You never really grasp just how important something is to you until you lose it. That's what they say, at least. Generally speaking I've got to admit that it's a valid platitude. Sure you might be aware that others lack whatever blessing you've been graced with, but to really feel the sting you have to live it for yourself. I think that's what this story is about. Coming to terms with losing something as fundamental as your identity and judging where you stand afterward. That and ponies. There are ponies involved too, which is probably why you're here. But now I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start on the day when the cosmos decided to drop the floor out from under my feet and ruin my life.
~~~~~
Day Zero
I'm honestly not sure how long I stood there staring blankly at the centrifuge. Spinning down a tissue sample to get at the DNA takes a while and by the time I felt the hand on my shoulder it had already finished the job. The first sound I registered apart from the annoying broken fume hood fan was the voice of my co-worker Steve.
“You alright Lance?” he asks, a hint of concern sneaking into his tone. “You looked a little lost in space. And you were making that annoying clicking sound again.”
“Yeah. Yeah I'm fine. And sorry about that, old habit,” I reply once my neurons decided that the time had finally come to start working in concert rather than shooting mental spit balls at each other. The 'clicking sound' is that soft 'tch' you can make with your tongue on the roof of your mouth. I'm not sure when I picked it up, but I tend to do it when I'm lost in thought. “Just have some stuff on my mind.”
Though for the life of me I can't seem to place exactly what that stuff was. Ah well.
“Well, if you say so. You sure you weren't just having a little chemical birthday celebration before coming into the lab today?” Steve asks. As far as Steve is concerned it is always a good time for a little well intentioned ribbing.
“Oh come on Steve, you know me better than that,” I laugh. “Keep the mind sharp and as boring as possible. You'll all have your fun making idiots of yourselves and I'll take all the pictures. I'm sure you'll be more than happy to guzzle my share. Gotta have one person to play designated driver after all.”
“You're such a teetotaler Lance,” Steve sighs, shaking his head as though mourning some great tragedy. “I'm going to get you to loosen up some day, mark my words.”
In a weird coincidence Steve and I both share a birthday, May first. And we're both twenty five today, too. Only found out about it after meeting each other here at the lab. We made for fast friends despite our somewhat clashing personalities but hey, that just makes for more interesting friendships, right? That also made Steve the newest addition to a little circle of friendship between myself and two other old school mates who happened to share the same birthday. When you grow up with kids in the same class with the same birthday some degree of camaraderie is almost inevitable.
“You keep saying that Silver, but I'm telling you it's never going to happen,” I reply with a wry grin. I was pretty resolute about the whole drinking thing. I've got an older brother who managed to completely wreck his life with alcohol. He's ten years my senior and seeing someone you look up to wreck themselves like that really leaves an impression on a young mind.
Steve turns to give me this weird look. Did I have something on my face? “What?”
“Did you just call me 'Silver'?” he asks.
I pause and think. Did I? I don't think so. “Probably just heard me wrong, Steve.”
Weird.
We spent the rest of our shift shooting the breeze and processing samples. A lab technician isn't exactly the most glamorous of jobs but I enjoy it. There's more downtime than you might expect, but that's science for you. No one makes a movie about the heroic scientist incubating a sample at a precise temperature for a few hours after all. Once work was done it was back to the apartment to get ready for the party. Well, less party and more a get-together down at a local bar and grill where my friends would all get hammered and I would laugh at them and drive them home.
It's traditional.
My usual post-work routine goes more or less as usual. Get home, feed the cat, toss some crickets to the salamander, check my e-mails, change out of my work clothes, notice the weird tattoos on my thighs. Alright, that last one isn't right. I'm dead certain that if I had gotten some tattoos I would have remembered it. Especially since I'm not the sort of person to partake in drunken blackouts. I sit down on my bed and inspect the picture more closely. Two tornadoes, a red one pointing down and a blue one pointing up so that they look like a pair of arrows. The detail is impressive and the skin near the edge of the mark doesn't look irritated at all.
On a hunch I lick my thumb and try rubbing at the picture to see if it'll come off. Nope, not even a smudge. “Curiouser and curiouser...” I mutter to myself. I'm a bit lost here. It obviously isn't one of those roll on tattoos you would buy for kids. And it doesn't really look like the more traditional inked tattoo either. No one could have drawn it onto me while I was asleep since I live alone. And I'm sure I didn't have it this morning either. Unless I was attacked by some really sneaky hobgoblins with permanent markers while I was at work I honestly have no idea where this thing came from.
