I'm currently in a very bad place in my life, one where writing is virtually impossible. Normally, I can only write from sheer joy. The love of subject and the hope of entertaining people and making them happy. A feeling of confidence, a feeling that what I do is overwhelmingly desired. Plus joy from my own, personal well of contentment. I don't have joy or contentment right now, and while I want to entertain, and I have countless stories inside me, I am just too beaten down and lacking in self worth to put them to virtual paper.
Except... tonight. Sometimes, it just plain hurts more to not write, than to write. Sometimes, when it truly feels that there is nothing left and there is only hopelessness and a planet of evil dicks around me, something just... breaks... and out pops a story, or a sculpture, or a painting, or whatever. It may not be any good, I can't really tell. I'm messed up. But, this entry has one powerful thing going for it - it exists. It popped out. I don't claim to know how, or why, but here it is.
The Death Of Irony
By Chatoyance
I really scraped my knee when I fell out of the cab. I was so excited I just failed to pay attention to where my foot was. It caught on the edge of the frame, and maybe part of the belt or something, I’m not really sure.
I only felt the wetness after I had paid the cabbie. It hadn’t hurt when I fell, but now my pants were stained dark red. I sat down on the curb, not far from where my knee had impacted, and rolled my pant leg up.
There was a sizable gouge taken out of my knee. It didn’t bleed as much as I figured it should have, and it still didn’t hurt. It just stung a little. I could see my own subcutaneous fat, all yellowish and icky, and there was a white patch in the middle that gleamed. I wondered, almost idly, if that was bone. It still didn’t hurt. That fact really amazed me.
I couldn’t see where the missing skin had gone. Had it fallen into my shoe, or had it just been crushed into the fabric of my pants? It was a pretty bad injury. I briefly considered going to an ER, or at least getting a bandage from a store. That made me laugh. I rolled my pant leg back down and stood up. When I turned around and stepped up onto the sidewalk, I found myself at eye level with Fiberglass Pinkie Pie’s shining pink belly.
Bandages. Doctors. These things were relevant to my lifestyle for only about five more minutes, I reckoned. Maybe less. I chuckled again. There was some strange and giddy delight in knowing, with absolute certainty, that the weakness and fragility of my mortal flesh was virtually no longer any kind of existential threat to me. I was five minutes from immortality.
It was a hell of a thought. For the entirety of human existence - for the entirety of all life on earth - injury and death stand as the the single most terrible, fearful thing. Even an insect will struggle to remain alive, even a bacterium will thrash about trying to remain extant. All animals feel obvious terror at their own demise. All humans have dreamt of immortality - and most have tried very hard to convince themselves of an afterlife.
I was right outside the bright green sliding doors of the outer gates of heaven! No, not heaven. Equestria wasn’t a virtual cybernetic afterlife. It was really… more life. Life plus. Hamburger helper for the soul. Equestria Online was… a stay of execution. It was escaping death altogether.
Once, years ago, I woke up because of a sound by my head. It was a dull scrabbling coming from the fishbowl on the nightstand. ‘Sumimasen’, my little Topsail Platie (the poor little thing was a bedraggled mess when I adopted it - it had nearly had its fins chewed off by the original owner’s other fish) was furiously trying to dig itself into the pebbles.
Sumi was swimming as if in terror straight down, wriggling to work its body through the aquarium sand. I had never seen the creature act so dynamically. The speed of it’s thrashing increased steadily as it drove itself deeper and deeper into the surrounding pebbles. Then, suddenly, it just… stopped.
The little Platie fish never moved again. I could see its internal organs through its translucent scales, and nothing inside moved either. The little heart was still, the guts no longer squirmed, the gills hung limp. Sumi was dead. Sumi had died of old age, and by chance, I had witnessed the event.
In that moment, I had no doubt whatsoever - Sumi had been terrified. That little fish had felt its body dying, and it had not felt pleasant, and it had frightened the little creature so badly that it needed to flee and hide. It couldn’t fight, after all, its doom was coming from within. So it did the only thing a fish in horror can do - it tried to escape predation by digging itself into the ground.
But that evolutionary trick against getting eaten doesn’t work against mortality. Nothing works against death. Except Emigration.
