Pandemic: of Twins and Tails

by Seven Fates

Day 11: Part 1 - A Brother's Vision

Jacen finds himself in a large tent, seated at a table surrounded by other ponies, some of them more well-off looking than others. There's a feeling of belonging as he stares down at several documents. It's the survey for a large plot of land, and several different parties have submitted different ideas for that land. The earth ponies want to take the majority of the land allotted to them by the government and do everything they can to turn it into farmland to provide crops for the planned community. The pegasi point out that the area the earth ponies want has a natural spring that shouldn't be disturbed, as it would provide the best, cleanest water for the community. Meanwhile, the unicorns and the rich ponies are pointing out that the area around the spring should be used for housing, rather than having to trudge through the farmland.

Everything is getting heated, and nopony is really budging. That is until something in the plans catches Jacen's eyes. The earth ponies, while serious about providing for the settlement, have made a mistake in their plan for the land. If the group followed their plan, only place for housing would be on marshlands. He quickly points that out, and the earth pony representative apologises to the group. Despite the argument nearly coming to blows, there seems to be no bad blood toward him.

The next matter of business is who should be elected leader of the community. There are several different nominees. A unicorn doctor... An earth pony lawyer... Even a pegasus trained for weather control by some of the best. The final nominee, however, is one that Jacen doesn't expect will get many other votes: a night pony from across an Old World border, she was a town councillor for a town that no longer exists thanks to ETS. She might get a pity vote or two, but would ponies want to be led by a foreigner, even if she was the most qualified?

To his surprise, the vote is unanimous in favour of her. Without missing a beat, they're onto the next matter of business. The settlement has been allotted funds for building shelter, but most of money would be eaten up by construction labour. One of the unicorns suggests that the richest in the community chip in. The earth ponies think that rather than pay others to do the work, they should just buy the materials and build everything themselves. The pegasi side with the earth ponies, but the rich ponies seem dubious as to whether that was good usage of time and funds.

Again, Jacen puts his own two cents in. Those with money should do their best to help those less fortunate, but using funds intelligently was also important. He suggested that those who could afford it donate to the settlement's funds, and everypony work together to get everything built themselves. That way, if there were any sort of disaster or crisis here or in nearby communities, that accumulated wealth could be put to better use. Although the wealthy members of the committee seem less enthused, the rest of the ponies love the idea.

Soon, all of their work is complete. all of the other ponies rise and do something rather odd. As they all make for the exit, they pause to tap outstretched forehooves with the other committee members, not unlike a high five. He watched them all exit the tent to go celebrate a job well done, and Jacen is left by himself. He feels a sense of contentment in using his analytical mind to help the others build a new home together. It was a far cry from the gambling of his youth, but it felt somehow better. Like he had a purpose. Except, now that he was alone, that glee was fading.

"So what have you learned, Jacen?" comes a voice from behind him. The tent flap to his back opens, and he can hear the sound of hoofsteps behind him. When he turns to face the pony, he is left awed. A great white mare with a mane like the Northern Lights stood before him, looking down at his new teenage body with a motherly gaze. He is struck dumb by the sight of both the horn on her head, and the wings on her sides.

"Pardon?" he asks as he gets over the shock. "I don't follow."

"Look back at all you have experienced here," the mare asks.

He considers this for a moment. "I found myself here, among others..." he says slowly. "I used to hate being around a lot of strangers, but it felt good to be around these ponies."

The smile never leaves her face as she nods down at him. "A stranger is simply a friend waiting to be made."

Again, he considered what he'd seen. "Despite being having the body of a colt barely in his teens, they accepted me and my input without question."

"There are no barriers to friendship."

He smiles as recognition fills his eyes. "The ponies here... we are all here to help set up a home for ponies who could not stand remaining in the cities. Ponies always help those in need."

"Very good!" she exclaims. There's the makings of pride in her eyes, and he feels compelled to stoke those embers into a roaring flame. "What else?"

"Although some seemed reluctant to part with their wealth, the ponies were all willing in the end. Generosity was more important than personal ambition."

