Rag Doll

by No one is home

Ladybug, Chapter 16: Take Only That Which You Can Carry

“We’ve bought time. We hurt it. We gotta scramble like we scramble, girl.” The dragonfly sneered. “I can only hold this form for so long.”

“What was that thing, Any?” Gloomy Onyx shuffled her hooves as the adrenaline melted away.

“That was a true infinity. An infinite multiversal society of one.” The nightmare changeling queen flicker into a pink changeling queen with a long, paifully straight crimson mane dressed as a circus ringleader. “There are borders between the texts, and we are on the wrong side of one. I need you to call your contact on the other side of that wall.”

“You want me to call Charlie?” The Beatnic blinked twice in dismay.

“No! For the love of tartarus no!” Tthe queen shouted before lowering her voice. “He would throw us both under a train to save his “Ladybug”. Just like he would have done for me, just how he would have done for you. I mean, your other contact.”

“I’m not comfortable bringing David into this…” Onyx blushed lightly as she stared at her phone in indecision.

“You’re not bringing him into it, you’re taking us out of it. He exists quite a bit further from the universe's border than me or Charlie. And he probably has a couch.” The dirty earth stallion rolled his eyes. “I’ll prolly need to wear a disguise, seeing as last time he saw me I was trying to foal-nap you, but that’s cool. My disguises are actually way more stable than my natural form. Just make the call, worst comes to worst it goes to voice-mail.”

Reluctantly, Gloomy Onyx made the call…

"This is David," came the reply, but it was flat and even, unlike David, really. "David is not available. He's exploring his sexuality. There's no sex involved. Figures. What do you want?"

“I think it went to voice mail,” Onyx whispered to the glitchy pony thing. “Hey, David, it’s Gloomy. I was in Maretime bay with my new…friend…”

“Ouch, would it kill you to say ‘My super hot mare-friend?” Anypony rolled her eyes.

"Your text has different tastes than I do. What do they want?" The voice remained even, save that emphasis on one word.

“Oh…oh…” The unicorn’s eyes went wide. “I’m sorry! I swear I wasn’t trying to do that again… uh, Any, we might be in trouble…”

"How many monsters are involved?" asked the voice in its flat way, like a reasonably done artificial voice.

“Ummm, there’s just the one monster…” Gloomy admitted as Anypony desperately tried to pantomime for her not to admit that. But it’s not following us at the moment?”

"What do they want?" The words were repeated without variation. Flat, blunt.

“Meep!” Gloomy practically shoved the phone at Anypony, “I think they want to talk to you?”

“Okay, for the record, we totally started on this side of the universal border,” Any said with a heavy sigh. “My super hot mare-friend, see how easy that is to say, Onyx. Anyway, she was trying to call her friend to see if we could crash on his couch for a couple of days a little further inside universal stability. She’s new at this game.”

"Fascinating. What does he want? This is not the time for games. Text to Text." No emotion there, just words. They were spoken, but so deadpan, minus the emphasis required in brief places.

C: Yeah, I just thought it would be cute to have Gloomy check in with David while on the lamb. You know hitting up friends for a place to stay while hiding from terrifying cosmic conglomerates. No monster-mash hanky-panky. Promise.

D: Dropping the call? Works just as well. Either way, David has no couch. He's a paying roomie. He owns no furniture but a backdrop and some other photography equipment. Most of that doesn't count as furniture.

“Does this mean David doesn’t want to talk with me?” Gloomy asked with sad pony eyes, as the words swirled around her.

"Oh. Right," spoke the flat voice. "You can see me. Hear me. Perceive me. This is a one way street you are looking down. You walk down it, or you do not. There is no going back. Leave your world, or stay in it. Choose. There are no angry suns here. It's boring, I imagine."

“She’ll take it!” The Dragonfly cut in, quickly shushing her companion. “This is your in, Onyx. We’ve had great times, but this is your in. You have mad skills and a probably cursed saxophone. This is your chance to make your mark…”

“Any, what about…” The mare she was trying to address was already not even there.

"It's a simple question. Leave your world. Stay in it. I offer nothing aside this choice. Make it." The voice had no real emotion. It sounded like David, but lacked his usual cheer.

“I’m sorry, sir.” the nervous blue unicorn shyly backed up even while carrying the phone that was the source of her fear. “I’m just… I made it to the top of the mountain, and I just want to go home? I only have some basic camping gear to take with me… that’s how it works? Take only that which you can carry. That’s how Charlie taught me the deal works… right?”

"Stay. Go. Decide." There was no exasperation, or encouragement, or discouragement really. The facts, laid out plainly.

“I want to stay. I’ve seen the edge of what might be. I want to play on a real stage in what is, and I want to be able to make ponies see the music as I do now. Music is text.” And Gloomy Onyx laughed.

"You are speaking in two directions. To stay means I hang up. Nothing happens. To go means you leave, and you become mine. Your story, mine. Your past, mine. Your future, mine. You are praying to a god. Will you be in my story, or his. Decide."

“Then I go”, the unicorn giggled without mirth. “I am going to walk away… towards something else. It’s only one step. But it’s the step to the other side of the coin…”

She never even knew she’d taken the step. That was the end of the chapter.

Comments

[Booster Spice]

There are some truely alien worlds discovered that exist in the realm of mathematics that could be likened to Text, as the sequence of digits guide the flow of stories.

Grahms Number, Tree(3), and one I recently saw thats called Infinitely Fragile Primes.

Which means by definition there must be even larger and more terrifying constructions out there that humans can only recognise by name at best?

Occasionally, there are close relatinships between infinite sets, by taking a single +1 step.