Pinkie Pie Tells A Story

by FeverishPegasus

Automaton

Author's Note:

There's lots of violence and cutting and suicidey stuff in this chapter, so don't read it if that stuff bothers you.

Either way, be forever optimistic.

“Little Pip. Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Why do you think I exist?”

That made him snort. “A question like that, coming from you?”

“Ha! You’re probably right. Wanna hear the rest of the story?”

“These are separate stories,” he said, glaring at her.

“You aren’t thinking hard enough silly.”

---

You see, after living in Ponyville for about a year or so, I got really really bored.

I bet you’re thinking, but Pinkie! Ponyville is full of life and friendship and magic and love and things to do and stuff to get drunk on and ponies to do and life to live and daisies to plant and laughs to be had and let me tell you, those are wonderful things! Wonderful, wonderful things! I didn’t even get to half of them!

It just got so tiresome. All that smiling and waving and friend making and booping made me feel so whitewashed and soulless. I know you ponies don’t need to struggle to live happy lives, but I do! I act like I don’t want to struggle, but it’s almost as important as food! I actually like the ebb and flow of things, as much as I hate it!

And you know, maybe it’s just stupid to be like that. To always live on the edge of your emotions, trying to scrounge by on a daily basis. Maybe I ought to make myself an automaton like the residents of Ponyville, and just live my life in bliss while I forgo the rest of my passions and dreams.

But as a child, I wanted to do something grand! I wanted to be ruler of the world! No, not just the ruler of the world, but the ruler of the universe, the multi-verse, the all-encompassingverse! And I wanted to be an astronaut too! I wanted to be the world’s only astronaut ruler of the cosmos, the top dawg, the holiest of holies. I wanted everyone to worship me…

Okay, that might be a little overkill, but you get the point.

When you grow up and all the adults tell you the sky’s the limit, well, you dream big.

And then you do grow up and it seems like you can still do it, so you tell your high school counselor that you want to be missus ruler of the world, space astronaut extraordinaire and they just scoff. They’re like, you’ll have to choose one of those sweety. You can’t be both.

And you try your best to ignore her! But the more you live your life, the more get the inkling that she’s actually right. Like, every big business in the hooman and pony world has their own horde of factory workers, and if you’re anywhere near average intelligence, guess where you’re going to end up?

Sure you can work your way up, but it only works so well. Some things aren’t attainable for ponies, no matter how hard they work, and I had to come to terms with that. You wanna guess how I did that? You wanna know how I reacted to the fact that I’d never accomplish my dreams?

I didn’t! I just kept trying to accomplish them, even though it was clear I wasn’t getting anywhere near what I wanted to do. I kept trying and trying and trying and trying and trying and trying and then I became a druggie.

Instead of trying to accomplish smaller things, I just gave up and let it all go. Isn’t it ironic that that’s what made my dreams possible?

What was I talking about again?

Oh yeah. Ponyville. Boring.

Even after all this, I hadn’t given up on my dreams, so I decided to go to a different dimension, at random.

Which was a mistake.

But it was also interesting.

I’d teleported to a world where everypony was actually secretly a robot. It seemed peaceful enough at first, and life chugged along at a quick and efficient pace. Crime was practically unheard of, and everypony smiled at each other like overly friendly businessmen. I quite liked this place because of how similar it was to the hooman world. Not very many buttons though.

Life just kept going that way, day after day. Insincere smiles exchanged, deals made, jobs performed, favors given in discrete places, meals eaten, flowers planted. It was almost like they tried too hard to be normal.

However, I noticed a sort of tension building up between the ponies. Smiles went from insincere to fake and handshakes became more mechanical. Their well-established facades began to fall apart, and soon, interactions went from unsettling to cringy. Frightened, unsettled laughter rang out among groups of ponies that day.

I hadn’t known the ponies were robots at the time, so I did what I could to make the ponies I talked to more relaxed.

It worked well!

Ish.

While there were ponies that refused to open up, some of them broke down in front of me, crying about how they’d never felt right inside. How they lived their entire lives feeling like they had to meet some kind of impossible standard. And that they’d tried their best to fit in, but no matter what they did, no matter how much time they spent dwelling over what they might be able to do every night, when it came to it, their words came stilted and jerky.

So I went to work on these ponies. I organized socials and hangouts and all kinds of things to get these ponies to accept who they were, but it never worked. In fact, most of my attempts just made it worse for them.

It wasn’t until the first pony injured himself that I realized what the problem was.

While I was walking by several shingles workers putting together a roof, one of the workers lost his footing and fell off. He immediately scampered away from his working crew into a nearby alleyway, incredibly active for someone who’d just broken a bone.

