//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: The Boy in the Bubble // Story: Breakdown // by McPoodle //------------------------------// PonyEarthverse: Breakdown Chapter 1: The Boy in the Bubble Day 10 (Thorsday), 9:38 am PDT I was awakened from a troubled dream by the bleating of a car horn. For a moment, I tried to recall...there was a sea wall getting uncomfortably close, and the sound of the foghorn had become my chauffeur’s insistent greeting as I had regained consciousness, so that would mean... Ah, yes. The “Wreck of the Hesperus” dream. The intended message being that my pride would inevitably lead to a precipitous fall from grace. My professional training has a bad habit of draining the magic out of dreams. I had been having this particular dream at odd intervals for five years now, and all the positive visualization in the world didn’t look like it was having any effect in dispelling it. The car horn ignored my musings. I tried to get up, but I found that I had strangely lost the ability to move freely. I struggled mightily, pulling and straining, before finally yanking the bed sheets free and tumbling to the ground between the bed and my mirror-mounted closet. I sat up, looked around me, and discovered something unprecedented and horrifying had happened: I wasn’t going to be able to make it to the golf game this morning. Well, what did you think had happened? (% % %) My name is Dr. Nathan K. Franklin. I am by trade a clinical psychologist, specializing in the treatment of the sons and daughters of the rich and famous; and it is a very lucrative position for me, thank you very much. I live in Malibu, California, and I possess both a lovely seaside chateau and a well-apportioned sailing vessel. Or in other words: “My name is Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht.” Yes, I imagine at least some of you ran that particular Bugs Bunny quote through your head after reading my self-description. If movie, TV show or book has a stereotypical psychologist in it, I am more than likely familiar with it—a side effect of working with teenagers that don’t fit in well with their peer group. Yes, I actually have a tax-deductible excuse for keeping up with the latest in geek culture. I was being driven into my office by my chauffeur. He had only been working for me for a month or so, so I hadn’t learned his name yet. Understand, I’m normally good with names. I simply need to prioritize, you know. He might quit on me like the last two did. Being driven really is the way to travel in Southern California. The traffic is simply unendurable otherwise. It is my firm belief that the city of Los Angeles represents the very summit of human civilization, but alas, such perfection of culture and vibrancy of capitalistic success must have a few costs. The only significant ones in my opinion are the aforementioned traffic and the smog, but I’ve learned to deal with both of them. Just get yourself a driver, and never spend any significant span of time outside of air conditioned buildings and vehicles. The outdoors are overrated, in my humble opinion. I spent my time on my iPad, scanning the latest news. The presidential election was turning into a battle of the polls, with each new one claiming to prove that all of the previous ones were completely worthless. Whoever won, there was some debate as to how the eventual winner’s term would be measured. If the inauguration waited until January, for instance, that would mean that the equivalent of several years by the old calendar would have passed, and to allow his administration to last until 2016? Well assuming he didn’t die of old age, it would surely make the incumbent the longest governing president in American history. That’s what having days like Marsday and Thorsday leads to. And so it came back to ponies. Everything came back to ponies sooner or later nowadays; “these are the days of miracle and wonder”, as Paul Simon told us in one of his more enigmatic songs, and tiny Technicolor equines are at the heart of it all. Unicorns are real, godlike beings walk the earth on delicate little hooves, and this week and the next have miraculously recomposed themselves to each consist of 365 days, and each one has a sillier name than the last. Nobody’s taken credit for that last absurdity, but the timing suggests ponies. The number of these beings on this world increase day by day as one human after another awakes to find themselves in a new body, but to what end? Take the number two story on the Los Angeles Times website for example, all about a pony not being shot in one of the flyover states. This on a website that probably documented dozens if not hundreds of individual deaths of humans within a hundred mile radius of my current position and the past