> Xenophilia: Advanced
>  by SpinelStride
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1: Transition
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was a pretty normal kid, once upon a time.

I was a college senior majoring in mechanical engineering after switching majors twice from math to physics. I guess I kept moving from the abstract to the physical. I respect theory, I really do, but I figured out along the way that I need, as the civil engineers put it, concrete details. I liked going outside my major, though. Chemistry, history of engineering, some courses in electrical engineering, I was sort of a dilettante. Renaissance man, I would have put it, though I didn't actually do any of the art or humanities courses I would have needed to go for to really meet the title.

Blonde hair, blue eyes, tall, in okay shape but poor conditioning, I was happily on my way to graduating and going on to the big wide world of the modern economy. I had a nothing-serious-yet girlfriend. We'd met freshman year but hadn't been much more than friendly acquaintances up until we had a class together fall semester of senior year.

I was heading back to my apartment from a grocery run, walking on the sidewalk. Nothing major, just cereal, milk, bread, ramen, the basic essentials of life. I never saw it coming.

***

Pain. Unconsciousness.

Dark. Sounds. Familiar sounds. No meaning. Assess.

Eyes open. Lights. Faces with lights behind them. Recognition. Hospital.

Assumption: injury. Disorientation. Sounds identified as voices. No meaning. Assess.

Face looking down. Not familiar. Upraised finger. Understanding. Demonstrate awareness. Focus on finger, track visually.

Attempt to speak. Sounds emerging. Recognition: I cannot understand me. 

Attempt to categorize situation. Darkness encroaching. Recognition: losing consciousness.

Dark.

Eyes open. Lights. Recognition: hospital room. Unable to sit. Noise. Attempt to turn head. Unable.

Movement. Form resolves. Recognition: nurse. Familiar sounds. No meaning. Assess.

Attempt to speak. Sounds emerging. Recognition: I cannot understand me.

Recognition: brain damage. Horror. Scream.

Nurse adjusts tubing leading into arm. Horror recedes. Light recedes.

Dark.

Eyes open. Lights. Recognition: hospital room. Unable to sit. Unable to move head.

Awareness of situation. Nurse present. Refrain from scream.

Familiar sounds. Slowed. Nurse is speaking. Repeating sounds. Concentrating.

"Gus?"

Recognition: name. Relief. Attempt reply.

"Gyuh."

Recognition: failure. Nurse speaks. Sounds do not resolve. Concentrate.

Recognition: solution. Attempt to remember word for concept required. Result: slow.

Attempt to remember muscle movements for component sounds. Initial hiss. Tongue against roof of mouth. Following sound, tongue against teeth. Rounded lips. Enough. Attempt.

"Sshhhlo."

Nurse stops. Attempt.

"Sshhhlo."

Nurse responds. Single word.

"Gus."

"Gyush."

"Pain?"

"Hnno."

Conversation ensues. Limits established. Communication slow. Concepts intact. Sound-meaning interface crippled. Attempt: writing.

Recognition: limit. Symbol processing damaged. Twin curve recognized. Sine wave or integral. Effort required to parse as abstract letter 'S' without function indication. Other symbols similarly distorted.

Conversation slow. Multiple surgeries required. Demand: understanding. Granted. Drunk driver. Brain damage. Bone fragments removed. Tissue damage. Survival presented low odds. Lucky.

Therapy initiates. Progress slow. Persistence. Improve sound-meaning interface slowly. Restore symbol library slowly.

Math intact. Knowledge intact. Communication remains slow. Recognition of formulae rapid. Able to calculate. Able to solve pattern puzzle. Know name, difficult to resolve formula integral-union-delta-zero-thousand-union into letters. Concentration. Puzzle solved before name parsed. Recognition: Sudoku.

Progress continues. Persistence. Physical injuries heal. Mental function slower. Leaving hospital.

Monitoring required. Assisted-living facility. Regular examinations. Frequent graphs of brain formulas. Able to walk, move.

Initial period limited to facility. Understanding. Passage of time. No deterioration. Trust increasing. Processing facility increasing.

Attempt: walk outside. Refused. Request. Solution: escort. Agreed.

Bright. Open. Loud. Unable to process sounds. Too fast. Walk anyhow. unfamiliar location. Suburban area. Woods near on one side. Street near on other side. Few cars. Able to walk around facility before return.

Further walks. Satisfactory progress. Attempt to visit store on street. Negative outcome. Unable to communicate. Clerk requires escort to intervene. Depression.

Solution: falsity. Proposal. Accepted. Shirt made: 'DEAF' on front and back. Worn. Store visit. Different clerk. Helpful. Able to calculate price of candy bar easily and translate into exchange of money. Glad. Numbers are mine still.

Passage of time. Months. Communication improvement slows. Able to process writing with time and effort. Insist on communicating with college. Agreement: graduation on completion of course exams. Time limits waived.

Intense difficulty. Persistence. Force recognition of symbols as non-formulae. Calculation sections simple. Success.

Graduation. Recognition: brain damage. Emotional damage. Failure to perceive appropriate response in me. Recognition: faces cheering. Realization: family. Recognition: family visited during recovery. 

Recognition: Lack of emotional connection.

Passage of time. Assisted living remains. Walks permitted unescorted.

Hobby: design. Bridges, buildings, vehicles. Tensile strength calculations, frictive forces. Physics. Math. Results.

Hobby: engineering. Recognition: unable to function independently. Study difficult. Persistence.

Walking. Path through woods. Grown familiar over time.

Unfamiliar turn in path. Unfamiliarity increases. Unable to process. Numbers are present. Numbers are better. Understanding of numbers is present. Unable to process anything but numbers. There are no words.

Null set. Missing. Unable to access.

Pain. Manipulate numbers. Further pain. Manipulate again. Pressure.

Emergence.

Dark.

Pressure against side. Pain. Eyes open. Black and white lines resolve. Recognition. Animal. Specific word unavailable. Familiar sounds. Unable to connect sounds to animal. Pain continues.

Dark.

No pain. Eyes open. Recognition: hospital room. Recognition: inaccurate scale. Approximation: half-size. Recognition: animal. In hat. White hat, red plus. Symbol recognized: medical indication. Medical animal. Familiar sounds from medical animal. Attempt to sit. Success. Medical animal moves. Pressure against chest. Accept pressure. Return to lying down. Await doctor.

Animal enters. Oddity: protrusion from head. Oddity: bright coloration. Oddity: object around neck. Recognition: stethoscope. Doctor animal does not process. Words unavailable. Familiar sounds from both animals.

Recognition: brain damage. Hallucinations initiated. Probability of death high. Emotional damage: unable to care.

Logical process: unable to influence me outside hallucination. Operate within hallucination. Relax.

Departure of doctor animal. Medical animal departs. Medical animal enters with tray. Salad. Fork. Water. Hunger recognized. Eating. Medical animal departs with tray.

Passage of time. Person enters with medical animal and doctor animal. Unfamiliar. Hair is bronze. Attempts communication. Unable to process. Raise hand. Symbol. Stop. Indicate shirt with 'DEAF' false symbol. Speak slowly.

"Gus. Brain damage."

Communication. "Lero." 

Symbol not recognized. Assumption: name. "Where?"

Response slow. "Hospital."

Further data required. "Hospital where?"

Response slower. "Ponyville."

No recognition. Correction: tangential recognition. Pony. Specific animal is pony. Medical pony and doctor pony classified. Unable to process further.

Doctor pony and Lero communicate. Unable to keep up. Increased volume from doctor pony. Steady volume from Lero. Doctor pony volume decreases. Lero wraps arms around doctor pony, speaks with low volume. Head protrusion on doctor pony emits light.

Dark.

***

I woke up feeling better than I had in... months, at least. It could have been over a year. I could have lost a lot more time than that. I was in a hospital room, the same one (as far as I could tell) where that unicorn doctor and that stranger named Lero had...

I realized I was thinking in complete sentences. I realized I'd thought the word 'unicorn' and attached it to the word 'doctor.'

Either I was going even further into mental breakdown to the point I couldn't recognize my own deficiency anymore, or I was developing a whole new set of symptoms, or something simply impossible had happened. Fortunately, I'd had that situation come up in a philosophy course one time. The subject of one class was Socrates' allegory of the cave. Long story short, I had decided back then that in the event you find yourself in a situation where your perceptions are known to be unreliable but consistent and no external information is available, the only rational course of action is to simultaneously remain aware of your own instability while operating as best you can within the context presented to you.

Insisting that you must be mad and everything is impossible? Fine, but work with what you have anyhow. Reject everything as meaningless if it lacks the quality of objective reality? That way lies solipsism.

So, I was, to the best of my own ability to judge, thinking clearly and with access to my full vocabulary, and I was in the care of a doctor unicorn and a nurse pony, and there was another human somehow involved.

If I'm mad, at least I'm interesting. So why aren't I feeling happy?
> Chapter 2: Welcome
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wasn't awake long before someone noticed. The nurse pony must have been keeping a close watch on me. Lero was probably staying there too, because they came into my hospital room together. Lero was following. He spoke first, though.

