//------------------------------// // When things go insane // Story: Planet of the Ponies // by LightStriker //------------------------------// Mark was laying on the ground, motionless. His mind was racing back and forth between the past and the present, trying to find what went wrong, at what moment he lost it. He was looking for a sign, something that would show him a difference between before and after he lost his grasp on reality. Talking horses were an obvious difference, but aside from that everything else looked so real. He couldn't have imagined his space mission and his five years training, they were too detailed and not something a sick mind could come up by itself. The crash was real too, his painful broken leg remembered him this. But was really the station in any danger to begin with? The forest was as real as he remembered any forest. Was it? Maybe he always had been insane to begin with, and this situation was the only way the healthy part of his brain found to make him understand that. His head hurt. He remembered he lost a good amount of blood from his head meeting the station's wall. His normally white suit was all red on his chest and shoulder from being socked with his own blood. How much blood did he lose? Was it the moment? Did the station kick him in the face or did he bang his head by himself? His inner voice couldn't say any word. Only flash of memories went on and on, coming back on the images again and again, trying to spot what he could have miss before. Enough! You're a scientist, act like it! Everything can be explained if taken the time and the effort. He sat up against a tree. Possibilities... Insanity is only one, and for now I have no way to prove or disprove it, so let's just leave that aside. Theory number one, I felt in an unexplored part of Earth where some unknown species live. He looked around. The forest wasn't dense enough to hide the small town he notice earlier while crashing the escape pod, and the fact he did notice it means satellite imaging would have picked it up too. An unknown settlement was quite farfetched. So much for the first one. Second, something happen while I was on the station. He remembered the look on the adjacent station module. Something cut trough it straight. Too straight. The metals should have bended and the composite materials should have shattered. Even cutting it with plasma should have left burning marks. A... quantum shift? Like many things, he knew his fellow scientists liked to theorize on improbable scenarios. But suddenly changing the quantum state of a part of the station would be a good way to slice it in half and leaving no traces on it. If so, the unaffected part of the station would still be up there. As a material physicist, he read his share of article about the theory of what could be done if it was possible to control the quantum state of an object. But like many theories, it lacked much basic information. Like what would happen of the object? Where, when and how would it look like once shifted? Do those questions even manage to describe the final state the object would be in? I should have taken notes of the other experiments onboard. It could have been an accident from another test. He sighed loudly. If it was something like that, no way to know where... what state I got myself. Could be a different time, different place or for all I know a different reality. He always laughed at papers that talked about multiverse theories. Why write about something that is complete fiction as there is no way to prove or disprove that kind of thinking. He always considered those to be on the same category as religion or magic. But right now, he wasn't laughing so much and the few more scientist articles he read on parallel universes came back to his mind. "Bleh." he let out loudly. "Hey! I think I heard something!" made out a voice. Mark slapped his hands on his mouth, mad at himself for drifting like that in his thoughts. He had no idea how much time had passed since the equine entities left. It's the same voice from before... Applebloom was it? He quickly checked around and saw no one. He was behind some bushes and couldn't even see the pod from his position. Good chance whoever was there couldn't see him too. He slowly released his breath, finding he had held it for what appeared an eternity. His heart was beating hard. "I didn't hear anything Applebloom. What did you want me to see?" asked a new voice. Mark slowly moved to his left, trying to see pass the bush hiding his view. Finding no good spot to see through it, he started to slowly raise himself on his left feet, using the crutch to push on ground. "This! It felt from the sky this night!" replied the younger one. He was half standing up when his head managed to see above the bush. The filly and the zebra he saw so far were fairly normal aside from their speech abilities. The zebra had those black and white strips and the filly was a bright yellow, similar to some mustang Mark saw on television. At least visually, they appeared normal. But the new one standing aside the crash site didn't even look normal. It sported a bright purple color with an almost black mane and tail. He thought he also saw a pink strip in its mane, but from the distance he couldn't be sure. Great... Next what? Pink elephant? The new comer was looking at the pod from every angle, but it was obvious it didn't know what to make out of it. It took a long look inside then looked at Applebloom. "I don't know Applebloom. It's obviously ponymade, but I have