Highway 502
Chapter 2: Highway 502
Admiral Biscuit
The semi rumbled under my seat, and in the mirror, I could see a big black cloud billow out of the exhaust pipe. I looked back over in the driver's seat, to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing, and she was still there, big as life. Her blue-grey eyes were looking right at me, and I gave a weak smile. It seemed like the thing to do.
I couldn't help but feel that she was as brimming with questions as I was, but was enough of a driver to not want to be overly distracted until we were back to speed, so I just watched her. I learned that she knew how to double-clutch, and that pony trucks had just as many gears as real-life big rigs.
Her eyes flicked back over to me. “What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?”
“No, I—“ I shook my head. This was probably all a hallucination, brought about by a night in the desert or something. But how to tell the real from the unreal? That was the real question. “Where are you going?”
“Las Pegasus,” she said. “But I can drop you off in Palomino. It's just up the road a way. There's a tow truck in town.” She shifted up a gear and leaned back in her seat, resting one arm on the windowsill, hooking her hoof just in front of the channel for the window. “Where are you from, anyway?”
“Moriarty,” I said.
“Never heard of it.”
“I'm not surprised.” I slumped back, trying to find a comfortable position. I couldn't think of a thing to say, and she wasn't much of a conversationalist, either, so we rode along in silence.
The desert looked the same as it had in New Mexico. Nothing but scrub brush and rocks and distant mesas, but it was a view I loved, and seeing it was somehow reassuring.
I was expecting Palomino to be a collection of ramshackle huts in a barren wasteland—blame too many Hollywood movies—but it turned out that it was a nice little town, filled with nice houses set back from the road, each one of them surrounded by flowerbeds. The homes themselves were two- and three-story adobe affairs, their flowing lines blending neatly into the surrounding desert.
There were fewer cars than in an American city, but the streets were hardly deserted. The sidewalks, unsurprisingly, were crowded with ponies going about their business. The truck driver kept up a good pace as she went through town, but she wasn't reckless. She had an air of calm competence.
“Well, here it is,” she said as she braked to a stop in front of a small garage. A weathered sign with a pegasus on it hung over the a single gas pump out front. Next to the small lobby were two service bays, and there was a row of abandoned cars parked along the property line. The air brakes hissed as she popped a switch on the dashboard, and without waiting to see what I was going to do, she opened her door and climbed out of the truck.
I waited until she had crossed the parking lot and poked her muzzle into the shop before I got out of the truck. That would give her time to introduce me, I figured, and maybe prevent a panic, although if all the ponies were as laconic as she was, I’d be fine.
I followed her into the shop, smiling at the familiar scents of grease and oil and gasoline. A tube radio was softly playing bluegrass or gospel; I couldn't tell which. Not that I would have known the song, anyway. The car up on the hoist had its differential cover off, and I watched in wonder as the unicorn mechanic lifted the stamped steel plate back into position, held it in place with a hoof while she started all the bolts with her telekinetic field, before spinning them in with a socket wrench. She ran them snug with her field, before torquing them by hoof.
The truck driver was paying the mechanic no mind; she was talking to who I assumed was the owner of the shop. The two of them bumped hooves, and the truck driver headed back towards her rig.
“Good luck,” she called over her shoulder at me.
“Thanks! Thanks for the ride!” I gave her a wave as she walked around the front of her truck, but I don’t think she saw me. The air brakes were released with a soft sigh, and the truck billowed out another cloud of smoke as it drove out of the parking lot.
I turned back around. The unicorn had started to fill the differential with a hose attached to a bucket pump, but her attention was fixed on me. I kept watching her out of the corner of my eye as the other pony leaned into the front office.
“Dusty! Me 'n your sis are going on a wrecker call out on 502.”
“Okay mom.”
She turned around and looked up at me. “You got a name?”
“Al,” I said.
“I'm Orchid Frost,” she said, sticking out a hoof. I bumped it politely. “And that's my daughter, Poppy Mallow.”
“Hi.” The unicorn gave me a half-grin, flashing braces at me. I waved back.
“You wanna get the wrecker started, while me and . . . mister? Al talk?”
“Sure, Mom.” The unicorn wiped her hooves off on a rag, and trotted out the door. As soon as she was gone, Orchid's eyes narrowed. “Just what in Tartarus are you? No offense, I'm just curious.”
“I'm not from around here,” I began.
“That's as plain as the muzzle on my face,” she said. “Where are you from? Prairie Fire—that’s the truck driver, in case you didn’t know—said you told her you came from 'Moriarty,' but I've never heard of that.”
“It's not in your world. I'm from another world.” As soon as I'd said it, I imagined how it would sound if someone told me that. Then again, if I'd been back home and a horse had come up to me and made that announcement, I might have been inclined to believe it.
