The talk got complicated from there. We needed a place that was accessible to all of us. To be honest, I really phoned it in on that part. It was more Qesun's style of thing anyways. He just had the skill set for finding a good area to set up in. The group, with his suggestions, came up with Colorado Springs.
The plan for me and Neon was to meet up in Las Vegas. It was the best meeting point for both of us since it put us on the correct road. The only major issue was that Neon would have to get himself there somehow. That part worried me a lot, but I convinced myself that he would be able to figure out a car.
With our plans formed, and our goodbyes said, I started to gather my backpack full of things I could need for my little journey outside. It's included my laptop, the good mouse I could use with my hooves, all the cabling someone could ever need, and a sturdy blanket incase I needed to break windows.
I thought to grab my tool bag while I was at it. I had no idea what I was going to use it for, but it was always better to be safe than sorry. The only issue was that I could not find the damned thing. I looked everywhere, but it was nowhere to be found... until I looked up. On top of my 6-foot bookshelf rested my Husky brand tool bag.
"Oh. Come. The. Fuck. ON!" I think my rage was justified. Why couldn’t it have been on the ground like all the other stuff. Nearly everything ELSE was there after all.
Getting that down was going to be a pain, but it had all my good tools. Stuff that was going to be needed in the coming hours, and following days. I made a note of everything that was up there with it: my dremel tool, Nintendo Wii, and a lamp.
I started thinking of all sorts of plans to get that stuff down. Eventually though I said "fuck it," and launched the blanket from my packing stage. I gave it a fast pull and watched everything on the shelf cascade onto the ground. Thankfully my tool bag was closed, so only the stuff in the side pockets spilled out. I Just didn’t care about the Wii at that point, and the Dremel tool was in its case, so it was likely fine.
With tool bag in mouth and backpack on back, I headed toward my door. I didn't make it out, however, since my mirror caught my eye. It’s really strange to look in the mirror and see yourself as a small, fluffy animal.
I almost stopped at the mirror to get a better idea of what changes had happened to me. Though I ended up forgoing that experience at the time. There was too much on my mind right then. I wanted to get everything I could ready to go. I left my mirror behind and quickly made my way to the door.
"I'll... face myself once I have all less on my mind."
I carefully opened the door and crept outside. It was still bright, but it was manageable and I needed to get work done. I headed over to my next major issue: I lived on the second story apartment, so I had to descend the stairs. I had yet to perfect my walking, so just walking down them was not going to happen without me becoming a lame horse.
The best idea I had was to take it slow and basically lay down on each step. Much like everything else, it takes a considerable amount of time.
After successfully descending the stairs, I took stock. I knew about four different computers in my small gated community. Any of them would work for my needs, as long as I didn’t harbor any delusions of getting more than the English version of wikipedia.
I ran to the closest house I knew had a good laptop in it. The door, of course, was locked, so breaking a window was necessary. That turned out to be my second huge mistake of the day. A few loud beeps were my only clue, and maybe on a good day I would have had the good sense to run like hell, but I was not at my best.
After a few beeps, the house alarm started its attack on my ears with no mercy in its electronic heart. I was floored from the poor reaction of throwing my front hooves over my ears. That did muffle the sound a little, but I was on the ground and well within the "too loud" portion of the house.
I tried to wiggle away from the house without removing my hooves from their protective positions. After noticing I had not made any headway, I knew what I needed to do. I bit down, got front hooves under me as fast as I could and ran away from the house. I don't know how I cleared so much space in so little time. My mind was just focused on getting away from the shrill sound. I didn't stop till I was at the other side of the complex and crashed into a small incline covered in grass.
I lay there, out of breath, for a few minutes. I could still hear the alarm even though I was clear across the grounds, but thankfully it was no longer ripping the ears off my head.
"Okay, note to self: keep an eye out for some noise-canceling headsets, and watch for house alarms," I said to myself before regrouping and going from house to house, avoiding any that had alarm signs.
I checked my bag to make sure nothing was lost and moved on. A new house and one more broken window later, I was attempting to use someone else's computer. It booted up and took itself straight to desktop. After that, I just used my own mouse to navigate to a website I knew had updated mirrors of Wikipedia. With the download started, I began to head off to my house, though I didn’t make it there.
Halfway back to my next goal felt my ears began to twitch and move a little on their own. They were being drawn to one of the houses, as a strange sound was coming from it. Once I got up to the house I could in identify it as scratching. My only thought was that a dog was likely trapped inside.
Another locked door meant I would need to smash yet another window. That time though I didn't get a chance to throw my blanket over the field of glass. The very moment that window was smashed open the dog jumped throw it and took off into the complex.
I thankfully managed to get out of its way as it rushed on by. Though I had no idea if had managed to cut itself on the glass, and I really could not be asked to chase it down.
