The Horror of Happiness

by CrackedInkWell

Chapter 12: Of Suspicion and Trade

“You have to admit,” Double Diamond said, “That something really weird is going on.”

Starlight was in deep thought as she looked from her window that overlooked the town. First the two mysterious disappearances, and now a suicide, and this was from only one week! “I know what you’re going to say, it’s all connected to the doctor.”

“A foal would easily see that,” he trotted up to her, “Face the facts Starlight, he was the last pony that Lilly and Finishing had been with before their disappearance – and now this? You’ve to see that something is going on.”

She sighed, “I don’t want to admit this, but you’re right. Ever since Dr. Lovejoy had arrived, the townspony keep disappearing left and right. Along with they all have him in common. At the same time though, we all have to open to the possibility that the simplest explanation might be the most likely answer. For example, with Check Mate’s death, there’s a possibility that Lovejoy’s story might be true. After all, you told me that the Skyland children said they did see Check rushing out of his door with the doctor running after him. Perhaps he was trying to stop him from jumping off.”

Double Diamond shook his head, “Makes me wonder, if he’s right, why would Check Mate commit suicide for?”

“Isn’t it obvious? He’s not exactly like in the village. He’s been sent to the Equality House several times for bad behavior before, and giving his past before he came to Our Town; perhaps it was all too much for him.”

“Are you sure? Last time I’ve checked, he didn’t seem that depressed. Besides, nopony has ever done this before since you founded this village. Sure, we’ve buried a few ponies now and then, but they were from natural causes. So what’s changed? It’s because of him. I’m telling you Starlight, Dr. Lovejoy has been bad news from the start.”

Starlight broke away from the window towards the white stallion, “Diamond, I know where this is going, and the answer is no, I can’t banish somepony unless I have absolute proof or reasonable cause that they should be evicted from us. Have you considered the possibility that if I did, I might be kicking out an innocent pony that just happens to have a string of bad luck? But even if he was responsible, what’s the motive? Why would he go after Lilly, Finishing, and Check Mate for? He only met all of them once.”

“I know. But maybe you should seriously question him. What if he’s up to no good? What if he’s some criminal that we don’t know about?”

“Okay, I’ll tell you what,” she put a hoof on his shoulder, “I’ll ask him to have dinner at his home. Once I’m there, I’ll ask some critical questions and judge for myself whether or not he should be banished. And don’t worry, even if he does do something threatening, I should be able to take care of myself.”

---

A phonograph played a soft, melancholic string quartet. Slow in melody, like a funeral eulogy, set the mood of the dinner scene that was before Starlight. Across the table was Lovejoy, who hasn’t spoken much since the burial. The meal that was prepared was very simple: mashed potatoes with gravy, a shredded carrot and turnip salad, and a glass of water.

After taking a bite of the mash potatoes, Starlight began, “How’ve you been feeling?”

The old stallion looked up for a moment before returning his gaze to his plate that he barely touched. “A little better, I suppose.”

She nodded, “I understand how shocking all of this is, even the entire town is terrified of this. We’ve never had anything like this happened before.”

Lovejoy said nothing.

“Just, out of curiosity,...” Starlight began again, “...what exactly happened that made Check Mate suddenly run out of your house? He seemed perfectly fine before, right?”

“Depression, Ms. Glimmer, is very tricky to spot from other ponies. You see, what happened when he came knocking on my door was that he was sent because he was told it was his turn. I offered him tea and I was curious about how he came to the village. Such a sad story really, about his cutie mark is the cause of his misery. Then I asked him if his time here was any better, but he told me that he wasn’t that much liked among the villagers. I think I’ve overstepped a little with my curiosity because he suddenly got up and started to head away from the town. Believe me; I did try to go after him to apologize for getting into something so personal. I followed him to the cliff side and pleaded him to stop... to consider what he was actually doing. But… he jumped. Just like that.” The elderly unicorn took a drink of water, only realizing how empty it was. “Oh, here,” he took Starlight’s glass in his aura, “Let me refill that.”

As she watched him going over to the barrel of fresh water, Starlight asked, “Doctor, do you know why I’m here?”

“Because it’s your turn?”

“No, it’s because I’ve heard some rumors about you – nasty ones – saying that with the disappearances and the suicide in the past week, my fellow town ponies are thinking if you had something to do with it.”

Lovejoy snapped his attention to her, “What! They are accusing me? But, whatever for?”