“Screw it. Shower time,” I announce to no one and head off to do exactly that. “Hopefully you're going to be nice and come off under some scrubbing. Otherwise we're going to have to escalate this to finger nail polish remover and I don't think anyone wants that.”
It was a few hours later when I picked up Ivory at her house. Nice gal. Long standing friend of mine and partner in crime for our little Mayday circle. Great fun to be around. Bubbly, personable, and generally likeable. Owns a party supply store down town. First words out of her mouth? “Lance? Why do you smell like nail polish remover?”
I give an exasperated sigh and drop my head to the steering wheel. “It's a long, sordid story. One which I'm going to relate once we get to the bar to avoid repeating it.”
She laughs, but doesn't press the issue further.
Steve and Ruben are up next. Unsurprisingly Steve asks the same question. Ruben looks uncannily distracted though and keeps scratching at his hip. Maybe he got injured during a practice session? Ruben is a coach down at the local high school. Great guy, built like a wall, and has the utterly uncanny ability to rattle off most any sports statistics you might want (or not want) to hear about. He can get a little intense sometimes, though. Especially when he's out there with the kids showing them how it's done. Though the fact that he's itching at the same spot where my mysterious tattoo showed up? Some level of creeping dread nags at me, but I shove the thoughts down. This is a party. We're going to have fun. And we can laugh the newest addition to my body's pallet later.
“Ah King's Bar and Grill. There's no greater hive of scum and villainy in all the galaxy,” Ivory says in her best Obi Wan Kenobi impression as we step out of my car.
I do my best to hold my tongue. I know better than to bite Ivory's wrong-quote bait. We head inside and get seated at our usual table. We all come in here often enough that we're considered regulars and the novelty of the four-person birthday makes for quite the scene. I can't help but wonder if the waiters singing their rendition of happy birthday four times is a row might be considered a form of torture under the Geneva Convention.
“Alright Geneva, out with it. What's with the nail polish smell?” Steve asks with a wry grin.
Everyone else is staring at him now. Was that some kind of slip? Was he thinking the exact same thing I was? If Steve suddenly gained the ability to read minds that would be news to me.
“What did you just call me?” I ask. You know. Have to make sure.
“I think he called you 'Geneva,” Ruben replies.
“That's what I thought. Isn't that a city in Switzerland?” I say.
Steve looks vaguely confused. “I'm pretty sure I called you Lance, Lance. Didn't I? Is this some sort of revenge for calling me Silver at work?”
I honestly have no idea what to say. Probably doesn't matter, right? “Eh, never mind. Anyway, nail polish story. So when I got home from work and was getting undressed for a shower-”
“Mmm, go on?” Ivory interrupts with that mock-flirting of hers. I level the look at her and she just smiles innocently.
“As I was saying, I discovered this weird tattoo or picture or something on both my hips. Which is pretty damn odd considering that I haven't ever gotten a tattoo before,” I recount. “I ended up buying some nail polish remover to try to get rid of it, but no dice.”
Ruben is looking at me like my head just turned into a goldfish. “No way...” he mutters breathlessly. Great, now what? We all motion for him to continue. “I found Lightning Dust's cutie mark on my legs today between classes.”
His tone suggests that we should have some grasp of what he's talking about. Steve and I are utterly clueless. Ivory's grinning like a Cheshire cat, though. “Really? Wow! That's pretty crazy! And you didn't have it put on or anything? Just POOF! appeared out of the blue?” Ivory asks.
Ruben nods in confirmation.
I hold up my hands in defeat. “Alright. I have no idea what's going on. You found who's what on your leg?”
“Lightning Dust the Wonderbolt!” Ruben clarifies. “Only the best pony ever.”
“That's up for debate,” Ivory says with a grin.
“Oh God ponies,” Steve sighs as he buries his face in his hands.
Ah ponies. As in My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic. Sort of like Veggie Tales except without the religious overtones and talking ponies instead of talking produce. Did I mention my two oldest friends are bronies? Because they are, and they've got it bad. They tried to get me into it back in the day but I was always more inclined towards Transformers myself. It's really hard to go wrong with giant robots. The show ended five years ago with an awful series finale that sparked a giant flaming shitstorm on the Internet. The Big Bad Discord catches Rainbow Dash and the other Wonderbolts on their way to save the main characters. Dash gets blasted first. Two no name ponies are cursed or banished or something, fade to white, then the credits scroll.
I never really liked Pony, but Ivory and Ruben badgered me into watching the last episode so I would better appreciate how bad it was. Other than that I only know a few basics about the show, wasn't really my thing. Steve on the other hand? Hates them.
