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// Dr. Thyme Linseed, Newfoal GP 
// Story: The Poly Little Pony 
// by Chatoyance 
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I've just recently been to the doctor, a couple of doctors, actually, as I continue to deal with the issues of changing over to Obamacare combined with changing to a new doctor entirely, combined with the issue of my destroyed voice. In truth, I have been to a LOT of doctors over my life. I've had a complicated life.

I studied to be a doctor, in college, until one day I realized that this was not the proper direction for me. My memory has always been flaky and poor, and above all else, I cannot stand gore or pain or suffering or dead things... and these are all things doctors have to face. I don't have the personality for medicine, no matter how much I might learn. So, I went artist.

That said, medicine is still there, in some part of me, and physicians occupy some portion of my identity-space.






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T H E       C O N V E R S I O N       B U R E A U :
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Dr. Thyme Linseed, Newfoal GP


By Chatoyance




"How you say your name, doc?"

Mr. Johnson had been out of the Bureau only a month. He had come with his daughter, a tangerine filly with her deep teal mane done in dreadlocks and ribbons. There must be a unicorn in the family, for that kind of work, but it was not Mr. Johnson. Johnson was a surprisingly portly earthpony.

"Lin...seed? Like it's spelled?" Thyme motioned with a hoof for Mr. Johnson to stand on the low examination platform that took the place of the exam table used in human clinics. Johnson needed a little help getting onto the platform because of his bulk. He seemed tired, which was very unusual, even unheard of, for an earthpony. Earthponies were nearly tireless.

"No, I mean your first name. Thigh-um? Tie-mee? Thim... mee?"

The unicorn doctor blinked. "Thyme... TIME... the herb?" Johnson's eyes remained round and empty. "There... was an herb, once. A plant. Before the Collapse. It was one of the first medical herbs. Infusions of it were both antibacterial and antifungal. It was used for binding wounds."

Johnson nodded, then looked away. "So, not your real name then?" Johnson shuffled his large hooves on the platform. He wasn't exactly fat... he was bloated, with a great deal of water retention.

"It is my real name, Mr. Johnson. I chose it when I went pony. About a year ago now. What seems to be the problem?"

Johnson's daughter spoke, annoyed, excited and having too much fun all at the same time. "HE CAN'T POOOOOOOO!" The filly's grin was sunshine itself. She must have been biding her time, just waiting for the opportunity to say her pre-rehearsed line.

Mr. Johnson turned his head and shot his daughter a gruff look. The filly shrank slightly, but it was clear she still thought she was the funniest comic in two universes. 

"LaShaniqua... she ain't wrong, doc. Truth is I'm plugged up tighter than a drain after a haircut. I don't feel too good, and I haven't for a while now."

The filly stomped a hoof on the tile floor. "MY. NAME. IS. SUNSHOWER!" She snorted and flapped her little wings. "I make rain in the daylight, that's a SUNSHOWER, an' that's my NAME!

Mr. Johnson tried to turn around on the platform, but decided his bloat made that uncomfortable. He curved his neck and stared hard at his daughter as best as he could. "Why you be takin' that damn fool pony name, instead of the name your own momma done gave you?" Johnson puffed with frustration, children could be muffin trouble at the worst of times.

"Well, maybe BECAUSE I'M A PONY!" LaShaniqua / Sunshower turned and faced away, unconsciously flicking her tail at her father in annoyance.

"Mr. Johnson..." Dr. Linseed levitated the cuff of a pony-adapted sphygmomanometer to the stallion's left front foreleg "can I get your blood pressure please?"

"Call me Evin. Short for Evinrude. Sure. Do whatch'a need to do, Doc."

The cuff wrapped itself gently around Evin's leg, the neoplastic tube hovering out to terminate in a bulb-like device. Thyme pumped the bulb with his hornfield while simultaneously sending a small glob of his telekinetic force into an artery in the large stallion's neck. The small field allowed the doctor to feel the flow of blood as it passed through, and to count the pulse of each beat of Mr. Johnson's heart. The rush of corpuscles and the occasional larger leukocyte tickled Thyme's field. It felt like squishy, soft, wet grains of sand sliding by, after a fashion.

"Hmm, well your blood pressure is a little on the high side, which is unusual, especially for an earthpony." The cuff removed itself and floated over to the counter, where it neatly coiled just before Thyme withdrew his hornfield.

"So, what's wrong with me, Doc?" Evin Johnson looked a little worried, as he stood on the platform.

"A little too early to tell, yet... Evin." Thyme gave the pony a professional smile. "I have an idea, though. Tell me, what do you eat?"

"Doc?" 