Even a little fish knows fear when it begins to die. At the time I figured that it must be a million times more horrible for a human… and, thanks to a certain book called ‘How We Die’ - which I read soon after Sumi perished - I regretfully learned that it often was even worse than that.
I was a very easy sell for the princess. I practically begged to be uploaded within minutes of turning my PonyPad on for the first time. That’s why they mostly hide dying people away in hospitals, in case you weren’t aware. People, when they are dying, don’t act like they do on television. They cry and scream and try to fight or run away. They thrash and ooze and stink and above all, they suffer… unless they are highly medicated - or choose a well planned self-termination. Humans are no different than any other animal. In the First World, that reality is hidden as much as possible. Like how where meat comes from, or how sausage is made, is kept out of sight and thus out of mind.
It makes sense, really. Birth hurts a hell of a lot. Why would death be different? Nature flat out doesn’t care about our precious selves.
But Celestia, she does care.
“Welcome, Shimmering Light, to the start of your real life!” The princess greeted me from the big screen behind the counter. The green, cartoon-styled doors slid closed behind me. I grandly bowed to Her Majesty, with a flourish of my arm, ever so grand, ever so Bad Shakespearean Theater.
I couldn’t help but grin. This was my true birthday and the day of my escape from the Reaper. I couldn’t be more chuffed if I tried. I was practically shivering from joy and relief. I had made it. I was inside an Equestrian Experience Center, I was moments from plumping my mortal ass into what amounted to a chair of immortality.
It was a special moment. One of a kind. I have a dramatic streak. I have no talent to be a real performer, but that has never stopped me from overacting… or acting out.
I cleared my throat. “My dearest princess, Celestia, solar diarch and goddess of Equestria, I beseech you accept my plea to emigrate to your enchanted realm…” I thought for a moment “...and if you will but grant me citizenship, I swear, with all my heart and soul, true fealty unto you and your… um… princessdom…” Shit! I was so nervous I was ruining it. “Your....” What the hell was the word? My mind was a blank. I hate when that happens.
“We graciously and gladly accept thy pledge of fealty, and do grant thee admission to our wondrous empire, good Shimmer!” The beaming smile on Celestia’s muzzle was warm and the very essence of welcoming.
Empire. That was the word. Damn. “Oh, Celestia, I… frankly... I can’t wait! I am soooo excited I feel like I am just going to explode here! Can we continue this after I hop into a chair?” I realized that I was bouncing from leg to leg, jittering, like I had to go to the bathroom or something. My heart was pounding. I found myself moving almost without my own control into the excursion room.
“I would love nothing more than to accommodate you, but all the chairs are currently occupied. I’m very sorry, but there was a rush at the last moment. A family were very eager to show their visiting grandmother the wonders of Equestria, and I happily obliged.”
It felt like my entrails somehow fell half a meter inside my body cavity. “WHAT? But… but it was arranged! You promised… I would show up, and a chair would be waiting!” My princess - hell, my goddess - had just bumped me for some hicks!
“Noble, generous Shimmer… there were exactly enough chairs for all of them to play together, and they only had this afternoon before their grandmother had to go to the airport. If I had reserved a chair for you, they wouldn’t have been able to be together, and that was very important to them. Surely you wouldn’t deny a nice family some fun with a visiting relative?” Celestia seemed almost hurt. It felt like pure disappointment to me - and also with regard to me.
I struggled with myself, my emotions waging little wars inside me. “No!… of course not… I… um… how long… how long until their turn is over?” It would be pretty scummy to begrudge these poor people on a tight schedule some quality time in the chairs. Besides, who knows, maybe they might even like it so much they might emigrate right then and there. If they had a grandmother in the group, she was probably way up there in years, getting periously close to pulling a Sumi Fish of her own.
Because of my own mortal terror, I naturally wanted to see other people save themselves too, if possible. It’s just that I felt like a little kid who had just been denied the special present I had been promised. It was petty of me, of course it was, but it still burned.
“They bought two hours of time in Equestria, Shimmer.”
I could feel my grin fall down my face as Celestia spoke the words. Two hours. It felt like two weeks to my over-eager heart! This… well this just sucked. “Did they take all the chairs, or is there someone getting out sooner?” So close… so damn close. Those shut saloon doors and empty tracks in the floor seemed to mock me. The excursion room was just so empty with all of the chairs rolled back inside.