twenty-four hours before the present moment. And the Times is one of the worse-run news organizations in the country. This is of course terribly unfair to this individual, who by a quick scan of the contents of the article went through absolute hell. It’s always good to be reminded that the little things in life still matter. Now I don’t mean to brag, but because of that “pop culture excuse” I mentioned before, I’m probably one of the few members of my age group to actually know what My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic was before this whole mess began. There’s a small chance I might even recognize the name of the pony in question... Fluttershy. The name of an Element of Harmony is only mentioned in the last paragraph and is nowhere near the headline. Did I mention that the Times is run by morons? You would think they would have hired at least one brony by now. (% % %) I reached the gleaming glass and steel tower where my office resides after an hour and a half of driving by my chauffeur. That works out to an average of 25 miles an hour on the highways—not bad for a weekday. I had spent the time after finishing my perusal of the news lecturing my driver on the way he should have woken me this morning. I didn’t catch him talking back once. He may last long enough for me to need to know his name after all. Since I had slept through half of a golf game, that meant that I had arrived for work a half hour before I had scheduled my first appointment of the day. I used the time organizing paperwork, of which there was very little. My secretary, Sally, possesses the exemplary qualities of studiousness and obsequiousness—my very own Twilight Sparkle, if we are to keep with the pony theme from earlier. Eventually, however, my initial client arrived (we call them “clients” nowadays, not “patients”), and she was shown into my office. Her name was...well, I should show some discretion, I suppose. I shall call her “Lillian Disney”, because she was nothing like Lillian Disney whatsoever. She was the youngest of three daughters of a good old-fashioned studio mogul, and she had nothing mentally wrong with her whatsoever. Well, I suppose I could say that she suffered from the terrible, terrible condition of not getting as much attention as she thought she deserved. She was accompanied by a sizeable deposit into my bank account. I liked to schedule Lillian first on Tuesdays (or Thorsdays...) because it was an excellent chance to zone out after a rousing game of...yes, well I think I have run that golf game subject completely off the table by now. I shall not speak of it again. What I mean to say is that, having nothing truly wrong with her, and knowing full well that she cared nothing for my opinion of her, the only real reason for her visits was to get her out of a couple of her more-boring classes and a chance for her to vent at someone guaranteed not to vent back. “So I did my exercise of trying to see things from somebody else’s point of view,” she began, “when I swear, why did Cathy of all girls turn into a pony?” She didn’t even seem to notice the attempt at empathy being cancelled out by her usual narcissism. “Well, who can say what—” I began, when I was interrupted, as I always am interrupted when I try to do my job around Miss Disney. “She was already, like the most-popular girl in school,” Lillian continued, not even bothering to look at me, “so it wasn’t like she needed the extra attention! And that pegasus she turned into...Cloudy Skies? She so totally made her up!” I’ve heard some of the names the more desperate bronies named their OC’s. This name sounded like the real thing. But of course I wasn’t being paid to prove my clients wrong, so I decided to say nothing. Oh wait, there was a pause in her monologue, so that meant she actually wanted to hear what I had to say. “And what sort of pony would you become, if you had the chance?” I asked her. I won’t inflict upon you the voluminous description she provided, other than to say that of course it was an alicorn of a type never before seen by pony eyes. I tuned her out once she mentioned dragon’s blood. (% % %) I arranged to meet with a couple of friends at 11:30 that morning at a nice little Italian cafe located on the campus of the neighboring University of California, Los Angeles. These were the two individuals I stood up by oversleeping this morning. I like the university because it is within walking distance, because it was my undergraduate alma mater, and because some of my best friends from those years still work there. I dislike it because I have to walk past the corner of Westwood and Le Conte to get there. Westwood and Le Conte is the preferred confrontation spot for every conceivable cause, all neatly grouped in pairs to glare