"Your diet, tell me what you typically eat in a day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks. That sort of thing." Thyme had read about a patient once, when he was skimming the hypernet. It was the basis of his hunch.

"All we eat is those SWIRL rations! Only time I get decent food is when I stay at Feather's house. Ponies in the street always givin' me hoofouts 'cause they know what I face at home!  Rations! You a fool, and now you payin' for it!"

"HUSH YOUR MUZZLE, FILLY!" Evin Johnson was not a happy stallion. "I done told you about that sass of yours. I'm your cinnamon swirlin' father. Respect, filly!"

"Respect is earned, an' you ain't earnin' none tryin' to shove gov'ment rations down our necks!"

Dr. Linseed tried to keep a professional attitude. "Is this true, Mr. Johnson? Do you mostly eat standard rations?" It was exactly like the case he had read about. "You don't eat any pony foods?"

"So it's 'Mister Johnson' again, is it? That tells me everything - no, I don't eat no hay, or grass clippings or what-the-muffin else they got in those bins down in the market. Maybe the occasional carrot, nothin' wrong with a carrot now and then, but rations were good enough for me when I walked on two legs, and they're good enough for me now!" Evin bent his neck to stare at his filly again. "And they're good enough for you, too! I don't like you eating all that pony stuff, it ain't natural!"

Thyme stifled a laugh. "Actually, Mr. Johnson, Evenrude, it is government rations that aren't natural. They are nanoreconstructed waste, you know that, don't you? Standard rations come out of nanofactories, they are as artificial as... artificial can get. You are a pony, Mr. Johnson. A stallion. You are now an Equestrian, through and through, and Worldgovernment rations aren't healthy for Equestrians. You can't properly digest fake food anymore." The doctor ambled over to his low swivel office pillow and sat down. "Have you ever even tried a proper pony diet, Mr. Johnson?"

Johnson looked at the floor, as if it held important answers. "Yeahhh... I've eaten some. After my Conversion. In the Bureau, before I got out."

Thyme noted Johnson's daughter stepping forward. "You liked it then! You rolled your eyes and we practically had to pull you outta the cafeteria! You done begged for thirds and fourths!" The little muzzle wrinkled. "Then we get home and you go all funny. 'I may look like a pony, but I'm still a man, I won't eat no chocolate cheesecake animal feed..."

"You watch that muzzle of yours, girl. I didn't raise you to talk like no gutter pony. I don't got hands, but I can still swat that flank, don't you doubt it!"

"What's made you all crazy, poppa? Why you go all 'H-L-F' on us when you a straight-up pony? Huh?"

Thyme sat and listened. Sometimes patients heal themselves.

"Sometimes... sometimes girl, I... I don't know where I fit, you know? We still livin' in the same apartment, we still got the same stuff, and the same neighbors, and the same everything, only now its all ponies, we're ponies, I'm... a... a pony... and... it just doesn't make sense somehow!" Evinrude almost seemed like there were tears in there, somewhere, deep down.

"Poppa, eatin' nasty food ain't gonna make nothing make sense. That only makes things crazier. It makes you crazier, and it makes you all fat and puffy and grouchy 'cause you can't take a dump! Ain't nobody happy who can't take a dump!"

Dr. Linseed stood up and nodded at little Sunshower. He turned to her father. "No truer words were spoken, Evin. Your daughter is a smart one."

Evinrude Johnson looked up and sighed. "Yeah... she's always had a mouth on her, but that's because she had a brain behind it." The large stallion smiled.

"Mr. Johnson, I'm going to give you a prescription for a laxative, you can claim it at the desk on the way out, courtesy of the Diarchy Of Equestria. Which, I would like to remind you, you are a citizen of. You stopped being a citizen of earth, of the Worldgovernment, the day you changed species. You aren't human. You are Equestrian, like just about everypony in this city now. You have to live as the creature you are - and that means you have to stop trying to eat government rations, and you have to eat only fresh, real, actual food. There isn't a balcony or a roof left that isn't a garden now - Mr. Johnson, I am giving you a medical order: eat your veggies."

Johnson noted the slight smile on Dr. Linseed's muzzle and returned it with a grin. "It does taste a swirl of a lot better. I can't deny that."

"About MUFFIN time!" Sunshower stomped her hoof and looked disgruntled.

"It isn't like I didn't have a clue! I guess I knew it wasn't workin' eating rations an' all, but... It still doesn't fix the reason I was eating them." Mr. Johnson scraped his hoof on the exam platform edge.