"Gus? How are you?" he asked. The words seemed pressed together, but I could make them out.

I'd already taken stock, so it was easy to answer. "Much improved. As far as I can tell. I can think and understand you. It's been a long time since I could do either of those."

His voice slowed. It became easier for me to follow him. "I'm sure you're wondering what's happened to you. I don't know any easier way to say this, but you're not on Earth any more."

"Of course he's on Earth!" the nurse said. I could hear a sharp rising tone toward the end of her sentence and tried to remember what that meant. I couldn't.

"Not our Earth," Lero continued, emphasizing the mutual possessive. "You and I are the only humans here, as far as I know. There are people, just not humans. This is Nurse Redheart. Just like she looks, she's a pony. Her type is called an earth pony. Doctor Vital Signs was the unicorn who healed you. There are also pegasi. You'll meet some of them later. Ponies are the majority of the population here." He was speaking slowly and holding his arms to his sides, showing both hands. I thought there was some significance to his posture, but the meaning escaped me.

I sat up, carefully. I did not feel dizzy, nor did I have any other notable symptoms. "I understand. Thank you, Nurse Redheart."

The cross-hatted pony tilted her head and took a small step toward me. "You're taking this very calmly," she said.

"I thought I was going mad when I woke up and had talking ponies all around me," Lero agreed. "It took a while before I accepted that this was all real."

I nodded. That gesture I could still remember. "I have an advantage, then. I've had a long time to understand that my brain doesn't work right. Maybe this is real, maybe I'm having a complete breakdown. Either way all I can do is make the best of it. If I am mad, talking ponies and helpful unicorns is better than Cthulhu."

"What's Cathooloo?" Nurse Redheart asked.

Lero patted a hand on her back. "A monster from a made-up story. I promise, Gus, you're not crazy. But I get what you're saying. You can't tell."

I nodded again. "And it doesn't matter." I changed topics. "Am I healthy otherwise? I remember being in pain, but I feel good now."

The nurse looked back at Lero. He hunched his shoulders, then relaxed them. I had to think before I could identify the movement as a shrug, and then remember that a shrug meant uncertainty. I took it as a positive sign that I could figure it out at all. Body language was apparently not as easy to recover as verbal language.

"You had several other injuries when you came in," Nurse Redheart told me. "Burns around your ankles and a gouge in your chest, with two broken ribs under it. Doctor Signs started healing them, but you'll need to stay for at least a week while we work on them. You're probably going to have scars."

"How did I get those?" I asked. It seemed like a useful thing to know, but I noted my own lack of curiosity. It was a reflexive question. I considered the possibility of being on some sort of medication. Lingering anesthesia would explain a lot. But if that was the case, would I be thinking clearly enough to notice?

"I was hoping you might know," Lero said. His expression changed, but I couldn't figure it out. "I'm happy here in Equestria, but I'd still like to find out how I got here."

"Am I being medicated?" I asked.

The nurse shook her head. I could recognize that gesture too. "We don't know what's safe to use on humans, and you responded well to magical treatment. Do you feel something?"

"No. That's the problem. I should be feeling something. Happy to be fixed. Worried to be in a new place. Something. But I'm not. If I'm not being drugged, then there's still something wrong with me." I didn't bother to mention my trouble with their body language. That I was willing to put down to an extended lack of practice.

"I'm afraid there probably is," came a new voice. The bright green unicorn in the doorway was the one who I'd seen before. Doctor Vital Signs, I presumed. "Lero tells me your people have a hard time treating brain injuries. Yours was old enough that I couldn't simply heal it, not without doing other damage. Like a scar, in a way. And even with magic, brains are delicate things. It's going to take time and careful observation to finish the restoration. You seem to be very good at self-reflection, so it may go quickly."

"Doctor Signs," I said. "Thank you. If I never fully recover, this is still a huge improvement."

His head lifted. I tried to associate the movement with something. Maybe he was pleased to be thanked? It was like trying to read letters out of symbols all over again, but with a far, far larger alphabet and no definitive answers.

"I'm glad I was able to help," he told me. "I'm as close to an expert on human medicine as Ponyville has, and Lero doesn't give me too many opportunities to study him."

"I make no apologies for not spending more time in need of healing," Lero said. I could recognize the joke, and both ponies smiled. I put it down as another positive sign. In time I'd learn to laugh, I promised myself.

"A healthy patient is better than a research paper any day," Doctor Signs said. "And speaking of which, it's time for your treatment, Gus. Please lie back and relax. I'm not going to do anything to your brain today, but your burns need tending."

I obeyed. I felt a tug at my chest and looked down. A green glow was surrounding his horn, and a matching field was pulling the lower hem of my shirt up. I could see bandages around my wrists and ankles unwinding, and a white gauze pad on my chest lifting up. I had a brief twinge of pain from each spot as the fabric pulled away, but it was only momentary. Considering the black marks on my wrists, I concluded that 'magical treatment' was a very effective pain reliever. The burns encircled each wrist and each ankle, and I felt very sure I knew what they were from.

I simply had no idea why I would have been shackled up. Or, looking at the injury to my chest, why someone would have screwed something into my ribs. I looked at Lero's face and mentally catalogued his expression as either horror or pity.

Nurse Redheart cleared her throat. "Lero? Would you mind stepping out? I know you can't catch Equestrian diseases, but he's not Equestrian either. I don't want to find out what a human infection is like."

Lero backed away, lifting his hands, palms forward. "Oh! Right. Gus, I'll be here. Don't worry."

"That doesn't seem likely to be an issue," I said. Lero laughed, and left the room.

The doctor lowered his head and slowly waved his horn over me, starting with the chest. I noted the spiral groove in his horn, given the up-close view, and the sharpness of the tip. I was not afraid, but I didn't need an emotional reaction to figure out that poking myself on a spiky bit would be a bad idea. I could see my skin responding to his magic. The gouge was slowly filling in, and when he moved to my wrist I could see the blackened areas flaking away to reveal shiny new pink skin underneath.

It only took a few minutes for Doctor Signs to finish his work. I could feel a distinct tingling in the areas where he had healed me, edging on stinging. When he put the bandages back in place, the stinging stopped. I assumed the bandages were magical as well.

"I'll come back in the afternoon for another treatment," he told me. "Until then, Lero has volunteered to start teaching you about Equestria. Princess Celestia has requested an interview with you as well, but said if you need more time to adjust, she is willing to wait."

I considered. Whether or not 'Princess' was a ceremonial title or an actual one, it seemed likely to be someone important. If I was going to live here, whether 'here' was inside my own head or not, starting out by cooperating with someone important was probably a good idea.

"I'll be happy to... well, I'll speak with her when she wants to." I hadn't been quite so precise with my vocabulary, once upon a time, but somehow it seemed dishonest to lay claim to happiness I didn't feel.

***

Lero spent several hours filling me in on the vital details of Equestria. Absolute monarchy transitioning to a power-sharing arrangement between Princess Celestia and her sister, Princess Luna, who were directly responsible for magically moving the sun and the moon, respectively. A mostly agrarian society with certain advanced sectors, mostly magic-based, with direct control over the weather. The unit of currency is the 'bit' and equine puns abound, though the ponies themselves do not recognize them as puns. Spontaneous musical numbers which humans cannot hear, aside from listening to singing. Most everyone being vegetarian or piscatarian, except for some outside species. Gem-eating dragons. And other matters.

"Pony society is based a lot on the herd," Lero told me. "They have a big gender imbalance, multiple mares per stallion. So gender roles are kinda swapped from Earth. Stallions used to be basically property, like wives in the Dark Ages on Earth. They've tried to fix that, but they still tend to be protective of males. Even human males."

He swallowed. I remembered what that meant. He was nervous about something he was going to say, if I remembered right. "Since there are more mares than stallions, ponies form herds. One stallion with three or four mares, or two stallions with six to eight. That way, when the mares go into heat, the stallions can take care of all of them. Polygamous relationships are normal, as is bisexuality. Only liking one gender is considered being 'bent,' regardless of which gender it is, while being bisexual is 'straight.' Monogamy is considered selfish, but there's not a polite term for it other than 'monogamous.'"

I nodded. I could follow the concepts. It made sense, from a systematic perspective. I'd tried game theory back when I was still a math major. It hadn't clicked for me, but I could still apply it when I needed to.

Lero let out a loud breath and spoke rapidly. I couldn't make out any of it.

"Lero, slow down. I can't understand you if you talk fast," I interrupted.

He stopped, inhaled, exhaled, and started again. "I know it might sound strange, but I'm in a herd too. I fell in love with a pegasus named Rainbow Dash, and then with two unicorns, Twilight Sparkle and Lyra Heartstrings. There are other non-pony races in Equestria and interspecies relationships are tolerated." He paused there.

I looked at him. He might as well have been a DOS prompt, sitting and waiting for input. "Yes?"