And so was Orchid. She just nodded. “You got any money?”
“None that would do you any good,” I said. “Unfortunately.”
“Of course you don't.” She turned in annoyance as the wrecker bounced over the sidewalk beside the garage, nearly scraping the passenger-side mirror off. “Kids,” she muttered under her breath. “But you've got money that would do you good, right?”
I nodded. I always carried a few hundred bucks in cash, just in case.
“Alright. We'll worry about that later. Get in.” She motioned to the truck. “Slide over, Poppy. You're riding in the center.”
“But Mom, I want to drive.”
“Not this time.” I grinned as I slid into the truck. Even here, kids and parents were the same.
I didn't have a good frame of reference for how old the wrecker was, but it looked well-used. The seat had a blanket covering it, since the original upholstery was probably long gone. A crystal doorknob was on the shifter handle in place of the original knob, and the pull handle for the floor vent on my side was tied open with a length of bailing wire.
Poppy gave me a dark look as I slid into the truck. I just smiled back. Teenagers the world over had mastered that look, apparently.
Orchid slammed her door and shifted the truck into gear. Poppy looked at her mother and then at me, and scooched in my direction millimeter at a time. Satisfied she’d snubbed her mother enough, she braced herself with a hoof as Orchid slowed to let a car go past, before making a left turn onto the road.
Either the engine was woefully underpowered, or the wrecker was geared really low: I could have kept up with it walking for the first block, and jogging for the second. It was just as well; the seat springs were completely shot, and with no load on the suspension, it bounced me in the seat every time she hit a bump.
“How did you get here?” Orchid asked once we'd passed out of the town limits, and the wrecker had reached the blistering speed of thirty.
“I don't know,” I said. “I was driving my Jeep along a two-track last night. I turned onto a paved road, swerved to avoid a bear, and broke the radiator on a bush.”
“On 502?”
“Yeah, I guess. It's this road. The Jeep's maybe ten miles out of town.”
“I wonder. . . .”
“I bet Discord did it,” Poppy chimed in, ending her sullen silence.
“That's what I was thinking.”
“Discord? Isn't he reformed?”
“He was.” Orchid took her eyes off the road long enough to look me intently in the eye and drift over into the other lane of traffic. “But now that Lady Fluttershy's dying, he's kind of gone back to his old ways.”
“It rained root beer last week,” Poppy said bitterly. “I used to like root beer.”
“He thinks that if he makes enough chaos, he can somehow stop it from happening.”
I gawked at her. “Fluttershy's real? What about Twilight Sparkle?”
“Princess Twilight?”
“She's, like, Princess of Magic.” Poppy reached up and tapped her horn. “She wrote half my textbooks.”
“I know of your world,” I said. “Or one very much like it. One where Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy and four other mares freed Nightmare Moon.”
“Yes, that's what happened.”
“How long ago?”
“Like, over a thousand moons ago. That's ancient history.”
I began doing some rough calculating in my head, coming up with a workable number. If their lunar cycles were the same as ours—and if that's what they were counting—it would be somewhere between a hundred twenty and a hundred thirty per decade, so somewhere around eighty years ago would be in the ballpark.
“What happened since then?”
Poppy got a slightly dazed look on her face, like I'd just sprung a pop quiz on her. Orchid glanced at me, licked her lips, and began giving me a summary of the last eight decades of Equestrian history. She focused largely on earth pony achievements, although Poppy occasionally added in a few notable unicorns.
When the show I knew had taken place, the ponies had been on the cusp of an industrial revolution, and thanks in no small part to Twilight's tireless campaign to educate everypony in Equestria, their society had flourished.
Orchid had just started in on the rise of the great dirigibles, when we came across my Jeep, sitting right where I'd left it. Poppy turned on the beacon, and we cut across the road.
She expertly backed up to the Jeep, stopping five feet short. Poppy turned back and lit her horn, moving levers on the wrecker body with her telekinesis. Once she had it positioned to her satisfaction, Orchid backed up until the sling touched the Jeep's rear bumper.
I would have liked to see them hook it up without getting out of the truck, but the Jeep was too foreign to them. Orchid got out and Poppy followed; I was curious enough to join them along the side of the road.
Poppy let her mother attach the chains, then ran the winch and boom with her hooves, watching the Jeep intently. Once she was satisfied it wasn't going anywhere, she walked around to the front and put her hooves on the fender, leaning into the engine compartment. I saw her eyes flicking across the components, identifying them. For a moment, I wished I'd been driving my Cruze last night. That would have baffled her.
“All right.” She tugged the hood down and I strapped the latches.