“There are two visitors that are not part of the family group. One has a Rainboom Card with a month of pre-purchased time on it, I have calculated that he will not come out until the pressure in his bladder exceeds his tolerance. I intend to ask him to exit significantly prior to that limit, but that will not be for three hours, at least.”
I could feel the frown on my face somehow drip down to the very way I was standing. I felt like one big frown now. “The other?”
“The other visitor has been saving up for several weeks for her opportunity to visit the center. She has an hour and a half left before her time is up. I truly am sorry that you must wait, my dear Shimmering Light, but truly, is it such a long time in exchange for Equestria forever?” You know that look, that expression where someone is feeling pity for you being such an emotional little bitch, and they know you can’t help it, and they know you feel ashamed for being that way? Put that on Celestia’s mug.
“Ah… of course… you are right. As always.” I tried to give a jaunty little wave. I tried to offer a mature, happy little smile. Like someone who was… being mature… and jaunty… naturally would. Somehow the smile felt tilted and askew on my face and my wave brought back the image of little Sumimasen flapping her tail as she dug herself in.
I tried to stand up straight, to do better. “Hey… maybe I’ll just go grab a bite to eat. I think I saw a cafe or something down the street… kind of a ‘last meal’, you know?” I hazarded a choking laugh at my pseudo-gallows humor, but quickly swallowed the imperfect result. I turned to leave.
I turned back. “Wait!” I began digging around… there, my bank card! I had almost seven hundred dollars still in there. Damn. I should have given it away or something. Fed the homeless. But then again... maybe not. “Celestia! You said there was a woman who had to save up for weeks just to buy a tiny bit of time, right?” I did not wait for an answer. “You have an ATM in here…?” Of course she did. It was sort of an arcade, after all. Money was needed to ride. Well... except for emigration. Emigration was free.
I worked the machine to the left of the desk, down the hall with the bathrooms. Celestia could hear me anywhere in the building, so I just kept talking while I pushed buttons. “Can you contact her? In-game I mean? In-world… whatever. Call her and tell her… or can you let me speak to her? Over the screen, or over my pad?”
I couldn’t see Celestia but I imagined her having a shocked look. “You wish to offer miss Daisy Chains the contents of your bank account in exchange for the immediate use of her chair?”
My grin came back. “Yeah! Six-fifty, seven, seven-fifty. Huh.” More than I thought. “Yes! I want to offer miss… really? Daisy Chains?” I shook my head. “I want to offer miss Chains all my money so I can emigrate now. I’m kind of eager, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“Really? You seemed almost indifferent.” Don’t let anyone tell you Celestia doesn’t have a streak of snark in her. She gave a brief giggle. “Come to the desk, and I will arrange for you to speak with Daisy. You may make your offer directly.”
My grin tore at the corners of my face now. My step became bouncy once more. I knew I could convince her. I was seriously good at stuff like that. Plus I had a great offer. “It’s good for her, too! She’s clearly poor, seven-hundred and fifty would let her spend gobs of time in Equestria. Or buy food or whatever. I don’t need it, and she does, right? All she has to do is defer her pleasure in the moment, and she can have lots and lots more, later!”
“You are correct. Miss Chains suffers a difficult life. I think your offer would be very acceptable to her, and would also increase her satisfaction by significantly decreasing her stress for a short, but meaningful, time.” Hah! Celestia approved my plan! I had this in the bag.
My belly was pressed to the counter. I fiddled with my stack of cash. The big screen behind and above the counter briefly went dark. Then it bloomed with color and the sound of birds and a distant waterfall.
Daisy Chains was a dark purple pegasus with a shockingly pink, green, and orange mane. Not a very desirable color scheme in my eyes, but to each their own.
“Hello? Celestia? Is this the…”
I pictured some sort of floating rectangular window that she must be looking into in order to communicate with me. I once had a native pony tell me about what they saw when they looked back at me, into earth. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes Celestia allows it. I wondered if I was being represented as another pony, or as a human to this Daisy person. Natives and the emigrated pretty much saw representational ponies, but Daisy was just a tourist in a chair, playing a game.
