//------------------------------// // Chapter 7.5: I'm just like you and you're just like me [3 of 6] // Story: Xenophilia: Advanced // by SpinelStride //------------------------------// Xenophoolia - A trilogy in six parts. Part 1 of 6 - “If you follow me we'll put our differences aside.” Part 2 of 6 - “But I look a little closer and it starts to feel familiar too.” Part 3 of 6 - “I'm just like you and you're just like me.” (YOU ARE HERE) Part 4 of 6 -“Everything is turned around, this crazy world is upside-down.” Part 5 of 6 - “Helped me to see all the possibilities.” Part 6 of 6 - “I couldn't see what was right there in front of me.” The Lost Chapter (7.5) I dreamed. I’ve no idea if I used to dream so vividly or frequently as I did since coming to Equestria; much of my ‘lost time’ is a muddle. Having a magical pony personally charged with watching over dreams seems a likely explanation for the crisp, realistic intensity of my unconscious visions. Certainly I could not have remembered every line and scene from ‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow’ on my own, but I watched the entire movie on my college dorm’s community couch with Luna alongside me. She left when it was over. She had other duties she had to attend to. She didn’t have to tell me; we were in a dream. I just knew. I don’t think she intended for me to know some of those duties, but an inability to fear isolated me from what I suspect would otherwise have been some serious mental consequences. I went straight into another dream when that one ended. Luna had left, so I did not think it was her doing. This was a very different sort of dream. For one thing, I didn’t seem to be in control of my own actions. For another, it had a very different tenor. I couldn’t feel it, but again with that dream-certainty I knew it as clearly as if someone had gone through and written ‘powerful and capricious, not malevolent’ on the scenery. Then I saw that someone had written ‘powerful and capricious, not malevolent’ on the side of a building, with a chalk picture of a sort of snake-like thing with mismatched limbs underneath it. The picture winked at me. Then it climbed off the wall and waved at me. I could see it, but not return the wave. It fell in alongside me. Then it reached out and patted me on the head. Something crinkled and clung to my scalp. “There,” the thing said. “Wouldn’t want to vaporize your brain by accident this time. A little tinfoil hat is just the thing for the fashion-conscious human these days anyhow.” It waggled its fingers, and I heard myself talking. “Golly gee, Mister Discord, that sure is swell of you! I bet there’s a bunch of other Guses who wish their Discords had been so thoughtful as to spare my poor little head!” It laughed. “A very paragon of consideration, I am,” it, apparently Discord, agreed. “Fluttershy has been a terrible influence on me, I fear. But, in any case! Your timing is badly off for some of the more interesting experiments that I want to run, so I’m simply tweaking things a bit.” It moved its fingers again, like moving a puppet, and my mouth reacted the same way. “Shucks, Mister Discord, I’m awful sorry! I didn’t mean to mess up like that! What are we gonna experiment on tonight?” The chalk-outline entity laughed again. It seemed to be prone to that. “Why, we’re going to find out just what sort of reaction those amusingly alien brains of yours have to fluctuations in the fabric of space and destiny themselves!” Space and destiny instead of space and time had certain implications about the structure of Equestria’s universe, but I couldn’t think of any way to meaningfully test them. In any case, I was talking again. “Wowzers! And that’s why you were so kind and generous and loyal and friendly and optimistic and honest as to protect my messed-up head? You’re swell, Discord!” It buffed a claw against the hollow space where its chest would be. “Of course I am! So kind of you to appreciate me. Now! We have a dream for you to enjoy, as much as that’s possible, and then we’ll get things really rolling!” It moved a claw, and my hand lifted; there was an eraser in my grip, and it guided my arm through erasing the chalk outline from the air. A raspy voice called out to me. “Hey, Gus! Whatcha doing?” Two strong, blue legs hugged around my waist, and something nuzzled into my spine from behind. I still had no control over my actions. Overhead, I could see pegasi leaping down from the clouds, while several unicorns were twitching their heads in time with the otherwise now-undirected movement of those same clouds. Almost every pony in sight was moving; some were abandoning their shops and taking up other positions, while others were sliding into place behind newly-open counters. “Just taking care of a little cleanup, Dashie,” I said. “Aww, that’s my Gus!” she said happily. “Town handyman, always keeping everything in tip-top shape. Hey, you wanna… Okay, okay, I know, mister too-cool-for-everything never ‘wants.’ You got time to come watch me do some stunt practice?” “Sure, Dash,” I agreed. “Who knows? Maybe this’ll be the time you get me to jump and cheer.” She snickered against my back, still hugging me. “You do that anyhow. This’ll be the time I get you to really mean it. I’m gonna get through to you sooner or later!” She released the hug and trotted around to grin up into my face. “You’re amazing, you know that? Got that weird freaky head-thing of yours going on and you still recognize awesome when you see it.” She went up on her hind legs and I found myself bending forward. Her tongue was broad and strong, and she rubbed it along my teeth as we kissed. The shape of her mouth was different than mine, but not so troublesome as I had considered when I saw Lero and Dash sharing a moment. Then she broke the kiss and we went to her stunt practice. What happened after that was, in a manner of speaking, unscientific. I awoke in Twilight’s library, not in the house the ponies had given me. I was sitting in a chair in a circle of moonlight, and a warm, winged shape was draped across my lap. This was in keeping with where we had ended up in the dream, but not with where I knew I had fallen asleep. I had no further sensation of being in a dream now, neither Luna’s inexplicable certainties nor Discord’s instability. I had simply relocated in my sleep and ended up with Rainbow Dash in my lap somehow. Perhaps Twilight Sparkle had been linked to the dream and teleported me. Perhaps Discord had done something to the fabric of space and destiny. The moonlight through the window changed its angle and began to play against a wall. It was clearly magic, but I felt no impending arrival of a numerical rush, and nothing vanished around me into a haze of probabilities. I reached up and felt tinfoil crinkle under my fingers when I touched my head. Discord’s protection was still in place, then. Cartoonish pictures took shape in the moonlight; I recognized myself, in silent black and white, being found in a dangerous jungle by a pegasus with worry-lines all around her. The exaggerated emotional cues were very useful for me. An ambulance bounced in, being pulled in large hops by a very recognizable Pinkie Pie, and the cartoon-me was loaded in. One scene-change later, and two ponies in medical gear were making various non-alphanumeric symbols at each other over my prostrate form. Princess Celestia walked in. She was highly detailed, not stylized as everything else in the show was, and her fluid grace was captured perfectly. She lowered her head to cartoon-me’s temple and a bright light shone. Then my cartoon representation jumped from the table and hugged in her overt gratitude. Another scene change, and my avatar was strolling around a bouncing-to-the-music Ponyville, wearing a carpenter’s toolbelt and leading the ponies in a dance, though I didn’t see how Thriller fit the setting. The scene darkened, and a robin’s-egg-blue unicorn mare in a wizard hat and cape entered the scene, twirling a long black moustache and wearing an enormous necklace that dragged on the ground. Another unicorn, Twilight Sparkle by the mark on her flank, came out. The two of them exchanged word bubbles, tossing small cloudy shapes full of the words ‘blah blah blah’ at each other, then began firing their horns instead. Twilight was getting the worst of the exchange until my cartoon figure jumped in, suddenly wearing full plate armor and carrying a sword and a spool of wire. He pulled a loop of wire around the villainous unicorn’s horn, tied the other end to his sword, and jammed the sword into the ground, shorting out the interloper’s magic. Several ponies rushed forward with small hearts wafting up from their heads - one streaky pegasus immediately identifiable as Rainbow Dash, a bandaged Twilight Sparkle, and one pony I recognized as the hostile one from the market, Honeydew. The three of them picked up my cartoon self and carried him bodily off to Twilight’s distinctive tree-library. A