Worried, I followed him into the alleyway, cornering him into a dead end.

“Don’t. Don’t look,” he said. “I’ll be ruined.”

That was the first genuine sounding thing I’d heard from these ponies. “Why?”

He laughed shortly. “Ha! Well, I guess it’s too late. Here.”

A broken leg thrust itself in my direction. Wires and metal jutted out of his open skin.

He continued, “You see, normal ponies bleed, but a long time ago, I found out that I wasn’t normal. The first time I fell down as a filly, I’d known it was a secret I had to keep, even from my parents.”

“How did you hide your injuries?”

“I didn’t. I just sent my parents a letter talking about how I’d visited a friend’s house for a few days. I hid in a trash can until it got better.”

“Wait, but how did you eat?”

He chuckled darkly. “I don’t need to eat. All this time, I’ve been burning it in my furnace, trying my best to act like the food did something to sate me.”

The situation was tense, and although the robot pony seemed to be taking it pretty well, he’d gotten good at acting over the years. If I would survive the situation, I’d have to tread carefully.

“Here,” I said, slicing my hoof on his metal wound. Blood dripped from my hoof into the wound, but I didn’t worry, blood diseases weren’t exactly a thing with robots. “I might be a real pony, but I still see you as an equal.”

His eyes were wide. “What are you doing?”

“I’m giving you the right to call yourself a real pony.”

“It’s just going to stain my chassis.”

“Yeah? Blood stains my veins every day.”

He grimaced at that. “I don’t think so.”

“Stop it! You’re ruining this whole metaphorical bullshit I’m trying to pull off right now.”

“I…look,” he said, pulling his hoof back. “I appreciate the gesture, but it’s not going to get my leg fixed.”

I gesticulated wildly. “But you’ve got it all wrong! I’m telling you that you can go to a normal hospital now! Your wires and electrodes make you, you, and nopony will judge you for that. I don’t know what kind of strange society you live in, but it seems that most ponies here try their hardest to please each other.”

Glimmers of hope shined in his eyes, and for once, I felt like I was making progress. There didn’t exist a problem the element of Laughter couldn’t solve!

I led the poor mecha-pony out to the other workers still shingling that rooftop. If I couldn’t help society, I would, at the very least, help this pony.

The now exuberant pony called out to his coworkers. “Hey guys! I know it might be a bit surprising, but I’m hoping you take it well.” He held his leg toward them. “I’m a robot!”

A moment of silence passed.

Then four simultaneous wails of terror emanated from his coworkers, each of them fixated on the metallic wound. All of them jumped off the building and made quick pursuit of the revealed pony.

The poor guy tried to run, but his broken leg made it impossible to move at anything close to escape velocity. He was overtaken in a matter of seconds.

His coworkers formed a ring around him and pounded him into the ground, screeches of metal and pain filling the air around the city, drawing more ponies in to participate in the ruthless killing.

Soon, his post-mortem twitches stopped, and all of them looked towards me.

One of the shingles workers that started the attack asked, “What’s your affiliation with him?”

I’ll say that at that moment, I wasn’t inclined to call my previously existing buddy so much as an acquaintance. “I…uh. I ousted him. Look,” I said, showing them the cut on my hoof. “I’m real.”

The brown maned, grey pony gave me an approving nod. “Good.”

There was a bit of an awkward silence, but most of the ponies had started milling about, so I breathed a little sigh of relief. No doubt I’d have to go to sleep thinking about what I’d done for the rest of my life.

And then, out of nowhere, more screeching sprung up from the crowd.

One of the ponies had gotten injured while mobbing, and had been revealed as yet another robot.

This cycle continued for five or so more ponies, until miraculously, no more injuries occurred.

***************************

My first instinct was to get away from this terrible place. I understood that cruelty existed in every dimension, but it didn’t occur to me that this species could be worse than hoomans. It was like one big game of mob justice. Everypony kept their head down, waiting for another to make a mistake.

However, as much as I wanted to leave the place, the element of Laughter would not be deterred. I was the most well equipped to deal with things like this, and deal with them I would. Starting with a position of power.

And Little Pip, you wouldn’t guess it, but, it was really easy to get power in this world. As a normal flesh and blood pony, I was treated like some kind of celebrity. Never before had a pony willingly taken the cut test, and passed.

I can bleed is what I mean.

The second word got out about my presence at the recent robot ousting, I grew in fame and power. The fact that I could bleed the red juice made me an expert on all things ‘normal’.

Ponies asked me about how to deal with awkward situations, how to avoid being awkward, how to make genuine facial expressions, even how to perform sex acts with their wives. While I answered as best as I could, the most I could offer were a few simple anecdotes about actually feeling the emotions that you wanted to portray.