“Well, you were the last known pony that all three of my villagers had met before something bad happened to them. Considering that these events had never happened before, and your arrival makes-”

“But, why would I do any of that?” Lovejoy interrupted, “For crying out loud, I’m a doctor. I’ve sworn to do no harm or cause any pain. Sure, I unintentionally had broken Check Mate’s to the point of suicide, but I didn’t want him to do it! Please understand, I didn’t come here to tear up your village, Ms. Glimmer.” He said as he started to refill the cups, “I just want a place to stay for the remaining life I have.”

“Doctor, I’m sorry,” Starlight said, “I didn’t come here to offend you. I just want to know what’s going on.”

Lovejoy, with both cups in his aura, walked back to the table. “I just can’t believe that your ponies are blaming me for all your troubles.” He placed his cup on his side of the table before proceeding over to giving his guest her cup. “But I guess with hard times, things are easier when you- whoa!” the old stallion’s hind leg was caught from one of the legs of the table, making him drop Starlight’s glass fall on the mare’s side. “Starlight, I’m so sorry, I didn’t…”

That was when he saw something when he tried to pick himself off the floor. Where the water had drenched the founder’s side, it ran over her flank, in which he saw something unusual. The black equal sign was smudged. An eyebrow was raised, “Ms. Glimmer? What’s wrong with your cutie mark?”

Starlight’s eyes widen as she took a closer look. Grabbing the napkin with her forehoof, she tried to cover it up, “I-It’s nothing!” she quickly stood up. “I’m just a little wet is-... wait!”

But the doctor’s magic took hold of the napkin, cleaning up the makeup to reveal her true cutie mark.

There was a silence between the two of them for a moment until Starlight took a defensive stand. “Why you- you clumsy old fool!” she shouted, trying to light up her horn only to find nothing but sparks to come out of it. Her face dropped, “W… What?” Starlight tried as hard as she could to summon magic to her horn but quickly found that she couldn’t. “What’s going on? Why can’t I use my magic?”

Lovejoy sighed, “Somehow, I knew that this was going to happen,” he said as he returned to his seat, picking up a forkful of mashed potatoes and gravy.

“What did you do?” the mare demanded.

“To put it short, I had a feeling that you came here for more than just to have dinner with me. So... I’ve put an extract of the anesthetic Fructus stellarum nocte. (Something that I have very little of mind you.) It is used for unicorns before they undergo surgery for the purpose that the doctors won’t get shot at while they’re carrying a certain procedure out. I knew that you were actually going to come here to confront me about Check Mate’s death, so I took the precaution to put the extract into the gravy so that you and I could discuss this without you hurting me. Basically, just so we could talk,” he swallowed his forkful of potatoes with the gravy. “There, now like you, I won’t be able to do any magic until morning. So, Ms. Glimmer, if you would please sit back down, I want to tell you something.”

With a scowl still on her face, she complied, “And what is it, Doctor Lovejoy?”

“There’s another reason why I’ve chosen to stay in this village.” He said, “The truth is, I’ve been experimenting with drugs and herbs to see what effects it has on ponies. Now, I admit, I’ve been disgraced from the medical community completely for doing this. The truth is I think I have discovered certain drugs that can be proven to be incredibly useful in the right hooves. But the problem is that I didn’t have enough funding to get any test subjects. Recently, I’ve been caught, and I threatened to go to jail for drugging my patients without them knowing it. But with the possibilities of the formulas that I’ve discovered, what choice did I have?”

“Are you telling me that you’ve been drugging some of my ponies this whole time?”

“Not all the time. And I’ve tried to create a careful situation in which I could monitor closely that, if anything did go wrong, I would give them the antidote. I confess that when I laced my newest drug, an antidepressant, to Check Mate, I didn’t predict that he would go and kill himself. I admit, that was my fault, and I know what I did was wrong for not telling you up front, but I was afraid that you and your ponies would say no before I could tell you the possibilities I could give you.

“But now since we’re in this situation, where you now know my terrible secret, and I know yours… why not we both make a deal?”

“What deal?”

“How about this, since you know my secret, I will trade, for security, a drug in which I have successfully tested to give ponies a controlled hallucination in which whatever you tell or show them, they will accept the experience as truth. All you have to do is give them something like a cup of water or some food in very small trace amounts, give them a few minutes to have it enter the bloodstream, and then you can tell them anything you want them to believe.” he paused for a moment.

Then he continued saying, “At the same time, since I know that you still have your original cutie mark, you will trade to leave me well alone to conduct my own experiments where I promise that I’ll be more careful about. That from here on out, I will test these drugs more carefully so that the unknowing subjects will be perfectly safe. And the moment you say yes to this, I will keep your secret to the grave. So, Ms. Glimmer, do we have a deal?”

