"All right son, now take it easy," the unicorn doctor instructed the human. "This is for your own good. Just relax."
Seventeen-year old Nathan Sheffield wasn't relaxing; he was panicking. Strapped to a hospital bed in a small room of a conversion center, he struggled against the restraints that bound his hands and legs. He pulled at the wrappings that held him down to no avail.
"It's no use, you might as well calm down." The white unicorn in a lab coat turned to him. Glowing yellow and levitating near his head was a silver spoon filled to the brim with some purple liquid. Nathan eyed the spoon as he felt his heart race. He buttoned his lip as tight as he could.
"Open wide. It tastes like cotton candy... I'm told," the doctor encouraged him, advancing slowly. Nathan didn't stop struggling; he rotated his wrist to try to loosen the wrappings holding him down. Still, no success. He breathed heavily through his nose as the unicorn hovered over him with a friendly smile.
Suddenly, Nathan felt his lips tingling. His entire mouth glowed yellow and opened as if being pried apart by some sort of invisible fingers. The spoon quickly floated over to him entered his mouth; the purple concoction bathed his tongue and went down his throat. The doctor was right: it tasted like cotton candy. Nathan ended his struggling abruptly and lay in the bed, waiting for the inevitable. The fight for his humanity was over and he had lost.
"There we go! Now, once the process has taken full effect, we can get you out of those clothes and get you down to orientation. Believe me, you'll love being a pony," the unicorn doctor told him.
"You son of a bitch," he cursed the doctor. If he could spit, he would've spit in the unicorn's face.
"Language!" the doctor said, slightly appalled. "This is good for you, good for all humans. You'll thank me one day."
"Go to hell!" Nathan yelled. He started crying a little but lacked the energy to bawl. He didn't want to be a pony, he just wanted to go home and see his mother and father. Would he ever see them again? What would they say when they saw him as a pony? What would they think? They probably wouldn't even recognize him.
"Now, we'll just wait for the potion to take effect and then the transformation process will begin. Shouldn't be more than a few minutes," the doctor said, turning his back to him. Nathan didn't respond, what was the use? In a matter of minutes, he was going to be walking on four legs. What kind of pony would he be? How many types were there? He pushed these uncomfortable thoughts out of his mind and focused on his family. He pictured his home clearly in his mind and tried to think back to a time when he was truly happy.
Ten minutes passed. Nathan lay there and breathed as he was strapped to the bed. Nothing was happening. What was wrong? The doctor watched him. More than once, he caught him looking at the clock that hung above the door. Ten more minutes passed and still nothing. The unicorn doctor walked over to his side and put a hoof to his chin.
Nathan's mouth glowed and popped open quickly. "You took it all, right? You swallowed every drop?" How did he expect the teenager to answer with his mouth stuck open? The doctor didn't wait for an answer, he turned back to the counter behind him and retrieved the spoon. Carefully, he poured more of the purple substance into it from a vial and turned back to Nathan.
"I'm pretty sure I got the dosage right. It's not like it takes that much of this stuff anyway." Nathan's jaw was forced open for a third time and the spoon was shoved in again, this time with a little more force. Again, Nathan swallowed every drop of the liquid, he had no choice.
"You didn't spit the last dose out when I wasn't looking, did you?" the doctor asked. Nathan didn't answer, didn't say anything this time. His chest felt heavy and his limbs ached. Sweat trickled down his face and once again, the two very different creatures in the small room waited for something to happen. Nothing did.
Nathan's eyes were glued to the clock above the doorway. The doctor himself glanced over a couple times, an ever-growing look of concern on his face each time he turned back. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Twenty-five minutes after Nathan had ingested the strange ponifying potion, the doctor finally turned away from him again.
"This is peculiar. It's... definitely not supposed to take this long. I'll be back in a few minutes," the unicorn said. Why was he telling Nathan this? They were turning him into a pony by force, why be nice? The door opened, the doctor stepped through and it closed behind him. Nathan was alone. His heart racing, he returned his attention to the straps holding him down. He didn't know what was going on and he didn't care. There was a chance he could walk out of here on two legs and he was taking it.
Doctor White Veil was a unicorn of science. Since getting employed by PER, or Ponification for Earth's Rebirth, White Veil had enjoyed ponifying dozens of humans. While each case had been entirely different, they had all ended with the good doctor making a new friend. Some had even been chosen to work with him at here at the conversion center with him.
He went to see one of them now, Nurse Sliver Lining. He down the hallway to her station, only a few doors down from the room he left the current subject in.
"Silver, you have the results on number twenty-two's blood work?"