Dr. Linseed sat down again, on his office pillow. "I read about a case like yours. That's how I knew what to ask. There was a pony, 'bout a year ago or so, who did pretty much the same thing - ate rations, got constipated... it was a much more serious situation for them, though. They required surgery. That can happen, by the way. I want you to keep that in mind.

"Basically, this other pony, they... had found their relationships with all the other people around them had changed. They had defined themselves, and their life, by how they were treated. That was their place in society, and when every soul in their city went pony,  the social rules changed. For the better, of course, but they changed. And change itself was the problem - good, bad, change is stressful just because it is different. Sometimes ponies find strange ways to cope with that stress. 

"I don't think 'change' is something I can prescribe a pill for, Evin. It takes recognizing that even changes for the better are still changes, and change itself is almost always disturbing. I'm a medical doctor, psychology isn't my area, but as a person, as a pony, I think that it wouldn't hurt to find somepony to talk to about how Conversion has affected you. How it has affected the way you perceive yourself and the world around you. Is there anypony you can talk to about such things?"

Mr. Johnson nodded. "Uh... yeah. I suppose so. I just haven't... wanted to." He thought for a moment. "But I will. I will, doc."

"Well halle-muffin-lujah! 'Bout time, pops. I tell you doc, some parents, you know?" Sunshower tried to look exasperated, but she was having too much fun doing it.

"Here... is the prescription..." Thyme levitated a slip of paper in the air, it was taken by little Sunshower, who tucked it under a wing. "Take one dose before bedtime. It's from Equestria, it's imbued, so expect it to work extremely well, early in the morning. You probably won't need a second dose... unless you go back to bad habits. 

"Food is very... powerful. Food helps define culture, circumstance, even identity. What we eat can affect our mood, and, obviously, our health. I can understand why you might choose to cling to human rations, but it is not a good choice. Once you start eating what you are built to eat, and after tonight, I think you will find your weight going down, the bloat reducing, and you will feel a lot better. Try to focus on that, if you can. Feeling good can be a powerful ally when dealing with changing behaviors."

Evin stepped off the platform. "Thanks, Doc. I guess I'm more of a mule than a pony, huh?"

Thyme rose and briefly laid his neck over Evin's, the standard pony 'handshake-and-hug'. "No, not a mule, just coping with a very strange new world. We all are. There has never been a more profound change in all of history. Probably, anyway. It would be very odd if nopony had troubles with it all. Your particular manifestation of stress might be unusual - most ponies can't get enough of fresh food no matter what else is going on - but the impulse is actually very common. You are not alone, Evin. 

"We smile and laugh and help each other and have fun, because that is what ponies do, and we are ponies now. But inside, deep down, we are still who we were before we faced Conversion, and that isn't going to go away or change. We each have to come to our own terms about what it means to be a former human from a very troubled world. That doesn't go away when we trade hands for hooves, or machines for magical abilities. Give yourself time - and permission - to find your own terms to deal with it all. That... and eat real food."

Evin laughed. "Yeah. A big bale of hay for me, I guess."

"Celestia's Socks, pop... I think we can do better than that. How about pizza? Artichoke and garlic and pesto sauce? We could all go eat at 'Nuvola's' tonight! Yeah! Come on... he's a pegasus too, like me, and he makes great pizza and..."

"And you think mister fancy Italian-word-for-'cloud' is handsome. I know your games, girl." The look on Mr. Johnson's face was priceless - a mix of indulgent adoration and endless frustration. "But, games or not, pizza sounds pretty good. I forget, sometimes, that Equestrians like their food just as fancy as we... as those... humans... did." 

Dr. Thyme Linseed nodded at that, and gave a short salute with his hoof. "Be sure to pick up your prescription at the desk, on your way out."

"Thank you for fixing my dumb 'ol poppa, mister doctor!" 

Thyme smiled and nodded. "That's my job, Sunshower. Good day!"

Evin grimaced at the use of the pony name for his daughter, and then shrugged with his ears. "Come on... Sunshower... let's get that bottle of poop medicine and see about a pizza."

As they walked out, Thyme made ink-pen notes on Evin's patient file. Everything was done on paper now. Computers and magic did not mix.

For a few moments, Dr. Thyme Linseed spun slowly on his swivel pillow, and then stopped to look out over the city. The sky was blue now, thanks to diligent pegasai, the roofs and balconies of every skyscraper covered in lush, green gardens. The city looked like mountains of glass and metal and stone, covered in verdant foliage. The city looked like a green canyon, from before the Collapse, from before the ecodisaster.

Everything was different. It could never be the same. And one day, soon, it would all be gone.

"Nepenthe?"

The muffled 'Yes doctor?' could not hide from pony ears.

"Would you send in the next patient please?"