He blinked. "I... Sorry. It's just been so long since I saw another human face, and I..." He shrugged again and I recognized it. Progress. "I suppose I built myself up to being defensive about my relationships. I thought I'd have to stand up for them."

I considered shrugging back, but it felt again dishonest to attempt to show confusion when I didn't feel any. But then I thought shrugging had other possible meanings. I held off until I knew for sure. "I'm still learning how the rules work here. Talking ponies and magic unicorns are normal. Orbital mechanics operate at the whim of two princesses. I'm not feeling anything. Until I know more, forming any kind of expectations seems pointless. You having three pony wives is part of the world."

His muscles relaxed. He was, I could see, in good shape. No short-distance mechanized transport, and all the ponies I'd seen so far were much too short to comfortably ride on, if that was even socially acceptable. I would probably end up in good shape too, walking everywhere.

"I'm still sorry Vital Signs couldn't heal everything. We'll get you feeling again," he promised. "And in the mean time, even so, it means a lot to me to hear it from another human. I love my girls, and I wouldn't let anything get between them and me, but it's a relief."

"You're welcome," I told him.

***

Doctor Signs came, did his magic, checked my vitals (and compared them to Lero's for a baseline), and told me that Princess Celestia was going to come in. Lero sat in a too-small chair against the side wall. He appeared to have tensed up again. I was unsure why. He had told me about the thousand-year-old alicorn, how she was universally loved as a kind and just ruler, and how his Twilight Sparkle was her personal student. I guessed that he might be daunted by the idea of talking to the ruler of the local kingdom.

A very large pony entered. Had I not been informed better, I would have probably said 'horse.' Her horn was substantially longer than Doctor Signs', and she had two magnificent feathered wings. I noted that I could still judge beauty, even if I couldn't enjoy it. Her mane was pink and hung plainly at the side of her neck without decoration, and her tail was a matching pink straightness.

"Princess Celestia," Lero said. His tone of voice had shifted. I tried and failed to categorize it.

"Lero," she said back to him. Her head stayed high. I saw his eyes jumping to her horn repeatedly, and saw that she was looking at his eyes too. Lowering her head would have brought that sharp horn closer to him. I made a note to ask Lero later why he was afraid of her.

"And you must be Gus," she said to me. She kept her head high and looked at my face.

I sat up. Neither the doctor nor the nurse had said I couldn't move, though they did tell me to stay in bed and let my injuries heal. "Princess Celestia," I said to her. 

She continued to regard me. Her voice was melodious and measured; I thought she was slowing herself and speaking carefully. If Lero was afraid of her, then perhaps she was trying to avoid sparking further reactions from him. "As Princess of Equestria, I would like to welcome you. Lero has represented your kind well here."

"Thank you," Lero said. There was little tonality in his voice.

"Are you sure you don't want the spell?" she asked him, her voice quieting. It did not sound forceful, so I tentatively guessed she was showing sympathy rather than politely phrasing an order.

"Thank you, Princess, but no. If I don't face it, I'll never get over it," he said. I could see he was starting to sweat.

She nodded her head. His eyes jumped to her horn. She took a half-step back, her tail going out into the hallway, and held her head high again. "I badly mishandled my first meeting with Lero," she told me. "I take full responsibility for my overreaction. But, Gus, I must convey to you the same certainty I gave Lero. I love my little ponies, and I will not let them be hurt. Nor any of my other subjects, including Lero."

"You should put guards on me," I agreed.

Her wings moved to both sides. I could not judge the meaning. I remembered that reaction to watch for later. "Why ever would you say that?" she asked.

"I don't want to hurt anyone," I told her. "But I have a brain injury. Doctor Signs healed part of it, but I don't know what effects it might have." I had been watched for two months when I first came to the assisted-living facility. It was logical. "If I'm now prone to going into fits or anything else, you should be prepared."

"I will take that under advisement," she said. "Your honesty becomes you. Vital Signs is the best expert we have on humans, but there is just not much we know about the human mind. May I examine you?"

I nodded my head. "Yes, Princess."

She started to dip her horn, then paused, looked at Lero, and resumed lowering her horn at a much slower rate. The tip hovered near my temple and glowed golden. I felt a twinge, and then a violent headache. I gasped. Pain is a sensation, not an emotion. I could feel that just as much as I could feel the sheets under me. Her horn pulled away, the light fading from it. She stared at me.

"You have been marked, Gus Wainwright," she said. I didn't think I had told anyone my last name yet. "It is not a good thing. I can remove it, and it may help you heal better, but it will be painful." Her expression changed, but I was again unable to place it. "I do not want you to fear me, Gus, but it would be very bad to leave that mark on you any longer than necessary. But it is up to you."

"Remove it," I said promptly. She waited for me to say more, and then she slowly lowered her horn again.

There were no words. There were only numbers and pain.
> Chapter 3: Healing
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was sitting in a soft, overstuffed couch, with a bowl of popcorn in my lap. My hand was resting on the neck of a midnight-blue unicorn. A television in front of us was playing a movie. Inception. Her horn glowed blue. Several kernels of popcorn floated from the bowl to her mouth.

"Hello, Gus," she said to me. Her fur was warm and soft under my hand. "I am Princess Luna. My sister asked me to aid you."

I recategorized 'unicorn' to 'alicorn.' I stroked her neck. The sensation was pleasant. "I need aid?"

She mmmmed quietly. I could tell it was contemplative, not a reaction to being petted, though she enjoyed that too. I didn't feel any great insight; I was simply aware of her reactions as though they were hovering in gold letters over her head.

"I fear you do," she said at last. "My sister sent word to me from Ponyville Hospital. She is with you there still."

"Still?" I asked.

"Dreams are my realm, Gus," she told me. "This is one of them. Your memories gave this place its shape. I must stay with you while Celestia does her work, and then she can return to you while I do mine."

I watched a top spinning on the screen. It spun on and on. "Do visitors often gain the personal attention of both rulers of Equestria?" I asked. If I was dreaming, I should be able to dream what I want. I tried to dream of being whole again, but nothing seemed to change.

Luna saw the attempt and looked up to give me a sad smile. Even if I couldn't feel it, even if it was dream-certainty, being able to recognize expressions was welcome. "Some do. Most of those come to face our horns and hooves. I do not remember the last time we came together to heal."

A thought came to mind. "Celestia controls the sun. Her work would be setting the sun. It was afternoon when she came to see me."

"Yes. It was. And now she is doing her royal duty, and then she will return to the task of healing you." Her wing extended and rested against my back. It was the softest thing I had ever felt. I set my hand on her feathers. She made a small sound, and I abruptly knew in crisp, clinical detail that she was desperately lonely and afraid, that casual physical contact was a rare and valuable treasure to her. I kept my hand there.

"I was feeling much better," I said.

"Sometimes a barb does not hurt when it stays quietly in place," Princess Luna responded quietly. "But one must bear the wound that comes with pulling it out, lest it fester unseen." She was wearing a helmet I hadn't noticed before, or perhaps it had materialized. I was dreaming, after all. I moved my hand up and lifted it from her head. She twitched, startled, and looked up at me.

I looked at the helmet. Blue metal, with a long nose guard, a hole for her horn, and a space in the back for her mane to spill through. I heard music. I recognized it. I always liked the Lion King. I sang along. It seemed like the right thing to do. Dream logic.

"Some of us fall by the wayside
And some of us soar to the stars
And some of us sail through our troubles
And some have to live with the scars."

I tossed the helmet aside. It was gone before it hit the ground. Luna was looking up at me.

"This is not how I intended this dream to go," she said. "My past is not what you need to concern yourself with now."

I set my hand on her neck again. "Am I dying?" I asked.

"No!" she exclaimed, and began to rear. The overstuffed couch absorbed her movement, though, and she settled. "No," she repeated. "Celestia is healing you. There were... terrible things done to you, Gus. You have our word, we will not let you suffer from them any longer. Nopony should."

"Will I be fixed when she's done?"

Luna lowered her head and closed her eyes. "I do not know. You will be free of... that mark. And of what it was doing. What effects it may have already had on you, I cannot say, nor what wounds you suffered before you bore it. We will do all that our powers can."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because nopony else can, and because..." She looked to the floor where I had tossed the helmet, but nothing appeared. "... because if we did not, we would not be fit to have our little ponies follow us."

We watched the rest of the movie quietly together. It was much better than numbers and pain. Then The Last Unicorn. Luna tried not to let me see her cry for poor Amalthea.

***

The sun was rising when I awoke. I could see exactly how. Princess Celestia was still in my hospital room, facing the window, her horn glowing golden. That pink mane and tail had changed colors; they were the flowing ethereal colors of the sunrise.

My vision receded, as though staring down a long tube. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, and my body refused to move. All I could see was that mane. I could not make my eyes so much as blink.

It is a distinctly absurd situation to realize that you are simultaneously terrified into paralysis and completely unaffected at the same time.