"And?"

He recalls the way the rest of the ponies in the group forgave the earth pony representatives. "Ponies always forgive?"

She nods. "There's yet more," she says.

The way the ponies celebrated a job well done...the fruits of working together to establish a new home, and preparing their own disaster relief fund. "Regardless of the problems they have with one another, ponies work together... even if it's another community in need." He gazes back at the tent door, where those who had just left can be heard partying. "There's always time to enjoy life, too."

The mare has a contented look on her face. "There's but one lesson left for you to learn." She joins him back at the table, and looks down a locket lying open before him. When he looks down, and he sees himself and a night pony filly who, save for the eyes and the way her coat and mane were a swap of his own, looked just like him, he feels warmth within his chest. "A pony never needs to be alone."

He looks up from the locket to the mare, before returning his attention to the locket. Her expression says that she's expecting something from him, but what? There's some lesson to be put together from all of this, but he cannot be sure. She seems to be highlighting their behaviours. "Are you trying to idealise these behaviours?" he asks, looking up to her. "Are these what is expected of ponies?"

"This is how all ponies should act, should they desire a civilisation of peace and plenty," the mare in white calmly stated. "Look at the basic principals at play in everything you have witnessed. Kindness, Laughter, Loyalty, Generosity and Honesty. Imagine a whole world based around those five tenets."

"It does sound pretty idyllic, but it'll be hard to implement," he commented. It isn't just that ponies have to agree with to behave like this. Human greed and hate could still have its roots in the minds of some. Having been one himself, he has his doubts about it all. "I wanna buy that this is achievable... that we all just to follow these five tenets and life will be peachy keen... But it's a pipe dream."

"Nonsense, Jacen," the mare turns her back to him and begins walking back towards the tent's entrance. "With faith in yourself, your friends, and what you can do, anything is possible."

---

It was nice waking up without being in any pain, Jacen decided. After waking Saturday morning in crippling agony, the doctors had determined that it would be best for him, and everypony else in the ward, if the rest of his transformation went with he and Jinxi in a medically induced coma. As a result, they put him under anesthesia on Saturday, only for him to come to on Monday afternoon.

Despite the fact that the mental mathematics he'd done insisted is transformation shouldn't be done until tomorrow, he was fully pony right now. His white coat blended in quite well with the linens, but the hoof itself looked to be about the same colour as his sister's coat. As he looked around the room, taking in the brighter, more vivid colours, it finally started to sink in just how much he'd lost in terms of size. Everything looked so much bigger to him.

Beside him, Jinxi was still asleep, although it appeared that her transformation was slightly behind his own. She was on her side, curled in something approaching the fetal position, her back touching his side. Her facial bones were still in the process of distorting and turning into a muzzle, and her forehooves were still distorted, the fingers slowly merging into hooves. He wondered if she wasn't still under the effect of anaesthetic, though, because she was very still and breathing slowly.

Still, he felt lucky to have her. Random happenstance had prevented him from having a sibling, and yet ETS had given him a second chance. Even if she was mostly the same as him in the head, she was one more living family member than he'd once had. Part of him wanted to hate whatever or whoever had caused the virus, but looking at his sister and realising that she would be a beautiful, healthy filly, he remembered the words he'd spoken to that mare in his dream—no, it felt more like a vision; it was far too vivid to be a dream.

"Ponies always forgive," he murmured, wincing when he noticed that his voice was now closer to what he'd sounded like when he was younger. That would take getting used to.

He heard the clicking of hooves—no, those were definitely heeled shoes—outside the privacy curtain, and quickly sat upright. There was the sound of hooves elsewhere, but it sounded like whoever this pony was, they were mostly human. A nurse who, despite her personal protective equipment, was sporting glittering cherry-blossom pink hair and a pair of striking viridian eyes, looked down at him. At first, he thought he wasn't as short as his eyes told him, since he appeared to be at least eye-level with the mare's—er, woman's—navel, but he quickly realised that a lot of that height was probably the hospital bed.