“You got a pony tattoo Ruben? Seriously?” Steve asks incredulously. “You're a grown man. Seriously. You would think a coach would be interested in more manly subjects.”
“Ponies are plenty manly,” Ruben replies with a completely straight face before grinning at me. “Alright. What's it look like Lance?”
I give a shrug and pull out a pen and a napkin and begin drawing a terrible rendition of my new 'tattoo'. “Two tornadoes that look like arrows. A blue one and a red one.”
“Geneva Pressure Front,” Ruben says definitively. I raise an eyebrow at him. “She's another Wonderbolt. A hippogriff that only showed up in one episode in Season Five.”
“You've memorized all the ponies' names and their butt-symbols,” Steve says, exasperated. “That's beyond pathetic.”
Ruben is about to counter Steve's compelling argument when something clicks in my head. “Wait wait wait. Geneva Pressure Front? Didn't Steve just call me Geneva a few minutes ago?” I shoot a sly grin his way. “You aren't a closet brony, are you Steve?”
Steve's face starts turning a little red. “I already said I didn't call you Geneva. And ponies are lame as hell.”
Ivory leans over to me and in a stage whisper says, “Methinks he doth protest too much.”
Laughs are had at Steve's expense and Ruben and I begin bouncing back and forth ideas about where these weird tattoos could have come from. Ivory throws out the suggestion, “Well obviously you were both always ponies but you've been displaced through time and space and body! And now here on your twenty fifth birthday the curse is broken!”
For added effect Ivory wiggles her fingers in a spooky fashion. Ha! As if that's likely.
Eventually our waitress shows up and begins taking our orders. Things are going just fine up until she gets to Ivory. “So what'll you be having tonight sweetheart?”
Ivory slowly raises one finger and takes in a breath to speak only to trail off.
We all wait for her to say something. Steve gives me an uncomfortable look, probably because of my unusual zone-out earlier in the day. The waitress is the first to speak up. “Honey? Are you alright?”
“Just give us a few more minutes,” Ruben requests. “I'm sure she's fine.”
Fine took another four minutes of Ivory vacantly ogling the wall until she finally blinks heavily as though waking up from a dream. She gives her head a shake and tries to focus on Ruben. “Dusty?”
Okay. This is starting to get a little bit eerie. On a hunch I ask, “Is there a Wonderbolt named 'Silver'?”
That gets a really odd look from Steve. “I could have sworn you don't like ponies.”
“I don't,” I reply tersely. “Hush.”
“Uuhh, no I don't think so,” Ivory says after shaking off the funk that had settled onto her. I breath a sigh of relief. Well good. As crazy as that hypothesis was it's shot down now.
“There's one named Silver Lining, though,” Ruben helpfully adds and sends my hope crashing into the earth in a flaming wreck.
Oh hell.
Now my mind is putting facts together. What do we know? All my friends have the same birthday. All my friends are the same age. All my friends either have Wonderbolt cutie marks, have referred to one of my other friends by a Wonderbolt's name, or have been referred to themselves by a Wonderbolt's name. These developments have all taken place in the last day. I rub my temples as I consider the implications. What the hell are the implications again?
Ruben is the one who voices my train of thought. “Hey Steve, Ivory? Would you two go into the bathroom and check for cutie marks?”
“Absolutely not,” Steve says as he crosses his arms.
“Alright!” Ivory chirps and rises to her feet. “If the waitress comes back tell her I want a super extra large order of onion rings and that one lager I like to start with. We're going to be here a while after all.”
It takes a few minutes. We place Ivory's order while she's in the lady's room and by the time she returns she's grinning like a maniac. All eyes follow her as she settles into her chair.
“Well?” I ask. What I'm met with in reply honestly wasn't what I was expecting at all.
“Surprise!” Ivory shouts, throwing her arms up in the air and turning heads around the restaurant. By the time I'm done clutching my heart and she's done laughing she offers some much needed clarification. “Three purple balloons. That's Surprise's cutie mark. She's another Wonderbolt.”
Isn't that just peachy?
“Alright, so,” I point at myself. “Geneva,” then to Ruben. “Lightning Dust,” then to Ivory. “Surprise,” and finally at Steve who glares at me. “Ostensibly Silver Lining. But we don't know for sure since Steve is too afraid of pony cooties to check. So.”
More glaring from Steve.
“Soooo?” Ruben echoes.
“So I have absolutely no idea,” I admit with a click of my tongue. “There's no way this isn't connected somehow. Maybe toss up some social media nonsense looking for other people with the same birthday and mysteriously appearing butt-symbols? We obviously need more data before we can draw any real conclusions about what's going on. Maybe this is just some kind of absurdly elaborate prank?”