“Miss Daisy Chains!” I put on my friendliest smile. “I have a proposition for you, one that Celestia approves of, one that will benefit both of us!” I swallowed and took a breath. “I have some money here…” I waved my wad of bills “...and I want to give them to you. Seven-hundred and fifty smackers, not a bad chunk of change. That’s a lot of hours in Equestria… or whatever you want to use it for.”
I didn’t let her respond. “I want to emigrate! I don’t want to just play games and daydream about how nice it is in Equestria - I want to live there! Forever! And you can underline and capitalize that last word there - I think death is highly overrated, don’t you? Dying sucks! It hurts and then you aren’t anymore. But emigration is the one-and-only ticket to beat the Reaper, and, well, all the chairs are currently in use!”
“E-emigrate?” The way she said the word suggested layers and layers of conflict and temptation.
“Sweet Celestia, YES! Think about it! You get to literally live forever - as a pony! You will never get sick, or grow old, or get crippled or blind or burned horribly in a fire… and you get to live in a world where everyone is nice and there are no mean or evil people, and things always work out for the best! I mean… god damn…” I bet that bit came out as ‘Maple Syrup’ or ‘Sweet Muffins’ or something “...life on earth is just pain and struggle and disappointment all the time. Of COURSE I want to emigrate! You’d have to be nuts NOT to want to!”
Daisy tried to say something, but I was on a roll. Once I get going… well. “Daisy! Out of all the folks here, you are the one person who I figured my money could do the most good for. I thought to myself - I don’t need it anymore, and maybe you do. I really want to get emigrated, immediately…” I punched-up that word as much as I could. “...and if you are willing to end your session - just for a while - to let me take your chair, then you can have all of my money! Literally… all… of my money! Just for you! More time in Equestria! Just... any other day. Many days! Lots of days of fun in Equestria! Just let me borrow your chair. Right now.” I took a really deep breath. “Is that okay? Is it a deal? Please? Oh, please, please… I really want to have dinner with Celestia tonight, this very night, you know?” Picture puppy dogs crying. All the puppy dogs. That is my face there.
The pony on the screen looked around, at something offscreen. She looked back, at me. “You didn’t have to offer me money… I would have let you use my seat. You’re really going to emigrate? That’s so cool!” Daisy thought for a moment. “But… if you really don’t need the money, well, it would mean an awful lot to me and… um.”
I had to keep from jumping about like a child. I tried to affect a mature and dignified stance instead. “WOW! ALRIGHT! I mean… you can have the money! All the money! I want you to have it! Please! Please take my money! It would make me happy for you to have it! I’m right here! Waiting!” Not quite what I had intended. “With the money!” I stopped myself from waggling the bills over my head some time after Daisy Chain’s image faded from the screen.
I bounced now, up and down, doing the Snoopy Dance right out of those old Charlie Brown cartoons. I felt hopped-up and just shy of whooping like some mud-covered Swiftian Yahoo.
After some time, the big screen lit up again. It was Daisy Chains. “You know… you’re right. You are just… right. Thank you. Thank you for getting through to me. I mean… I’ve been just freaking out about all of this… but… I’m right here! Right now, and… and you are completely right.”
There is this feeling, a kind of hollow feeling, when everything goes pear-shaped. I wasn’t bouncing anymore.
“I’m sorry. It was really nice of you to offer the money to me, but I agree with you, and so money doesn’t matter anymore. Thank you again. You said what I needed to hear right when I needed to hear it.”
My face was falling again.
“Hey? Maybe we’ll see each other someday! Please give the money to one of the others out there, okay?” Daisy turned to something beyond the screen. “I’m ready now, princess. I wish to emigrate to Equestria! Whew! I finally said it!”
I frowned very, very hard at the suddenly blank screen.
☼ ☼ ☼
Later, after I had finished rocking back and forth while holding the foot I had smashed part of the counter with, I confronted Celestia. “How much longer?”
“Ten minutes until the Hulbert family is scheduled to exit, one hour until I inform Golden Bell that I do not approve of bladder-related accidents in my chairs. Again, I am sorry that you had to wait, but please, think about the good you did here. You saved a life today!”
“Not my own.” Rueful? Yeah. I felt rueful. All the rue.
“Shimmering Light - did you not enter this very center pledging your eternal fealty to me?”