at each other, because heaven forbid that there ever be more than two sides to an issue. The subject de jure was, you guessed it, ponies. On one side you had the Day Guard, emulating Princess Celestia’s protectors in their defense of the basic human rights of ponies. And on the other side you had the People Against Ponies Association (PAPA), which would much prefer if ponies went away, and took their troublesome rights with them. Shouting both from left and right, and all I had to do was walk right though without becoming a target of either of them. You might think this aggravation isn’t worth the bother, but I assure you, Cafe 1919 is definitely worthy. My lunch companions when I finally arrived that morning were Dr. Norton Nimnul, a biochemist researching for the university, and Dr. Nyssa of Traken, a computer language theorist also with the university. I hope you’ve realized by now that I will be providing unusual aliases for all of the characters in this story who have any hope of retaining their privacy. It’s what passes for humor among us psychologists. “Well in my opinion,” said Norton over a meatball sandwich, “if the so-called junk DNA of the human genome were repurposed, you ought to be able to fit not only an entire equine dataset, but also the means for an overnight transformation between forms with room to spare!” “Wait,” said Nyssa, putting a spoon back down into her bowl of Italian wedding soup. “Isn’t this the same theory you used to explain werewolves?” “Well,” Norton said with a dismissive wave of one hand, “the crucial difference there is that werewolves do not actually exist, while ponies...do.” “Yes, and it only took you a week to admit it,” I said smugly. I was eating the Florentino panini, if you must know. “Where did the prodigious amount of energy for such a transformation come from?” Nyssa added, certain that she had caught Norton out. “Oh, from an extremely high-efficiency metabolism,” Norton answered with pride. “I figure your average brony went into the process weighing 250 pounds, and came out as a 40 pound pony. Don’t quote me on the latter figure.” Nyssa and I gave that idea the scornful look it fully deserved. Finally, I broke my scowl with a laugh. “Face it,” I told Norton, “your way of looking at the world is now dead, and mine—” “‘Reigns supreme’?” suggested Nyssa archly. “Well, I wouldn’t have used precisely those words,” I said. “And what would that paradigm of yours be?” the programmer asked. “Norton here sees the world through the prism of exact rules, of proportions to mix chemicals that give rise to predetermined results, while I see the world through a web of shifting symbols representing intelligible concepts. What do you see?” “I see a world as shaped by consensus,” I told them, leaning forward with eagerness. “Reality by majority rule. The idea that there was ever an objective reality separate from our perceptions was always but a weakly supported belief, enforced by Western societies for a few brief centuries, and now with ponies walking amongst us, it is fully overthrown. People always say that history is written by the winners, when in fact the history that is recorded is the most-entertaining tale of what happened, whether that tale makes you look good or bad. Consider the fondness of the English towards the story of Joan of Arc for example, a story in which they are the villains. What we have playing out before our eyes in real time is a tale on the level of an ancient epic, complete with a noble quest and an almost-certain confrontation with one of a number of absolute evils. Oh, and magic, heaping gobs of magic.” “Uh huh,” Norton said skeptically. “Well I don’t know about so-called magic, except the kind you wield when you try to use those persuasion powers of yours.” “I never talked you into doing anything you later regretted,” I said with care. Well, there was that one blackjack table back in ’09, but I made sure that he doesn’t remember that anymore, so it doesn’t count. What? Don’t look at me like that. (% % %) You may be sensing a theme of “ponies” in my story thus far. You would be correct, and you’ll be interested to know that it has no chance of abating any time soon. I returned from the cafe to see that the protest and counter-protest had disbursed, almost certainly with the help of the local constabulary. After returning to the serenity of my office, I saw Willy McCoy, age 14, who had been bussed over from Olympic Boulevard. Willy’s one of the cases I take without remuneration, much like a rich lawyer will agree to defend the occasional poor soul caught up in the justice system. He comes from the area of Los Angeles I used to work at, before a rather-unexpected turn six years ago put me on my current upward trajectory. Unlike Lillian, Willy