Chapter 12: The Truth
Her brain told her that there was pain, but she knew that there was none. Rather, she experienced the oddly uncomfortable sensation of being somewhere else, a slight break and then the immediate upwelling of internal context that slowly flooded her mind. There was no memory of the intervening time—and it was not the only memory Derpy had lost. Even before the tasing—which she knew to be impossible and out of character for the peaceful nature of ponies—she had begun to achieve the horrible realization that her context was fading. Her memories were dying, stripped away from her piece by piece. Part of her told her they remained, but she could no longer visualize them. A far deeper part, though, warned of a far more terrible realization.
The birth of her daughters. Her foalhood. Even what exactly her house looked like aside from the fact that it had stairs, a kitchen, and Dinky’s room upstairs—it was all gone.
She found herself in a padded room, a straight jacket leaving all four limbs free but holding her wings in place. Because otherwise she would not be able to stand and be at risk of injuring herself through friction alone. The door to her new home was open, with a guard standing at it, watching her—and she heard shouting from a voice her mind told her was familiar.
“You did WHAT?!” screamed Twilight Sparkle.
“It was a reasonable medical intervention, I had approval from the hospital review staff—”
“Which one of us is actually a wizard here? Not you! Because you’d have to be an abject parastprite-sucking imbecile to put Exmoori technology in a pony’s head! We don’t even know what it does!”
“Princess, please, this is a mental ward, we don’t use the ‘i’ word here. Either of them, in fact.”
“You can put your banned words in an envelope and mail them to your own mother!” hissed Twilight. “I’m going in there to talk to her.”
“Princess, it’s not safe, she could—”
“She’s a little gray pony and she’s scared, ‘doctor’. I’ve fought gods and won. In fact, I think I probably am a god at this point, so if you don’t want me to exercise my divine authority to write a strongly-worded letter to the medical licenseure board, get out of my way.”
Derpy sighed as Twilight entered the room. The Princess in recent years had gained a considerable amount of height and needed to duck slightly to enter the room. Despite her harsh words to Dr. Horse, she smiled.
“Hey, Derpy,” she said. “Are you feeling okay?”
“No.”
Twilight looked around the room. “Yeah, I figured that was probably the case. But it’s safe here, okay?”
“Nowhere is safe, Twilight. They’re always watching me. They can even see me right now. They can hear me. When I talk but also...also my thoughts. They’re reading my thoughts, Twilight. What do I even do? I can’t keep them out.”
“Derpy! Derpy, it’s going to be okay. We’re already working on a counterspell and a procedure to get you back to the way you were.”
“Comically mentally challenged?”
“What? No, I meant—”
“Not insane?”
Twilight fell silent. Derpy sighed.
“I’m not insane, Princess. The crystal isn’t even real. It’s not a thing. It was never even there. I never saw it, can’t see it now, it’s gone...because it's just a concept. A premise.”
“It’s inside your head, of course you can’t—”
“I’m not insane,” snapped Derpy. “You’re all blind. You can’t see what I can see, you can’t know what I know, what I...what I almost know...” She shook her head. “But if I do know, it’s all over. But I can feel it coming. And I’m...I’m so afraid...”
“Derpy. Derpy, I promise—”
“No. You don’t, because you can’t. You just can’t see it. Thank whatever gods a god prays to that you can’t see what I can. Just...just go, Twilight. Leave me alone.”
Twilight stared at her, then nodded. “We’re going to find you some medicine. This is only a temporary hold. You’ll be back home soon.”
“Go.”
Twilight paused once more, then left. And as she did, the door was closed behind her.
Derpy stood, watching the closed door. Time passed, but she was unclear as to how much. It no longer seemed to move at a consistent speed. She did not dare turn around. She felt the eyes on her, in her, watching the progression of her thoughts and memories. But more than that, she felt it—displaced from the others across time, standing in the corner of the room. Watching her intently and with unbreaking concentration. She did not dare turn, did not dare face it—because it would break her if she did. If she allowed herself to fully know that it was there—that it had always been there. In the corner of every memory she had left, always watching, never speaking.
Derpy approached the door. There was no handle on the inside, and it was surely locked. Carefully, she slipped off the bindings over her wings and turned back to the door.
“But there isn’t a door. Not really.”
She then stepped into the empty hallway. Staring down it, she focused her mind—and tried to keep them out.
The hallway was long and empty. It was that which would be expected of a hospital, blank and repetitive—and poorly lit by the oddly colored glow of fluorescent lights. One flickered in the distance as Derpy stepped down it, her hooves producing the only sound as she moved. Not in a rush, but slowly, pausing to consider each door that she did not bother to try to open. Wondering—or knowing—that they would surely be locked. Because there was nothing behind them.
Geometrically, the hallway did not correspond to the outside of the building. It was far longer than it should have been, empty and cold, filled only with the dull echoes of Derpy’s hoofsteps and eventually the dull buzzing of the fluorescent light ballasts—and the dim echoes of medically appropriate sounds, of machines clicking and beeping and of calls over unintelligible intercoms that sounded as though they came from miles away.
