In Another Life III: A Human(e) Retelling

by Bateman66

Cracking the Mind

Alistair tapped his knuckles against the office door of Professor Neuro Paraprax. Inside he could hear a wild shuffling of papers that seemed to cascade about like a storm. Not hearing a response, Alistair knocked again.

“Come in,” called the voice of the Professor, its baritone lowness and soothing aura slightly muffled through the walls. Opening the office door, Alistair stepped in casually and shut it behind him.

“Alistair!” greeted the orange stallion jovially from his desk. “It’s very nice to see you once again. How was yesterday?”

He made a wobbling motion with his hand. “It was fine. Twilight and I spent most of the day walking through the Royal Gardens, and then ate dinner at the hotel. Pretty mild to be quite honest.”

Neuro smiled. “Well at least you still had an enjoyable time.” He gestured to the vacant waiting room chair that sat in front of his massive desk. “Please-please, take a seat. We have much to cover today.”

Taking his seat as casually as he entered, Alistair folded his hands and leaned back slightly. “So what precisely are we going to be covering today, Professor?”

The Professor pulled the reel-to-reel tape recorder out from under his desk and placed atop a bare section of his desk. Clicking the record button on the machine, he began. “Oh, just this and that. Nothing too important.”

Alistair bit his lip at the vagueness of the answer, half-truths and open ended responses leaving a large possibility of whatever was intended. Never the less, he respectfully kept his mouth shut, opting to stick with the manners Twilight Sparkle had so valiantly instilled within him.

“I’d like to start with something different, though,” continued the Professor. “I’d like to focus on you for a moment. Not your past, not your homeworld, just…you.”

“What would you like to know?”

Neuro rubbed the stubble along his chin gently, seeming to stall for a moment as he contemplated something. “Where does your name come from, Alistair?”

Alistair’s eyes widened in surprise, but quickly receded as a grin spread across his face. “You don’t skip a beat, do you Professor?”

He smiled slyly. “I try. It’s a talent you pick over the years I suppose.”

Alistair laughed. “I would assume so. But still…how do you know about my name?”

“Twilight Sparkle told me,” he answered simply. “The reference you made about the correlation between that book and your name left quite an unanswered hole. What was the book’s title, precisely?”

“Alistair’s Adventures in the End of Time,” he happily responded with giddy pomp. “Definitely one of the greatest books ever written.”

“Quite an interesting title there,” remarked Neuro with a chuckle “invokes adventure, mystery to the mind. I assume that’s why you chose it?”

Alistair shook his head. “It was the only one that was open to be quite honest. I wasn’t particularly adept in the names department. But it seemed like an interesting enough title so I took it, and have never looked back since.”

Neuro looked confused for a moment and held up his hooves to stop him. “Hold on a second. You didn’t have a name prior? No other alias?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t see the need. Nobody else was there to speak to me, so why have a title to go by if you’d never use it? But after reading the book, it did seem nice to have an identifier, something to call or see yourself as. It suddenly seemed odd not to have one so I figured, why not?”

Neuro’s eyes sharpened as he nodded. “Most interesting. I believe your one of the few people to be granted the rare honor of actually choosing your name. A huge liberty is in that.”

“I assume there’s been ponies who haven’t been…content with their birth name?”

“Oh no,” said Neuro with a smile. “My brother was an Equestria Games athlete, ran the 500 meter sprint about fifteen years ago. Our parents named him Dough Loaf.”

Alistair’s face contorted as he tried to hold back a giggle. “Yeah…I can see how he…wouldn’t like that name. Not very fitting to his persona.”

“Not it was not.” Neuro paused. “But we still have work to do I’m afraid.”

“That’s alright,” said Alistair with a positive lift. “This is definitely getting easier than before.”

A sad frown wrinkled onto Neuro’s face as he nodded slowly. He felt something rushing towards him, knowing all to well what it was going to be, but denying any feelings that came with. Neuro leaned forward on his desk, his hoofs folded solemnly as his shoulders hunched slightly. Speaking on something slightly above a solemn whisper, Neuro looked at him with weak eyes.

“I understand what happened to you in the days preceding your arrival in Equestria, but I remember you mentioned something about the wildlife. That they turned quite unruly in your final days…could you explain this?

Alistair’s eyes became glazed and heavy at the question, as if a switch had suddenly been flipped. Neuro could tell that it discomforted him, set him off balance. It was exactly what he had intended.

“Well…” began Alistair slowly, his voice wavering with indecision. “They bit me; they would just dash up and bite me. I thought it was rabies or some flu going around but it wasn’t, I…I had no idea what was happening.”

His tone slowly shifted into that of desperate recollection, shooting off details with a frustrated urgency, as if once he started he needed to finish as quickly as possible. “They would just move so fast, some would jump and tear right into my skin. It hurt so badly. These animals, such peaceful creatures, always keeping their distance from me, and then suddenly…”

“Suddenly what?” pressed Neuro, hating the words that were coming out of his own mouth.

“—Suddenly being so mean. This rabbit, a mangy little jackrabbit, bit me on the arm. Tore so deep that it bled, badly. I was so scared, so mad. He sank his teeth so deep in that he just hung there on my arm as I screamed. I had never felt so much pain in my life, not ever. I wanted him to just stop. So I took him by the head, yanking him from my arm and…and…”

“And what?”

Alistair’s face paled. “I killed him, with my hands. Just dropped his body right at my feet, like a bag of garbage. I felt numb, I felt bad. There we’re still others, getting closer…”

“Others?”

“They came from all sides. Teeth snarling. I readied myself. Magic in one hand, ax in the other. I knew what was coming…I closed my eyes as I did it.” He looked down placidly at the floor, his eyes empty.

“You killed them,” Neuro stated, finishing what they both already knew.

Alistair slowly shook his head. “No…that can’t be right, I…”

“You killed them,” he repeated, putting extra stress on his words to sear them further.

“No, no-no-no...I…I defended…defended…m-my…”

“You killed them, Alistair. You.”

“No!” he shouted as he stood up madly. “I…defended…I would’ve…they-they-they…I…” He looked down at his hands, and then grabbed at his hair, terrified, frozen where he stood. His face shocked in a horrid expression of realization and madness.

And then, as if on cue, Neuro leaped over his desk in a single sliding motion and landed right next to him, a syringe now held tightly in his hoof. Stepping back, Alistair gasped and attempted to push away but was too late. The needle bit into his shoulder as the Professor pressed down on the plunger.

His vision turned blurry as his ears rung like church bells. The world moved around him, shifting in and out between two places. He doubled back in confusion and crumpled to the floor.

The last thing he saw was the Professor standing over him, a sad grimace across his long face.