came by his bronydom honestly, and he paid the price you’d expect from a sensitive male student at a tough public high school. My treatment for him worked in tandem with his martial arts instruction—I like to think that my contribution was more significant to the improvement of his self-esteem than that of his sensei, but I can’t really say for sure. It took a good half-hour of wading through rumors of the upcoming third season of Friendship Is Magic, discussions of the relative merits of a particular musician’s rap vs. orchestral pony music videos, and a reiteration—for the eighteenth time no less—of the artistic worthlessness of “Cupcakes”, before he was finally ready to discuss what was really bothering him. “It’s just that I don’t think it’s fair who’s being turned into a pony,” he told me. “I mean, yeah, the Bearers are alright. But what’s Stan Gable doing as Midnight Sentry? It didn’t make him any less of a jerk.” Stan Gable played offensive guard of the football team at the school Willy attended, and was also his chief tormentor. This change must have happened over the past week. As for the specific pony... “Is Midnight Sentry Twilight’s brother?” I asked. “No, that’s Shining Armor,” Willy corrected me. “Midnight Sentry is a thestral OC, one of Princess Luna’s royal guards.” The guard became a guard. “Ah, that would make a good match,” I said. “No, it doesn’t!” yelled Willy. I of course did as I have been trained and asked him to explain why I was wrong. Willy was perfectly alright at confronting me with my errors; it was just everybody else in the world that he needed a dose of self-confidence to deal with. “A royal guard’s duty is to protect the Princesses and, by extension, all of the ponies,” Willy told me. “All Stan’s doing is goofing off with his dumb friends and using his pony powers to pick on the rest of us. I don’t think he even listens to his pony.” This is another valuable trait of a trained psychologist, to never give away one’s true feelings by way of, say rolling one’s eyes and sighing dramatically. The bronies quite obviously transformed themselves into fictional characters using the magic that this world is now flooded with, just as somebody else used the same magic to wreak havoc on the calendar. This idea that the ponies harbor the spirits of their namesakes within them is just self-delusion. Of course, if I had an actual pony as a client, I would be able to prove this assertion, but so far I haven’t been lucky enough to have one of my brony clients turn on me, and, well, there are laws on the books to prevent me from doing the sorts of things that I’d like to do if I had no scruples whatsoever. What? I’m a scientist. We’re all like that. Don’t let any of us try to trick you into thinking otherwise. “I’ll show you, I’ll show you all!” is a sort of sweet tune piping at the back of our heads. The point is, of course, that we do have scruples, else we’d become Researcher Twilights. That’s two Twilight Sparkle references so far, in case you’re counting. Anyway, listening skills are vitally important for somebody in my line of business, so while I was quietly ranting to myself just now, I was also keeping track of my client’s words. After carefully backing away from the implication that the princesses actually needed anypony to protect them, he went on to state that the Bearers, and the ponies that accompanied them—in their travels across states and quite possibly continents in their epic quest—needed all the help they could get. In fact, if he was this Midnight Sentry character instead of Master Gable, he’d set right out and— And that’s when the police came barging in. No, Willy wasn’t in trouble, and I sent him on his way after deflecting his questions. The reason Officer Wiggum came for a visit was that he needed my help with a teenage robbery suspect who wouldn’t tell where she was hiding the goods. You see, the police and I have an informal (and not entirely legal) arrangement for cases when they have somebody they need to talk in a hurry. Per our arrangement, I had been given the complete police file, and enough time to get everything prepared for my deception. To give you the full effect, let me describe what was going through Little Lulu’s head as she was being herded towards my door: Today has been a bad day. In fact, to use her vernacular, it positively “sucks”. Her eighth consecutive attempt to steal computers from local elementary schools ended for once in failure instead of success when an off-duty mall cop caught her attempting to flee from an unexpectedly armed security system with a half-dozen hard drives stuffed in the pockets of her long jacket. Every moment after that had been a constant harassment. The few adults who don’t hate on her for breaking the law or who