//------------------------------//
// One Horse Town 
// Story: Stacked Deck 
// by lightfox lowell 
//------------------------------//

My alarm was ringing. One of my favorite songs blared a few feet away from my bed on my iPod, signaling that it was 9:00, and time to start the day by getting my lazy butt out of bed. It was putting in extra work that day by becoming a jet engine at a distance of only six feet away.

I flung myself off of the bed and attempted to turn off the alarm. Unfortunately, my attempts to grasp the device in my hands failed. It was like they were totally numb. I assumed I had been sleeping on them in the wrong way. Left with little choice, I took the screaming banshee that my phone had become into my mouth and buried it in a good amount of blankets and memory foam pillows.

I took a moment to breathe. My ears were still ringing and my head was starting to pound. As I sat there on the floor just trying to recover from the explosive sound, I began to notice that everything in my room looked a lot bigger. On top of that, everything was in focus, but yet I could see my glasses on one of my shelves.

My brain gained more of a foothold as I started to try and shake my hand awake, only to be greeted by a roundish gray mass at the end of my arm. There was a flash of surprise and panic as I froze in place and examined the sight before me. I went to bring up my other arm not conscious that it was supporting about half of my weight. It was a short trip down to the ground from that point.

My contact with the ground was met with a shot 'Oof' and sudden darkness as something fell over my face. Pushing it aside showed it to be long brownish hair. Kind of a shock considering my hair was never that long or brown. The only word my mind could turn to after that was 'mirror.'

I started to crawl my way across my room as my resolve was tested not to look at whatever my body had become. Every joint and limb felt... different. Though I would not say it felt wrong.

I had to navigate over a minefield of sharp metal and cabling from the scattered electronics on my floor. When I finally managed to reach the mirror, what I saw was disturbing and incredibly hard to process: a fuzzy little animal, with brown hair and slitted blue eyes. I didn’t really believe the sight, crumpled on the ground, and I couldn’t really identify what I was. Thus, I tried to stand and get a good once-over.

I found standing upright basically impossible and when I got a good look at myself standing on all fours, I found out why. My body had been totally changed. There was nothing left that was reminiscent of my human form. Instead, in its place was a pony-like alien.

I shouted "What the hell am I!?" only to be taken aback by how I sounded. Instead of a deep, rough tone, it seemed much more neutral and smooth, and reminded me of a young girl’s. I gave that observation a courtesy wince, but at the time I was just thankful for the ability to speak.

After a moment I noticed some strange, reddish, brown-gray masses layered over my gray coat. I poked one of the leathery lumps with my hoof only to feel it in a place I never had felt before. I fussed around and managed to get a bat wing to unfold from my side. 

With my wings unfolded I gave myself an uneasy look in the mirror once more. I had managed to go from a pony-like alien to something that looked like a one-shot character from some Halloween special for a kid show.

It was all a bit too much to process at once. I fussed with my wings for a few moments before I managed to get them back into a relaxed folded position. From there I looked to my left to see the door knob for my room at eye level. Getting the door unlocked with hooves and turning the knob was a pain, but I handled it with some persistence. There was a brief struggle where I almost closed the door twice before I managed to open it completely. I yelled out to either my sister or my mother, trying to get any help I could. Sadly, the only responder was my sister's dog, Cotton.

Cotton looked at me with unease and confusion. I didn't hear any growling from her, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous that she wouldn’t recognize me and attack.

"Hey, there Cotton-dog. It's okay, it's just me," I said with a reassuring voice. 

Cotton's response was to walk up and rest her head on top of mine like she was trying to point out I'm short. It was strange, but I did what any dog loving person would have done: I laughed and gave her a hug. That required a coordinated hop with only my front hooves, but I managed it.

"Yeah, yeah, you silly dog. Where is Mom?" I asked, since she would've normally gone off to whatever room my mother was in. Instead she did something worrying. She just backed away from me with a whine and bark.

"Did she leave the house?" That question was more for me than for Cotton. Border collies are smart, but not that smart.

I peered around the corner of my room’s door frame to see the front door. It was all locked up, which meant no one had left the house, since I was the only one who ever locked the door.

I endeavored to get myself onto all fours, which took longer than I hoped it would. Standing like that felt so strange. Walking, however, was much worse. Even with Cotton here to take ideas from, I fell on my face more times than I wished to count on the way to my mother's room.

