Myou've Gotta be Kidding Me

by DataPacRat

I'm not a psychopath, I'm just very creative

Cheerilee was rather amused when she saw my latest invention - I'd used my bovine bulk as the support for a framework to hold a book in front of me, so that I could read while I walked, even without hands. "If Twilight Sparkle ever sees that," she giggled, "we'll never see her face again."

"She has magic - she can already levitate a book with her wherever she goes," I countered.

"Just try not to walk into any trees. or ponies. Or walls. Or-"

"I get the idea. Don't worry, it's a lot easier than it seems - peripheral vision is a lot more useful than you'd think, and I've got this set at a height so I can look over it at anything in front of me. Besides, the only time I've ever walked into a pole was when someone deliberately came up from behind and startled me."

"So you've made one of these before?"

I started to answer, then paused. The cerise-bodied mare looked at me with wide innocent eyes, only wanting to know more about me and help me... and I looked away from her, trying to think of what I could say.

"Missy," she came up and pressed her neck along mine. "I know your job means you have to keep secrets, and I understand that, and I'm fine with that. But your memory... every time you start talking about your past by accident, you look like you've just been caught with your hoof in the cookie-jar. I don't know how much you really remember, but - please take this the way I mean it - I think you need to talk to a mental health professional."

I sighed a bit. "You're entirely right," I agreed. "I probably do need to. But - I can't."

"Is it a doctor thing? Maybe we could start by going together-"

I shook my head. "It's not that. It's just - a lot of what I remember, or don't, is tied up with my job. And any doctor I talk about is going to find out a lot of the secrets I have to keep. So - I can't."

"Is your job really more important than your own peace of mind?"

I took a moment to take that question seriously, and to consider it. Finally, I answered, "Yes."

Cheerilee pulled back, and looked at me with slightly narrowed eyes. "This Safe Guard you work with - he's in the Royal Guard?"

"Yes," I agreed.

"And he has secrets of his own to keep?"

"I expect so."

"And if he's hurt in the line of duty, the Palace will give him the best of care?"

"Of course."

"And if he ever needs to see a doctor of the mind, instead of the body...?"

I blinked. "Oh, of course," I said. "I hadn't thought of that. I could kiss you for that alone." And I did, and she kissed me back, until she finally pushed my chest with a hoof. "Don't procrastinate. Go make an appointment, now."

"Yes, Miss Cheerilee," I chuckled.

---

I was stretched out in the couch I'd been told to wait on. On the other side of a folding paper screen, a door opened, a set of hooves approached, and there was the sound of a pony settling into a chair or something of their own. From over there came a stallion's voice, "You may call me Doctor Brown. As far as I know, you are a female cow of adult age with a high security clearance, who I only know as Patient Forty-Two. I am cleared for Confidential, Secret, and Top-Secret data, but not for Top-Secret code-word compartmentalized data. If you feel that, at any point, you have revealed information beyond my clearance, you may request a memory-charm to erase my memory of some or all of a session." He went on in this vein for a bit, describing the various procedures in place to ensure I remained as private and anonymous as I wished, and the ways I could back out of the whole thing if I felt I needed to.

Once that was all out of the way, he asked, "So then. How can I help you?"

"That's a very good question. If I knew the answer, I'd probably know enough to be able to help myself."

"Perhaps you could start by describing what brought you here."

"My - well, marefriend, I guess you could call her. She has no clearance at all, and I've been having trouble talking about my past. A lot of it impinges on classified aspects of my work, and I'm still sorting out what I can talk about, and what I can't."

"Go on."

"About five weeks ago, there was an... incident. It's best I don't go into too much detail, but a major aspect is that afterwards, I was left with memories that are... in many details, completely incompatible with the obvious facts of reality. But these memories also contain valuable, useful information. It goes all the way to little things - such as, say, I distinctly remember Neighagra having always been pronounced Niagara, until I mentioned it to someone after Day Zero, and they corrected me."

"Since you say these... memories of yours contain useful data, I'm guessing that you're going to be ruling out any attempts to recover what your memories before - Day Zero, you called it?"

"Good guess. As some bonus blows to my psyche, in the time since then, I've... well, if I tell you, you'll probably be able to guess who I am."

"Even if I do, you'll always be Patient Forty-Two to me. And as I said, if you're uncomfortable with my knowledge at the end of the session, we have a unicorn who knows the memory charm on standby."