It never helped them, but they kept asking away.

Regardless, as the element of Laughter, I knew how to pull the strings of power, and I did so to become the ruler of the city.

I’d like to branch off a little bit to say that the whole planet was just one big city. Not too large, mind you. The planet itself was very small, so the city really only rivaled the size of Canterlot.

Little Pip, I have no idea how it all worked. If you’re not satisfied with the word ‘magic’, how about you just take wacky physics and impossible economic procedures as an answer?

Back to what I was talking about.

I became mayor of the city, thus, ruler of the world.

And let me tell you, my idea for a new law was brilliant.

***************************

On the summer solstice, everypony was required to perform a mandatory cutting of their hooves. They would walk into view of everypony, and show them their true nature. Nopony was permitted to move until the ceremony ended.

It was my hope that they would realize the stupidity of their mobbing. If they each revealed themselves to be robots, they wouldn’t have it within themselves to hurt each other, because no pony would be able to call themselves ‘normal’.

And on the day of the ceremony, I felt hopeful that the whole robot/pony dichotomy would be resolved.

***************************

Let me tell you, the plan worked very well at the start.

The other ponies managed to withhold their shrieks as each pony exposed their metallic hooves. I could tell that as the number of ponies who hadn’t exposed themselves dwindled down, tensions began to vanish.

Soon enough, the last pony stood in front of the crowd with his hoof out. After a few seconds, he walked back to his place among the crowd.

The whole exercise hadn’t been easy for them, and I could tell from the tired looks on their faces that their nerves had been absolutely fried. It was only out of sheer respect for me that they’d managed to go this far and keep themselves under control for this long.

The residents of this city might be murderous, but they certainly knew their respect.

In order to take advantage of the moment, I gave all the newly revealed ponies the best words of encouragement I could offer. It went along the lines of this.

“Dear citizens of ‘Error: Void index referenced at…’”

It was a very long name, so I won’t repeat all of it.

“I know that right now, you might feel a little dismayed about all of this, but now is the time to rejoice! All this time, the root of your worry and insecurities have been embedded in your fear of being a robot. Now that you know about it, don’t you feel at least a little bit relieved?!”

I waited for some kind of cheering or positive reinforcement, but received none.

“Now that you see the truth behind your society, and all the ponies that run it, you no longer need to hide. For the first pony that would seek to hurt you, is also a robot, and thus, they have no greater right to harm you than they would themselves.”

Silence.

“Where is the excitement?! Where is your jubilation?! Can I hear a Hallelujah, citizens of Error?! Today is the day that you can breathe a big sigh of relief. Today marks the day that you no longer need to hide from your peers, in fear that they might turn on you and kill you. Today…you are liberated! Those that used to walk in fear, need not fear! What was once the valley of the shadow of death is now a land of harmony, friendship, and understanding. On this day forward, we will be known as the land of robots, because that is what you are, and that is what makes each and every one of you a life worth saving.”

Once again the ponies looked at me with stoic expressions. I waited for a response, worried that my words meant nothing to their hollow ears.

One pony finally piped up. Her voice was ragged, monotone. “Is this the end of the ceremony?”

“Yes,” I said with bleary eyes.

The ponies below me writhed in a group frenzy, killing each other as quickly as they could manage, and I could only watch.

***************************

Eventually, a single pony stood where the crowd used to be, his carapace of a body shredded, and two of his legs mangled. He looked at me, and I had to avert my gaze.

While I was sitting with my back to him, crying, he struggled to the nearest building. It was a two-story hotel, and I listened as he creaked and groaned up the stairs. The sounds were terrifying, and they went on forever as the robot struggled up each individual step of the building, parts of his metal body scraping the stairs underneath him.

I knew what the robot was going to do, but I felt that I was no longer allowed to stop him. Hospitals didn’t exist in this world, and I had no idea how to fix metal creatures as complicated as him. What was I supposed to do, make him suffer for the few days he’d have left to live?

From what I’d gathered, these guys had some regeneration abilities, but a quick glance at the pony told me he probably wasn’t going to make it out of this.

It was useless to think about that though. Even if I’d known what to do to save this pony, I wouldn’t have helped him. My speech hadn’t done a thing, and I doubted any words could help.

He eventually poked his head out from a second story window.

Above all things, he smiled.

In as loud a voice he could manage, he said, “Thank you.”

Then jumped out of the window, and aimed his head towards the ground.

---

Little Pip couldn’t find it within himself to be surprised. “So. He just…died?”

“Yeah.”