no idea what's its purpose. I don't even know what it's made of." "It's maybe magic!" claimed the filly jumping around the purple one. It stopped and looked at the purple one. "You surely have some detection spell to see if it's magic... Right Twilight?" Twilight left an obvious sigh out. At this point Mark was now pretty sure they were both female. He hoped the high pitch voice were a good enough sign for this. He was staring at the scene, trying to not miss anything out of it. Twilight was staring at the pod and half closed her eyes. He thought he saw something glow on Twiligt's head. He moved a bit more left to get a better view. He did noticed right, there on her head was some kind of horn. It was glowing of a purple tint similar to her body. The glow quickly enveloped the pod, and started to glow brightly. "Woah!" let Twilight while looking at the pod. It was obvious she was expecting a reaction, but not that intense. Purple unicorn? Should I really be surprised at this point? Next won't be pink elephant... Will be flying pink elephant. He felt his thinking about insanity coming back, but he quickly pushed it aside. He knew if he would let his mind run around this concept, he wouldn't be able to think straight and take some actions on whatever would happen. And right now, drifting in his thoughts was the last thing he wanted. That's so irrelephant right now. He stopped for a second, his eyes wide, rethinking about what just passed in his mind. He put his hands back on his mouth trying not to laugh. The situation was so ridiculous his shoulder started to shake. Finally he let a chuckle pass his mouth. Twilight and Applebloom jumped back and stared at a bush the noise came from. Twilight was sure she heard somepony laughing, but in this forest she wouldn't take any chance. She put herself between the bush and Applebloom trying to shield her from whatever was inside. "Who's there?" she asked loudly. Mark was so stunned, he even stopped breathing. He wouldn't move a finger, all those efforts to stay hidden destroyed by a very bad joke his mind came up with. He swallowed hard. Come one... That was nothing. You haven't heard anything. That's not the bush you're looking for. He closed his eyes, of all moment, why his brain decided to think of jokes right now? But the time passed and both ponies were still staring at the bush. Twlight's horn started to glow again. Mark was sure he saw a small rock being lifted off the ground, bathed in the same purple glow. It stopped going up around the height of Twilight's head. "Last chance! Who's that?" she asked again. Mark noticed she appeared more scared then himself. He simply didn't want to be found and they appeared to be expecting some kind monster to come out. He lowered himself slowly, trying to take as little space as possible. Without warning the floating rock shoot toward the bush. What was that?? He felt something hit himself on the right leg. He looked down and saw the rock slowly roll off after it bounced off his broken leg. By some kind of very bad luck, it hit him almost at the spot where his leg was bent. His tibia was now bent slightly backward. He was surprised it didn't hurt right away, but when the pain finally came, it was overwhelming. His left leg felt like it was made of jelly, it couldn't hold him up any longer and he started to fall on his left side. The scream he was trying to hold inside came out in force. Even before he hit the ground the world was fading in black again. I really have to stopping passing out... His first thought was how good he felt at this very moment. He was dry, warm and didn't feel much pain, which was a much welcome change from the last day. His mind slowly came back online and he quickly remembered all that happened. He slowly opened his eyes. They felt like they stayed shut for days and his mouth was terribly dry. The room he was in was dark. From the window to his right he could make it was the night again and the only light bathing the room was from the moon. Even without a good source of light, it was obvious the room he was in was painted blue. He was laying in a comfortable bed and to his left the rest of the room was blocked by a long closed curtain. He didn't need a doctorate to understand he was in some kind of hospital but the size of the room made him think more of a small clinic. A solute was plugged in his left arm. He raised his bed sheets to find that whoever brought him here removed his blood and mud soaked suit. His right leg was now in a white cast that covered him from his foot to his knee. At least they left him his underwear. He checked his head, to find it had been washed and a huge bandage covered a part of it. Someone found him and the country he was in was kind enough to take care of his wounds. They would surely ask him questions later, but for now he had the impression nothing bad could happen. You know what brain; I'm really not made for that insanity stuff. I hate passing out. He felt back in sleep. He was waked up the next morning by a male voice of someone in the room, behind the closed curtain. "You are doing great progress. One more day, maybe two and you will be on your way." said the voice. Mark looked around. The room's walls were indeed painted blue, but the ceiling was green. Both were covered in some kind of hand painting of some kind of vegetation. However the curtain was of the standard bland greenish clothing used in medical facilities, the kind that were easy to wash off whatever could end up on them. He noticed the solute