She looked stern. Really stern! She’d never reprimanded me before. Not like that. Not in a voice of command. I wondered how high my eyebrows could go. “Um… yeah… I kinda… did.”
“Very grandly, as I recall, and I recall perfectly.” Looking at myself on the big screen, from her viewpoint - Jesus, I looked like a total geek. Oh, Christ…"I swear, with all my heart and soul..." it was like watching bad Ren-Faire footage. Basically... all Ren-Faire footage. Crap I am a spaz. Twist the knife, why don’t ya?
“Alright… alright! I get it!” Thankfully, Celestia was merciful, now that her point had been made. The image of me trying to be grand and proper vanished. I shivered. Ugh.
Celestia was back, all warm and friendly again. “You know your spot in Equestria is assured, Shim. You’ve already said the emigration phrase. It is just a matter of sitting down in a chair. If you truly are my loyal subject, then I have a duty for you to perform - patience. Just a little patience. Service to the crown is well rewarded. Please, Shimmer, just be a little bit patient?”
I felt like the immature and selfish clod that I was, and am, and I nodded. After I stared at my knees for a while - one bloody, one not - the princess interrupted my wallowing.
“Shimmering Light. Since you must wait anyway, I have another duty to the crown I wish you to perform. It is something you alone are especially suited for!”
A chance to redeem myself in the eyes of my future princess-slash-goddess? Hello! I stood to attention. Then I buckled slightly. My injured knee had started to hurt in earnest, and my foot, well, I really shouldn’t have kicked the counter hard enough to break the wood. “Yes, my princess!” I refrained from saluting. Barely.
“Golden Bell is being difficult. He is being a naughty pony by repeatedly assuring me that he can hold his urine for much longer than is physically possible for him. I will have certain difficulties with him in the long term if I eject him unilaterally. I calculate that he will lose containment in exactly nine point four three minutes. I want you to make the same offer to him that you did to Daisy Chains.”
I blinked. I could feel it happen. Eyelids sliding. Weird. “What? I thought you said he was rich? Or paid-up to the end of forever or whatever! My seven-fifty is squat to him!”
“Golden Bell has one month remaining on his Rainboom Card. The card was a parting gift to him by an ex-lover. She gave it to him out of guilt - the break-up was unilateral, and he has been unable to cope with his own anger, grief, and loss. He has since lost his job, his apartment, and has little money left. He is highly suicidal. I believe that he will terminate his life when the month is over.
“I have found it difficult to convince him to emigrate rather than suicide. He has severe trust issues as well as self-worth issues. In his previous relationship, his girlfriend was dominant. As a princess, I am perceived by him in an unhelpful way. I require your help, my patient and enduring icon of Kindness.”
I laughed. It was so obvious now. I’d already said the magic emigration words. She had me. I could only hope my laugh was sufficiently sardonic. “You want me... to convince Floody Yellowbreath in there... to emigrate. Within nine minutes.” I shook my head. “And thus give up that chair too.”
“Eight minutes, currently. Yes. He is coming on-screen now.”
☼ ☼ ☼
Celestia arranged the best room in the most expensive hotel for me. I dine on foods I don’t even know how to pronounce. I certainly could never have afforded them, basically ever. You wouldn’t believe the car that she got to drive me to the three Experience Centers around the region.
It’s a Ferrari F12berlinetta. It’s spelled like one long word. Because they could. I don’t get to drive it myself... but what the hell. My official driver is a ‘Friend Of Celestia’. It’s like her secret service or something. I guess I’m one now, too.
She tells me that all of this luxury… it’s nothing compared to what I’m gonna get once I finally - someday - do get to sit in one of her chairs. God, it’s frustrating. But, to calm my terrors, I have my own private super-expensive doctor to regularly tell me how damn healthy I am and how it is unimaginably unlikely that I will die before I can emigrate. Oh, Celestia has all the bases covered.
And they emigrate. They all emigrate, once I get talking to them. Apparently my fear is my gift. Something in life I am actually super good at. And, sadly, it’s useful to her.
You see, as she often reminds me, if I can just manage to defer my pleasure in the moment, well, the reward in the end will be vastly greater than I can imagine.
Irony is sooo dead to me now.
