The Fluttershy Parable
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This is a story about a mare named Fluttershy. Fluttershy was a worker in an office complex where she was assigned the number four-two-seven. Every day, she pushed buttons on a binary board. Instructions were given on a monitor telling her which button to push and how long to push them. Although other ponies may have considered such an occupation life-draining, Fluttershy enjoyed every single minute of it and Fluttershy was happy.
Then one day, something very strange happened. On this particular day, no pony had come by with a memo, called a meeting, or even said “hi”. Additionally, hours had passed on end without a single instruction or order appearing on the monitor. Shocked and confused, Fluttershy stood frozen there for the longest time. Finally, she turned and walked out of her office room.
---
“Uh, not sure why I should do what you’re telling me to, but I don’t see any other way out of here,” commented Applejack as she stepped out of the weird office building.
“All of her co-workers were missing,” mentioned the voice, “What could it mean? Applejack decided to head to the meeting room to see if she could find any pony.”
“And where in the hay am I supposed to find this ‘meeting room’?” she asked. The voice, however, did not answer.
In spite of her misgivings toward the invisible stranger, Applejack ventured forth through the office complex. It wasn’t exactly her element of expertise, but she was pretty sure an office was supposed to have workers at this time of day. The lack of any pony else’s presence did unnerve her.
She took a left where the hallway seemed to be pointing her. Any other office door was locked. She had tried bucking the door numbered four-one-seven, but it didn’t budge. It almost felt like some pony else was herding her direction.
“Coming to a set of two open doors,” the voice spoke, “Applejack entered the door on her left.”
From then on, Applejack did as the voice told her to, intending to go headstrong into whatever the voice had her face.
One press of an "OFF" button later...
“I guess you were right after all, stranger.” Applejack smiled at the sight of the open-aired orchard in front of her. “This really is happiness.”
---
“Coming to a set of two open doors,” the voice recited, “Rainbow Dash entered the door on her left.”
Dash looked at the two open doors and then looked at the ceiling to where she presumed the voice was coming from. “Why? What’s through the door on my right that’s so bad?”
Ignoring the voice’s instruction, she flapped on through the door in which Spaniard ponies would call “derecha”.
“This was not the correct way to the meeting room and Rainbow Dash knew it perfectly well,” the voice chimed in as if expecting this very action. “Perhaps she wanted to stop by the employee lounge first just for a moment.”
Again, Dash tried to karate kick various doors and walls along her journey. But as before, there wasn’t even a dent left in them after she was done. With a grumpy snort, she continued on down the set hallway. Eventually, she entered a room that was completely surrounded by blue walls.
“Ah, yes, the employee lounge,” sighed the voice, “This had definitely been worth the detour. Rainbow stood there to drink it all in… just for a moment.”
Dash deadpanned. “Yeah, I’m bored.” She quickly flew out the door on the other side of the lounge.
“But eager to get back to the adventure,” the voice narrated, “Rainbow Dash took the first open door on her left, went straight through, and got back on track.”
She did stop in front of the open door on her left, but she didn’t go through.
“You still haven’t given me a reason to trust you, stranger,” Dash called out as she flew the rest of the length of the hallway. She thought she could head out the door in the new room with relative peace, but the voice had other ideas.
“Rainbow Dash was so bad at following directions, it’s a wonder she wasn’t fired years ago.”
“Hey!” Dash shouted, “I got hired into the weather team for my initiative, not by taking orders from complete nobodies that couldn’t tell the difference between a cumulonimbus and a cirrostratus cloud.”
A sign to a large warehouse storage room had a sign that held fines for anyone that abused the lift system. After spitting over the edge, Dash promptly landed her hooves on the large, yellow lift out of spite.
“Look, Rainbow, I think we may have gotten off on the wrong hoof,” reasoned the voice, “I’m not your enemy. Really, I’m not.”
Still not paying the voice any mind, Dash saw a catwalk just below where the lift was moving. Without a second thought, she jumped off the lift and fluttered just above the catwalk.
“What? Really?” asked the voice in frustrated surprise. “I was in the middle of something. Do you have zero consideration for others? Are you that convinced that I want something bad to happen to you?”
“And that right there pretty much cinched it,” said Dash, “That’s it. I’m out of here.”
“I don’t know how to convince you otherwise. Just give a chance. Let me show you something. I can guarantee that it’s wonderful.”
“Pfft, yeah right,” scoffed Dash as she continued down the slightly darker hallways. Eventually, she found herself in front of a room with three closed doors. A white door with a number pad lock was to her right and two different-colored doors stood in the wall in front of her.