either use or threaten physical force to put her back in her place in the social hierarchy are all a bunch of fakers, pretending sympathy for her in order to earn a buck. And now, because she was too wise for the “good cop, bad cop” routine, she’s being handed off to some fancy shrink. Well, she’ll show him. The door is opened, she’s shoved inside, and it’s slammed shut behind her, with a strange sound like a quiet airlock being cycled. The first thing she notices is the heat—it’s got to be a hundred degrees in here. She tries to step forward, only to have her foot unexpectedly slowed down by the thick shag carpeting. The room is circular, mostly, except for the wall containing the door, and all of that circle is glass, revealing a jaw-dropping view of the City of Angels in mid-afternoon. It’s even tinted so you can look out at this time of day without getting a headache. She looks around. There’s an impressively large set of filing cabinets on one side, and an imposing desk with a swivel chair at the other. Behind the desk is a high-end sound system, playing something too faint to be clearly made out. It sounds Classical—strings and flutes, backed by a slow but insistent rhythm. Between the desk and the cabinets is the kind of couch she’d always imagined in a place like this, and lying face-down on that couch is the shrink, Dr. Franklin. He has himself propped up on one arm, and he’s using the other to fill out some paperwork with a pen. Her paperwork, Lulu is certain. The man’s shoes had been tossed haphazardly in a corner, while lying next to him are a navy blue blazer and a bright red necktie that looks like it had been loosened and pulled over his head to save him having to retie it the next time somebody forced him to wear it. Dr. Franklin is a tall man, and very fit—he was probably a hunk back in the 90’s, she thinks to herself. His hair is short, and also mussed—thereby proving the theory about the tie. He’s wearing tan slacks and a pale blue polo shirt, and has on a pair of large glasses with black square rims. Waiting for him on the corner of his desk is a scotch on the rocks. It’s not even on a coaster. “Hey,” Lulu says. “Hey,” Dr. Franklin replies in a bored tone. “I still have to fill this crap out, so make yourself comfortable. Oh, and sorry about the heat—the unit’s busted.” She looks behind her, and spots the open bar. “Can I pour myself a drink to cool off?” she asks sarcastically. He glances back at her for a second, and clearly sees that she’s underage. “Take whatever you want,” the man says, turning back to his work. His words are perfectly in time with the rhythm of the song on the stereo. Whoa, she thinks to herself. He could totally get arrested for that. Seeing what else the bar is stocked with, she decides to push even more buttons by lighting up a Virginia Slims. “Do you mind?” she asks, expertly blowing a smoke ring his way. He looks straight at her as the ring breaks around his rugged face, not even blinking at the moment it hits. He picks up the paperwork and points at it. “What do you want me to put down?” he asks, and then he stands up. He’s freakin’ tall! The question the shrink asks is so unexpected to Lulu that it takes several seconds for her to process it. That, and it’s getting real hot in here. “Uh, what’s the question?” she asks. “The cops want to know where you and your driver stashed the PC’s before you fenced them,” he says, perching himself on the edge of his desk and toying with the drink. “Which bullshit location would you like to send them to first?” His words are regular and even, spaced according to the beat of the song. Lulu grips the cigarette between her teeth like F.D.R. and laughs out loud. “What’s your angle?” she asks. “No angle,” he says, holding up both hands. He glances over at the one holding the scotch, and then takes a swig before hopping down. “They think I’m some kind of miracle worker who’ll do whatever I’m told,” he says, working himself up, “but I just like helping people in trouble, so screw ‘em! I mean, I’m sure you can convince those bastards that you’ve got a whole gang of followers that moved the loot out of the dump you’re going to tell me about the minute after you were picked up.” “Yeah,” she says with a nod. “Yeah, I like that plan!” Her words too are now matching the music’s tempo. She starts pacing back and forth—the air seems thick and sticky, like the smoke she exhaled earlier has congealed into cotton candy. “We could...we could send them to the dumps! The real garbage dumps!” “Yeah!” he exclaims, “I’d love to see the look on their faces after having to dig through this for a few hours.” As he says this, he fiddles with his iPad. Walking beside her, he shows her a Google Maps overhead view of a junk heap. “What do you think? This