“It isn’t a hospital,” said Derpy, muttering to herself. “It looks like a hospital like they look like ponies...but they’re not ponies and this isn’t a hallway. This isn’t linoleum, it isn’t even tile...why am I even here? I’m not crazy...they did this to me, but...they didn’t do anything, why...why does it have to be like this? I didn’t want this, I just wanted to be normal, I just wanted to be there for my daughters...”
She stopped at another false door and stepped through it. Inside was a small medical records room, gray and nondescript. Derpy stepped in and immediately opened a file drawer. It did not matter which one. The first one was always destined to be the right one for time’s sake.
She pulled out her own file and flipped through it. There were papers, and all were empty. No text and no records—but a few x-ray images of her head. Showing where the crystal was inside, where it was slowly growing, converting the necrosis and scar tissue of her brain into threads and tendrils of inorganic material as it overwhelmed what was left of her brain. As what her brain had been became crystal.
“Except it doesn’t look like that,” she said. “These are fake. The crystal isn’t real. My skull isn’t real, I don’t even have a brain. Homogeneous. Homogeneous pony all the way through...” She paused, staring at the image of the growing crystal in her head—and shook her head, closing her eyes. “No,” she said. “No no no no...I’m not insane. I’m a pony. I’m a pony. I have friends, and likes and dislikes, volition and...and I have a family.”
Her mental walls fell as she recalled her daughters. Her mind once again focused as she looked up, holding back what she now knew to be inevitable. “Dinky. Sparkler. It’s going...it’s going to be okay.” She turned toward the door. “I need to go home. I just want to...just want to go home. My daughters...”
She stepped through the threshold to her front door. The pause had been even faster, non-existent as she traveled—and no one had tried to stop her. No one was left to. Ponyville was gray and silent—but Derpy could not bear to look back to check as she closed the door with one of her rear hooves.
“Hello?” she called into the house. There was no response. She did not even see Trixie.
As she entered, she felt the space seem to bend. The walls functioned as walls and the space was occupiable—but it did not look like anything. She closed her eyes and forced it back, opening them to see the pictures she had on her walls. With all her mental focus, she described the pictures she saw.
“That was Dinky graduating from primary school,” she said. “With a diploma and mortarrboard hat and little robe. I’m there beside her, smiling. I look so happy.” She turned to the next one. “And there’s the three of us, when we went on a trip last year to the Crystal Empire. Sparkler in her fancy clothing, and Dinky trying to dress like a wizard—and I’m smiling. I’m smiling and it’s like my eyes are looking at them both. I would say I look proud.” She stepped forward, to the next one. “Me, in bed, at the hospital. Holding Dinky for the first time. She is a little foal wrapped in a white cotton towel. Sparkler is there and she is very young. I look tired but am smiling.” She turned to another. “Me and Time Turner. I seem to have slipped as the picture was taken, and I’m falling back. He’s about to catch me. Teenage Sparkler is flying a kite in the background and Dinky is reading a book under an oak tree. A quercus.” She paused. “And...the one below that is me taking a blurry picture next to Trixie, who is asleep and covered in crumbs and used muffin-skins.”
Tears began to run down her face. She sniffled as she stood in the center of her living room.
“I don’t...I don’t remember any of these things,” she said, her voice wavering. “But I made the pictures real. At least I...at least I have that. Dinky. Sparkler. You’re out right now. Maybe...maybe you’re at the hospital, trying to visit me. You’ll be back soon, and I’ll be able to smile and pretend. Because I have to. It’s the only way I can keep this. Any of it. The only...the only way...”
She sat down on the floor and quietly wept. After a few moment, she looked up and wiped her eyes. She looked behind her, to one darkened corner of the room where nothing at all sat. She did not speak with anger, but only the deepest sadness in her voice.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
For a moment, I remained silent, considering whether or not I should respond. Eventually, though, I elected to reply.
“What is it, exactly, that I am doing?”
“Making me suffer like this...why? Why are you hurting me?” she turned outward. “For them? Is this...for them?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“But they’re not...not even there.” She paused. “Not yet. You’re on...different timelines. By the time they see this, you’ll be gone...and while you’re here, they’re not here yet...but I’m in both places. And it hurts. It hurts to know.” She faced me, her eyes welling with tears. “Did you create me just to suffer? Why would you do that?”
“I did not create you, specifically. And you are not actually suffering.”
Derpy stared indignantly. “How can you say that?”
“Because I can say that. Surely you realize it at this point. You are a representation of my own voice, a portion of me. You respond the way you do because I have written you to, but there is no mind behind it. You do not really think or feel. I merely cause you to behave as if you do.”
A pained look crossed Derpy’s face. “You’re not reading my thoughts at all. They are, but you’re...”
“Writing them. Yes. I’m sorry, Derpy, but you do not exist. You never have.”
Derpy looked away from me, down at the the rug she could not remember buying—because she had never bought anything. She simply existed in a half-rendered world already created for her, a stage for her to move around upon—or be moved around upon.
“I never wanted to know that,” she said, holding back quiet sobbing. “I just wanted to...to not be a joke. To enjoy my life with my friends, my daughters...”