Once in the doorway I called out again. "Mom, I have a massive issue here." No response. I lifted my head up to see the bed properly. There was no one in it.

"W-what?" I looked around the room. Her purse and phone were still there, but she was not accounted for. Getting slightly worried, I stumbled back to my room. I knew better then to check on my sister. She never did sleep up there, and I really didn’t think I could climb the spiral stairs to her room.

Once there, I slammed the power button on my computer and climbed up onto my chair. When the computer booted up and I had summited Chair Mountain, I used the built-in buttons to reduce my mouse sensitivity. It made for slow going, but it let me use it with hooves.

The first thing I knew I would have to do was to boot up Steam and try to contact my friends like I would on any day regardless of an apocalyptic phenomenon. Normally there would be one or two of my friends online at that time, but I saw no one. I fiddled and fussed with my computer until I entered our personal voice chat room and turned on my speakers. If someone came into the chat room, I wanted to be able to hear them.

It was at that point the silence started to get to me. I didn't know why it was so quiet; normally there was quite some background noise in and around my house. That's when I noticed that I didn't hear any cars.

I lived on the main street in my town. Along that street were two ways onto the freeway, the mall, the connecting street to the college, the best hotel in town, the police, and the fire departments. So to not hear cars at any given hour was strange, but to not hear them around 10:00 am was nearly impossible.

My new hooves and body would not let me reach over my monitors, so I couldn’t see out of the window. Instead, I jumped down from my chair and opened the front door. That was my first huge mistake of the day.

The front side of my house faced East, so it got extra bright in the morning, and when I opened the door it felt like I had injected pure fire into my eyes. I let out the girliest scream that I had ever heard and shuffled backward. After retreating into the relative darkness of my home, I flopped down onto the ground and put my hooves over my eyes. 

After an unknown amount of time passed, I finally felt like I could risk opening my eyes again. Everything was fuzzy for a moment, but thankfully that passed. I was happy for that since I had just gotten eyes that worked correctly and I didn't want to ruin them.

I turned back toward the door and let off a cat-like hiss as I noticed I had left the front door open. The sound I produced caught me and Cotton, who had taken residence next to me, off guard, but I ignored it for that moment and walked back to my room, making sure to keep my eyes away from the Blind-o-Matic 3000 that the Sun had become.

After a brief search, I took one of my woven blankets and wrapped it around my head. Through it I could still see, but it dampened the light quite well. That gave me the courage to try and venture outside again.

It was still extremely bright for me. Given these circumstances, I figured that either the sun had exploded or my eyes had become extremely sensitive to light. Seeing as it didn't feel much hotter than normal, I assumed the latter. I had a feeling that wasn’t normal, but there was no way for me to tell.

The street was completely empty, and all the cars outside were still parked. There wasn't any sign of human life anywhere.

I hurried back inside and winced at the loud slam of the door behind me. My best bet was to try and call emergency services to see if I could get an answer.

Using my flip phone was a pain, but with some good hoof placement and a spoon in my mouth I succeeded at calling out, only to be told that all lines were busy. Obviously, not a good sign.

I dueled my mouse so as to hit up my local news site, but there had been no updates since yesterday. That was when I started to go into full survival mode, and luckily I was prepared. My life largely revolved around the Internet and technology, and my job gave me quite a few useful tools, so I navigated my computer to the programs I had for backing up websites. The various hard disk drives around my room were about to become more like suitcases.

I started to grab a full copy of Reddit, Still Tasty, and other useful websites I knew I could quickly back up onto my machine. I wanted Wikipedia, but I didn’t want to eat up all my bandwidth so I would have to wait till the sun starts to set. Otherwise, there would be no way for me to get outside for that long without going blind.

I figured I should go to a good vet medicine site and back that up as well. I had turned into some type of animal, so that should come in handy.

The next thing I did was go onto Reddit and make a post via my patented spoon-in-mouth technique. It simply asked if anyone was out there. I made sure it showed up at the top of the new posts and hoped that other people out there knew how to use Reddit. With that set up, I was about to get up and look through my fridge when I heard a voice call out from my speakers.