was gone. Whoever removed it did it smoothly enough to not wake him up. "Thanks Doc. Will be more careful next time." replied a female voice. Whoever it was, they trusted him enough to put him in an open room with another patient. He felt some luck actually coming back from all this. He wasn't locked in and with some hope he could find a specialist to explain him why he kept seeing ponies. He felt like he ran a marathon. While his body was in an amazing shape, better than he ever was in his whole life thanks to the training for his space mission, but his muscles painfully reminded him to not do more crash landing. He didn't know at what speed he hit the ground, but it was obviously faster than the intended Soyuz design. I guess I was lucky landing in trees and dirt. At the speed I was going, a rock or a building and right now I would be dead. He started thinking how he would ask the doctor about his little problem. Is there any good way to explain that your mind is slowly drifting off in crazy land? He stretched his arms and yawned. He didn't know how long he slept, but it felt good. "Ah! I see our new guess is awake." said the doctor coming around the curtain. The doctor was a tan pony with a brown mane and tail. The horn on his forehead was quite obvious. He was wearing a doctor jacket, a stethoscope around his neck and some small armless glasses. Mark's body instantly went in overdrive, as a flow of adrenaline blurred his senses. He automatically tried to get away, pushing off the bed with his hands. But even when his butt crashed on the floor he didn't care much of the pain, he kept pushing off. What felt hours for him but was only a few second, he ended up in the corner of the room. "Is something wrong Mark?" asked the equine doctor, worried by the weird display of fear. "How do you know my name?!" he almost screamed. He was looking around scared as hell. Even if he would try to escape this, his broken leg meant he would be caught again almost instantly. Even then, he never was good at running, his thing being more swimming. With a broken leg, the best he could do would be to crawl anyway. He started to sweat and shake, the adrenaline pushing for physical action, but he mind couldn't decide what to do. The doctor stepped back a bit, surprised by the reaction. "Well, it was written on your clothing. Mark Nasa, isn't it?" he asked. "Oh. huh... just Mark" replied Mark in a shaking voice. His name was indeed written on his suit, right above the NASA logo. But why they thought his second name was NASA, he couldn't think of anything. He looked around, finally noticing he was curled up in the corner of the room, shaking, in his underwear. Great, for a first impression, you really got a talent to make it as worst as possible. He moved slowly to the left, keeping his eyes on the doctor, and pulled the bed sheets off. Using them he quickly covered his body. He noticed the doctor didn't seem moved at all by the display. He probably saw far worst, like any medical doctor. Come on, man up Mark! Using the walls, he slowly got on his left foot, wrapping himself in the bed sheets. Once on his feet, he found out he was a good head taller than the doctor. He slowly moved back to the bed, using the walls to keep his balance as he jumped off his left foot. He slowly lay back in the bed, never leaving the doctor off his sight. He was in sweat and the adrenaline rush was slowly fading away. "Huh... heh... Sorry for that outburst." he excused himself. The doctor looked at him puzzled then shrugged his front shoulders, in a quite human way. "Not a problem." he said, sounding obvious he had experience with much weirder behavior or more excited patient. "If you don't mind, we got a few questions about yourself." "Well... I have one myself first, if you don't mind." asked Mark back. "Go ahead." "Huh... Do you have... a psychologist in this clinic?" The doctor looked surprised by the request. He was used to weird behavior, but someone asked help about it right away was unusual. "We are a small clinic here. We don't have one on site. I usually take care of that kind of problem myself and when a case is too complex I ask for a specialist to come from somewhere else." It made sense. The small village he saw in his crash wasn't big enough to require a permanent psychologist. Did this place even have a thousand people? Why would you have someone just for a case of depression once or twice per year. The doctor slowly moved toward the bed. "However, I'm fully qualified to do basic psychologist diagnosis. What's troubling your mind?" Mark was about to open his mouth when something bluish ran off in the corridor. It was barking loudly and if he could believe his eyes, it was wearing some kind of white containment suit. The doctor ran to the door and screamed, "Nurse Redheart! I told you to not let her off her room without supervision! Screw! Go back to your room!" "I'm sorry doctor Stable, she ran off after seeing a squirrel off her window." replied a small white pony with red head that ran after the blue mass of crazy. Mark didn't think his eyes could get any wider. He felt like if anything was to happen, his eye balls would simply pop off his head. He was back in a state without any rational thinking. He then noticed his mouth was handing open the whole time. He quickly closed it off. No need to make them think you're a drooling idiot on top. Sanity... I already miss you. Satisfied the matter was handled, the doctor went back to Mark's bed. He stared at him a bit, noticing he was