I repeated the same process afterward, letting out any dog that would allow me in the house. If they started to show signs of aggression after I busted the window I had to write them off, but I needed to at least give them a chance.
I knew I couldn't save all the dogs around here... which did make me feel like crap. A lot of dogs would likely be stuck inside and starve without their owners, but there was only so much one person could do!
I let myself have a small break on the grass, not too far away from my next goal. In the sunset light, I could see the main gate to my complex. That thing was going to be a major obstacle if I didn't get it open. I pushed that thought aside for the moment, however.
While I was relaxing, I watched the dogs run around. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. I made note of a few that escaped the complex by going under the gate. I never noticed how big that gap was before.
I could get under it and use the gate code on the other side, but then I’d have to keep it open. I grabbed my tools and walked over to the gate itself. I could use a vice clamp on the arm when it was open… that way, it would be stuck open. At least, that’s what I thought before I got to the other side. I didn’t know how I was going to punch in the gate code.
My means of using a code pad at the time were kind of limited. I did NOT want to touch that pad with my mouth, and my hooves were too big. I ended up going back and getting a screwdriver to hold in my mouth. It worked well as a proxy finger.
The pad for the gate let out a shrill beep as it confirmed the code had worked. I headed around the gate as it opened, and quickly dropped my screwdriver on the ground to arm myself with the vice clamp. Once the gate had opened all the way, I placed the clamp on the bending part of its arm. Consequently, the gate tried to close and got jammed more than halfway open.
Now I had full access to my area, which gave me free reign to make tracks for the store. My house had some food, but it was mostly junk and snacks. This would be a great time to experiment on what I could and could not eat.
As I was walking I couldn’t help to notice how alien the street felt. What used to be a busy motorway was now a desolate strip of asphalt, and as my hooves touched the ground I could not help but feel a sense of overwhelming emptiness.
"I'm alone here, aren't I?" My voice echoed against the empty street. “I’m sorry everyone.” I sympathized with all of the missing people in the world, as strange as that sounds, and it broadcast itself in a lot of ways with my new body. I could feel my ears flat against my head and my wings slightly sagged off of my sides. Something, likely my own ego, was telling me I failed everyone. I did my best to shake it off, but I had a bad habit of thinking of myself as a kind of hero.
I always did my best to help people. I’d managed to pull a lot of people out of bad spots in their lives. Sure, I never did it for free. I always expected repayment in one way or another, but that was always justified in trying to get more resources to help even more people. Of course, that did matter anymore. Everyone one in my town was likely gone, and I could have done nothing to stop it.
After a moment of solemn reflection, I had to press on. It didn't matter how crestfallen I felt because I knew there were still people counting on me. I was not going to allow the list of people I've failed grow any longer.
I moved along to the stores which, of course, had their front doors locked. Nothing can ever go smoothly, after all. I started to come up with a complex plan that involved a shopping cart, a battering ram, and a ton of rocks, but it turned out to be unnecessary as my ears began to twitch again.
Hearing felt really weird. I had never had the experience of being able to move my ears, and so as I tried to locate the source of this new sound, I battled with my turning ears and twisted my head to try to pinpoint it. After a brief struggle, I managed to line everything up and heard the sound of a running motor.
I let myself get my hopes up; a mistake, but it happened anyways. I ran as fast as I could to the source of the sound. What I found was a freezer truck, parked and still running.
There was no easy way to tell how long it had been here, but right next to it was the loading doors to the store, swung wide open.
Venturing inside, I started to call out. There could be someone inside, but with no response came the shattering realization that it had likely been here all day, parked before whatever took everyone away.
I mentally kicked myself for getting my hopes up and continued on. As I made my way into the store, I found the back freezer. Making a mental note of its location, I progressed onto the shopping floor.
It’s really hard to say what you will grab when you have free reign over an entire store. I knew I wanted the strawberries and apples kept safe, mostly since they were some of my favorite foods before becoming a horse.
As I was going down my mental checklist, I really started to wish I was not alone. The sheer amount of stuff I wanted to pack away was massive. At least, for one person to pack away.
The best idea I had was to load all the stuff I wanted to keep into the freezer until I could find a way to transport myself and the food stuff safely. In the freezer, it should be safe from any animals, and it wouldn’t spoil in there as well.
That idea turned into me quickly running around the store to get all my favorite foods: frozen pizzas, strawberries, apples, and watermelons. Passing one of the aisles, I noticed a bunch of little seed packets and grabbed them as well. Someone might be able to make use of them once we manage to get set up. Or they could be completely useless. At that point, I was really just trying to take anything that even looked useful.
After I had the back freezer loaded up with anything I could ask for, I started to hunt for the circuit breaker. That took a while as the door needed some forklift negotiating to get open. After getting into the breaker room, I killed the power to anything that was not the back freeze, hoping that it would give the backup generator some more time. I didn't plan on staying in town any longer than a few days.
