Healthy as a Horse

by Crescent Pulsar

Chapter 1: Special Delivery

Author's Note:

I never planned on writing a story with Anon, but I had a silly idea (based on the same title) where a character with no backstory or need for introduction would serve it well. I wasn't satisfied with what I put together, though, so I tossed it out and what you see here percolated into being because I figured I might as well do one thing with Anon and try to make it unique in some way.

...And maybe I wanted an excuse to have someone draw a cute baby alicorn and use it as a cover.

Anon stared up at the ceiling from his bed. There was nothing interesting to see up there, but his depression had gotten the better of him again and he was feeling listless.

He'd been in quarantine for several months now, due to the fact that his immune system was ill-equipped for a whole world's worth of new microbes, with no defense at all against the magical varieties, and he had spent most of that time in a single place. The ponies had built a special outbuilding on the hospital property to better accommodate both his needs and the hospital staff's, but fifteen-hundred square feet had become stifling after a while, especially with so little in the way of things to distract himself with.

The world that he'd somehow been transported to didn't have an Internet, console video games, any computers worth mentioning, or television. Usually one of a couple of ponies would come by to engage him in conversation on a daily basis, since there was little else that they could do in terms of interacting with him, but it had reached the point where he preferred to be alone than see their pitying gazes. Books had been his best friend for a while, and he'd learned a lot about Equestria and the world in general, but even those had grown stale. The food didn't inspire any enthusiasm for being conscious either, although that had more to do with it going through a sterilization process than it coming from a hospital, and the fact that the only meat that he had access to was fish.

He turned onto his side and stared at the wall, which wasn't appealing to look at either.

By now he'd come to terms with being stuck on another world and potentially never seeing another human again. At least, it didn't seem like the ponies understood the way that he had arrived on their world, and only had a working theory on why he'd been stripped of his identity in the process: because his universe was so different from theirs that there wasn't an analog of himself present. Apparently, if two universes had a close enough relationship with each other, one would assume their analog's identity upon their arrival in the foreign universe.

That's how he had come to be known as Anonymous: he couldn't remember his original name, was detached from his original identity, and he was no longer of a mind to desire a new one. In fact, his nature as a non-entity was such that poison joke had reversed that instead of his immune system's performance, as a well-meaning pony had hoped it would. He still shuddered at the memory of becoming "Sancho," someone who thought themselves so special that the world revolved around him being "Sancho" and making sure that everyone else knew it.

It was probably for the best that he was detached from his old life, though, or else he'd be less depressed from being stuck in quarantine for so long and more emotionally distraught about what he had lost and left behind. He could only hope that the ponies would find a solution to his health problem, so he could see about living a relatively normal life without said life being in peril again — a near-death experience wasn't something that he was keen on repeating any time soon.

The sound of an electric bell jolted him out of his brooding. He didn't need to look to know that it was one of the nurses that had come to visit him, which was almost always the case. Since he didn't want to take out his frustrations on someone who didn't deserve it, despite not being in a mood to talk to anyone, he released a sigh before languidly rolling over and sitting up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed in the process.

Looking up at the window by the door, where a desk and intercom was set up, he saw nurse Isopropyl waiting for him expectantly on the other side, a young-ish — he could only guess — unicorn pony who had a snow white coat, orange eyes and silver hair that had a single white stripe running through it. What he didn't expect to see was another pony with her, although he couldn't see enough of them from his vantage point to know who they were by their face or cutie mark. Curious, and having nothing better to do, he rose to his feet and approached the window.

As he pulled the chair away from the desk, he noticed that the nurse's companion was Twilight Sparkle, supposedly one of the princesses of Equestria. She may live in a crystal treehouse castle, of all things, but he would have never guessed that she was a princess otherwise — not before learning about alicorns, at least. His general impression of her was that of an eccentric college professor who also happened to be a bit of a naive child. Granted, he was usually a subject of interest to her whenever they had the opportunity to chat, so he had probably seen a more skewed view of her personality than those most familiar with her.

Twilight Sparkle had been one of the ponies who had discovered his unconscious body on the outskirts of Ponyville. Apparently, whatever had brought him to their world, an event that he had no memory of, had been really conspicuous: on top of it involving quite a light show, the charged air had made the fur and hair stand up on most of the ponies in Ponyville. Despite that, only the princess and a few other ponies had been brave enough to approach and handle him.

She had taken him into her spacious castle and offered to aid him, although — at first — she hadn't been able to help sate some of her curiosity about him and his origins. Then, shortly thereafter, his health problem had become apparent, and his memory of the next several days were rather spotty. The next time he was fully cognizant, he found himself being quarantined in a small hospital room — in stable condition, thankfully.

Twilight Sparkle had been waiting in his room, within a shield that kept him safe from her germs, and she solemnly restated her promise to help him. From then onward he hadn't seen her much, due to all the work that she had been doing for his sake; they may have only chatted as many times as he could count on one hand. She usually came alone when she visited him, like the nurses did, so he couldn't help wondering if he was about to receive some news that concerned his fate.

After easing himself into the chair, he tried to act casual as he reached across the desk and pressed the button on the intercom. "Is this a special occasion?"

The two ponies shared a look, and the slight nod that Isopropyl sent to Twilight Sparkle told him that she was likely present for moral support. A shot of adrenaline hit his system at the thought that he was about to be delivered bad news.