looking at the door with eyes almost as big as anypony. "Hmm, sorry for that. You were about to say about some psychological problem?" he asked like if the barking pony wasn't anything to care about. Mark slowly turned his head to face the doctor. I'm not in a hospital, I'm in an asylum. At least I won't look out of place. "Yeah... doc, about that... I'm... huh... Seeing stuff." he replied with a trembling voice. "You mean Screw? Don't mind her. She likes to make us run around." "No, I mean... I'm seeing... impossible stuff. Like... ponies?" Mark said laughing. He was feeling very small right now. Like if his bed was swallowing him. The doctor was looking at him puzzled. "Heh?" said Mark, looking desperate. Seeing he was serious about his claim, the doctor let out a small laugh. "Well at least your eyesight is good. So for right now, the only thing I can tell you is, no you're not insane. At least not yet." He turned around toward the door and while walking off continued, "Try to keep it calm for a few hours. I'm gonna call Twilight. She's the closest pony we got to a diplomat around here, and she wanted to apologize, from what I understood." On that the doctor was off the room leaving Mark thinking. Sorry Doc, but for now I won't trust my earring anymore than my sight. Without thinking, he grabbed hold of the curtains and pulled them off to see who his room neighbor was. The grey pony with a blond mane in the next bed looked as surprised as him from the sight. She had her front right hoof wrapped in a bandage. They just stared at each other for what seemed an eternity. "Huh... Sorry." Mark said, closing the curtain. "No... No problem." replied the pony as stunned as he was. The next two hours, from what he could see on the wall clock, passed quite fast. He simply didn't think about anything. He knew there was nothing he could do, and he didn't felt like theorizing about his condition. The doctor didn't say anything about his wounds but he didn't sound worried about that. They didn't hurt much anyway. He's probably more worried about my head than my leg anyway. Nobody else showed up and no other event took place. He thought he heard barking outside, but he couldn't say for sure. He stayed all under the bed sheets, only having his head out, like if the sheets could protect him from this strange world. Looking around, he noticed the place was clean and didn't look much aged. It was obviously well cared for. At some point he was sure he heard his neighbor fall asleep. He didn't want to check and repeat the awkward moment of staring. He didn't know what to do, not that he could do much right now. He was about to get up to the window and look outside when the door opened. The purple pony or unicorn, he remembered himself, came slowly in the room. She stopped at a few feet off his bed. For a few moments they just stared at each other. "Hey." She simply said. "Huh... Hey." replied Mark almost automatically. Improvements here... I didn't freak out this time. Next step, not looking like a frighten child. "I wanted to say I was sorry about throwing you a rock. You scared us and it was pure bad luck that hit you on your leg." she quickly said in one breath. She's as scared as you. Maybe more. "No need to be. I shouldn't have stay hidden like that. And for the leg, it was already broken." he replied quickly with a small smile. She let a small nervous laugh. "Well Mr. Nasa..." "Anderson" he cut. "NASA is an organization, not my name. But just call me Mark, will be simpler." "Oh." she let out. "Well, Mark, we got a few questions for you." "And I'm pretty sure I got some for you too." he replied. The tension was still there, both were still nervous, but with every sentence they felt more at ease. She shocked her head like she forgotten something. "Where's my manner, I'm Twilight Sparkle, nice to meet you Mr. Mark" "Just Mark. Nice to meet you too." he replied automatically. He never felt good being called mister, doctor or any title for that matter. M. was for his father and almost nobody called his doctor anyway, not that he didn't earn it with a double doctorate. "Alright... Mark." she let a small uneasy laugh. "If you don't mind, first thing first, what are you and how did you get here?" Mark sit himself up, careful to keep the sheets to cover him from his shoulders. He was a bit surprised by the question, and started to think about how to answer. Good chance they never saw someone like you to begin with. Would be pretty stupid to assume they knew while you never saw one of them before. "I'm a... human. A kind of mammal, a primate. The technical term is homo sapiens, or if you prefer "wise man". We are sentient being from a planet we call Earth. We have two genders and numerous races. We are mostly pacific and..." noticing he started babbling he stopped to take a few deep breaths. Breathe dumbass. And speak slower! "As for how I got here... I was in the International... huh... A space station, when something went wrong. I used an escape pod. Pretty sure you saw where it crashed. As to why I'm here and not on a planet full of human... My guess or lack of it is as good as any." She looked at him puzzled. "What's a space station?" she simply asked. Oh right, another civilization. How far are they in their technology? If they don't even know what space is, good chance they are for nothing for my presence here. "Huh... That's kind of a good question." he said, wondering how to reply. "You see... if you shot something upward fast enough and far enough, you can get off