“We've got to keep an eye out,” Orchid instructed once I was back in the truck. “For the road you took last night. I think I know where it is, and I think the portal will still be there. They usually last a couple of days. If not, you'll have to go to Canterlot and see if one of the Princesses can find a way to send you back.
“Yellow Jacket's Folly?”
Orchid nodded. “Most likely. Reality always was thin up there.”
She jammed the truck in gear and meandered back to our side of the road, occasionally checking her mirrors to see if my Jeep was still following along.
We got there quicker than I'd expected, but she was driving faster than I'd been. She had daylight on her side, and knew exactly where she was, despite the complete and utter lack of mile markers or road signs of any type. She crossed over the road again, which made me grit my teeth even though we'd only seen a couple of cars and one truck in all the time we'd been on the road.
All three of us got out and inspected the ground with the same diligence a detective would give a crime scene. Luckily, the wet ground had held the impressions of my tires well, and it was readily apparent that this was indeed the two-track I'd come in on.
“It's gonna be rough,” I warned Orchid.
“I know.”
She climbed back into the truck, followed by Poppy and myself, and we began crawling across the desert. The stiff suspension on the tow truck alternately bounced me off the door and into Poppy, despite my deathgrip on the door.
“You really need to invent seat belts,” I muttered.
“We have. This truck doesn't have them.” Poppy glared at me as I slid away from her for the umpteenth time.
We scraped through a narrow passage between rocks that had been no issue for my Jeep, but was a little tight for a wrecker. Orchid took it at a crawl, leaning forward in her seat until the rocks passed abreast of the cab, then she glued her eyes to the mirror. The Jeep was almost clear when I heard a familiar chime from my pocket.
Without even thinking, I pulled my cell phone out. Fifteen missed texts?
“What's that?” Poppy looked over at my phone with interest.
I gave her a devilish grin. “Oh, nothing much. Just a cell phone. I can make calls and send and receive messages from pretty much anywhere.” I brightened. “Hey, we're back on my world, if my phone works. You can just drop me off and head back to town.”
“Here?” Orchid stopped the truck and looked out at the vast expanse of nothingness that surrounded us. “Is this where you live?”
“On second thought, maybe closer to town would be better.”
Alright, now it seems to be going somewhere. There's definitely still opportunity to make this unique, and it seems you're leading up to exactly that. I'll give it a tracker for now.
Multi-shot-tober?
Funny how indifferent the ponies are to all this.
"Portal's open again, huh? Meh. At least you're not trying to eat our faces."
5121254
Seriously, just think of how many eldritch horrors have attacked since the show began . .. and then add in the comics, and the fact that Daring Do's real--as well as her enemies.
A weird ape from a different planet that just needs his Jeep towed? Hardly worth mentioning.
EDIT:
A two-or-more-parter is coming up soon. And you'll love tomorrow's fic, for some values of the word 'love.'
5121272
"AAAAAHHH!! Holy crap, what are YOU?"
"AAAAAHHH!! Holy crap, it TALKS!"
I wonder if a pony has already scanned that cellphone...
Discord really is like a kid, isn't he? Can't quite accept what's happening.
Surreal night for Al, but not an unpleasant one.
I've learned that spending the night in a car whose coolant leaks lets you meet interesting people.
Ah, a car fic. Aren't those nice?
The beginning is eerily similar to an episode of the Twilight Zone. In fact, I daresay I remember one beginning in a similar manner. The atmosphere you create with the descriptions of the fog and pretty much the entire environment are excellent. The attention to detail is awesome. Just something like the crystal door knob-for-a-shifter knob, it's nice touches like those that add a lot to a story.
The ponies are a teensy bit laid back if you ask me. Just barely, though. You make it very clear what's going on and why a human might be the least strange thing they've seen lately. And that's great. I just feel like they might at least be a teeny tiny bit more interested in him. Though I suppose it's always a welcome change to have ponies NOT make a fuss about a human. And I guess Orchid did straight up ask Al wtf he is.
I do say, though, there is one bit of conversation that should have went down a tad differently:
lol Oh, come on, like you wouldn't say that. >_>
Lastly, the car bits. Ya know I love em, but - and I'm taking a neutral standpoint on this because... well, you know - I think they might be just a tad too much for non-car-people. Know what I mean? You do a great job breaking everything down for those not in-the-know, and again it's hard for me to judge, but the question is: are they too car-ish for non-car-people? It's just a passing thought, and in fact, maybe I'm just over thinking it. I doubt anyone else would even mention it. On the flip side, maybe all the scrubs will enjoy the car parts (pun?) and learn a little while they're here. I dunno, like I said, I like em, and a car fic is definitely a welcome one to me.