She seemed somewhat surprised to see that he was awake. "Good morning, Mister Cadlow," the nurse said as she reigned in her expression. "How do you feel? Any pain or discomfort?"

He shook his head and smiled up at her. "I feel good," he answered quickly. "Everything feels right... like it's what I'm meant to be." He slowly pushed himself up into a standing position, and carefully—so as to not disturb Jinxi—moved over to the foot of the bed, where the nurse stood. "I have instinct telling me exactly how my body works."

To demonstrate this, he turned on the spot, wiggled his ears, and then, his back to her, swished his tail from side to side. She looked kind of embarrassed, and that confused him for a moment. Then he remembered, she was still mostly human, and had just gotten a good look at his business. Sure, she was a nurse, but she probably wasn't used to seeing pony anatomy, and it was probably quite odd to her that he wasn't at all abashed at his nudity.

"Doesn't that seem weird to you?" she asked. "You've lost your humanity, and you clearly have been brainwashed to accept it. It's leaked all over the internet that this was intentional! You should be angry at the terrorist behind all of this!"

He considered that. It was true that he'd lost his humanity, but hadn't he gained more than he lost? Jacen felt healthy as a horse, and his body felt whole—he felt whole. The sense that there was something missing from his life, and the guilt he felt over the knowledge that he'd absorbed his twin in the womb was no longer there. ETS had not only given him peace of mind... It had given him back his sister.

He just shook his head and smiled at her. "You'll understand when you're done transforming." He tried not to sound condescending, but it was hard not to. There were no humans in the vision; the world wouldn't have any left by the time ETS ran its course. "Sure, I wish that I'd been given a choice in all of this, but I'm not so proud as to turn away what I've been gifted. If anything, I want to shake the hooves of the mare or stallion responsible."

The woman standing over him lost her cool. "What you've been gifted!?" she yelled so loudly that his ears pinned themselves back in an attempt to muffle the shrill sound. He retreated back under her furious gaze until he was beside his insensate sister. "You lost your self-determination and your connection to your species! How are you gonna work a job like that? Not to mention you sound like you're brainwashed! What could be worth that?"

There the clearing of a throat on the other side of the privacy curtain, followed by the sound of two hooves hitting the floor. "That's quite enough, Kate," came the admonishing voice of Tara Weintraub. A moment later, the privacy curtain was pulled aside, and revealed a shorter figure than he'd been expecting. She looked like she was closer in size to a small child than a fully-grown adult, but based on the oversized hospital gown she wore and the way she seemed to hunch slightly, that was likely to blame on ETS. Her mane was fully green with a teal streak, and there in the middle of her forehead was a horn. "You know he can't help it. Before they cut the communications out of the Emergency Zone, a lot of the transformed ponies that still showed interest in sharing their stories online showed similar attitudes toward their transformations."

Although Nurse Kate looked a little less angry, and looked what she wanted to say something, but the comically short doctor pointed at the still-resting Jinxi as she came to stand beside her. "You ask what's worth it for him," she said in a sad-sounding voice. "She is."

With a shake of her head, the nurse frowned. "I don't understand."

Jacen looked less frightened now, looking from Tara—who nodded at him—to the pink-haired woman. "When I was in my mother's womb," he began in a monotone voice. His voice thus far had been relatively emotionless, but this was even flatter somehow. "I absorbed a sibling. I spent most of my childhood feeling like something was missing from my life, and I was subject to all sorts of health problems. It wasn't until my fully-developed uterus, without any other part of the female reproductive tract, started what all do that I found out about it and lived with the guilt. I was a chimaera... clumps of her cells and all over the place inside me."

The nurse regarded the still sleeping pony as a look of understanding crossed her face. ETS had given him a sibling, and cured him of his health problems. Even if the transformation could be reversed, could it even safely be used on him? She frowned, looking from the one pony to the other. The ethical implications of even trying that were kind of monstrous, as it would effectively kill one of them.