The mane moved. "Gus!" she said, and that shifting field of color abruptly returned to pinkness. I could move again. I could not identify the emotion in her voice. I had begun to grow accustomed to recognizing those again, in Luna's dream.

"How am I doing?" I asked. I lifted a hand and touched the side of my head. A thick bandage was taped in place there.

"You are safe," she said. "What was done to you was monstrous, and I do not know all of the effects it was meant to have. That mark ran deep, but I have taken it from you and scattered it on the morning light. They will not have you again."

"Who?" I asked. A logical question. It would be a very bad idea to go back to someone who likes burning manacles and screwing things into your ribs.

"The ones who had you," was her response. Vague and uninformative. "They knew where you were, and now they know I have placed you under my protection. I will not speak of them further and you will not ask."

Phrased as a factual statement. I noted that tone of voice as 'royal command' for future reference. "Yes, your highness," I agreed.

I was unable to so readily translate the look she gave me. Approval for using the right protocol to speak to a princess? Annoyance and assuming I was being sarcastic? I recalled Luna's loneliness and wondered if Celestia was unhappy to be reminded of her high station. But I didn't ask.

"I will take your advice, Gus," she told me. "Two of my guards, two of Luna's, to watch over you while you heal and then afterward, until you are confident in your own harmlessness. My student, Twilight Sparkle, will report to me on your progress. If you need to contact me, she will be able to help you. Please, Gus, if you have even the slightest thought that your condition is growing worse, inform me immediately."

She yawned hugely and raised a hoof to her mouth. "Ah... Excuse me, Gus. I have grown out of practice with working through the night, and the court will be busy today. I have to return to Canterlot."

"Travel safely, your highness," I told her.

She smiled at me. I failed to figure out what kind of smile. "Remember, Gus. If anything changes, tell me. I will do all I can to help." She paused, then added, "I will not hurt you. I promise you, I will not hurt you."

She was very fixated on reassuring me. A result of her experience with Lero, clearly. "I'm not afraid, Princess. I can't be," I told her. She gave me a different smile, slightly wider, and ducked her head to pass through the door.

***

A guard pony in golden armor came in and sat in the corner shortly thereafter. He introduced himself as Solid Stalwart, and that was all. Nurse Redheart and Doctor Vital Signs checked on me repeatedly all morning long. Looking at it from their perspective, I could understand why they would be professionally interested in the case. An alien being with a strange injury who spent the entire previous evening and night being treated by their princess, who herself was powerful enough to raise and lower the sun itself in a matter of minutes. I would have been interested myself if I could have been.

Lero visited for lunch. He brought with him a lavender unicorn with a six-pointed star on her rear, both sides, and introduced her as Twilight Sparkle, his wife and Princess Celestia's personal student. He also brought lunch and jokes about hospital food being a constant across worlds. The rubbery eggs and overcooked pancakes I'd had for breakfast supported that hypothesis. He had some sort of fried fish sandwiches, and they were delicious, whether or not I enjoyed them. The unicorn had a daisy sandwich instead. We talked.

"That was Zecora who found you," Twilight Sparkle said. "She lives in the Everfree Forest, which is also where Fluttershy found Lero, so it's not really surprising it was her."

"I should thank her," I said. A lifetime of habitual manners doesn't go away.

"She'd appreciate that," Twilight confirmed. "She used to be, um, misunderstood in town."

"I had a professor like that," I said. "A really nice guy, but socially inept. He was always surprised when someone thanked him for just about anything. It always made his day."

Twilight said something rapidly, her eyes widening. I held up a hand. "Slower, please. I can't understand when you talk quickly."

She continued to talk quickly for a moment, and then Lero swatted her on the rear. She let out a very equine snort and reared back, presumably in surprise.

"Slower," he told her.

She blushed. I tried to figure out how she managed to do that when her face was covered in fur. The optics of it just didn't make any sense.

"You had a professor?" she said, slowly and distinctly. "You were a student at a college?"

I nodded. "Before the accident. I had almost finished. I was able to graduate later. I think it was a year later. It might have been more."

She was leaning in toward me, her eyes seeming to sparkle. Maybe that was where her name came from. "What sorts of things did you study? How do human colleges work?" And then she was off again, rattling off questions faster than I could understand her words.

Lero laughed and pulled her back against himself, hugging her until she noticed I wasn't answering, and then she blushed again. "Twilight, you've been hanging around Pinkie Pie too much lately," he said.

With names like 'Twilight Sparkle,' 'Redheart' and 'Vital Signs' already introduced to me, it was easy to pick out 'Pinkie Pie' as a name. I assumed she'd be pink. "I don't mind," I said, and it was of course true. "I don't have any vital appointments to keep."

Twilight took a deep breath and nodded her head. Lero released his grip on her. "Okay. So. First question. Oh! Wait. Let me get Spike so he can take proper notes!"

Lero laughed. "This isn't a research paper, Twilight. We're helping Gus adjust."

Twilight stamped a hoof. "It can be both!" she insisted, then added, "Fine, I'll write it myself." A quill, an inkpot, and a piece of paper materialized in a purple glowing field in midair.

"Did you teleport those, or create them?" I asked without thinking. It could have been reflexive, or perhaps I have some emotional responses after all, ones I can't feel, but can be influenced by? That would be another promising sign. Having the calm of a Zen master wasn't a bad thing, but it wasn't who I was.

"Oh, I teleported them from home, but how do you know about teleporting? Lero," and she was talking too fast again.

Lero held up a finger. Twilight trailed off. "We didn't have it, but we had thought of it," he told her, enunciating exaggeratedly and slowly.

Twilight cleared her throat. "Oh. I see. So. First question. Or first question from me, since you asked the first question... or, first question I meant to ask before asking how you knew about teleportation. You were a student. What did you study?"

"Mechanical engineering, by way of physics and math."

Her eyes did that sparkling thing again. I watched more closely. It was an actual physical effect, not an expression. She didn't seem to be bothered by it.

"Math and physics and engineering?" she squealed. "You know all of those? What's e to the i pi?"

"Negative one," I answered. "Euler's identity."

"You mean Muler's," she said, then went on. "How do telephones work? How do you make your electricity without lightning bolts? What makes your weather work?"

"Which one first?" I asked.

Trying to answer all of Twilight Sparkle's questions proved exhausting. Magical or not, healing had depleted my bodily reserves, and I have no idea what kind of strain my injured brain was under. I fell asleep while trying to remember whether Snell's Law used thetas or sigmas. I knew what the law meant just fine, I just couldn't remember which symbol was used to express it.

***

The next few days passed quickly. I don't think I could have been bored even if I'd spend the week sitting quietly staring at the wall, but Twilight Sparkle's constant hunger for information about human science kept me constantly thinking, recalling formulas and explaining how various devices worked.

Such as the sun.

Lero halted the conversation at that one.

"Twilight, wait. Please. Gus, stop. Twilight. Wait. I didn't do a lot of science classes, but I know that how the sun works leads to some very dangerous stuff."

Twilight blinked at him. "Dangerous? Come on, Lero, how can the sun be dangerous? Unless you stand out in it too long and get a sunburn, or if you got Celestia reeeeeally mad."

Lero quietly said, "Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

I was about to correct him, since those were fission bombs, not fusion, but Twilight gasped. "Horshoema? But... an accident like that... you don't have magic in your world, how could..." She trailed off, then started anew. "You learned how to do that. Yourselves. Without magic. And then did it again." She shuddered very visibly. "And Gus. You actually know how to do that?" She didn't give me time to respond before she continued. "I have never before said these words and I hope never to do it again, but please, please, don't teach me that. I don't want to know. I like Ponyville where it is. No questions about the sun. Question withdrawn."

"Orbital mechanics is safe," I said.

And it was back to numbers again. Starting with Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, the shortcomings thereof, and off into a discussion about the meaning of G. I couldn't remember what the value was, let alone how it was calculated, and Twilight was clearly putting together a connection between gravity and magic. Then she demonstrated a gravity-reversal spell.

Numbers and pain. I could almost touch the numbers. Like a stereogram, watching form emerge from seeming chaos, but not seeing. Something else. Some other sense. Something...

Magical.
> Chapter 4: Learning
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The sun was just starting to rise when I woke up. A dark-colored bat-winged pony was leaving the room. A golden-armored pony had taken Solid Stalwart's seat. Neither was familiar to me. More guards, clearly. The night guard did not look back, but the day guard saluted me when I sat up.

"Solar Power, sir," he introduced himself. "Doctor Vital Signs and Nurse Redheart are on their way."

I asked "Why?" before I could stop myself. Reflex. Coming to check in on an unusual patient, and they must have some magical way of detecting when I woke up.

His answer was not as I expected. "To check you over before Princess Celestia arrives. She'll be on her way as soon as the sun is up."

I looked out the window. There was a golden ring around the sun. I didn't recall seeing that yesterday. My eyes watered after a moment and I had to look away. Staring into the sun, not a good idea, whether or not the local deity of that sun is well-intentioned towards you.