"So, L.F.,  it took me a really long time to figure out how to open this." The voice wasn’t one I could instantly recognize, so I had to click on the chat itself to see it was my friend with the screen name “Neon” signed in. “L.F.” was my friend group’s shorthand for my own screen name, “Lightfox.”

"Neon? You don't sound like yourself, but dear god is it good to hear from someone. NO ONE is around, and I'm a small bat-pony thing! I'm guessing the same thing happened to you, from the sound of your voice?" I responded.

"I am now majestic as fuck and no one is around to witness it."

“Neon, what on Earth does that mean? Majestic-- what?"

"I always figured they'd be white, and not … green," was his extremely unhelpful response.

Before I could question that statement, our friend Captain Wolf entered the voice chat.  "Please tell me you are all real and not more of whatever Twilight Zone episode I've woken into."

I gave a simple answer. "Hey, Wolf. Yes, but hold on.  Neon is being unhelpful. Neon, what the hell are you talking about? I'm gray." Being gray was odd in its own right, but was definitely better than green.

Wolf talked before Neon answered me. "No wonder dogs don't use headsets. Christ, this is ... less than comfortable."  

"Wait, what? Dog? You're a dog!?" I basically yelled out.

Neon continued to yammer on and, not even trying to make sense, gave another response after C. Wolf. "I'm lucky I managed to plug in my speakers because to hell with figuring out these headphones."

I face-desked at that point. Thankfully no one heard that due to being on push-to-talk, but, hey, at least I knew it was them. "Okay, okay! One at a time. Neon, what the HELL are you?"

"...I am the last unicorn," he started. "Or the first. Alpha and Omega... Something."

A new voice entered the fray. It was a higher pitch than I was used to coming from the owner. It was White, our friend who lived all the way in the UK. "Oh, Jesus Christ FINALLY! I've spent all day running around town as some TINY-ASS LIZARD THING, but there's nobody here! Did I miss some sort of evacuation memo? Am I a horribly mutated radioactive freak? I'm going nuts here guys..."

C. Wolf was the first to respond. "Hold up, so we’re all seeing the same thing? Aside from you guys I haven't found anyone ANYWHERE around here."

White clarified right after C Wolf.  "I mean there's my cat and some dogs and like sheep or whatever but I mean bunkers can't really hold sheep."

"You know what I mean,” Wolf loudly moaned, “people."

White gave an interesting response and a good question, because it helped me figure things out a bit more. "Look, man, I don't even know what I am, let alone- Wait. Are you guys weird lizard things too?"

"I'm, well, more like a ... dog ... ape ...thing?”  Wolf answered.

"Nope, I'm some sort of bat-pony hybrid thing." I thought bat-pony was a good descriptor at that point. I think there were bat horses in a Harry Potter book, but I don't think they were nearly as fluffy.

"... shit," Wolf answered.

"My hands are okay. Bit claw-like and covered in scales. But I'm like 2-3 feet high!"

"I don't know if I can draw anymore like this." Neon finally added in. "I mean, I managed to use the computer, but-"

"Drawing?” Wolf asked.  “I'm sorry to be the sledgehammer of realism at this point, but we all seem to be doing a bang-up job completely ignoring how royally screwed we are at this given moment, like ... CHRIST!" He sounded panicked. Can't blame him, but really he should be holding it together better. He still has hands.

"I assure you I HAVE NOT BEEN IGNORING IT,"  said White. I could almost hear the panic in his voice as well. I felt bad for him. The rest of us were in the states. We could all meet up, but White was going to have a harder time with that.

"It's not going to do us much good to panic. Panic can come after I'm done backing up stuff for later use." That was me mostly trying to keep a cool head. I knew that using a computer with hooves was going to wear my sanity down with time.

“White, why is your voice so high-pitched? Mine feels, almost the same? What the heck?” Neon asked, thankfully getting us away from the topic of losing our minds.

"I-... I don't know. I sound like a kid." He lapsed into a few seconds of contemplative silence. "... and I'm the same size as a kid..." He obviously didn't like where that train of thought was going. "...Oh goddammit."

I could only wonder why no one had commented on my voice change. Maybe it was not as bad as I thought? That's something to be thankful at least.

