Stories, for me, have a will of their own. I can go months wondering when a wandering muse will suddenly strike. Or I can click a single link, begin to read something, and ninja-like, a story leaps onto me and slits my resistance to doing any work writing.
This was the case, just now, when I came across this relaxing and fluffy little piece from Phys.org - Strange behavior of quantum particles may indicate the existence of other parallel universes. That is sometimes the way with light reading - the mind drifts, the imagination runs away and suddenly a story is wearing one's guts for garters.
Join me then, in a reality where quantum waves are nonsense, and parallel universes are fact, and watch me butcher and bastardize the life's work of an eminent and lauded chemist in...
Deep In The Choklad
A Ponies For Poirier Story
By Chatoyance
"Bill Poirier is the problem. William Muffin Poirier, cursed be his name!" The upset unicorn stallion in the ill-fitting lab coat tripped again as he stomped his hoof clumsily. He was still unused to his new shape. If his assistant's quick search of relevant fanfiction was valid, Dr. Miles Bennell would have a very, very long time to get used to it.
Francis Muel glanced furtively around her for any indications of another faintly hissing Ring. It was the natural name that had come to them for the things - they looked like glowing, rippling, irregular loops of difficult-to-look-at light. Like oversized, floating onion-rings made of plasma... or something. Definitely something. Something else. "Miles... we'll find a way. To reverse this. To make you human again!"
The remarkably green stallion shook his head. His white mane spilled from the ill-fitting collar of the lab-wear. "Not even within that three-hundred and fifty year lifespan you say I have now. I've had at least three other Rings pass through me, and I haven't changed again. I think this shape is some kind of lowest energy state for transformation. Or something. Maybe being changed leaves some kind of residual charge that prevents further... in any case, we won't know until another unlucky barbajada gets hit. CROISSANT these GULAB JAMUN pastry words!"
"Please, calm down!" Francis tried to reach out to pony Bennell, but withdrew her hands. It was agreed that the effects of contact between them was unknown and should not be attempted except in an emergency. Francis backed away. "You'll trip again! I don't want you to get hurt!"
"I already AM hurt, in case you have suddenly gone blind! I'm a Franzbrötchen PONY!"
Francis tried not to laugh. She really did.
"HELLIMI AND HAMANTASH!" Dr. Bennell stomped so hard the Erlenmeyer's on the counter rattled.
"How do you even know these desserts?" The situation was dire, possibly apocalyptic, but Francis couldn't stop her giggles.
"I Streuselkuchen don't know!"
Miles Bennell's tantrum was cut short as he suddenly leapt forward, pushing miss Muel out of the way of a grapefruit-sized faintly hissing Ring. The flickering, multicolored, writhing circlet wobbled and twisted as it bobbled lazily towards the door to the lab.
Bennell landed on top of Francis, his muzzle smacking clumsily into her crotch as she fell. She reacted instantly, pushing and kicking him away. Suddenly she stopped, aware of the gliding Ring. She glanced briefly at her hands, which had touched Bennell's fur. No reaction. She wasn't changing. Contact was apparently safe. "Sorry... and thanks."
"Close one." Bennell was staring at the slowly twisting, spinning ring as well now. The Ring continued on towards the door.
At that very moment, Sam Carter entered the room. "What's all the commotio..."
The Ring hit him square in the chest. The hissing energy vanished inside his body, the glow spreading out under his clothing until it faded entirely. Then he began changing.
"What? What the..." Dr. Carter's body bent as his legs reconfigured themselves. His arms began to draw into his jacket sleeves, his neck lengthened and filled out. Within seconds it was clear what he was becoming - another colorful pony from that ridiculous cartoon. Sam shrieked, as the process finished - not from pain, the transformation was painless - but from shock and terror.
Dr. Sam Carter stood now on four hooves. His sports jacket and pants fell in draped wrinkles around his smaller body. His muzzle peeked out of the collar of his polo shirt like the nose of a monk from under a cowl. He simply stood there, afraid to move, unsure of what had happened, unwilling to accept what had happened to him as reality.
"Oh, Sam!" Francis put her hands to her mouth.
"Punschkrapfen!" Miles muttered. "Sam! Samuel! It's... okay... sort of. I know this is strange, but you'll be surprised at how quickly..."
The screaming was loud, and it was astonishingly high pitched. Francis couldn't help but glance at the flasks, in the expectation that they might shatter. After the screaming concluded, Samuel choose weeping and moaning as his preferred form of discourse. Bennell stood up, his forehooves finally away from his tall pony ears.
Francis moved to hold and comfort the suddenly ponified astrophysicist. She helped his face to escape his jacket, tie and shirt. Now that it had been proven physical contact would not transmit the strange energy, she began petting Carter and scratching his ears. It worked for her two dogs. In the end, it worked for pony Carter, too.
"Wha... what the Bizcocho Jaffacake is going on?" Carter kept sniffling, despite his attempt at scientific detachment.
"If quantum waves are butterkuchen, as Poirier claims, then Everett's Many Worlds really do exist. Only Poirier suggests Many Interacting Worlds - quantum effects are the result of particles from other universes literally affecting particles here!"
Samuel Carter, astrophysicist stallion stared hard at Miles. "Why in the name of Celestia did you get CERN involved? Why, Miles? Why in Luna's name did you..."
"Oh god."