After an hour’s worth of work, I picked up a small basket of strawberries in my mouth as food for the night when I started to head back home.
It was when I got outside that I really felt the full scale of how many people went missing. The sheer amount of lights where I lived usually kept the stars from ever showing up until the deadest points of night. Light pollution was a very real thing that most people ignored.
However, it was only the beginning of the moon's rise into the sky, and I could already see the stars out. Something about them just grabbed at my mind and I was forced to stare at the sky for a few moments.
"Wow... I wonder what it's going to look like when the power starts to fail."
The rest of the walk home was mostly uneventful except for the sudden spring in my step. I really couldn't explain it. A warm, fuzzy amount of energy had been dumped into me for no understandable reason.
“Maybe because it turned to night? Did my day-night cycle change with this body?” I couldn’t come up with any better reasoning, but I also couldn’t say I was upset. This would allow me to work throughout the night.
When I arrived at home the next thing to do was mentally sort out what needed to be done. I wanted to get an RV; something that would let me transport a lot of stuff and keep my food safe. Maybe I could attach a U-Haul pod to the back of it. I also wanted to hit up a Harbor Freight building. They would have all sorts of goodies, like generators and solar panels.
The only obstacle was what was under me: my hooves. Well, my hooves and my size. The first part of my plan was to get an RV, but I had no way to drive it. If I wanted to pull that off, I was going to have to adjust to the new me a bit more.
That was a huge demand. Normally it takes trained professionals to do physical therapy like that, but there were none to be found. Instead, I did have an idea for getting a feel for my new body, but it was going to involve me eating a lot of dirt. It was a pretty bad idea. That said, I didn’t have any better ideas at the time.
I returned to the house of one of the released dogs to borrow a set of computer speakers and fetched my backpack from hiding.
My plan was to dance. Music always had a way of making me want to move with it. I knew that it was going to be hell, and I knew I would end up face-first in the grass more times than I really wanted to, but my hope was that it could help me find my center again. I was also hoping that grass might end up tasting good. A lot of people would have said I was crazy and that I could have gotten hurt, but I have always claimed to be talented at figuring stuff out and adapting.
I danced up for hours. If anyone had been watching me, they could have easily mistaken the song "Stamp on the Ground" for "Flop on the Ground".
It was near midnight when it happened. I was about to hit the ground again--not a big deal, since falling on the ground had become standard by then--except I didn’t. I had mostly braced for impact with the ground, but it never came. After a brief moment, I opened one eye to see that I was suspended above the grass. I thought I had managed to catch myself with one of my hooves, but it turned out that was not the case. When I looked to my side, I could see one of my wings doing its best to hold off the assault against the ground.
That was the first time I made my wings do anything useful, and they were quite strong. Touching down on the ground, I stopped my music while I examined my wings. It was at that moment I realized how strange bat wings really were. It was like they had fingers of their own--sure, they had webbing, but I found that I could manipulate them really well.
I tried to use the keyboard on my laptop with my wings. It did work, but it felt really strange. That strangeness was mostly due to how the membrane of the wing stretched out, but this revelation was huge. I had a way of manipulating things, and I could still use computers effectively! That thought made me so excited that I let off a strange squeaking sound which I don’t think I could do again on command.
Sadly, my excitement was short-lived. I needed to set that discovery aside for the time being. Wing-hand things are cool, but mostly useless if I couldn't really move with my new body. Thus, I returned to falling on the ground in style.
By the end of the night, I felt like someone had run me over, but I had made some progress. I was not going to be winning any dance contests unless I was the de-facto judge, but I had managed to get a handle on shifting my weight around without crashing onto the ground.
I had lost track of time, and totally missed the fact that it was getting brighter out, the stars fading away into the orange sunrise. It took a yawn to indicate how tired I was. At that point, adrenaline was the only thing keeping me on my hooves.
I packed up my stuff and walked home only to face my stairs. Honestly, I almost decided to sleep outside when I saw them. I was just so beat up, and so tried, but I persevered. The little control I gained from training paid off in dividends as I managed to walk up the stairs without crippling myself.
After that great accomplishment, I zombie-walked my way to the door… only to find it closed. A cold chill raced down my spine and kicked my brain into gear. My door had a bad habit of locking itself whenever someone left the house. That's why I would normally leave the deadbolt out so it couldn't close--something I clearly forgot to do this time.
I quickly tried to open the door with no success. After cursing myself for allowing that to happen, I started to check my options. There was no hide-a-key, and I was also on the second floor so there was no back door on the list. I reasoned that I would need to break a window, which I was now quite skilled at.
One broken window later, Cotton began to freak out and bark her little head off.
"Cotton! Stop! No barking! That hurts like hell!" That did little to dissuade her. She had clearly forgotten or did not recognize me. Thankfully, though, she didn't keep going.