Oh, and I do recall one thing. The uh, circumstances, shall we say, of the human's world-jumping are pretty close to that of Off the Beaten Path
Looking forward to more, even though I know it'll probably be many miles down the road.
5121272 I still maintain the thought that that entire episode was merely a fanfic written by Dashie. I mean think about it. It's a shameless self insert. It's not a bad story, has a decent plot and decent characters, and a neat (if unoriginal) twist that AK Yearling = Daring Do. But at the end of the day, it seems uncannily like Dash's impression of the Daring Do universe, she gets to be the hero, without overstepping her favorite character, and she even gets to be in the next book. And if you think a little more, you'll remember a prior episode when Dash mentioned that she was indeed writing some sort of story. A shitty one, and not a fanfic, but she's some kind of amateur writer one way or the other. I guess her original work is just vastly overshadowed by her fanfictions. Hehe.
I'm holding out to see if they ever mention that Daring Do escapade again.
5121634
.
I was slightly inspired by a Stephen King short story where a woman takes her car on ever weirder shortcuts that skip through worlds.
Well, they live in the pony equivalent of 'near Roswell.' And--after it's been raining root beer and whatever other weirdness Discord's been getting up to--Al's not that weird at all.
My next story will feature Princess Twilight. It's a romantic comedy!
I don't know. I kept everything as simple as possible (for example, other possibilities of damage to the jeep were broken front spring shackle, or sheered gearbox bolts--both of which could easily be done by a rock), but everyone should understand radiator. Besides, in CSI and all the related stories, nobody's complained when i put out a technical description.
Or Misunderstandings, or some female turns into Discord fic I stopped reading a while back, or King's The Langoliers (except it's an airplane that goes through a tear in space) and probably dozens of others. Heck, I did it way back when in Missionary, although Thad went on foot, rather than in a car.
Sooner than you think.
I was confused as to the so called advancements in Equestria, till you mentioned how long had passed, giventhe times, things are still going slower, unless being a small town in the middle of nowhere, its running slowly relative to th big cities etc., As for Fluttershy being old, I wonder if telomere rekniting or even blood cleansing, according to local research, vampiric myth, would work. After all, Discord wouldnt be doing anything To Fluttershy.
Crystal door knob for the shifter? That sounds like my family, but I cant remember which vehicle it was. Might have been the Mark 2 Jag that me grandad had.
Yellow Jacket always has thin reality? Is it that due to wasps, birds, or HiViz wrecker crew mirages? I wonder how much it varies, as in rigid relative to local immediate geophysical structures, which is why mass can pass through, givenits inherent hgh spacetime stress, and normal energy cant, such as cellphone signals. Then again, there was no visible change as they passed through, so light has high enough energy in this situation? Im wondering about using a dirt cheap pair of WiFi range extenders with a fibre link between them on either side of the fault? At the very least, use the cell phone to measure signal strength, then try a Roman Empire Heliograph signalling method?
If that portal's gonna be there a few days, maaaan, I would totally head back through that thing with a working car. Maybe see if I was close enough to say hi to some ponies I knew of, or just see the sights in Las Pegasus if nothing else.
worst case scenario
Cap Mom
5122316 captain mom? Is that some newfangled superheroine?
;D
5122316
Me, too. Or at least hang out at the thin spot and talk back and forth, until you're more certain of its mechanics.
Also, corrections made.
Yep, looks like Al was adventures out after that.
He also broke the Prime Directive, but really, who cares amiright?
Keep going! ;)
5131243
Huh, I didn't know that. The choice of 502 was a tongue-in-cheek joke to the rampant 502 errors right after the update.
5125923
Fear not! More will come!
Well I feel stupid. Who woulda thunk there was a second chapter?
5133431
So far on this site alone, I've been constantly and pleasantly surprised, especially since by its very nature, writers on this site have a fairly narrow focus.
This, my friend, is good reading material... I wonder...
5142070
Thanks!
Yes? Go on. . .
5143078 I think I am going to try constructing a similar story with a bit more of a twist... in interesting twist.
Now if a way can be found to stabilize the portal, the two worlds could learn so much from each other right now.:)
5131935 wrote : "Huh, I didn't know that. The choice of 502 was a tongue-in-cheek joke to the rampant 502 errors right after the update."
The update scrambled email notification too now. Even tracking the fics I'm not getting any updates. I hope that problem is fixed real soon now.
5181277
I hadn't noticed the lack of fic updates, but I've been to busy with one-shots and the play and work to have any time to read them.
80 years since the show eh? Aw... that means Octavia is most likely dead, or very old. *Sadface*
I think you meant than.
Also bad Discord, stop running root beer, no one ruins root beer!