Really though. I have no idea.
The talk of pony related doom dies down a bit when the food arrives and we start digging in. My friends, as per normal, continue ordering drinks well after the food is gone. Around the fourth round our desserts arrive one at a time and the singing starts. Oh that awful, ear bleedingly bad singing. I keep an ear out during each song and I find myself rewarded by the sound of Ivory belting out a buzzed 'Dear Silver Liniiiiiiing!' when Steve's turn rolls around.
Yeah. There is without a doubt something weird going on.
I continue to mull it over as my friends get increasingly incoherent. Steve, of course, tries his best to present a compelling argument about why I should join them. Given his current state of cognizance it shouldn't come as much of a shock that his reasons aren't that sound. After all, who is going to be driving these yahoos home if everyone is tanked?
Conversation bounces between work, the future, annoying kids that Ruben is coaching for and how they would best be dealt with, and of course the state of parties around the town as per Ivory's sales. I try to chat a bit about new nano-pore DNA sequencing machines we got at work recently but all my talk about how the technology is going to revolutionize our ability to study genetics is met mostly with glazed eyes.
“Come on Silver, I know you know what I'm talking about,” I say with a huff. “Being able to sequence someone's full genetic library for just a few hundred bucks is a giant leap forward in our ability to understand fine detail in, what?” I ask when I notice that Ivory is snickering.
“You called Steve Silver again,” Ivory laughs.
I gape like a fish. Did I? Damn, I think I did. I'm no neurologist but I know that people sometimes get subject related names mixed up sometimes. I can't count the number of times my mother called my by my older brother's name. But how would I be relating Steve with Silver? And why would I be relating Steve to Silver before I even knew who Silver Lining was? There's something I'm missing.
Ah well.
As the time went on my friends gradually reached their respective limits, bills were paid, and I herded my inebriated comrades back to my car. It had been a fun night even with the My Little Pony weirdness. I dropped my friends off one by one, wishing them each a happy twenty fifth, until it was just me and Ivory. She's a bit more wobbly than the other two and so I help walk her to her home. Of course she's giving little giggles every time she nearly topples over.
“Hehe... you're a great friend, Geneva,” she says, alcohol slurring her voice.
“Haha, yeah. That's me. Geneva the great friend,” I reply. I'm a little uncomfortable playing to the mistake, but I'm curious if she'll keep it up if I do. I'm rewarded with even weirder weirdness.
“Silly! Your name isn't Geneva,” Ivory says as she boops me in the nose with a finger. I'm surprised her hand-eye coordination is still that intact. “It's Geneva!”
I roll my eyes. “Of course, how absurd of me to forget,” I say as Ivory fumbles with her keys and finally gets her door open. She staggers inside and leans heavily against her hallways and waves drunkenly at me.
“Good night Ivory. Don't let the pony-madness crawl too deep into your brain. And happy birthday,” I say and she mutters back something incoherent. I close the door and head back to my car. I slide into the driver's seat heavily and lean back against the headrest. Really. What the hell is going on? There's no way I'm going to be getting any sleep until I do some research into this nonsense.
My mind is churning all the way home. I replay the facts over and over again, not that it does any real good. This is all related to that silly cartoon somehow. Somehow! But why? How? Is there some kind of disease going around that's painting pony butt-symbols onto people? That would probably be the most hilarious and most harmless epidemic ever.
Upon arriving home I head straight for my computer and boot it up. My house still smells vaguely like nail polish remover and my cat Soundwave is rubbing on my legs for attention, but nothing can stop me in my quest for knowledge. First order of the day? Image search for Geneva Pressure Front. The results are immediate. Ponies. Ponies everywhere. Or hippogriffs, more properly. Eagle front half, pony back half. Pony ears, golden brown coat, rust red mane with a black and white bar at the bottom sorta like a red-tailed hawk. Same with the tail. And there on her butt is the same nemesis that appeared on my own hips. Two tornadoes, one red and one blue. I think they use arrows that look kind of like that for weather reports? That's probably where the idea came from what with the 'pressure front' part and all.
I hike down my pants and check again just to make sure. Yep. Butt-symbol is still there. I give a sigh and turn my attention back to Geneva. She looks... strong. Determined. The sort of person (cat-bird-horse?) that is on a quest and is going to see it through. Something about her just clicks with me. She just feels right. And I have no idea why. And no idea why my friends kept calling me by her name. Including Steve. Especially Steve. He has no reason to even know who Geneva Pressure Front is.