“I wonder if Q is okay...” I said to myself, not having the push-to-talk key underhoof. I kinda hoped he was just off dealing with shit and had not thought to login yet. That said, I needed to address White, since he was sounding more stressed as our talk went on. “White, look, even if you are somehow younger, it just means you’ve had some more years added to your life. Don’t get all panicky just yet. ”

"We need to focus. What we do know is we're still here, and obviously we're still us," Wolf commented, and followed up by “Has anyone else appeared on your contact lists?  Mine are still dead as shit.”

“No, I've got nothing, and I’ve been here a while,” I sighed to myself, “The sun may as well be a brand on my eyes right now, so staring at my computer is at the upper limits of my usefulness at the moment.”

I noticed Qesun sign into the chat. I thanked any god that was going to listen at that moment. It took him a few moments to get on voice, but he opened up with some of his own humor. "So, I took a walk, guys. Or I tried to. I'm not very good at it right now. You’d think it would be easier with four legs, but you would be wrong. So now I'm trying to discount all this as a dream. Because, frankly, if I keep having to use my mouth for everything and taste all the things our hands have touched, I'm filing a complaint with both reality and causality."  

"Oh thank god, Qesun! I was really starting to worry about you," worry was a slight understatement. "As for it being a dream: have you ever been able to think this clearly in one? Anyway, if you do find reality's complaint department, please give me its address as well."

Captain Wolf let out a sigh.  "That makes five of us, out of ... what? There are over a hundred or more grayed out on my contacts in steam, and you are the only ones I've gotten a hold of."

I understood his unease, I’d spent one fourth of my life getting contacts and building a network of talented people: programmers, artists, writers, managers, anyone I could see had a spark for the world around them. I made it a point in meeting people like that and ensuring I was at least known to them. Then, in one day, almost everyone was gone, the gray uncaring declaration of “offline” next to their name.

Neon was quick and to the point when answering Wolf. "Aside from you all, I'm not seeing anything..." I had a small feeling that he was distracted with something, but I was not in the mood currently to dig.

"Okay, assuming we ARE the last ones left of the people we know," Wolf slowed down, each word coming more purposefully,  "what are we going to do about it?"

I’d given that some thought as well, but Qesun beat me to the punch when it came to a speaking role. "Well first, we make Neon get off League. I don't know how many are missing, but I can't help but find the lack of noise from the airport or any of the roads a disturbing sign that the lack of people logged on is not just because it was a nice day to go outside. We've built a civilization for ourselves that requires a lot of support services that no longer have the staff necessary to maintain them.”

"Wait, this stuff can't support itself? ...That really sucks," was Neon's response. I don't think he ever gave much thought into how everything worked, but it really was outside of his scope of interests anyways.

"It can, Neon," I gave him a quick answer, but also added an addendum. "It just can't support itself for very long. The net will die within a three-day window, and the power grid will depend on location."

“We should pick a place to meet up before our communications fail. Getting there will be hard, but we'll have an easier time getting through this together." Qesun said. It made sense. I would prefer to face the end of the world with trusted friends.

There were some things to iron out for a meeting point though. I felt like it was up to me to voice them. "Do you already have an idea for a meeting point? Also, if we were to meet up, what about White? He's over in the UK."

"....I don't mind staying in the UK." The biggest lie in history. "I mean I WAS supposed to catch a plane in a couple of days, but I mean, what am I gonna do, fly the damn thing myself?! I may as well just get used to being by myself instead of tormenting myself with the impossible."

"You want to speak of impossible?  Look in the mirror." Wolf grumbled, "This is impossible.  The fact we still managed to contact each other should be, at best, improbable.  As far as I'm concerned, impossible doesn't exist anymore."

"You're.... encouraging me to fly a jet. Completely untrained, and 3 feet tall." White absently said.

There was only one real response I could have given to that. "Yes."

Qesun tried to say something motivational but suddenly stumbled on the word. “So you would rather sit on your aaaaaa-butt and do nothing?” I had no idea what that was about.

“No, White, I’m saying you’ll figure something out though.  The worst thing you could do is not try.” Wolf correctly said. White really couldn't just stay in the UK and not do anything.

"White, all my resources VANISHED. Any help that I could possibly be will be gone by this time tomorrow. This is not something that we can figure out. This one is on you. I have faith in you." It hurt to say that. When the shit hits the fan I was the one to go to in this group. I had the people and the knowledge to move heaven and earth at times, but I had been reduced to well-wishing.

“... so, where are we going?" asked Neon, cutting to the point.