Both stallions turned to look at miss Muel. She had her head in her hands, elbows on the counter, her laptop screen too high for the diminutive ponies to see.
"It's bad, isn't it?" Miles hung his equine head.
"What's bad? What could be worse than this?" Carter looked from Bennell to Muel and back.
Francis lifted her head and sighed. "We're ten kilometers from Alice - point two on the LHC - and that's where our breach is. It wasn't momentary. It is open, and Rings are pouring out like... like... I don't know. It's flooding Rings. They can't stop them, they don't even know what they are or why they keep coming. The last post on Dr. Freeman's blog says he thinks it's another universe bleeding into ours. Like we somehow cut a cosmic artery. The Rings are like... cosmic corpuscles or something. Everybody was turning into ponies, right and left. Rings everywhere. He held out with a makeshift Faraday... thing, but... he hasn't updated in over an hour."
"Maybe he ran, maybe he's on his way to..."
"No. You don't understand, Miles." Francis spoke quietly, as if at a funeral. "I said flood, and I meant it. St Genis-Pouilly is rainbow light all the way to Sergy. They can see it from Crozet. Rings so thick it's one big glow. Like an aurora on the ground."
"The world. This is the end of the zwetschgenkuchen world." Miles Bennell lay down, his front legs spread out, and rested his head on his pasterns.
"I want you to know I despise you, Miles." Sam sat on his haunches, staring at his forehooves. "Well, not exactly despise, I can't seem to do that anymore, not really. But I super don't like you very much. At the moment. Celestia! I am miffed at this darn pony brain!"
Francis and Miles stared. "How'd you do that?"
"What?"
"Miffed - that's not a pastry." Miles raised his ears.
"Darn isn't either." Francis added.
"I'm upset, but I'm past raving!" Sam looked around the room. Two Rings finished passing through the ceiling, on their way to the physics department. Big surprise incoming for Koothrappali, he mused. The two stallions had stopped trying to protect Francis at her request. There wasn't really any point, she had reasoned. Besides, she certainly didn't want to be an alien on her own home planet. If anything, she was just waiting for a Ring to come and end her dreadful suspense.
Francis had turned back to her laptop. "Hey.... hey! Guys! Stallions! Whatever... the word is out... the news is carrying it now! They're trying to wire up Faraday cages... pretty much everywhere on the planet. Um..." The two on the floor were sitting upright now. "Here... let me move this thing to the floor..."
Francis picked up her laptop and set it on the tiles beside the two ponies. Miles still wore his labcoat, but Sam had been helped out of his clothes entirely. He was a pegasus. His natural coat was clothing enough - though he had wanted to keep his tie. Francis had re-tied it on him, as best she could. "Look, here's a report from Bern - and another from Milan! It's global, the world is awake and they are all building cages... or fences. Electromagnetic fields deflect the Rings. Freeman's idea works!" Francis clicked several times. "Well... mostly. The power requirements are not cheap, but..." More clicks. "They're herding refugees into protected zones. The Rings move pretty slowly... locally we're all boned, but the rest of the planet..." Suddenly she frowned.
"What?" Sam crowded closer to the screen.
Miles shook his head. His ears were low. "The earth seems to affect them, slightly, but it doesn't stop Rings. Fences work, but only close to the fence. Rings can come up from below, if it's far enough from the field. Radio towers seem to... click on that, Francis!"
Francis clicked where Mile's hoof had pointed.
"It seems that radio towers slow down, and even push away Rings." Francis clicked again. "I bet you could cover a city with a mixture of fences, cage walls, and carefully spaced towers. The power requirements, though..."
A Ring floated through the room, slowly tumbling and spinning both. Francis started to get up to run to catch it, but she sat down again when she realized that it would pass through the corner wall before she could reach it. "It will happen when it happens."
"It doesn't have to!" Miles gave Francis a hard look with huge pony eyes. "You've made it this long. If you could just get to your car, and make it to... Geneva! I bet they'll have EM shielding up by the time you get there and..."
Francis ran her fingers through the stallion scientist's coat. "Maybe. But Running Through The Rain. Standing still, I am less likely to encounter a Ring than on the move. I try to drive anywhere, I increase the chance I will be hit overall. It isn't quite like rain, because these things come from all directions, but..." Francis looked out the window. The sun was going down. "Also, I don't want to transform while driving a car at speed. If I must be a pony, I don't want to be a dead or broken one."
"Oh colt!" Sam had managed to move the cursor with flicks of his lip on the touch plate, and click as well.
"What now?" Miles and Francis were beyond shock at this point. Their tone was almost bored.
"It's not just ponies. What are 'diamond dogs'? I know what dragons are, and griffons... dragons? Seriously?"
"It's the whole sponge cake. My Little Pony is all real. I guess Bishop Berkeley was right. Sort of." Miles put a hoof to his muzzle in thought. "Maybe not him... anyone know the philosopher who thought that fiction was real, and that writers just unconsciously report other universes?"
Samuel shook his head and swished his tail. "Wasn't a philosopher. You're thinking of Heinlein after he went senile. Fictons. The Number Of The Beast. He got silly in his old age."
"Hey! I liked that book! Come on, Gay Deceiver alone! She's basically a talking Tardis, and..."
Neither Sam nor Miles moved as the glow from the Ring spread from her impacted back to her front. There was no point, really. In any case, Francis' suspense was finally over.