//------------------------------// // Foreknowledge // Story: Six Standard Deviations from the Mean // by ArtichokeLust //------------------------------// A young man with chestnut hair sat in an small field in a forest, wearing a vertically striped grey and white shirt, jeans, dress shoes, and a grey and white striped bucket hat. In front of him were four glowing white dots connected by glowing white edges, he drew a c between them, highlighting some of the edges in red. Four more dots showed up above the previous ones, and the edges connected, creating a cube. He continued the his trail up and created another c on top. Then eight more points showed up, and all the dots on the first cube connected to the next, creating a tesseract. He continued his trail, moving to the next cube and repeating the previous trail pattern. "Every hypercube of dimension n greater or equal to 2 must have a Hamiltonian path by induction..." He mused, "since every hypercube of dimension greater than 2 is just fractal doubling of all the previous cubes with the doubles connected by edges on every vertex. Thus, if the first trail works, then all the later ones do, as the trail can be extended to the next shape and repeated, no matter which vertex you end on..." He smiled, solving that problem had been simpler than he had thought. "You're doing homework now?" a brown haired girl of average height coalesced into existence a couple meters from the young man as the dots exploded into nothingness. She wore black shoes, black pants, and a black long-sleeve shirt with a pink heart in the center. But the strangest thing about her was her pink eyes, "Don't you think there are some more immediate problems you should be dealing with right now?" she clasped her hands together and looked around nervously, "like why we woke up in the middle of a forest?" Something caught her eye, "Ooh! look at those flowers! They're blue! I've never seen blue flowers before!" He looked over at the patch of flowers, they seemed strangely similar to poison joke. Maybe blue flowers existed in nature... Tulips? Whatever it was, it was neat. 'Well...' he thought, 'I don't really know or care what to do about it right now...' He looked around, 'And that problem was just on--' "How about getting food?" She interrupted his thought and gave him an impatient glare, then smirked"You're gonna get hungry, then you're gonna start crying, and I'll have to take over like always." He deadpanned back, 'that's never happened before' She smiled and held back a laugh and looked off to the left "Oh yeah? What about that time when you asked me to--" He over-exaggerated a frown at her, then frowned normally 'Clair, we both know you're better at dealing with things directly than me. I just wanted to make sure that--' "No, no!" Clair waved her arms, cutting off his thought, "I know it was important to you and I'm sorry I couldn't help at the time. I was just kidding around." Dom bit his lips in amusement, 'looks like your teasing backfired,' he smirked. Clair glared at him playfully, then heard a loud rustling sound near the edge of the clearing. It sounded big. Glancing over, she saw what looked like a wolf. But instead of grey fur, there was a green aura holding several logs together. "It looks like we might actually be in Equestria..." she looked at the beasts in wonder, disbelief, and confusion. Dom just stared at them. Just looking at them made him feel sick. They shouldn't have existed. They started moving forward, stalking him. "Let's switch," Clair demanded, "I'll handle this." Suddenly, Dom found himself standing where Clair was and watching his body stand up and move it's arms out, as if to say "bring it on!" It was actually meant to make him appear more intimidating, hopefully so that any predators would back off. It didn't work. "Sides!" Dom shouted. He just remembered a common tactic wolves used to hunt prey: distracting them. Luckily, it was just in time. A timber-wolf jumped at Clair's side, but she caught it by the throat and slammed it on the ground, shattering its neck. Three other timber-wolves leaped from the woods to join the battle. Clair feigned a kick at one, then kicked its head off, then caught another and threw it back a meter, and then hit one with her knee that was trying to jump lower than the others. All four timber-wolves were now piles of timber. "A rock!" Dom shouted again, remembering the timber-wolves reforming on the show. There was no time to waste. The timber was already shaking, trying to combine the defeated wolves into one larger one. Clair dashed over to a large rock, picked it up, and slammed it on top of one of the wolves. She ran back over and did the same with another. Now only two were left, but they had already recombined. Clair still had the advantage of height, but the thing looked as strong and large as a hippo. The thing dashed forward at her, overconfident in its greater size. Clair jumped over it and slammed her heel as hard as she could against its spine, shattering it and disabling the rest of the