profusion of hearts emanating out from that structure made the ending to the story quite clear. Rainbow Dash yawned in my lap, and the moonlight ceased its display, returning to a bright spot on the floor. She stretched, catlike, and her feathers brushed across my face. They were very soft. “Nnnnnnghaaaaah…” she yawned out, then added sleepily, “Dozing off in your lap’s great for a nap, Gus, but I gotta get into bed or I’ll be all kinks tomorrow.” She snickered. “ And that’s Honeydew’s job. Carry me!” I could tell what was going on, and saw no particular benefit to opposing it. If Discord had chosen to place me into some sort of altered timeline, that was not much more unbelievable than waking in a land of talking magical ponies in the first place. Or I could be going mad, and losing track of my own insane mind’s internal consistency. If all else failed, that hypothesis would be difficult to disprove. I carried the pastel-colored pegasus athlete to our shared bed. I awoke alone in bed, with the sound of voices coming from the library’s kitchen. I was familiar with all three - Rainbow Dash’s gravelly voice, Twilight Sparkle’s higher pitch, and Honeydew’s higher still. Honeydew sounded very different when she wasn’t jeering. I got up, found and donned my clothes, and went downstairs to join them. “Gus!” they greeted me together, and left the table to meet me with a group hug. “Didja get a good sleep after we got to bed?” Rainbow Dash inquired. I nodded. Honeydew gestured at the table. “We’ve got everything all set out for breakfast, snugglemonkey!” she said cheerfully. “I kept one of my best melons of the whole crop this year, and today seems like the perfect day to take it out.” Twilight Sparkle smiled at me. “I don’t know what it is, but today just feels like a good day.” She took in a deep breath Life in Ponyville shimmers! Life in Ponyville shines! I held up a finger. Twilight blinked at me. I hadn’t felt a thing, this time, no numbers or music. Apparently Discord’s tinfoil hat was doing its job. “Breakfast first, please,” I said. “Oh! Right,” she said, with a pinkness to her cheeks, and settled back into her seat. Honeydew giggled. “You must be hungry, Gus. You’re always the first to jump into songs when they start.” Dash nodded. “Yeah!” She grinned up at me. “One of your best qualities. I mean, you’re always too cool for Equestria, nothing ever bugs you, but then you sing and we all know just what’s hiding under that flat face and stiff ears of yours.” She landed herself back at the table as well. Honeydew nodded, and leaned in to nuzzle at me. “Yeah! Not like that creepy new guy.” “Honeydew!” Twilight scolded. “Lero can’t help not being able to hear the music. He’s not being creepy, he’s handicapped. You should be nice to him.” Twilight looked up at me apologetically. “I know it doesn’t seem like a handicap to you, Gus, but not being able to join in with everypony in a musical number makes him seem… well, alien, in a way you don’t.” “I’m sorry, Twilight, but he’s creepy,” said Honeydew firmly. “I can stand him not knowing how society works, since we went through all that when Gus arrived, but standing and gawking when everypony around is singing along? He could at least try.” “I’m… kinda on the fence,” Rainbow Dash added. “On the one hoof, he seems like a nice enough guy. Not, y’know, cool like Gus, but nice enough. But Honeydew’s kinda got a point, Twi. I mean, if Gus hadn’t sung that song while he was taking down Trixie, I dunno if I’d’ve ever realized what you were seeing in him. Loyalty and kindness like that doesn’t come along every day.” Twilight blushed again. “A scholar from another world? How could I resist?” Honeydew laughed and nudged a plate of melon slices toward me. I sat. “I wasn’t all that convinced until the duel either,” she said. “Sure, you two had been swanning around town, but I’ve always been a conservative kind of pony. If you heard the music, you couldn’t be that bad, but you have to admit you look really funny compared to a pony.” She then sighed and smiled. “But then Trixie came in and challenged Twilight.” She winked at Twilight. “Beat her all over town square, too.” Twilight hmphed and stuck out her tongue. “She was cheating.” “Yeah, well, cheating or not, she did,” Rainbow Dash chimed in. “And then Gus comes running in!” She waved her hooves for emphasis. “Big ungainly weird-looking Gus, waving around that big monkey wrench, while everypony is still gasping at the sight of Twilight