Starlight thought about this long and hard until she finally said, “Only on one condition: that if you’ll give this drug to me so that I can give it to Hidden Trek and if he joins our community overnight, only then, do we have a deal.”

The old stallion nodded, “Fair enough ma’am. I’ll give you the bottle right away, as well as lending you a towel when it's time for you to go.”

Comments

[Skye Mist]

Oh yippee. Two sociopaths make a devil's pact with one another.

[zalla661]

Starlight, you're playing a dangerous game. I really hope it's just a lie on her part to get on the doctors good side.

[Mix-up]

This was an interesting turn of events, Doc Lovejoy know of Starlight major secret and Starlight now "think" know some hoe his plus has a little intensive to keep the doc around. i don't think that SG was willing to give the benefit of the dought to the Doctor because they really need him to keep the population in good heath to keep the down functioning and would make them less dependent on outsiders. I think Starlight will use the fungus on Trek to became compliant but I don't think she know nuances of the mind to use the words to set the right mode put Trek in the right mode to reject the cutie mark. sorry, I am in a hurry I will try to continue later.

[Mix-up]

Sorry, I'm back to finish my comment.

This is interesting turn Double Diamond is taking an interesting role of caution and conscience to remind Starlight to consider above all the welfare of the townponies and the upholding her ideal of equality amongst ponies. In the beginning of the season premier, Double Diamond showed himself a Starlight Glimmer lieutenant how fervently believe in her speech of equality and is will to spy for to uphold, he is blinded enough by his loyalty and indoctrination to her that he is willing to force ponies to undergo the cutie unmarking and put them through the equalization house. Yet, the moment that he realizes that he was play by Starlight and that it is unveiled that she is a hypocrite; he spearheaded the group to free the cutie mark from the Cutie Mark Vault. DD has shown himself to an idealist and also has leadership skills. I am interested to see how he will evolve in the story in a way that he doesn’t betray his belief in Starlight.
Before the last season finally, I had thought that Starlight was social worker of sort and had probably studied in sociologies as a major and maybe a minor in psychology. She is very intelligent and a persuasive orator but I don’t think she really knows that much about Hypnoses, I don’t think she has the skills to understand the subtleties of manipulating other ponies minds with the fungues to change somepony core values and belief for it to stick in their mind for very long and reinforce itself in their thoughts. So I would expect her to either just let Trek listen to the voice caster or just patiently say what to believe in but it won’t have has potent effect on him like Doctor Lovejoy would be able to get out of it. Starlight methods of converting ponies to her cause are effective but still blunt by breaking the spirit of the ponies and then use the Equal mart to reinforce her ideals with the carrot and stick that that will condition them on how to thing. It is still a time consuming method that can still
What the doc would probably do to Trek to make him receptive to Starlight Glimmer’s desire of rejecting his own cutie mark with the help of the fungus, would be to attack the meaning in Trek’s mind of what it signifies to him, in this case a talent for wandering and finding interesting places, and then turn the meaning of it so that it is unappealing to him like make Trek think that he is lose and alone in a forest and that it is his cutie mark that is making him lost and alone and that he will always be lost and alone for as long he has it. Then there has to be a figure of a pony that Trek would was to join but he is push back the more he tries to approaches. The questions that Trek is being told in a way that he doesn’t want to be alone, that he doesn’t want to endlessly wander, that he wants to be free of his loneliness, that he want to be with other ponies, that he doesn’t want to have his destiny be determined by his cutie mark that he wants to get rid of it to be free. I think you get the idea; the point would be to make him think that he wants to get rid of his cutie mark. Toward the end of the treatment, Trek has to be given a metaphorical regimentation of his cutie mark; maybe a map that he will hold in his hooves and destroy it. Afterward when he finally when he reaches the other figure it doesn’t at first understand him or want to be with him unless he wants to be like them, to be equal that he wants to be equal and so forth. After the effects of the fungus wear off Trek’s mind would be pliable. At least, this is how I would go about it, I would imagine that you would have a much better way to this given your writing skills.
Seeing that Doc Lovejoy now has leverage on Starlight wander how far he will go to use it to his benefit and that now he got Starlight’s full attention now and that doesn’t help him if he wants to stay low. For Starlight is an opportunists, she originally needed doc to help take care of the ponyfolk of Our Town, but now she may have somepony to help her have a stronger hold on her town and maybe use it as a means to enlarge he herd with more new comers. With Trek under her influence, how has contacts to media out led, she might be able expand her operations with an increase the number passersby, this could be a golden opportunity for her. The problem is that she still has no clue of how dangerous Doc is. The tension is mounting; can’t wait to see how things will go along.