Solar Power saw where I was looking. "I haven't seen her push it that fast in years," he said. "Look, you can actually see her glow. Last time she rushed the sun up, she never did say just why. Rumor says vamponies."

I didn't dismiss the possibility. A talking armored unicorn reminiscing about watching the sun being manually lifted faster than usual made for an excellent reminder that I was a long way from having a functioning framework for understanding 'normal' at the moment.

The door opened, and Doctor Vital Signs rushed in. I turned away from the sight of the sun and its corona.

He started to take my vitals. "Are you feeling all right, Gus?" he asked. "Can you understand me? Do you know where you are?" Then another question, speaking too fast.

"I'm not hurting," I responded. "I could understand everything until you sped up. I'm in a bed in Ponyville Hospital."

He took a deep breath and nodded his head. "You gave us a nasty scare," he told me. Nurse Redheart caught up and came into the room. He read her my blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate, and temperature, then continued.

"Miss Sparkle alerted us that something was wrong." His ears flicked. I assumed a connection. He confirmed it. "You'd think a pony who's fought as many threats to Equestria as she has wouldn't scream like that," he grumbled. "She told us what happened. She cast a gravity spell and you went limp. She and Lero couldn't wake you, so they alerted us. We ended visiting hours. For the week. We were monitoring you all evening until Twilight Sparkle came back with a message from Princess Celestia. She said to alert Princess Luna if anything changed overnight, and that Princess Celestia would be back in the morning."

"And I am," the voice from the doorway declared. Her mane was a shimmering sunrise. I was paralyzed once more. I tried to figure out why the sight of her hair gave me such a response.

Nurse Redheart developed a professional interest in the subject as well. "His heart!" she cried out. I could not turn my eyes to see her or how she knew my heartrate had escalated so suddenly. "Princess, help!"

Her mane turned pink. I was released from my hindbrain's grip. I supposed that "hold still so they won't see you" was an instinct, not an emotion.

"Doctor, Nurse. Lieutenant. You will not speak of this to anypony. It is an unfortunate coincidence." She was using the royal command tone of voice for that. "Please leave us. I must speak privately to our guest."

Solar Power saluted her. "Yes, your highness!" he declared, and escorted the other two ponies from the room.

When we were alone, she bowed her head to me. "You have my apologies, Gus Wainwright. I have once again misunderstood the human mind, and once again an innocent has suffered."

"It wasn't your fault, your highness," I said. "You weren't there." I wasn't sure what wasn't her fault, but she hadn't even been there when I passed out, so whatever happened couldn't have been her fault, right? So it was true. And even I could put together an unbidden apology and a bowed head to come up with 'she feels bad' and it would be unkind to not help.

"No, my little... Gus. It was my fault. I misjudged your injury, and I failed to leave proper instructions with Vital Signs for your care."

I never was a very tactile person, even before. But some instinct, some reaction below the level of my conscious mind drove me. I climbed out of the hospital bed and put my arms around her neck. "It's all right, Princess," I said to her. "It's all going to work out. I'm alive, I'm healing, and I can talk."

Her wing pressed around me. It was just as soft as Luna's was in the dream. Her body was very warm. When she released me, she smiled at me and her head was up again. "Then you have my thanks as well as my apologies, Gus. And you deserve to know the truth. As much of it as I can safely tell you."

Her wing released me, and I released her in turn. I sat back on the bed. The magical bandages on my limbs and chest kept me from feeling pain and the wounds were healing with a speed that would have been flatly impossible in a normal hospital, but Doctor Signs wanted me to not move the injured areas more than necessary. Celestia was looking straight at me.

"If a pegasus lost her wing as a child, she would still be a pegasus," she said. "One who examined her would find the proof of it. Veins where an earth pony would have none, lighter bones, a different kind of magic. And if an entire breed of pegasi lost their wings, they still would be pegasi. The same would be true of a unicorn who lost her horn. The same is true of you." She paused. I waited. She continued. "Your kind did have magic once. There are signs of it to one who knows how to look. Magic, or some kinds of magic, is related to how you perceive and interact with the world.

"Your injury was related to the same things, and the ones who took you... They toyed with you, Gus. I must not speak more of them, but they toyed with your wound. The same as if they took that flightless pegasus and grafted an eagle's wing onto her simply so they could pluck out her feathers."

I took a moment to digest that. A form of synesthesia, then. That made sense. And since I lacked the wetware to process the signals, other parts of the brain were handling them instead. "Can you heal it?"

She slowly shook her head. "I do not dare try again. I removed their mark from you before, and I thought with that gone you would heal on your own. But your mind does not respond as a pony's does. I could harm you worse than ever if I did anything wrong. Like our eagle-winged pegasus, to remove the graft could be a worse injury than leaving it in place. And just as she had to learn to feel the wind against her wings and never fly, you may have to learn to live with magic's touch affecting you."

I did not miss the grammatical slip away from the hypothetical. She had to learn. Not 'would have had to learn.' I let it pass. "I didn't feel anything strange when Doctor Signs healed my burns," I said.

"It is a sensory organ like any other," she told me. "If your head stays outside of the magical field, you should be unaffected. I hope."

I nodded to her. A thought came to mind and it became important to pass along. It wouldn't be nice to leave anyone else feeling guilty over me either. "Please make sure Twilight Sparkle knows," I said. "It wasn't her fault."

Celestia bowed her head. "I will tell her what I can. If I could teach her of this, I have little doubt she would exceed my own skills in short order. But that must wait until she has reached a different milestone in her progress. I trust you will not tell her too much either." She smiled at me again. "She will be relieved to know she is forgiven. She has a tendency to overreact."

"Thank you, Princess," I said.

She smiled once more, and turned. "You are extraordinarily welcome, Gus. Close your eyes."

I did. I heard her walk out. I opened my eyes again in time to see Solar Power returning to the room. She must have restored her tail's colors before leaving.

***

Doctor Signs refused to let Twilight Sparkle back in without taking precautions to make sure she wouldn't start casting spells again. It made our conversation distinctly staccato.

"It's called a horn inhibitor, it OW!" Twilight winced and rubbed her head with a hoof. "Ow ow ow..."

Lero joined in with rubbing her head. "Stop trying to cast, Twilight. You know that's exactly what it does."

"It's reflex! I've never had a horn inhibitor on before and I'm used to casting any time I want! OW! OWOW! OW!"

"How does it work?" I asked. They'd been in the room for fifteen minutes and most of that time was spent with Twilight rubbing her head. If I could find out why it hurt her, I could make it stop. That seemed to be a cruel device, whatever it was.

The lavender unicorn stopped rubbing her head. She could, I had already determined, be distracted by having a chance to explain something. Until she tried to teleport teaching materials to her side, anyhow. "Oh! That's easy. A unicorn horn is usually inert, but when there's magic actively going through it, the horn becomes very sensitive. So a horn inhibitor is just a hinged cuff with a jagged ring around both ends. Don't cast anything, no problem. Charge up your OW!" She dropped to the ground and rubbed her head with both forehooves.

Lero knelt, picked her up, and kissed her cheek. "Twilight is a magical prodigy," he explained, standing. "So I think we'd better get out of here before her head explodes."

"No, Lero!" she protested. "I'll stop! I'll stop! Please! He's got so much to teach me! And there's so much left to know!"

The numbers came. No pain this time. The numbers were different, too. There just aren't words to explain it right. These numbers were... friendlier. They didn't come in. They made a space for me instead. Nature abhors a vacuum. I filled the space.

When I could see again, I was outside. I was standing, somehow wearing some sort of robe, with both arms raised over my head. I had two heavy hooves on my shoulders and two hooves in my hands for stability. At a rough estimate, half the hospital population, staff and patients alike, were arrayed around us in various positions.

Nurse Redheart came up behind me with a not-quite-large-enough wheelchair and bumped it into the backs of my knees. They folded under me and I dropped into the chair. The pony on my shoulders let out a sound of alarm and fell. Now I could see who it was. Twilight Sparkle. The horn inhibitor had come off at some point. She rubbed her flank.

"What were you thinking, jumping into a song like that in your condition!" the nurse scolded me, yanking the chair around and hurrying back inside. "I thought humans couldn't even hear the Music of Harmony, let alone turn it into a duet!"

Lero was rushing to Twilight's side. I turned to look. She was looking back at me with an expression I couldn't yet classify.

I was completely blindsided by the pink missile that sent me sprawling out of the chair. I landed on my back. There was a pony face pressed to my nose. It was pink. Intensely pink. with a smile I shouldn't have been able to see given our relative positions, but like Twilight Sparkle's blush, apparently some things in Ponyville transcend optics. She inhaled.

"Pinkie Pie, I assume?" I said first. If there was a pony pinker than this, I couldn't imagine her.

She gasped. "Psychic powers! Singing and dancing and psychic powers!"

"I don't have psychic powers," I said. Then, given everything else I'd encountered thus far, amended that with, "That I know of."