"Fair enough. In that case: I was almost raped, I was sent to jail, I was chased by a mob, I was almost dosed with a love-potion in a bar, I ended up accidentally drinking it and don't remember chasing after one of my employees, I came face-to-face with a dragon and had to kill some animals for it to survive, I was abandoned in Buffalo country by my airship pilot, I went through a Buffalo ritual and had a vision, I was challenged to duels which would have killed me if I hadn't been extraordinarily clever, at least half of what I thought I understood about reality turns out to be completely false and I don't know how much I can trust the other half, I'm running a set of government programs directly under the Princesses themselves, I met someone I thought was just a legend but who claims I'm kin, and, oh yes, all of Equestria itself may be in mortal peril and I may be the only one with the knowledge to prevent it from being destroyed."

"Is that all?"

"Not in the slightest. I was petrified by a cockatrice, and... well, I could keep going for a while."

There was a short silence. Then, "Maybe we should set up appointments for you to see me two times a week. Or three. Yes, three sounds good."

"I am going to have to go out on fieldwork on short notice."

"My office specializes in working around such limitations."

"That's fine, then. As long as you don't try to convince me that everything is the result of some suppressed Freudian sexual urges, or that I have to face my unconscious archetypes in order to reach self-realization."

"Are you sure? I took a doozy of a dream-analysis course last year..."

"If I start having problematic nightmares, that's one thing. But try it without good cause, and I might feel pressured to lie to you about what I'm dreaming, which would defeat the whole point."

"Fair enough. I'd like you to get in touch with me, as soon as possible, night or day, if you start experiencing such nightmares - or depression, lethargy, mania, or any other psychological symptom. I can give you a list before you leave."

"Seems reasonable. So... uh... what do we do now?"

"Now - we start working on solving your problems."

"I can get behind that attitude."

"Since it seems your marefriend was the trigger for your having made your appointment, let's try starting with her."

"That's fine. Um... I'm not sure 'marefriend' is the right word. We knew each other from work, but then there was this song, and now, well, we've started cuddling and kissing, and... well, is it really a good idea to base a relationship on a musical interlude?"

"It happens more often than you might think."

I sighed. "One of these days I'm going to figure out how to tame that sort of spontaneous musicalism, so its power can be harnessed for good, instead of just... cropping up and making stuff happen."

"A laudable goal - but I think you're straying from the point."

"I guess. I'm just... well, even without my memory-thing, this is all new to me, and I don't really know what to expect, what's going to happen - what I'm supposed to do..."

"I'm getting the sense that being in control of things is important to you..."

"Well, of course - figuring out how things work, to control them, is what I do."

"And how has that been working out with you and your romantic partner?"

"Uh... well, like I said, this is something I don't understand - so I've pretty much been letting her take the lead..."

And so we talked, and talked some more - and wonder of wonders, this particular psychologist didn't seem to pay any attention to cutting things off as some arbitrary length of time expired. And... it helped. Maybe. Didn't seem to do any harm, anyway. And since me going crazy would be a bad idea all around, and this was one of the top possible ways to prevent that... three days a week, depending on availability, it was.

---

When I went back to Cheerilee's, I brought her a giant bouquet of flowers.

She said they were delicious.

Comments

[devas]

this is nice and very sweet

[Salacar]

"When I went back to Cheerilee's, I brought her a giant bouquet of flowers.

She said they were delicious."

[Forevermore]

902162 That it does

[Dusky Flower]

By any chance, is the title a reference to Methods of Rationality?

[DataPacRat]

913364
As a matter of fact, it is - and it's one I wasn't sure even any MoR readers would notice.

[Themaskedferret]

902121 Best kinda attitude *grins*

[Glassed]

- Reads Missy's story.
- Realizes that just about everything I've planned has been done by Missy (a fair amount at this point at least/she's planning on doing it)
- Gets semi-depressed.
- Sees;

'I sighed. "One of these days I'm going to figure out how to tame that sort of spontaneous musicalism, so its power can be harnessed for good, instead of just... cropping up and making stuff happen."'

HAHA! I CALL THIS A WIN! I may have something after all!
-Glassed

[Organized Chaos]

Wat

[UltraNerdPrime]

heh. rereading this and HPatMoR at the same time, to save on page refresh delays. I just noticed the title of this chapter AS I WAS READING the chapter in HPatMoR it's a quote from.

[Ziper Ace]

Um....
Does cheeralie know that she’s actually a male cow?