire trouble. For reasons even she didn’t know, the bubble was expanding at a rapid and steady rate. The more the bubble grew, the more of Earth was sucked into it, and the larger Equestria became. She understood that Earth would eventually be consumed by the ever expanding bubble, so she offered a solution. Since she had already known of Earth’s problems, she had her scientists working on a way to convert humans into ponies. They came up with something they thought would work, but they didn’t have any people to test it on.
        
Needless to say, the idea that the Equestrians wanted to turn people into ponies horrified many people. Their anger was only fueled by those who willingly gave up their humanity to join the Equestrian race.  And then came the HLF. It was an organization dedicated to taking a stand against the ponies, the “threats” as they called them. They believed that they could fight their way out of Earth’s problems. They were new age terrorists who thought they could fight their way out of Earth’s problems, and pushed back against the ponies’ attempts to convert humans throught any means necessary. Then again, some of their righteous acts of combat against the pony threat may have been exaggerated, considering that their endeavors weren’t what you would call successful. Try as they might, their bombing of conversion bureaus and of killing ponies never swayed the minds of the general public into thinking that the ponies were evil.
        
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that I was not a fan of the HLF. That’s one of the many things I hated about humanity; they thought every problem could be solved through war. It’s like if you’re playing poker, and when you find out you don’t have a good hand, you stab the opponent. I could have spent all day rattling off things I hated about the human race. But out of everything, I despised greed. It killed families, destroyed friendships, and corrupted minds. 

That’s one of the problems my mom said I had. I was too trusting. I always felt that there was some innate good in people. After what happened when Celestia first came through the bubble, it’s safe to say that being overly trusting isn’t a problem of mine anymore.
        
When the bureaus finally opened up, there were floods of humans rushing into them to join Equestrian society. In the other visits Celestia made to Earth, she essentially made sales pitches about Equestria aimed at the millions of unsure people. I never paid much attention. I wasn’t one of the people against the ponies. I had friends who rushed off to be converted. They all knew how much I hated this world.  They kept bugging me to get converted, saying that Equestria would be a perfect fit for me. Every time they tried to convince me, I would just brush them off. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll do it eventually.” Eventually took too long for them.  My last friend, Ian, left about a month ago. I was alone for that long month. Leaving me to my thoughts has always been a bad thing. It’s not that I would do stupid stuff. I tended to get a bit obsessive and wild when I’m left to my own devices. Going over the same old ground. Philosophy, metaphysics, memories, and more.  Everything I would think about was only to answer one simple question. The very same question I had asked myself every morning for a year.
        
This particular morning I was in a rather melancholy mood. I had a terrible night of sleep. I couldn’t stop the battle in my head of good versus evil. There was a whole list of things I abhorred about humanity, yet at the same time, there were some things I just couldn’t give up. I was in love with Rock music, just like my dad had been. And not just any rock music, the music that inspired my dad. Rock from the sixties and seventies. There was just something so special that we could both see in it. Whether it be the way the lyrics could float on by, or if you just wanted to listen to something that kicked ass, there was something for you. Sure, there’s been music like that forever. What made rock so special is how it broke all the rules, how it came in a wide variety. Barely anything was bland or copied. You could hear the heart and soul put into the music, unlike the crap me and my dad both grew up to.
        
If someone wanted to convert, they were told they could not bring any possessions with them. That was the problem area for me. If there was one thing I wanted to remember about my humanity, it was the music I cherished. I could never bring myself to do it. 
        
My twelve story apartment building was on the North Side of Chicago, on Belmont and Lincoln avenue. It also happened to be where they constructed one of the more recent bureaus. This bureau in particular was securely guarded and supposedly impenetrable. However, I still saw my fair share of violence and the likes done to the building. It’s was wonder it had not been razed to the ground.  I guess that’s why the HLF called it the fortress. Or at least, that’s what I heard.
        
Finishing my breakfast I stroll over to the dusty curtains and pull them open. A smoggy, thick sunlight hit my eyes, and I couldn’t help but recoil slightly. I looked down at the bureau, sighing, still not knowing what to do. My eyes studied the slate grey exterior. What went on behind those walls? When would I be inside that building? Would I ever decided to convert? Suddenly, my daydreaming was interrupted, as a loud bang sounded outside my door...