The silver Pegasus colt turned to him. "Sure, we ready for the orientation?" The nurse was assuming that the transformation process was completed and that they were ready for the next phase.
White Veil put a hoof behind his neck. "Not exactly," he admitted.
Silver Lining raised an eyebrow. "We having difficulties? You want me to call security?"
"Not that kind of difficulty, Silver. I just need to see his blood work and records."
"Okay..." the nurse said skeptically. He hooved him manila folder containing the patient's data. For some reason, White Veil thought back to Silver Lining, formerly Sylvester Linus's own transformation. The human known as Sylvester had worked in the same hospital the conversion center had been made out of. His memory of the hospital's layout had chosen to be preserved but the other parts of his identity had been suppressed along with various other random human behavioral traits.
White Veil had seen many bipeds transformed into efficient, hard-working ponies. He enjoyed his job. It was a simple process: catalogue the information on each subject, administer the potion, make sure they take it and then get them started on their new lives. But what happened when the subject didn't transform? He had a feeling nopony knew the answer. This was the first time it had ever happened.
Ponification was necessary to save humanity. While it had to be done in secret and at times against the will of the subject, it was nevertheless a necessity. It was either that or see humanity wiped off the face of the Earth. Surely ponification was a saving grace?
"What's going on in there, exactly?" Silver asked, worried.
"I'd tell you if I knew, Silver. The potion isn't working." The doctor flipped through the folder.
Silver flew a pace backwards at the statement. "Not working? What do you mean?"
"I really wish I knew. Maybe there's something different about his records, something we missed."
"That... that shouldn't make a difference, should it? I mean, it's worked on every other primate so far. We only gather data for research purposes." Silver flew back over and looked over the doctor's shoulder.
"I don't know, Silver, I just don't know. There just might be something in his medical history, resistance to conversion or something." But there wasn't. Nathan Sheffield, age seventeen. Race, Caucasian. Born right here in the city. Nothing exceptional popped up in his vitals.
"What about his known allergies?" White Veil asked.
"There on the back," Silver said. The doctor flipped the folder over to examine secondary information. Wasn't much there anyway but a side note had been written in: difficulty taking medicine. According to this additional information, he had a history of trouble digesting various forms of prescribed liquid forms of medication. A possible link?
"Has the potion always been administered as a liquid?" White Veil put a hoof to his chin, thinking.
Silver nodded. "We don't have the equipment to process it any other way. If you want, I can put in a request for-"
"No, that's not necessary," the doctor shot down the idea. Alerting the higher-ups to this problem was the last thing they wanted to do given recent setbacks. Conversion had been made illegal recently following the halting of the magic barrier that separated both worlds. If humans caught them still doing it, it would only cause more violence.
"We don't have the capabilities to transfer the potion into a solid form. We need another way for it to be absorbed into his system..." the doctor thought.
"Will inhalation work?" Silver suggested.
"We might try that. All right, take some of the potion and see if we can transfer it to vapor form. I'm going to check on him now, get a few gas doses and we'll see if that doesn't work."
"Right away, doctor." The Pegasus turned back to his station and began working as White Veil walked back to the room. Sylvester had been one of the few who willingly had been ponified back when it was still considered something of a voluntary saving grace rather than a curse. Things had changed since then; the barrier had stopped. All the fear of Earth being transformed had disappeared, the need for conversion centers was gone overnight.
Earth and Equestria had entered a stable state, half of the world was ponified and half was Earth. A portal to the first Equestria existed on the ponified side, a place that felt very far away to White Veil. Ponies had entered Earth society, even some of the ponified humans themselves but the conversion process was permanent. Ponified humans had very little memory of who they once were, Silver Lining included. White Veil knew he had a family though, one he would go home and see tonight. He was sworn to secrecy about what he did during the day though.
Despite the fact that it looked like Earth wasn't going to be subsumed by Equestria, conversion still went on, though in secret now. Princess Celestia secretly decreed that conversion was to take place in specialized centers, that "Earth's Rebirth" would still happen. Until then, ponies and humans had to live together in the few cities that were left untouched by the magic of Equestria. But every day, there were fewer and fewer humans thanks to ponies like White Veil.
Dr. White Veil held the folder with his magic as he reentered the office.
"All right," he said, eyes focused on the medical chart. "we're going to try something a little different seeing as you..." he trailed off. The white unicorn looked to the hospital bed and just noticed that he was alone in the room. The bindings on the table had been ripped loose, cut in a crud fashion. A silver spoon lay on the bed, bent at an odd angle to the side.
The doctor levitated it up to examine it. "Son of a bitch," he muttered.