CRASH! The record player and its disc shattered beneath Rainbow Dash.
"Ooof!" the stallion in her grasp winced as he was shoved up against the concrete wall. Whump! "For the love of Celestia, d-don't hurt me!" he instantly squealed, clencing his eyes shut beneath rattling glasses. "I have two bit bags full of coins inside the stagecoach along with a set of tools, four bags of oats, and an issue of Flanks Quarterly! You can have it! You can have it all!"
"Who are you?!" Rainbow Dash snarled in his face. "What is all of these contraptions?! What were you doing to our friend Applejack?!"
"Rainbow!" Stu hissed, floating up and resting a hoof on her shoulder. "You can't just ask him a gazillion questions all at once—"
"Butt out, Stu!" Rainbow spat aside. "I've got this!"
"Hey!" Stu frowned. "I want to save Applejack as much as you do!"
"Believe me..." Rainbow glared aside, eyes hard as ruby daggers. "Nopony wants to save Applejack as much as me!"
"Then stop strangling the dude!" Stu sputtered. "Let him speak!"
Fuming... fuming some more... Rainbow Dash lowered the trembling stallion with a slump. She glared into his face, nevertheless. "Talk."
"I-I-I was j-just following the directions g-given to me!" the earth pony said.
"Given by who?"
"B-b-by Frederick Flim and Felix Flam, of c-course!"
"Who the buck are they?!"
He gulped. "Why, the sons of Serenity Shindig!" He smiled awkwardly. "Everypony knows that!"
"If knew it..." Rainbow slammed her hooves down in front of the stallion. "...why would I be asking you questions in the first place?!"
"Guhhhh!" The stallion flinched away from her, glasses rattling. "Look... the Flim-Flam brothers have worked for this farm all their lives! In the last five years, after their father died, they went abroad, flexing their entrepreneurial skills all across Equestria! But that wasn't all that th-they did! They were also up-and-coming archaeologists." He gulped. "That's how I met them! We were both working at an excavation south of Griffon Mount!"
Stu leaned forward. "And you are...?"
"Silver Shill, at your service!" The stallion reached forward to shake Stu's hoof with a nervous smile. "Best salespony this side of the Atlantrot! You have a wagon with half its wheels misssing, I bet you I could sell it to a manticore in less than a day—!"
Rainbow batted Silver Shill's hoof away. "But none of that explains what all of this—" She pointed dramatically at the electrified metal array flanked by gurney'd bodies. "—is about! Quit stalling and talk! For real!"
"Uhhhh..." Silver Shill squirmed where he stood. "It's not entirely easy to explain."
Rainbow seethed into his face. "Try me..."
Silver bit his lip. Adjusting his glasses, he stammered, "These figures—along with Frederick Flim, Felix Flam and your esteemed Applejack, it would seem—are all honoroed guests of Serenity Shindig. She has invited each of these citizens from all across Equestria, having heard of their agricultural and culinary exploits, and now they are partaking in the most magical and fabulous meeting ever concocted by mortal kind! Or, at least... eheheh... that's what Flim and Flam wrote for me to say on the cue card."
"A magical and... fabulous meeting?!" Stu stammered.
"Open your eyes, dipstain!" Rainbow's voice cracked as she gestured towards the gurneys. "They're all drugged out of their skulls!"
"Oh no no no no no no! It may appear like that on the outside! But, as a matter of fact..." Silver Shill smiled nervously. "They're... uh... they're all in one place! Communing on a separate plane, to be precise!"
"Separate plane?" Stu Leaves' muzzle contorted with confusion and disgust.
Rainbow sneered. "What kind of joke are you trying to pull here?"
"No j-joke! Honest!" Silver pointed at the machine. "In the heart of that machine lies Serenity Shindig herself! She's acting as the heart of the sphere!"
"Sphere...?"
"Of collective consciousness! You see, the cider needs a focus for its enchantment, or else the joining subjects simply get lost in errant thought and spread apart across the fabric of leylines."
"Wait—"
"Frederick and Felix there are acting as buffers, maintaining cohesion of the leylines between the subjects and Shindig herself."
"—hold on—"
"And those dark crystals—the ones that are glowing all around the beds? Heh, I'm in charge of maintenance for them. I show up everyday to check on the mana-batteries. You see, they stabilize the physical bodies of the subjects and keep them in healthy equilibrium just like the day that they first arrived—"
"Just... quiet for one second!" Rainbow Dash's brow furrowed. "How'd everypony end up... guhh... bound to this 'enchantment' to begin with?"
"Why..." Silver's eyes blinked from within their enormous lenses. "They drank cider from the Alicorn Chalice, of course..."