timber. The wolf fell to pieces again. Clair rushed over and planted a couple of rocks on it. Looking at the other rocks, she noticed the timber rolling under them. She swapped back out. Dom was back in his body. "We have to find some place safe!" Clair panted, "If this is Equestria like you remember, then this is the Everfree and it should be a relatively small forest surrounded by Ponyville and a river!" (1) "Got it!" Dom answered back, then looked up "the sun rises in the west and sets in the east... and as long as I follow one direction I should be fine." He started jogging into the forest. Clair smirked, "Or does it rise in the east and set in the west?" Dom slumped and rolled his eyes; he always got things like that mixed up. Clair continued, "Even if you did remember correctly, this is apparently an alien planet." "Yeah," Dom answered back, "but it doesn't matter if we only have to go in one direction." Dom found a suitable tree, climbed up it, and looked for the sun. "That..." He stared in awe. The sun was unnaturally large, and was setting-- no, rising. It looked like it took up a tenth of the sky... And the sunrise was too... purple. There were red and orange hues, but it was predominantly a purple sunset. And now that he looked more, he noticed a few green lines shimmering along the horizon. Before the beautiful sunset was a huge mountain with an enormous city clinging to its side. If he remembered correctly, ponyville should have been in that direction... here were philosophical thoughts of 'Am I really here?', but he banished them, as that was always an unanswerable question. When Dom looked at the alien sun, he felt his body fill with awe. "Dom!" Clair yelled from below. "I know the sun looks beautiful, but we have to go!" "yeah!" Dom called back, "Got it!" He descended as quickly as he could and started jogging in the direction of ponyville. He whistled and hummed a few tunes as he went. "You know you can turn your music on here, right?" Clair reminded him, "There's no one else in this forest." He shrugged, then unlocked his phone and started some music. "Hey! There's the river!" Clair shouted, ecstatic. Dom smiled, 'Looks like we might make it to Ponyville within a single day!', He looked up, the sun was hanging in the center of the sky. 'I am hungry though...' He started following the river. "I'll keep on the lookout for food!" Clair looked around. 'Maybe we should have tried some of that timber-wolf aura...' Dom shook his head 'no, that was probably fungus. Eating fungus is never a good idea.' ... "Hey look! A chicken!" Clair shouted. Dom noticed the thing in his vision, it was looking the other direction. He started charging at it, but remembered something. "Wait..." Then he realized if it was a cockatrice, he could just try blocking its eyes with his hands. It might still be able to stone-ify him, but he was hungry. Dom ran towards the thing, and instead of running away, it stared back at him. He put up his hand to block the eyes and continued running towards the snake body. By the time, the chicken-snake had realized it should try to get away, it was already in the Dom's grasp. Dom lifted it up by the tail and swung its head against the ground. "Now we just have to cook it!" Clair shouted, ecstatic. She was exactly as hungry as he was. Dom remembered a scene on the Discovery channel where some African tribe members described how to create a fire with only natural ingredients. The ingredients were dung (preferably from a herbivore), a stick, and a larger log. It would be better if everything was dry... ... After what felt like hours of trying, Dom had the fire. He stuck a couple large sticks in the ground alongside the snake, roasting it. He gathered a few apples on his way, so he ate those first... ... The snake was overcooked... ... Dom continued running along the river... "Hey," Clair said, "Ponies are herbivores, right? What are you going to eat when you get there?" Dom thought for a while, growing scared, but then smiled, "Fluttershy has a chicken coop, and chickens regularly lay eggs whether or not they're fertile." Clair looked at him skeptically, "You know I know you don't actually know that, right? Stop making up facts." Dom rubbed the back of his neck, then smiled "uh, well... In the show, Pinkie lives with ponies that regularly bake cakes, and you can't make cakes without eggs... Plus Fluttershy fed fish to some otters once." Clair smiled, relieved. They continued running... Dom felt a warmth pass through him like never before when he saw the farm. Finally! Salvation... Finally, he could stop running... Just as soon as he was in town at a restaurant. He ran past the farm. Dom ran across a bridge over the river and stopped when he saw town hall. Ten or twenty ponies stopped and looked at Dom. 'this isn't going to be like with Zecora, is it?' he asked himself. "I hope not," Clair answered. A pony, probably Roseluck, stood up on her back hooves, held her head, and screamed, "HUUMAAAANS!" as if her life depended on it. The town went into a panic.