shielding for her life, and you start singing to her about how much you love her, while you smacked Trixie’s spells away with nothing but an iron wrench!” The three mares sighed together happily, then began to sing our song. I wasn’t hearing any music but their voices, nor seeing waveforms take shape, but I sang along anyhow. Every other song had come to me on its own, but I knew the words to this one. Either my madness was getting less inventive, or Discord transcended dimensions. A blue apple agreed with that second suggestion. I hadn’t seen that one before. It had some other ideas attached, too. Someone knocked at the door. I got up to answer. Lero was standing there. His face looked gray. One hand was raised to knock at the door; the other was clutching the blue feather woven into his hair so hard his knuckles had gone white. “Gus?” he said. “I… I think I need to talk to you.” The ponies gave Lero and me a large amount of extra space as we walked. He was tense, twitching at infrequent intervals. That might have been why the ponies were shying away; being able to identify an overstressed individual and avoid them would be a survival trait. Then again, these ponies were sentient beings, so it could have been rumors spreading. “I think something’s wrong with me, Gus,” Lero said, rapidly looking around. “I thought I was getting a handle on this whole place, but I’m just falling apart today. I think I might be cracking up.” “I’m familiar with that self-analysis,” I told him. “It’s very difficult to disprove the hypothesis, but there’s very little benefit to operating under that assumption, normally. The most efficient response is to deal with the world as you perceive it.” “That’s just the problem,” Lero said, then bit his lip, looking at an aqua pony who I recognized from his herd. Lyra was her name, but she was glaring at Lero angrily enough that even I could identify the look at first glance. She was behind a stall in the market with a well-scuffed padded mat behind her, and a sign reading “SELF DEFENSE LESSONS 5 BITS.” “Oh, look, the freaks are here,” she snapped loudly. “Why don’t you two just move along?” Her horn began to glow, and I felt a slight pressure on the side of my head, but apparently Discord’s tinfoil hat was still isolating me from the effects of magical exposure. Lero swallowed and tugged on my arm. I took that as a cue to hasten my pace with him. When we got past the market, Lero stopped to lean against a building, running the back of his free hand over his forehead. “You see? That… that wasn’t right. Or maybe it was. I can’t tell. Everything’s gone wrong, or it hasn’t.” His other hand was still gripping the blue feather in his hair, but he seemed otherwise unaware of the token. “At least I know who she is.” “What do you mean by that?” I asked. He exhaled loudly. “Is it just me? I think almost all the ponies I thought I knew… aren’t. Or… aren’t who I thought they were. That was Lyra Heartstrings, but… which is it? Does she hate humans, like just then? She hates you because she thinks you’re some awful perversion of her philosophy, being emotionless and everything? Or is she one of… well, one of my mares? Gah, that sounds bizarre, doesn’t it?” He held up his free hand. “No, no, sorry, I know, you have your herd, and if I stay here the rest of my life, maybe I’ll decide to… to…” Then he swallowed and doubled over, clutching at his head. “Arrrgh!” “Do you need medical attention?” I asked. I had a blue apple bouncing along in my thoughts that said he didn’t. “No, I just… this is so weird, Gus.” He stood up and rubbed his face again. “... I had a dream last night,” he admitted. “About… Rainbow Dash.” He shook his head and shuddered. “A very vivid dream. We were… I don’t even want to think about it… except I think I do… and all the whole time, she kept urging me to remember her. And I did, and…” I waited to let him talk. It may have been theraputic, or it may have just let me get more information about what was going on. Either way, it was going to work out. He shook his head sharply. “But she’s your wife, isn’t she? The animal caretaker? How could I remember any of that? Nothing’s making any sense! At least I still know her name. Half the ponies I talked to think I’ve forgotten who they are. Applejack’s sister looked the same, but she told me her name is Diamond Tiara and she wasn’t wearing her bow. Derpy’s the mayor but her name’s Cheerilee. Mister Cake is selling sofas under the name Time Turner, and Time