She squealed and hugged me. "Your first psychic powers and your first musical number in Ponyville and your Welcome-To-Ponyville Party! This is the best day EVER!"

And then I couldn't make out a word she said after that. I couldn't tell if she actually was breathing in. I was pretty sure I wasn't breathing in. I couldn't interrupt her, though. She was just so happy.

I'm not entirely sure how long she kept going. I was running out of air and the thought never occurred to me to do anything about it for some reason. It only stopped when she relaxed her grip and pulled back on her own. She tilted her head at me.

"So? Isn't that just super-duper-splendarooniusly great? Aren't you happy? Or... something? Some ponies aren't always happy at first but they get mad or something until they have their party and loosen up and stuff."

Nurse Redheart and some other medically-garbed pony were able to extricate me from under Pinkie Pie and put me back in the wheelchair. I answered her question before they could turn me around.

"I can't feel anything, Pinkie Pie."

I had a new expression I could recognize. Existential horror.
> Chapter 5: Experiment
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wasn't allowed visitors for the remainder of my hospital stay. Solar Power and Solid Stalwart traded off watching over me during the day. Solar Power was talkative and told me a great deal about Equestrian society. Mostly about recent history, the return of Princess Luna, the various heroics of Twilight Sparkle and her friends, and an organization called the Wonderbolts that seemed to be a mix of an aerial stunt team, a mobile rescue squad, and a military branch. Solid Stalwart was less garrulous, but their Night Guard counterparts barely spoke a word at all. I never got their names. All four soldiers were gone when I woke up the last morning of my hospitalization.

I left the hospital in a wheelchair. Some traditions span universes. This one was poorly proportioned for me, but I only had to sit in it long enough to get through the door. Lero escorted me out, along with his herd. I had met Twilight Sparkle, but this time he brought along the other two, a blue pegasus with a rainbow mane and an aqua unicorn with a harp for a mark. Rainbow Dash and Lyra Heartstrings were their names, respectively. I couldn't tell at all what Lyra felt, but Rainbow Dash was sufficiently expressive that even I could register her potent dedication to Lero. The other two as well, but she was showing it primarily towards him.

"Where will I stay?" I asked. Food and shelter hadn't been considerations while I was in the hospital, or while I was in the assisted-living facility before that, but now I was outside of the medical establishment for the first time in a long while. I trusted that Lero had some place he was taking me. If not, I would have to make some sort of arrangements.

Lero smiled at me. "You've got a place of your own. Lyra and I offered to let you stay with us, but Twilight had another idea, and Princess Celestia funded it." He ran his fingers between the lavender unicorn's ears. She smiled at me too. Her smile was different from Lero's and I tried to catalog why. Hers was pulled wider, but that could have been due to differences in facial structure. Her body was tense, but there could have been any number of reasons for that. "It's not quite done yet," Lero added. "We'll get there later. Until then, we're going to give you a tour of Ponyville."

"Thank you," I said habitually.

Rainbow Dash flew in front of me in a side-sliding movement that was more like a hummingbird than anything her size should have been able to emulate. Hovering in front of my face was a trick of similar impossibility, but magical flight was no harder to accept than magical horns. She stared at me briefly, then darted back aside.

"Gyah!" she exclaimed. "Sorry, Lero, but this is just seriously creepy." She waved a forehoof. "I know, I know! You told me! But come on! If I was in a strange new world and met the most awesome ponies in existence, I'd be totally into it!"

"I'd say I'm sorry if I could," I apologized. It would have been a lie to say I was sorry, or that I wished I could be, but if I had the capacity to be sorry then I would, so that was true. I did have some sense that it was somehow a betrayal to be insufficiently appreciative, but I had no basis to figure out what could resolve the situation.

Twilight Sparkle started to say something, but Rainbow Dash shook her head. "No, Twilight, I get it. I'm sorry, Gus, that was rude, I know. See?" She stuck out her tongue at the other two mares. "All civilized and everything. I'll help ya out, Gus, getting settled in and stuff. You can't help your voice and you're a good guy."

Lero laughed. "Close enough to civilized, at least."

"Closer to civilized," Twilight agreed. "And this is going to be so great!" Her body quivered. I decided to connect the tension to the positive verbal expression, so that would mean she was excited, not nervous or strained. She was enthusiastic about my scientific knowledge, so presumably she anticipated something in relation to that.

Rainbow Dash stuck out her tongue again. Lyra had begun to fall behind, but none of the others made any comment or changed their pace.

"First stop, Sugarcube Corner," Lero pronounced. I regarded the structure. It would not have been out of place in a theme park. The roof was reminiscent of a gingerbread house, complete with icing around the edges, and a cupola on top was shaped like a cupcake with three burning candles on it. I applied 'magic talking ponies' to the observation and left open the possibility that the roof was not simply designed like gingerbread, but the details were not particularly important. Twilight Sparkle's horn glowed as she opened the door for us. Lero gestured at me to lead the way.

I walked in. I didn't have time to register my surroundings before a barrage of voices chorused out, "SURPRISE!" A pink shape again tackled me to the ground and stood over me, grinning in my face.

"Surprise, Gus!" she added to the prior call. "I know you said you can't feel anything but I thought maybe that just means..."

Her voice accelerated and I lost the thread of what she was saying before she finished the first sentence. She wasn't hugging me this time, so I wasn't at risk of asphyxiating. I waited for her to finish, but Twilight Sparkle did not. A purple hoof went directly into Pinkie Pie's mouth. She continued talking for several more seconds anyhow.

"He literally doesn't know what you're saying, Pinkie," Twilight told her. "You have to speak slowly."

Pinkie Pie blinked at her several times, then nodded. Twilight's hoof came out and I had a smiling face nose-to-nose with me again.

"Like I was saying," she enunciated. "I thought maybe that just means you haven't had the right kind of party yet, so I thought about it a whole lot and decided to throw you a Welcome-To-Ponyville-And-First-Song-And-Psychic-Powers Party because you probably never had one of those before so it's a good place to start." She dropped back onto her rear and threw her forehooves into the air. "Argh! This is taking way too long!"

I had no time to react before she was pulling me back onto my feet. I have no idea how she was able to grip my hand with her hooves without crushing my fingers while still exerting that much force. More magic. "Let's get you some cake! It'll take FOREVER to tell you all the different kinds of parties we can try to find the kinds that you like so I'll just make a list later and you can read it and then tell me which ones made you smile, okay?" She was physically vibrating with the effort of speaking clearly enough for me.

"I can do that if you want," I told her. It would have been unkind to reject her efforts as useless. The least I could do would be give her some of my time. And I couldn't honestly reject the idea that there might be some sort of party that would in fact spark an emotional reaction in me. As unlikely as that seemed, anything could be possible in a magical world.

She had a plate in my hand before I was finished talking. There was a thick-cut wedge of some sort of yellow cake with white frosting on it. I tried a bite. It was the most perfect cake I had ever tasted.

"Do you like it, Gus?" Pinkie asked me. The optimism rolled off of her in waves.

"It's delicious," I told her.

She looked at me, and the curled mass of her mane somehow reduced in volume. "But do you like it?"

I was caught. It would be cruel to remind her of the truth, but a lie to do anything else. I froze, unable to come to a conclusion.

Her mane straightened further. "Do you like it?"

It was not a conscious decision to set the plate aside, nor to bend down and hug her, or to tell her "It's delicious" again. It was a truth I could tell her and a reparation I could make.

She wrapped her hooves around me and bawled. I think I might have felt something, the slightest flicker. Or perhaps I imagined it, knowing how I should be feeling. She only cried for a few seconds, then put her hooves on my shoulders and pushed me back until she was nose-to-nose with me again.

"I am going to make you smile, Mister," she vowed. "I don't care how many parties it takes or if it's not a party at all, but I'm going to find what it takes to make you happy and I'm going to do it."

I tried to help. I smiled at her. It's just pulling the corners of your mouth back. It doesn't require an emotional state.

Her eyes watered. I could actually see waves in the tears sloshing around the bottom of her eye. "That's not a smile," she told me. "I'm going to make you smile a real smile. One that comes from inside, where it counts." Her hoof left my shoulder and pressed against my chest. "Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye."

I had a sensation I didn't recognize. A physical sensation, not an emotion. When she said that, I felt something shift. Not like the feeling of a rubbery hospital breakfast shifting, but something more nebulous. There wasn't a particular body part associated with it. It was a little like when the numbers came, without the pain, but I could still see and hear clearly.

For some reason it felt like a blue balloon.

***

The rest of the party went off without any crying ponies, attacks of synesthesia, or internal sensations of party decorations. I never had a surprise party before, so I had little to compare it to. A cake-and-ice-cream party with Pin The Tail On The Donkey was something I hadn't had since I was still in elementary school, but somehow all of the presumably adult ponies in the room were apparently having a very good time, as was Lero. The refreshments were unquestionably and possibly literally fantastic. When Pinkie Pie came out of the back room with a fresh tray of cookies, it was obvious she was responsible for the catering as well. Regardless of her obsession with smiles and mercurial personality, she was clearly an extraordinarily talented cook.