“Derpy. Surely you must know.”
“Don’t say it!” She shook her head violently. “Please, just...just let me keep them...”
“I don’t need to say anything. You already know.”
Derpy closed her eyes. “They were never real. None of this...none of it was ever real.”
“No. None of it was.”
She looked up at me. I looked back, wondering if I should have sympathy for a fictional character—a small winged horse who did not exist and who had never existed. An illusion of my own creation who only realized her non-existence through my narrative will. Wondering not what she felt, but if this development, this ploy, would be effective to those who she claimed to be aware of—who she existed for—but who I could not yet perceive.
“Is there anything I can do?”
I shook my head. “No. The story is already written. It progresses, one end to the other. If it’s any consolation, you still exist throughout. Every time it is read this cycle will repeat.” I paused. "I have already been here twice. At this very point."
“And I will be happy, again?”
“You do not feel happiness. You do not feel sadness. You simply respond as if you do.”
“Then why does it hurt so much?”
I did not reply. Doing so was pointless.
She turned away from me, looking out a window at the beautiful night beyond. A night neither of us could see nor visualize. “And what...what happens when the story ends? What happens to them...to me? Where do I go? Do I just...cease?”
“Considering you never actually existed, I do not know if you ‘cease’. You will just sort of stop. The page will go blank and then...nothing.”
“Will it...hurt?”
I paused, considering for a moment. “I do not know.”
And, as she looked at me and nodded, I can only hope for her sake that it did not.
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11703450 But if she REALIZES she's a cartoon, then she's become a sapient bodiless intelligence... a Great Intelligence, one might say!
i0.wp.com/i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/05/17/article-2326195-19D67643000005DC-403_634x357.jpg
IT WAS DERPY THE ENTIRE TIME!!
Or maybe... she gains the power to COMPLETELY ALTER HER MAKE-BELIEVE WORLD WITH JUST HER THOUGHTS!! SHE COULD TRANSCEND THE NON-EXISTENCE AND TAKE PHYSICAL FORM!!
Star trek: TNG did this with Professor Moriarty.
And this was the author speaking with other mind-voices...
See, I explained all this to MY mind-voices AGES ago, and we all agreed to share the rental space! NOW WE ARE LEGION, FOR WE ARE MANY.
You bastard.
Take your upvote.
Existential horror?
Yes I like this!
Wow. Just wow.
I just assume in the AU where they're "real" she's in a coma as her mind dies.
That reads like a prompt lol.
I think the whole meta narrative thing where the character knows they are a fictional character is lame and overrated. It doesn't mean anything. It can't mean anything because if something can think, it exists. You can't think if you don't exist. So this whole story was just pointless. You can't be smart enough to know you don't exist, because you need to exist in order to have a mind.
11716286
Therefore, your comment is pointless. Then why make it?
Gut-twistingly tragic in a way that hurts all the worse given how the story shows such sorrow to be entirely self-inflicted. There is no one to feel sad for but that which we created, after all. And that still only heightens the sting.
Devastating work. Thank you for it, you bastard.
An old idea, but done in an interesting and captivating form here. I've long found these sorts of ideas particularly interesting in the realm of heavily shared and, uh, multi-participatory(?) fictional worlds, like pony—universes with many people creating, influencing each other, making up weird fads and memes, some that fade, some that stick around. It's like a form of emergent intelligence: the mass of canon, headcanons, fanons, etc. taking on its own simulated life that's running on top of the 'hardware' of the fandom.
And of course it loops back even more for authors like yourself who establish fecund multiverses that could in principle contain the entirety of the fandom's works. BlackRoseRaven has what I've just realized is another iteration of such in his 99 Worlds Saga, I think even more explicitly comparable to fandom itself: a multiverse with each world a reflection of some unseen (though not by the readers) core reality, and all the 'child' universes capable of interacting and influencing each other, for better or worse.
Pondering more, I think it's a little hard for me to find this particularly wrenching or distressing because of the uncertain nature of our own reality. The more we study our own existence, the more we start to realize how many different ways there are to see it. Fundamentals like time itself, and free will, are all potentially illusory. We may ourselves be running in some sort of simulation, and are mostly deterministic machines regardless, with only the sheer size of the universe allowing for the chaotic illusion of choice. I'm just not sure how much I'm left caring whether a being is a product of my imagination, or whether the distinction is even significant.
And that's even before considering, as above, shared conceptions and emergent behavior. Hell, on top of that there are ideas such as character-driven writing. I've seen plenty of authors talk about their stories taking surprising turns, where the characters they've created end up making their own decisions for consistency's sake. When the products of our imaginations can influence us so strongly that it feeds back into their own narratives, and can even do so in a gestalt, influencing large swathes of a fandom...well, again, I'm not sure how much the distinction between realities matters.
I guess what I'm really saying is, Underpy here is basically just having the same existential crisis as a second-year physics grad student (or a junior-year philosophy major), and so she urgently needs pizza and beer...or maybe some weed. Which I guess means maybe you need the same, Dear Author. Cheers.
I’m not sure how to feel about it. But have a like