Turner said his name was ‘Valeyard,’ and all the pegasi were down on the ground while unicorns were moving clouds around with their magic. What’s happening? The only ones who aren’t crazy are the ones with the Elements!” That blue apple was definitely impatient for me to tell Lero what was going on. So I obliged. “Let’s get back to… your place. This may take some time.” It didn’t take as long as I’d estimated. I’d barely begun to lay out my theory when Lero screamed vigorously, clutched his head, and collapsed on the couch. I felt a pressure against the side of my head again, and I observed a visual distortion around him, like a ripple in the air without any particular origin. His color improved within a span of a few seconds, and he relaxed; his hand gripping the blue feather was still holding it tight, but no longer in a white-knuckled deathgrip. A door opened on the far wall, which was notable for its lack of a door. Lero walked in, identical to the one on the couch save for the characteristics of being upright, conscious, and not suffering from visible mental confusion. Discord walked in right behind him. Lero blinked at me, and a smile began to form on his face, then looked at his unconscious doppelganger and the smile faded. “Err… Hello?” he said. “Hello, Lero,” I said. “Since you didn’t know me when we first met, I assume Discord is doing something with alternate universes rather than time-travel.” “What?” he said. Discord rang a bell. “We have a winner! Gus, you make the most difficult situation in all of Equestria, really you do. I can’t get you in on the fun without going all Scanners on your head, and you spoil the big reveal right off the bat.” “I’d say I’m sorry if I could,” I said. “Wait, slow down, please,” Lero asked, looking between me and Discord. “Do you two know each other? Have you done this before? Is that why you’re so calm? And what happened to… me, over there?” “Oh, do go ahead, Gus,” Discord said. “You really should admit everything to Lero. At least one of him.” And held up a glass of water, dropped a pill in it, and offered it to me. I declined. “I’m calm because I have a brain injury,” I explained to Lero. “I don’t feel emotions.” I reached up to touch the tinfoil on my head by way of explanation. “Discord put this on me to isolate me from the effects of whatever he’s currently doing. To the best of my knowledge, he’s caused every pony in this town to exchange portions of their identities, as well as you and me. I have shown negative effects from being subjected to magical influences, so including me would likely have harmed me, which Discord is avoiding doing.” “Well of course I am,” Discord huffed. “The whole ambiguity gets wiped out if I simply explode your head. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twelve times, shame on you still but I do feel a trifle to blame. Besides, the expression on Twilight Sparkle’s face afterward is perfectly priceless.” I declined to analyse Discord’s statements for logical implications. I could provide no frame of reference for his remarks, other than his suggestion of having accidentally killed several other Gus Wainwrights in other timelines, and that he had some foreknowledge of events to happen involving Twilight Sparkle. Who, at least for the moment, had her trust placed in me to be her husband. Artificial sentiment on her part or not, it would have been disloyal to do anything that might end up with her widowed after all, such as annoying this extremely powerful being for more details. “In this reality, you are the husband of Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle, and Lyra Heartstrings,” I resumed. “The current identity-exchange effect appears to be magical in nature, or else I would not be damaged by it. Here, the local Lero Michaelides is incompletely under the spell, and may have successfully broken himself free when I began to explain the situation to him. This is likely due to the difference in the physical structure of human brains from pony brains.” “How so?” Lero asked, looking at his unconscious self again. “Pony minds operate on a magical basis,” I explained. “Ours do not.” “I know that,” Lero interrupted. “We had a magic-devouring plague at one point, and I was immune, but all the ponies were acting like animals while they had it.” He shuddered. “That makes sense,” I agreed. “However, here, electrochemical reactions do not take place.” I pointed toward the lab. “Passing current through pure water should cause it