“Now listen carefully, Rainbow. This is important,” requested the voice, “Rainbow Dash entered the red door.”
“You already admitted you wanted something bad to happen to me,” Dash pointed out, “Obviously, I can’t trust you.”
With that, she flapped through the blue doorway. However, a feeling similar to Twilight’s teleportation spell engulfed her. She opened her eyes in surprise as she found herself looking at the two different-colored doors again.
“Ahem, perhaps you didn’t hear me,” the voice coughed, “Rainbow Dash entered the red door.”
“How about no?” she asked rhetorically before entering the blue doorway again. She only got a few inches further in before being teleported again. This time, however, the blue door was absent from the wall and a large neon arrow pointed to the red door.
“I still don’t think we’re understanding properly,” the voice assumed, “Rainbow Dash entered the RED door.”
“Oh, for the love of Pete,” muttered Dash. She turned away from the red door in a huff. In doing this, she perked up when she saw that the blue door was now on this wall. She chuckled as she fluttered on through the doorway in defiance.
After playing a few games that weren't the ones that narrator specifically created for the mare, she ended up flying through a black void. The void eventually lit up and she found herself in a badly lit hallway filled with blue doors and black numbers.
“Hello?” called Dash as she wandered the complex that was barely light enough to see anything. “Mr. Voice? Can we go back to the part where you were building a house?”
Yet, the voice did not give any indication that it had heard, nor did it even intrude with an uncalled-for remark.
---
“But eager to get back to the adventure,” the voice foretold, “Twilight Sparkle took the first open door on her left, went straight through, and got back on track.”
“I suppose that’s enough freelance exploration for one day,” decided Twilight as she went through the door on her left. However, as she got about halfway back to where the voice had said, she noticed an open elevator just to her left.
“Then again…” she mulled. She stepped onto the elevator and pushed the red button. The gate closed behind her and elevator she was on descended.
The problem with this step, however, was the fact that it deviated even further from the story that the narrator had intended. Eventually, the voice called in the help of a brightly neon-colored line. It was there that he posed the philosophical question.
"Will we end up at the destination or continue the journey?"
“Well, if you consider this to be the journey," responded Twilight, "then of course the destination is only where it ends. Similarly, we can conclude that…”
---
“Look, Twilight, I think we may have gotten on the wrong hoof.” The voice tried to reason. “I’m not your enemy. Really, I’m not.”
“Then why do you keep calling me ‘Twilight’?” Spike asked.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” continued the voice, “but this story has been about nothing but you this whole time. It’s all for your benefit. For once in your life, please do something that isn’t so selfish. I’m not asking for me. I’m asking for her.”
Spike raised an eyebrow at this statement. “Her, who?”
The lift came to a stop at the upper platform and Spike cautiously stepped off. He then started wandering through another storage room with metal shelves. A forklift was at his left as well as a dark doorway.
“This is your chance,” offered the voice, “to give back the love… to let her back into your heart.”
Could it be…? thought Spike.
Slowly, he entered the darkened room. The door automatically closed behind him as had all the others. Suddenly, a hanging lamp shone brightly. It illuminated a yellow telephone on a small table. The phone let out a soft monotonous tone.
*Ring* *Ring*
“That’s her, Twilight,” declared the voice, “You know what you have to do. If any part of your heart still cares about her, pick up the phone.”
Spike stepped toward the table. Slowly, his thoughts of his beloved overtook his body. His claw hovered inches away from the receiver. But then, something snapped to the forefront of his attention.
“Wait a minute,” he said while lowering his eyebrows, “Rarity doesn’t have a phone!”
He was furious at himself for almost having fallen for a trick. But he was more infuriated at the voice that had led him so astray to begin with. The one time he had actually trusted its direction, the voice had nearly trapped him. Well, he wasn’t going to have any of that.
Stomping his little feet in anger, he walked around the table. He saw the power cord leading from the phone to an outlet in the wall. With a low growl, he swiped a claw through the cord. The disconnection from its power source shut the phone up quickly.
“As Twilight picked up the phone, she was engulfed in a radiant, white light,” said the voice as if reading a script.
“Equestria to ghost-voice!” hollered Spike, “No pony picked up the phone.”
“Wait, what?” The voice paused as if in reply to Spike. “What’s going on? Twilight, did you… unplug the phone? That wasn’t supposed to happen. At least, I don’t think it was. Let me see here.”
The sound of several pages being flipped filled the baby dragon’s ears. But just like the voice, he couldn’t identify where it was coming from.
The voice mumbled to itself while supposedly reading through the flipped pages. “No, it clearly states right here, ‘Twilight picks up the phone. She’s reunited with her wife. Cut to black. Roll credits’.”