Looking for a change in topic, Jacen glanced from the nurse to his doctor. "It seems like everypony is further along than they should be," he observed with a smile. "Are there any other fully-transformed ponies in the ward?"

"Three besides you," Tara answered. "There's a pegasus mare and her earth pony filly, and a unicorn stallion. Transformations have been accelerating, although I imagine that might be because the number of infected so close together, or some quorum sensing function in ETS set to speed things up when infections reach a critical mass. By my estimate, everyone in this ward will be ponies by Thursday."

He considered this as he made his way over to the edge of the bed. "Could you lower the bed please?" he asked as he looked back up to the nurse. "I don't imagine jumping down will feel very good, and no offence, but I don't fancy getting picked up like a pet."

Nurse Kate reluctantly agreed and lowered the bed until it was only sixteen inches off the ground. Without further comment towards her, he hopped down with a quiet clomp. Although he was somewhat curious as to just how many infections there were in the region, he was interested in the other ponies and soon-to-be ponies. The only ponies he'd gotten to talk to lately were Peter and Gage via instant messages, Doc Weintraub, and whichever nurses or doctors worked here. Being that isolated during his transformation had felt like torture, and now he felt so much more social.

The white mare's final lesson echoed in his mind, "A pony never needs to be alone."

Luckily for him, when the nurse entered, she didn't shut the door all the way. By his estimate, he might've been slightly over two feet tall. That didn't make it very conducive to opening doors with his hooves. Handles would be barely doable if he jumped and tugged it down, but knobs would be out of the question. When everypony in the world transforms, we'll never have to think about doorknobs again. Just good old handles or latches. He only stuck around long enough to note his room's number: 418.

The ward's hall was surprisingly busy, with several infected members of medical staff and some orderlies coming and going from the other rooms. He caught more than one glare from members of staff as he stuck close to the wall so as to not become a tripping hazard. They all probably knew who he was, and they probably blamed him for their predicament. Soon, they'll all see.

Most of the rooms that he could peek into had pony in various stages of the transformation, but surprisingly all of them were at least at the ear stage. There was maybe one other pony as close along as Tara, but it was hard to tell whether they were a mare or a stallion by looking at them. Maybe if he went in close enough to get their scent, he might figure it out, but that seemed kind of intrusive, and he doubted the nurse helping the person back onto their bed would have appreciated his presence.

When Jacen did not find the fully transformed ponies in any of the other rooms, he sought out the day room. Most hospitals he'd ever been in had one. It made sense that he had a hard time finding it, however, as his wanderings had been done in avoidance of the nurse's station. When he finally strayed close enough to that bastion of adversarial stares, he found the day room in clear sight of it.

It wasn't much to look at. There was a TV showing a news feed, and although it was currently muted, he could see a ticker display announcing that communication grids in many of the ETS affected areas were taken partially offline for emergency usage. There were plenty of chairs present, but they were all a bit high for ponies and they didn't look all that comfortable. There was an older unicorn stallion who looked like he'd been forced into a patient gown seated on one of the chairs as a human might. He was watching the news, occasionally shooting glares at one of the nurses keeping an eye on them.

Seated in the middle of the room, trying to occupy a tiny green and red earth pony filly with some of those Little Golden Books, was an exasperated pegasus mare. He momentarily froze up when he saw her, but he couldn't exactly understand why. There was something about her that tickled an irrational part of his brain. Was it the glossy cerulean feathers on her wings? Or maybe the wavy straw-coloured mane? She tensed up momentarily when he entered, and he quickly filed that train of thought away when her magenta eyes met his.

"Oh, hi there!" she greeted once she relaxed. Strangely enough, he thought he caught a hint of a southern accent to her. "I thought I'd met everypony in the ward already. Did they just bring you in today?"

He shook his head. "I was actually the first pony quarantined here," he replied, feeling slightly embarrassed. Pretty much every pony and human in the ward had probably heard the screaming fit he'd had the other morning. "I was the one in room four eighteen with Doctor Weintraub."