to form hydrogen and oxygen. No such reaction occurred. Since human brains rely on electrochemical activity to function, something else has to be operating.” “Electrochemi… But that doesn’t make any sense!” Lero objected. “I’ve seen…” He trailed off, then nodded. “Yeah, I have. Twilight’s done some experiments that had chemicals and electricity involved, anyway.” “Not to be in too much of a rush, but I do have a schedule to keep,” Discord commented. “Different universes, Lero. Different effects. Different you. And, of course, our little one-off guest star here.” “In this universe, human brains appear to work by a mutual observer effect between the electrical field of the brain and the chemical interactions of the brain,” I resumed. “A magical attempt to create an ongoing influence to a human brain therefore has to affect both components. The current effect is not correctly adapted to ‘my’ Lero’s brain, so he is experiencing partial integration into the mass delusion, and partial rejection.” Lero inhaled, then exhaled. “Okay. I… guess that makes sense. And you’re just going along with it?” I nodded. “It’ll all work out.” “How can you be so sure?” Lero asked. “There’s… something like this happening in my universe too, but it ‘s not going so well. What did Twilight do differently here?” “I don’t know what involvement Twilight Sparkle had,” I told Lero, honestly. “As far as I’m aware, Discord is responsible for the current situation.” Lero turned sharply. Discord pre-empted him. “Oh, calm down, you silly little angry monkey. Yes, yes, I set this one up myself - didn’t you figure it out, Gus? The Elements have protective spells on them, which protected their Bearers, so I could only do some little bits of editing around the edges for them.” He put a bear arm around my shoulders. “Take a lesson from Gus here, Lero! ‘It’s all going to work out for the best.’” He laughed. “Or, at least, so he insists. Poor little plaything, trying to pit his will against the universe and define his own destiny. Only I have that luxury.” “It’s going to work out,” I told him. A pink balloon smiled inside my head. “You see?” Discord chortled. “Such a wonderfully unique agent of chaos he is, while thinking he’s being so logical all the time! Upending pony beliefs, leaving little Lyra so very disturbed by his mere presence, stubbornly insisting that he can pick the future, in a world where little fillies and colts have their entire destinies laid out for them before they even hit puberty.” “Insanity is still one of my primary working hypotheses,” I reminded the amalgamated entity. “I might well be hallucinating everything.” “What? How can you even live if you think nothing around you is real?” demanded Lero. I looked to him for emphasis. “Whether it’s real or not doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s the environment I am in, and the only rational course of action is to move forward to the best of my ability within that environment. If I had a way to restore the history in this universe that I’m familiar with, even though the ponies now remember it all differently, I would. Since I do not, the only logical thing to do is function in this society until an opportunity presents itself to repair it or bring myself into alignment with it.” “How can you keep going when you’re the only one who remembers what really happened?” asked Lero. “Isn’t it much more likely that you’re just going mad?” I pointed to the blue feather in Lero’s hair, then to the one that my Lero was gripping so hard. “Find something to hold onto, believe it until it becomes an unassailable fact, and don’t let go,” I said. Lero blinked at me, then looked down. His hand reached up to touch his feather, then jerked away as though it had given him an electric shock. His eyes widened and he touched it again. “Where did this come from?” he said quietly. Discord laughed, and snapped his fingers. There was a bright flash of light. I saw my Lero vanishing from the couch, and a force lifted me, moving me to the chair I had been in when I dreamed with Princess Luna about Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I felt the tinfoil vanishing from my head, and then… "That is a very dangerous path," Luna told me quietly. The movie was just starting. Within the dream, I had the unusual sensation of having been dreaming just then, but I had no idea what it was about. "It's all going to work out in the end," I said. "How?" Luna asked. "How do you know?" "Just a hunch," I said.