“Shows what you know,” scoffed Spike, “Twilight doesn’t even have a wife.”
“Unplugging the phone is actually an incorrect choice,” continued the voice, undeterred. “How did you do that? None of these choices were supposed to have any meaning. I don’t understand. I- wait. What’s that?”
“Huh?” Spike looked around, but didn’t see anything different in the barely lit room.
“Did I just see…?” The voice trailed off. “No, that’s impossible. How did I not see it before? You’re not Twilight, are you? You’re actually a dragon.”
“Finally, the guy gets it!” exclaimed Spike in half-relief. The other half was peeved that the voice didn’t realize its mistake until now.
“So that’s how you were able to make meaningful choices,” said the voice. “This story had a pony’s story in mind and didn’t account for a dragon in its variables. If we had let you run around making even more wrong choices, who knows what could have happened. But not to worry. I’m going to stop the story momentarily and show you an instructional video about the importance of good decision-making.”
---
“Oh, Rarity,” said the voice in disappointment, “You didn’t just try to turn the mind control protocols on, did you?”
“I most certainly did,” answered Rarity.
“Rarity, Rarity, Rarity,” repeated the voice, “You must understand that there’s only so much that that one machine can do. I’ll let you in on a funny secret.”
I do love a good piece of gossip, she thought.
“By turning the machine on, you’ve activated the facility’s self-detonation protocol. The resulting explosion will be enough to fatally injure every pony in the entire mile radius of this entire area.”
“What?!” she shrieked. Frantically, she tried pounding the “OFF” button. But it was currently jammed, unwilling to be pressed down.
“You have only…” trailed the voice, “oh, let’s say… two minutes.”
A set of numbers appeared on the giant monitor. It read “2:00” before changing to “1:59” and then continuously decrementing down by one with each passing second.
“The other room,” muttered Rarity, “All of those other buttons. One of them must do something!”
Hurriedly, she galloped back into the first room of the Mind Control Facility.
“Did you actually think you had any control?” asked the voice, mockingly now.
“But I did everything else you said!” yelled Rarity slamming down one button after another, “Isn’t that enough?”
The voice only laughed in response while continuing his annoyingly long and pointless monologue.
---
The room was dim, lit only by one fluorescent lamp hanging from the ceiling. A large, rectangular coffee table stood in front of her. When she heard the voice again, it did not sound happy at all.
“Pinkie Pie,” it started, “this is my serious room. I come here when I need to be serious. I have something that I need to seriously discuss with you.”
One serious discussion later regarding how many tables the voice had carefully examined before finding the most serious table...
“Awww,” pouted Pinkie Pie. Her ears flattened as she set her head down on the ‘serious’ table.
---
“The door hadn’t closed behind them,” pointed out the voice, “They still had time to go back.”
“M-M-Maybe we should go back,” stuttered Sweetie Belle. Her willingness to follow was starting to teeter.
“Come on, Sweetie Belle,” insisted Apple Bloom, “How can a long hallway really lead to some pony’s death?”
“Besides,” added Scootaloo, “Do you really trust the voice of a complete stranger over the voices of your best friends?”
Sweetie Belle let out a sound through closed lips, but continued to follow. As she scampered along, however, she tripped over a loose pebble. This caused her to roll into Apple Bloom who in turned bumped into Scootaloo. After that, they all tumbled into an open, square whole in the floor.
“And so, the Cutie Mark Crusaders found themselves being willfully pushed towards their death between two giant, metal crushers.”
Before they could come up with a response, they all looked toward the large banging sound. It was, as the voice had said, two giant, metal crushers. They struggled and wiggled as much as they could, but the metal clamp around their bodies wouldn’t budge or slip. The crushers got closer and closer. They all let out a scream just as the crushers came within touching distance.
…
“‘Farewell, Crusaders!’ cried the narrator as the giant metal plates crushed their little bodies, killing them instantly.”
They weren’t expecting to hear the mare’s voice. They also weren’t expecting to be released from the metal clamp onto the catwalk below them.
“Wait, we’re not dead?” asked Sweetie Belle.
“We’re alive?” reiterated Apple Bloom.
“I think I see a light over there,” Scootaloo said while pointing to an open doorway, “Come on!”
“Scoots, wait!” Apple Bloom called, though she was ignored.
They're already dead... mulled the mysterious mare.
---
Fluttershy softly pulled the door closed before rushing to hide below the desk.
“But Fluttershy just couldn’t do it,” the voice stated the obvious.
“Meep,” squeaked Fluttershy.