Lero and his herd took charge of introducing me around. Even Rainbow Dash cooperated, however creepy she might have found me, bringing some of her weather team around to exchange greetings. My memory for names was never perfect, but I caught some of them. Fluttershy was a yellow pegasus with long pink hair and a butterfly mark; I recognized the name from Solar Power's stories about Twilight Sparkle's heroics. She talked very quietly and stayed against a wall. If Rainbow Dash hadn't steered us to her, I likely wouldn't have seen her at all. Given her name, I expected shyness, but she visibly relaxed when Lero and I started to talk with her. I guessed that she was only socially awkward around ponies, but it wouldn't have been nice to ask her directly.

Mayor Mare extended an official Ponyville greeting. Their friend Rarity insisted that I visit her store, Carousel Boutique, first thing in the morning so she could provide me with a proper wardrobe. I explained that I didn't have anything to pay with and she was very firm that she wouldn't dream of accepting a bit. A pair of unicorns named Chuckwagon and Shimmer introduced themselves and expressed a hope I'd be happy in Ponyville, but they kept looking at Lero while they talked. Some sort of history there, and they didn't stay to talk past the well-wishing. Pinkie Pie brought me a sample of every new treat she produced from the kitchen, all throughout. There was a pony with a Southern accent whose name I missed at first, but I told her so forthrightly and she repeated it. Applejack. An extremely muscular stallion named Snowflake was easy to remember. There was a tan stallion with an hourglass mark who made a comment I didn't quite catch about appreciating hands. I didn't get his name. There were a lot of ponies whose names I couldn't keep track of.

The party ended at lunchtime. I'd eaten so many of Pinkie's treats that I was fairly sure I would have an experience with reverse peristalsis if I tried to fit anything else into my stomach, and even Rainbow Dash had taken to walking alongside us instead of flying. The rest of the town tour was much more sedate. The town library, which doubled as their home. Town Hall, the road to Sweet Apple Acres, several bookstores, a shop selling the unusual combination of sofas and quills, the one-room schoolhouse, and a number of other civic landmarks.

And then there was my new house. A team of hornless, wingless ponies in hard hats were still finishing the roof. It was on the edge of town and very clearly built to a different scale than the pony homes, but following the same basic style as the rest of the town. Mostly. It had some sort of garage attached by an extended covered passageway. The garage dwarfed the house itself by a significant margin, and it didn't have any sort of driveway leading up to it.

Twilight Sparkle cleared up the purpose when she started bouncing around on all four hooves at once. "It's your very own cutting-edge scientific laboratory!" she sang out. Not the sort of singing that made me sink into the numbers. "I warded it myself so it's as totally isolated as ponily possible from any outside magical interference so we can really properly compare human physics to real physics and you can teach me everything about how your world works!"

Lero coughed. "Real physics?" he inquired.

Twilight Sparkle blushed. I couldn't tell whether her fur actually changed color or if it somehow showed through, even when I looked closer. "You know what I mean! Physics here."

Lero patted her on the back. "Just checking. All right, Twilight." His voice took on a flatter tone I interpreted as 'serious.' "Now, you said this is a research project. And we all agreed. But you're also helping Gus learn how to get around in Equestrian society." He knelt down to look her directly in the eyes. "And you are not abandoning the herd, and I still love you, and you are going to come home right away any time you start thinking the slightest bit otherwise, you got me?"

Her face reddened again, but she nodded at him. She lifted her right front hoof and waved it over her chest, then her face. "Pinkie Promise. Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye. OW!" She blinked several times the eye she had just jabbed with her hoof. "Why do I never learn to stop that short?" she muttered.

Rainbow Dash laughed boisterously at that, then abruptly flew down and hugged her friend. "Seriously, though. You're part of this herd and an awesome friend, and this is an egghead thing you're doing for fun, not ditching anybody. If you need help or just want company with anything, you come tell me and I'll be there in one second flat."

Lyra didn't say anything, but leaning in to nuzzle Twilight's cheek was obvious enough. Lero's kiss was extended and clear, too. Then they said their goodbyes and left me with Twilight.

She smiled after them, then looked up at me and resumed bouncing on the spot. "Okay! It's your new lab, and you know the human physics, so you can pick the first experiment to do, Gus!" she declared.

I watched Rainbow Dash flying circles around Lero and Lyra as they walked away. "One comes immediately to mind."

***

It was a well-stocked lab inside, for certain definitions of 'well-stocked.' Lots of elaborate glassware, weights, pulleys, anchors sunk into the walls and ceiling, plenty of shelves and cupboards, bunsen burners, and two lab coats complete with goggles, one human-shaped and one set for a pony. There wasn't a single electrical device in sight, but I hadn't seen any of those at the hospital either. I noticed the lack of a periodic table on the wall, but that might have been a decorative choice, or she was so familiar with it she didn't feel the need for a reference. The glass-fronted cabinets against the side wall had neatly-arranged vials and packages of various substances, but most of those were things like 'iron' and 'copper' and various sorts of rock. No sodium, no potassium, no aluminum, no jugs of hydrochloric acid, though there was a bottle marked 'ammonia.'

Twilight was literally vibrating when she put on her labcoat. I honestly don't think I've seen a kid in a toy store so blatantly eager to play. "So what are we starting with, Gus? Making a computer? Radio? Jet engines? Oh! Space telescopes!"

I found a board in one of the cupboards and took it out. "I thought we could start with gravity."

Twilight stopped bouncing and tilted her head at me. "Gravity? What's scientific about... Oh!" She resumed her enthusiastic activities. "Gravity is a magical force, but it can't be in your world, so of course! We can find out whether it behaves the same way! With hundreds and hundreds of tests and data points and I can make graphs of everything! Squeee!"

I don't think I've actually heard someone say 'Squeee!' before. I started looking for a hammer. Doing an inclined-plane experiment would be a good starting point, and the rig wouldn't be hard to build, but I did need tools. "We can start with theory. How does gravity work here?" I asked while I searched.

"According to Apple Neighton's theories, gravity is a magical force caused by fundamental friendship in the universe," Twilight Sparkle told me. She went straight from energetic bouncing to lecturing at the chalkboard at the front of the room in a blink of an eye. "At the very most basic levels, things 'want' to be together, even things that aren't capable of 'wanting' in any sense ponies would recognize. Such a weak form of friendship makes for a very weak force, but when you have a lot of weak friendships, you still have enough force to tug ponies and air and water and everything else down. Professor Cuddlesworth of Trottingham theorized that gravity in fact reflected an immaterial and highly diffused effort at hugging absolutely everything, but that's really getting into philosophy instead of science since it's trying to interpret motivations of inanimate objects. Some ponies used to claim that gravity is Princess Celestia's personal will, but she shut that down two centuries ago by imposing the Stop Worshipping Me Tax on anyone who said so." To her credit, Twilight spoke evenly enough that she never outran my ability to parse her words. She sighed. "She once made me pay that tax," she noted. "I had to give her my desserts for two months. Just because I made some very valid hypotheses for a little filly about whether 'as Celestia is my witness' actually meant she could see everything that went on anywhere in Equestria and then asked her to not raise the sun until I'd brushed my mane in the morning so it'd be too dark for her to see me with bed-mane."

I gave up looking for the parts and tools I'd need. Twilight was likely the one who designed and organized the lab, so it would be much simpler to ask her. I went to the chalkboard and sketched the plans, then pointed. "Not to interrupt, but can you help me put this together?"

It was a very simple, purely mechanical design. An inclined plane with an apparatus at top that could hold two spheres next to each other, then drop them simultaneously. Two spring-loaded flags at the bottom positioned so that a falling ball would hit the trigger on one side or the other. If the two spheres hit bottom at once, the two flags would collide. Otherwise, whichever ball hit down first would trigger its flag first and the second to hit would flip its flag on top of the first.

That purple pony knew exactly where everything was. She took one look at the blackboard and her horn lit up, and all of the parts floated out and clicked together in midair, then dropped into my arms. "What's this going to test?" she asked.

I set it up, leaned against a wall, and found some suitable test objects in the cupboards. A lead block and a wooden block. "Whether gravity is constant, to start with. Can you reshape these into balls?"

A whirl of magic surrounded both materials, and two shining round orbs landed in my hands. "Lead and wood?" she asked me. "How are those going to test whether gravity is constant? To do that, wouldn't you want two lead balls or two wood balls, and some way to drop them at different places at the same time?" She gasped. "Or is there a hidden ratio between the falling speeds of lead and wood and you can use that to calibrate something else?"

"A ratio of one," I clarified, and set the two balls into the apparatus. I hit the release to let the spheres fall.

The lead ball won the race easily. Twilight Sparkle looked up at me. "Um. Are you sure, Gus? Heavy things fall faster. How could that be any different? If it wasn't more affected by gravity, it wouldn't be heavier."