The grumpy looking stallion glanced over, his beige ears twitching. "Them's some lungs ya gots on ya, b'y," he commented. The stallion's accent caught him off guard. Jacen had heard it once or twice since moving to this province, but he'd never heard it so thick. "Lord thunderin' Jesus... When you was screamin' fer tree minutes straight, I tought they was torchurin' ya."

That got a nod from the mare, now looking slightly wary again. "We're in the next room over. Your screaming scared Alexa half to death," she stated as she draped a wing over her foal, who nodded emphatically. "What was going on in there?"

Sparing them his life story, he instead gave them the Cliffs Notes explanation. He absorbed his twin in womb, ETS decided the twin cells were meant to be their own pony, and one human Jacen equals two ponies. Although both adults listened intently, it was clear the little filly had gone back to reading the Poky Little Puppy. They both seemed sceptical of his story, although he imagined the monotonous way he found himself speaking didn't really sell it all that well. Or it might've been that I look somewhere between the filly's age and adulthood."Again, I'm sorry if I frightened you all."

The mare smiled. "We're sorry you had to go through that," she said in a soft voice before prodding the little green filly. "Ponies always forgive, though, right Alexa?"

Little Alexa looked up at him with her own happy blue eyes before letting out a quiet, "Yep!"

It caught him off guard when the stallion added in a sage voice, "Ponies're kind."

That felt kinda odd. They were parroting the same ideas from the dream he'd had, but could it really be coincidence? No, they probably had their own dreams, too. Didn't Nurse Kate say something about some terrorist causing ETS? If the transformation of mankind was intentional, then perhaps that dream was some sort of piece to the puzzle.

Let's think about it rationally. ETS changed our species, but it has done a lot for people. From what I read online, it's reportedly curing all ailments in those it transforms. Those transformed weren't reporting any sort of body dysmorphia before the grid went down... It's even rid me of my nicotine dependence. That's definitely not something you do out of malice. Plus, if you can harness some previously unknown form of energy to create this transformative virus, a dream telling us how we can rebuild a society free of major strife doesn't seem far-fetched. Soon, everypony will transform and have that same vision...

"Are you okay, mister?" the little one asked, managing to use the edge of her hoof close the book. "You're making a funny face."

He shook his head as he brought a hoof up to his face and unscrunched his muzzle. "Sorry about that," he said with a smile as he made his way over to the bookshelf. "I was lost in thought. You all had the dream too?" The three nodded, confirming his theory. He wondered aloud, "I wonder what Jinxi will see in hers."

The pegasus mare seemed confused. "Who's that?" she said, watching him as he started looking through what was available on the shelves he could reach. "I thought you said you were in the room with Tara."

He blinked, and quietly admonished himself for not giving out her name—or his, for that matter. "You'll probably meet my literal other half, Jinxi, when she wakes up closer to evening," he replied. "She's one of the ones ponies online were calling night ponies."

With an astonished gasp, she glanced towards the hall where our rooms were. "She must've been the filly that was singing along with Alexa's lullaby on Thursday night! She has a very pretty singing voice, though I think she thought she was being quiet." Rising to her hooves, she joined him by the bookshelf. "I'm Chloe, by the way. Chloe Reagan." She inclined her head towards the stallion who'd already gone back to watching the silenced news. "That's Jordan Carruthers."

She offered up a forehoof, frog out, as if she intended to shake his hand. He lifted up his own and examined it. No fingers to grip, and shaking it up and down would be awkward. Then the sight of ponies tapping forehooves together like a high-five in the dream resurfaced in his mind. He gently thrust his hoof against hers with a firm clop, and said, "I'm Jacen Cadlow."

Author's Note:

It is now the Monday of the third week of the ETS pandemic.

Props to anyone who can name the stallion's accent.

I love the delicious irony in what should be a rational pony falling into an irrational pattern of thought because of the mind trickery. That just leaves me to wonder if he'll inadvertently become a Shimmerist in the process or if Jinxi can put a stop to it.