the planet and in what we call space." "That I know of." she cut him. "It's where there's no more air to breath." Good! At least they don't think their world is flat or something. That would have made it very hard. "Good." he smiled. "If you shot something fast enough and high enough, it gets in what we call an orbit. If it's traveling as fast as it's falling back toward the ground, it can stay up there. A space station is a place to live put in orbit to make scientific experiment in an environment without gravity." Mark didn't know her eyes could get any bigger. They were already big enough to freak him out. He noticed she looked amazed by his story. "So... you're a scientist?" she simply asked. "Eayup. I was up there to run some experiments on new composite materials." he said nervous, noticing he slowly backed away from the pony, since she had moved toward him. She noticed her move too and back off. "And how do you get up there? I somehow doubt you can fly." she asked looking skeptical. "Do you... have any rockets?" "You mean like fireworks?" she replied wondering what he meant. Well, you got it. You ain't going back up there any time soon! "Yeeeaaah... But thousand time bigger. Big enough to care tons of material upward at about twenty time the speed of sound." he said with a smile, like it was nothing to be impressed at. She looked stunned. "Twenty time?" "Well yeah, that's for low orbit. For higher orbit you can imagine in the higher twenty four, twenty five time the speed of sound and for escape velo..." he said. Saying that, he noticed she didn’t believe him. "But once you clear the atmosphere, there's no air resistance to slow you down, so you can get quite fast." he finished with a grim. You not going anywhere with that. "So... Where did I crash, and what are you guys?" he asked, trying to diffuse the awkward skeptical look she was giving him. Her face went back to be a bit more joyful. "Oh yeah. You landed in Equestria, one nation of... Well we call it Earth too. It's mostly inhabited by ponies. Equus ferus sapiens if you prefer. We also have two genders and have three distinctive subspecies in the pony branch." she said with a smile. "We are quite friendly too." "That's... good to know. You said three subspecies?" he asked. "Oh! Yeah. I'm a unicorn." she said proudly pointing at her horn. Well... duh! Wait... how did she move her leg like that to point at her face? Her shoulder joint is obvious far more complex than our horse's. "There are also pegasus ponies. They have wings." Wings? If I was drinking something right now, I would have spit it all over the place. "And earth ponies. Which are normally bigger and stronger." she finished, obviously happy of her quick sum up. "Wings..." She looked at him, and even if he was of a different species, the skepticism was obvious. She blinked a few time, obvious trying to think of something. Having found something, she turned around and went to the curtain and talk to his neighbor. "Hey, would you mind showing off your wings a bit?" she said. A sincere laugh came from the other pony. "Alright." Twilight pulled back the curtain, displaying the other pony like an event. The grey pony was up on her bed, only on three legs, careful to not land her wrapped hoof. A bit embarrassed from being looked at like that, she flapped her small pair of wings she had on her back and slowly took off. She slowly started turning and did a full circle over her bed, she was showing off! She landed back with an obvious smile. "Thanks." said Twilight while closing back the curtain. "No problem." the other pony replied while laughing. As for Mark, it took him a while to find he jaw was hanging low. As soon as he found out, he closed his mouth, a bit ashamed of looking like a drooling idiot again. What... what was that? Wings? But... They were too small to lift anything. Surely not enough to lift a pony! He also noticed he had let go of the sheets, displaying his naked chest. He quickly pull them back on to his shoulders, blushing hard. The ponies didn't appear to care much for his nakedness. Well, aside from the doc, I haven't seen any clothing so far. But they got that kind of colorful fur... So they aren't really naked... Right? "Well, sorry I kinda didn't believe you on that." he excused himself with a small ashamed smile. Slowly getting back from that stunning new information, he went back to more present concern. "Huh... You wouldn't know where my suit is?" She blinked a few times wondering what he meant. "Oh! That white clothing? It was full of dirt, mud and blood. I think they might have sent it to be washed. I will ask the doctor to send you it back if you want." "Please." If they don't know any human, chances of finding any fitting clothing is close to none. And I'm not going out of this bed in underwear! As for shoes... Whatever, one thing at a time. "If you don't mind, I got to go. I will be back tomorrow." She went to the door and turned around. "Oh, by the way, the doctor told me physically you're doing well. He said he should be able to remove the cast in a few days." "Great!" And off she was. Wait... what? A few days for a broken tibia? Mark lay back in his bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to assimilate all that new knowledge. The idea that he was fully insane was still in the back of his mind, but for now he felt everything felt too real to just think he was a full nut job. And almost all the pain was gone from his leg. They can't go in space, but they can fix a broken leg in a few days...