I made my way into the house and gave Cotton a stern look. I couldn’t really stay mad at her, though. She was too excited for me to be home and was acting too cute. This was normal. If I was away from the house, even for an hour, she would get all clingy when I got back.
I gave her a few pets and ear scratches with my wings. “Okay, calm down. I just forgot to make sure the door wouldn’t close." I ushered her away from the broken glass. Thankfully, she didn't manage to get any glass in her paws. That would have been hell to get out.
I took Cotton to my room and closed the door before I flopped onto my bed. I didn't care how I was supposed to lay down. I just rolled a bit until I found a comfy spot.
I felt so tired I almost didn't want to do my normal nightly routine, but I felt like it was a good idea to continue to try and adjust to this body.
In my experience, lucid dreaming was not hard. You would shut your eyes, blank out your mind, and wait. Something would happen from there. Normally, you would “fall” into a dream and ride it out for a while before doing anything. Now, controlling a dream was tricky because you were not allowed to think. Changing the dreamscape was more like moving an arm. You don't think about it to do it. You just make it move. Normally, thinking would just snap you right awake.
That night was not normal. I laid there, waiting to fall into a dream, only to start feeling like I was really falling. I quickly snapped my eyes open only to see a pure white floor rushing up to say hello to me.
I did what any reasonable person would have done. I screamed, though that action was short lived as I slammed into the floor, shattering it like fine glass. I continued to fall, dazed from the impact. When my senses returned, I found out the falling was more like hovering in place. I looked around to see some shards of what I had assumed was white flooring resting on what appeared to be nothing.
At that point, I was sore again and done with whatever just happened to me. I started to think to myself in an attempt to break the dream away.
"I hate the start-up to a dream sometimes. It's always hard to keep track. That almost felt real." It was a disjointed thought. It was meant to be nothing more than ammo to wake me up. The only issue was it didn't work.
The cool chill of fear washed over my body. I'd never managed to stay in a lucid dream and have a proper, conscious thought. I quickly looked around to see what is best described as nothing: a barren realm of random light and what looked like dust that appeared to have no meaning.
"What is this? Am I still dreaming? That doesn't make sense! I didn't fall into some type of coma, did I? Is lucid dreaming bad for ponies or something!?" My panicked voice echoed into the random space.
I shook my head and struggled to get down to the non-existent ground that the shards were lying on. I only managed to look really silly as I tried to paddle and roll my way down. I was left hovering in place and spinning around slowly.
"This, whatever this is, sucks," I said to the world at large.
After a while, I advanced to spinning around and looking pissed off with my forelegs folded. Luckily for me, things didn't stay as boring. I can't say when it started, but slowly I started to get the feeling like I was being watched. I looked for the offending observer, but I could find no one. At least until my random spinning managed to point my view in the general direction of “up”.
It was far away, and hard to make out, but in this random world of nothingness I saw a moon. I stared at it and in return I received this odd feeling of concern.
I blinked a few times and then rolled my eyes. Why would a rock be concerned? At least I felt like I was in a dream again.
"Okay, yeah, don't worry. I totally have this," I said, even though I totally didn't have it.
I did my best to relax and stop my spinning. This managed to bring my rotation to a slow halt. I then started to try and get myself down from the hovering position. Instead, I sent myself spinning in place again, but much faster than before.
I was getting desperate, and it was in that desperation I had a crazy idea. I tried to imagine myself held up by strings, like a marionette which would soon be cut loose and fall to the floor. In this dream-like state, my attempts worked. I fell from the air and onto the white shards that lay below me. I didn't expect them to be like glass for some reason. They disagreed.
After a lot of cursing and pulling glass out of myself, I started to explore. The moon never left its position in the sky while I was doing so. Its state never changed, always providing a constant sensation of unease. I walked for a long time, wading through the concerned feelings that pressed down on me. I tried a few times to tell myself, and the moon, that I was not totally lost, but I think we both knew the truth. I had started to wish it would be more useful than just sending worried feelings at me when suddenly the feeling violently transformed into full blown panic, like someone was screaming at me to run.
I looked around only to see more of the empty expanse. I was getting really sick of it. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing was all there was to see. I had tried to perform some minor control techniques with the dream, but nothing was working.
"Look, moon! If you want to warn me about something, can you try to be more specific!? I can't seem to control my own dream for some reason and nothing about this whole experience feels right! Why am I allowed to think suddenly? Why does stuff hurt, and better yet, why am I not waking up?! Do you have an answer to any of that? Didn't think so!" I ranted off into the void. I was getting really sick of being stuck in this void when it had already been a stressful day.
A smooth voice cut the silence to answer me. It spoke calmly and deliberately to deliver its chilling message to my ears. "Why, that's easy my friend. You're dead."