ring of cars?” “No, how about that pile over there,” she says, pointing. “It looks like it could fall right on top of those pigs!” He’s...he’s so close to her. She can almost make out his scent underneath the expensive cologne. “Alright,” he whispers in her ear. “Now with that taken care of, what else can I help you with?” Lulu thinks back to the look on her lover’s face as he took off in her car, leaving her to take the blame. “Do you think you can help me get back at Tubby?” she asks. The combination of the heat, the music, and the smoke is causing her to sway back and forth. “Yeah, I think I can do something,” he says, bringing his hands up to her temples. There is a slight press inwards...and the cigarette drops to the floor. Little Lulu was now hypnotized, and completely in my power. I finally let out the pent up coughing from that ghastly cigarette smoke, took another sip of the doctored apple juice that my client probably thought was scotch, and then got to work. After gently placing her on the couch, I sat down behind the desk and spent the next two hours learning the details of her life story that were not captured in her police file. I also found out exactly where she and “Tubby” had hid their stolen electronics, just so the police wouldn’t start to question what I actually do with their suspects. And then I begin to make my adjustments. “You think you’re better than all of the richer people you encounter on a daily basis,” I concluded. “You are probably right in your assumption, but you are wrong in thinking that your best revenge is by stealing from them. Your best revenge in fact is to become one of them by getting a job, manipulating your way up the social ladder, and then subverting the system from within. Since I know you will never follow this advice if you knew it came from an authority figure like myself, I want you to think the idea is yours.” I got up and walked over to the window, looking out at the broad expanse of buildings and streets to the northeast, in the direction of Beverly Hills. The mesmerized eyes of my client remained looking at my empty chair as I resumed speaking. “As soon as you can afford it, you need to move out your current home and into an apartment in a better neighborhood; that alone will solve a great deal of your current problems. “Next,” I told her as I returned to my seat, “you have a bad habit of falling in love with men who try to dominate you, despite them being totally unworthy of you. This is a negative way of thinking trained into you by the bad example of what happened between your parents. If you were one of my regular clients, I would gradually help you to realize that these thoughts are harmful, and how we can best retrain your brain to think more useful thoughts, but I only have the one afternoon, so I guess I’ll have to re-write your memories instead.” I thought for a bit on the best way to do this. “From now on, you will believe as you did when you were a child, that your father did not abandon you, that he was a secret agent roaming the country doing good deeds. You will remember the letters he wrote back in reply to your own, praising you for your accomplishments and inspiring you with tales of his own until he died saving thousands of lives. These letters were unfortunately destroyed in the fire that claimed your mother’s life, but you will never forget them.” I had her invent the contents of some of these letters that I had just planted in her mind, inventions that instantly became false memories. As I suspected, she was imaginative as well as intelligent. “These are the slogans that will shape your life,” I told her, “that I want you to repeat back to me: I am strong.” “I am strong,” she echoed. “I am independent.” “I am independent.” “I will only love somebody who loves and respects me for who I am.” “I will only love somebody who loves and respects me for who I am.” I walked over to the stereo. “Now, when I turn off the music, you will awaken not remembering anything that happened after you said Tubby’s name to me,” I said. “You will be angry at yourself at letting him manipulate you. You will help the police to catch him, you will accept the punishment that the court imposes, but once that is done, you will transform your life.” “For Daddy,” said Lulu, surprising me. “Yes,” I said with a grateful grin. “For Daddy. Oh, and you’ll hate smoking with a passion.” And I turned the music off. I suppose you’re going to try to judge me for what happened in that little scene. Think what you like. But know that I harbor no shame, no regrets. I have a gift for influencing others, a gift enhanced by art and technology. And I possess the superior intellect to know how best to use this gift to improve mankind. I am fully justified in what I do.