Next I hop over to a My Little Pony wiki and look up Geneva there. Sure enough, only appeared in one episode during season five. “Wait, that can't be right,” I mutter as I recount the infamous last episode. I'm dead certain that she was one of the four Wonderbolts who were trying to keep up with Rainbow Dash and got blasted by Discord. Unsurprisingly she isn't listed in the episode synopsis. Well, one easy way to check. Just open up a tab for YouTube and play the final episode. Only the last few minutes matter of course since Geneva getting fried was the final event before the whiteout and the credits rolled.
I advance the video to the point where Discord is mocking that purple pegacorn and hit play. Alright, here we go. She gets zapped AND! Fade to white. The credits rolls.
“Wait, what?” I demand of my monitor. “Where the hell is the last scene with the Wonderbolts?” Did Hasbro cut it out or something? I check another upload of the video and discover the same wrong ending. And that process repeats with the next three videos as well. Did I just imagine it somehow? But where would I have gotten Geneva's character from? She was just standing in rank and file with a bunch of other Wonderbolts when Rainbow Dash was promoted to a captain. And I hadn't ever watched that episode, had I? With a sigh I drop my face into my hands. “Curiouser and curiouser...”
Well this isn't getting me anywhere. I switch back over to the images of Geneva and begin scrolling down to see if there was anything vaguely insightful to be found. It doesn't take long before I run across pictures of her in a compromising position with a variety of ponies and one griffin I don't recognize.
“Really? For a kid's show? Screw you rule thirty four. And straight through safe search, too,” I waggle an admonishing finger at my search engine. “You need to step up your game, Google.”
Welp! Time for a new topic. Silver Lining comes next. A grey pegasus stallion with a curly silver mane and tail (go figure) and a butt-symbol of a dark raincloud with a silver outline. Now I've got a pretty good idea of what might have spontaneously appeared on Steve's ass some time today. I make a mental note to harass him about it at work tomorrow.
Lightning Dust and Surprise get their turns next, both pegasus mares. Turns out that all four characters except Lightning Dust are considered 'background ponies' while Dust is a supporting character. Even gets a few episodes about her. Well way to go Ruben, I guess? Why would anyone fanboy over some relatively unimportant character, though? Bronies are weird.
Now that I've gathered some basic information on the characters and have an image of Geneva getting plowed by some body-builder looking white pegasus burned into my poor brain I decide to shift the focus of my studies a bit. Namely? Find out if anyone else has suddenly found themselves the proud owner of a cutie mark. Oddly enough there are a few Tweets on the subject, though I never bothered with a Twitter account so I can't rightly reply. Even more strange is that after a little bit of digging I discover that at least two of the poor souls smitten with cutie-pox also had a birthday today.
A twenty fifth birthday.
There is no way that's a coincidence.
I lean back in my chair and give a sign of disbelief. Soundwave finally gets tired of being ignored and jumps up into my lap. I acquiesce to his demands and start scratching his neck for him. “So what do you think?” I ask my cat. “Because the world wide tattoo-happy hobgoblin conspiracy idea is starting to hold more merit.”
Soundwave decides to climb up onto my shoulder and stick his butt in my face in reply.
Glorious.
“Yeah, I'm done,” I announce to no one and shut my computer down for the night. Morning. Whatever. Two thirty am. Yeah, that's plenty of sleep. I've been able to function at work on far less. I go through my before-bed routine with Soundwave doing his best to trip me the whole time, get undressed, and sit down on my bed. Soundwave hops up with me and begins sniffing at my new cutie mark until I toss him to the foot of the bed and pull my blankets over myself. Hopefully he won't decide to sleep on my face again.
Out go the lights and I start having a chat with the ceiling.
“So! Ponies and cutie marks, huh? If I find out that this is your idea of a joke I'm going to be pretty upset. You could have at least stamped a holographic Decepticon decal on me instead. I think I would have been okay with that.”
“I'm kind of worried about Silver, though. He's not too big on the whole pony thing and if he ends up with a grumpy raincloud on his rear I doubt he's going to take it well. He's a fun guy to be around, just... Well, you know. He gets pretty passionate about stuff he doesn't like. And he really doesn't like ponies. If it does come down to cutie marks for him just... I don't know... help him keep a level head about it. And if this is as wide-spread as I think it might be? There are going to be a lot of really confused people. There's got to be a reason for all this, I'm just a bit lost as to what it could possibly be. I'm still banking on the hobgoblins, though.”
I ramble aimlessly for a while about my day. I'm not sure exactly when I finally drift off to sleep. What a weird day. At least tomorrow can't get any stranger.