Twilight Sparkle took a calming breath before reaching for the intercom button on her side of the wall. "Anon, as you've no doubt noticed, I've avoided talking about the progress of our work to get you home. We wanted to wait until we had something concrete to offer you instead of leading you on or getting your hopes up. Well..." She hesitated, worried about the response that she would receive. "We've concluded that there are only two ways that we can help you going forward, and it will be up to you if we proceed with either one of them."

"By the sound of it, neither choice seem good," Anon remarked, keeping himself calm despite his accelerated heart rate.

"...They're far from ideal," Twilight Sparkle reluctantly admitted, "but how far will ultimately depend on how you see it, of course."

Anon sat back in his chair and considered the two ponies before him. As much as he didn't like the thought of his future looking bleak, he couldn't hold it against the ponies who had been nothing but sincere and sympathetic toward his plight. At the very least he could hear what his options were before deciding whether or not he wanted to rail against the heavens for what his life had become.

"Okay," he finally said, as he prepared himself for what he would hear. "What are my options?"

"The first one," Twilight Sparkle began, who carefully watched the expression on his face, "is that we continue to search for your home universe. I had hoped that a friend could find it even without an identifying signature, which we have, but he encountered an unknown source of interference that he hasn't been able to work through. As a result we have been feeling out universes for a match, which means we could find it any time between now and, well..."

"Never?" Anon flatly guessed.

Twilight Sparkle managed a confirming nod before continuing. "In the meantime, we'll provide you with special clothes and equipment so you can move about freely, as well as offer limited interaction with the world outside of your home. We hope that won't be the case forever, because we'll try to inoculate you to as many illnesses as we can, but even then — unless we can figure out a similar solution — you will likely need to continue taking special precautions to avoid catching anything magical in nature."

Anon silently stared at Twilight Sparkle, which clearly made her uncomfortable, and wondered how that option could have been described in any way other than bad. Unless he got really lucky, it sounded like his immediate situation would only improve slightly and there would be little chance of it improving significantly any time soon. If that was what the first option was, he began to worry what the second would be.

It wouldn't do him any good to avoid learning more, though, so he finally queried, "And what's my second option?"

"Well," Twilight Sparkle temporized, which did nothing to relieve Anon of his concern, "the second option would solve your health problem, but..."

"But?" Anon prompted, fearing the worst.

Twilight Sparkle licked dry lips before saying, "You'll be a pony. We'll preserve your consciousness in a magically-constructed embryo and introduce you to a surrogate mother. That way you'll develop the same immunity that we have."

Anon's mouth hung open for a few seconds before he found his voice. "Are you trying to tell me that I'd be reborn as a baby pony?"

"...Yes?" Twilight Sparkle nervously replied, her ears folded back.

"Would I be able to become human again?" Anon pointedly asked.

"Of course!" Twilight Sparkle readily replied, looking more confident. "We'll save a redundant amount of your DNA just in case, so it'll be easy."

Leaning forward, Anon inquired about another concern that he had. "Will I still be treated like an adult?"

"You'll only be treated like a foal in the ways that can't be avoided," Twilight Sparkle reassured him.

"What about my sex?" Anon went on, his gaze becoming more intense. "And can I choose what kind of pony I'll be?"

Twilight Sparkle was unaffected by his gaze because she knew she had an answer that he wanted to hear. "We can arrange whatever you want, short of making you an alicorn."

Anon frowned as he sat back, folded his arms and thought about his options, his eyes staring down at the desktop. They certainly weren't ideal, but they were better than nothing changing at all, or pursuing another option that he'd rather not contemplate. However, between the two options being offered, there was only one that would make his life more interesting and grant him immediate freedom while he waited to go home.

Slamming his open hand flat upon the desktop, which made the two ponies outside jump, he decided, "Alright, I'll take the second option."

"Are you sure?" Twilight Sparkle checked.

Anon resolutely nodded his head. "Being shacked up inside all of the time, with no social life and nothing but books for entertainment, is probably the worst thing I've ever experienced in my life."

For a moment Twilight Sparkle looked as scandalized as she felt, and was about to argue with Anon over his remark, but she caught herself and thought better of it. Instead, she turned her attention to Isopropyl and gestured for her to speak next.

Isopropyl worried her lip for a few seconds before making eye contact with Anon and timidly asking, "May I be your surrogate mother?"

Realizing that Isopropyl was also there for him, rather than just as moral support for Twilight Sparkle, he was touched that she actually cared about him beyond her obligations as a nurse. Really, all of the ponies that he'd had significant contact with had been nice to him, but he'd never been in a mood to properly appreciate it. This act of kindness, though, on top of his past experiences with Isopropyl, helped to ease a lot of his misgivings about being a baby and needing a caretaker.

"Sure thing," he softly granted.

Comments

[Alondro]

So 'Anon' lost all his memories of himself... but kept the knowledge of everything else... including eating meat...

So silly.

[Deadinlight]

9222134
kinda like how some amnesiacs forgots their lives and the people they know but somehow still have the ability to speak and use proper sentence structure. yes, silly

[Gizmo Gear]

9222134
9222284
Well, in all honesty, things like what we can eat and how to read and write are so drilled into us since we could toddle that it becomes a part of our subconsious. And our subconscious is something we will never lose. So yeah, he knows it. Also, just an fyi on mind stuff, did you know that the human brain has unlimited memory capacity? It just so happens that the search engines suck.

[AnormalUnicornPony]

Was not what I was expecting.

That being said. Go on...

[8bitmadness]

9222925
also whenever we recall a memory, typically some bit of it is slightly altered unless the memory is of a fact.