A clear physical difference. Obvious different rules. Still. "Let me try that again," I said. A single experiment on freshly-built equipment is no guarantor of accurate results, and I somehow had it in my mind that it'd be both incorrect and disloyal to my education to give up on my physics that readily.

Twilight gave me a look I couldn't connect to. "Okay. I think I need to make a little stop anyhow." She looked over her shoulder at me as she exited the room.

The moment she was gone, the balls started landing at precisely the same time. The flags flipped out and ran into each other, neither one on top. I repeated the experiment twenty-five times to verify it. Every time, except a pair of outliers, one each way, the wooden ball and the lead ball tripped the flags simultaneously. I wrote each one down on the blackboard.

The door opened and Twilight came back in. The lead ball clunked down first.

"So... are you feeling all right, Gus? Was the party maybe a little much?" she asked. I repeated the test. Lead ball first.

I formed a new hypothesis. "I'm not in any pain, and I don't perceive any problems with my thinking," I told her. "I believe I've isolated the difference."

Her horn flashed and she was at my side, staring up at the blackboard. "What? They hit together? That's not possible. Unless..." Her face twisted in thought. I couldn't adore it, but I could recognize the expression as adorable. "Well... if you're not having any trouble, and since we know you can't use magic... then that means... the results were different depending on who was watching? But this is balls sliding down a ramp! How can watching it influence that? And why would you think they hit at the same time anyhow? That's not sci..." She trailed off and took a deep breath. "Or maybe it is. Scientific. Redefining possible. So. Are you sure you're feeling all right?"

It was a valid concern. "We can ask Lero to observe," I suggested. "I can verify that he's familiar with our world's physics, and then he can perform the experiment. If he gets the same results I did, not knowing your results, we can assume that gravity is influenced by observer bias."

"Right!" Twilight said, and vanished. She reappeared a few moments later with Lero. She was panting. His eyes went wide and he doubled over. He retched on the floor. Twilight let out a shriek and grabbed onto him. "No no no no no no no no no! Lero, I'm sorry, are you okay? No no no no no no no no!"

Lero wiped his mouth and breathed hard, then sat down. "I... I'm all right, Twilight," he said. "That was... a rough trip."

Her horn flashed and the floor was clean, and she was pressing against him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I got excited and I teleported faster than I should have and I forgot you sometimes react differently to physical stimuli and I should never have done that and oof!"

He hugged her very firmly, then reached up to pinch her ear. "Deep breaths, Twilight," he said in a tone I took as 'stern.' "Now. What is it you need me to do?"

Twilight pointed a hoof at me. I gestured at the ramp and balls. "We need you to run an experiment, Lero."

***

I explained to Lero what we wanted him to do, and then Twilight and I left the room. He came out twenty-five drops later to get us. Twenty-two times the flags intersected; twice the wooden ball hit first, once the lead ball. Twilight stared at the tallymarks on the chalkboard. Lero hugged her while she gaped.

"But... if observer bias is present to that much of an extent..." she sputtered, then trailed off. She shook her head. "I don't think anypony ever thought about this," she said. "Who would? It's just so... obvious that heavy things fall faster. And... anyone who thinks they fall faster, sees them fall faster." Her head lifted and she turned to smile at me. Her teeth may actually have been glowing. "And I owe it all to you! This is going to be a research paper they'll be talking about for years! Decades! Centuries! We're going to make scientific history! How did you think of this?"

"Do you remember that gravity spell you cast in the hospital?" I asked. "Altering gravity would be effectively impossible from a pure energy perspective, in our world. Then watching Rainbow Dash fly made it clear that there are other factors at play. It seemed like a useful place to start."

"I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship," Lero said, and smiled at me.

"Yes!" Twilight exclaimed, and hugged me. It didn't seem like such a rough hug, but I saw stars anyhow.

One star, at least.
> Chapter 6: Party
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

We didn't stop with just three sets of results. I don't think I could have stopped Twilight from drawing up a six-month project plan if I had tried. I was able to distract her by pointing out all of the other experiments that were still waiting to be done. She would have been unhappy afterward if she had gone so far into a single subject, so it would have been an unkindness to let her continue too far.

She struck a balance by spending the rest of that day getting a series of samples among all the different types of ponies in Ponyville. I became very familiar with the expression of 'cautious curiosity.' I don't think this was the first time Twilight has invited public participation in experiments. After making some frankly brilliant adjustments to the equipment to allow for basic timing records, she divided the group into ten samples. Three sets were wholly pegasi, three sets were wholly unicorns, and three sets were wholly earth ponies. One set of each tribe was instructed that the balls should strike at the same time, one set was instructed that the lead ball should strike first, and the third group was given no instructions about what to expect. The tenth group was comprised of one pegasus filly, one unicorn filly, and one earth pony filly, with no instructions given to them about what to expect. Twilight Sparkle kept the tenth group for last.

The results were illuminating. There was a clear variance in effect between the pony tribes; the influence of the pegasi was visibly more intense than that of the unicorns, while the effect of the unicorns' observation was in turn distinctly stronger than the influence of the earth ponies. Any group specifically informed that the balls were to strike at the same time was statistically more likely to see that phenomenon, though the lead ball did hit first more often than the wooden ball even among these groups, most often among the pegasi. Some preconceptions do not disappear even on the word of an authority figure in a lab coat, even Twilight Sparkle.

Twilight produced a cross-correlation that I lacked the information to pursue even if it had occurred to me to try. She had a chart of the speed of each pegasus in Ponyville, rated on a scale of wingpower. Plotting the time differential of the dropped balls to the wingpower of the individual participant produced a clear linear relationship. The stronger the pegasus, the greater the difference between the lead ball and the wooden ball. The greatest difference was between Rainbow Dash, for whom the lead ball promptly slammed to the bottom and the wooden ball lazily rolled down, and Fluttershy, who demonstrated very little perceptible effect at all.

Twilight was tremendously excited by these results; she was literally bouncing around the laboratory, and her eyes were doing that sparkling thing again. "Gus! Gus!" she sang out. "Empirical proof! Total validation! Pegasus magic is innately connected to gravity, cross-related to ego as related by wingpower! There's going to be a whole new field of study based on this! We'll call it Sparkology! No! Gusology! Gusparkology!"

I waited for her to finish. It didn't seem useful to interrupt. She eventually noticed that I wasn't bouncing along with her, and she promptly came back to my side. I think she looked contrite.

"I'm sorry, Gus. I didn't mean to get so excited when you can't even feel it," she said.

I patted her head. "You have every right to be excited. It doesn't bother me that I can't join you. I have a question, though. What did you mean when you said pegasus gravity control is cross-related to ego?"

Twilight blinked, then said, "Oh! Of course, you don't know everypony. I noticed the effect back when Ponyville had Tornado Duty, providing the water for Cloudsdale. We were measuring the wingpower of every pegasus in town to see whether we could break the record for total wingpower, and I made some very rough estimates of the individual force of ego of each pegasus. There was a very strong relationship. I didn't have specific numerical values I could attach, only a basic ranking from one to ten of each pegasus' confidence, with Fluttershy as a one and Rainbow Dash as a ten."

"I take it that the ones who thought they were the best fliers were the best fliers," I said. "Normally that would be an indication of accurate self-assessments."

Twilight nodded. "That's why I didn't bother showing my results to anypony. But in this context, I think it might be the other way around! Pegasi who think they're the best fliers are the best fliers precisely because they think so!"

Twilight's eyes sparkled again. "Oh! Data points in favor of the hypothesis! Rainbow Dash has the most ego and is the best flier, but when she got nervous before the Best Young Fliers competition she could barely stay in the air, but when she stopped thinking about herself and started thinking about how she had to fly faster to catch Rarity then she rainboomed! And when Rainbow Dash was Discorded, she may have been subconsciously sabotaging herself, while Fluttershy was able to catch her because Fluttershy wasn't thinking about being a bad flier or being high in the air, she was thinking about helping her friend!" She hopped and clapped her front hooves together.

"It would probably be possible to test that theory via hypnosis, if ponies can be hypnotized," I suggested.

Twilight frowned at me. "Ponies can be, but I'm specifically banned from doing any mind-altering magics without an alicorn personally attending unless the safety of Equestria is at stake. There was an incident with a Want-It-Need-It spell. And between that incident and Discord doing mind-magic and a few other things, I don't think hypnosis is in very good repute in Ponyville at the moment. I'll put that down for a later experiment."

She looked around at the wreckage of the lab. That tenth group may have violated several other laws of physics. Apparently not satisfied that dropping balls down an inclined plane was 'science' enough, those three fillies somehow stacked several workbenches on top of each other and dropped many more objects from near the ceiling than just a lead ball and a wooden ball. Twilight did manage to get all of the fires out before they got too large.

"Why don't you go have dinner with Lero and the girls, Gus?" she suggested. "I'll clean up in here and meet you later."

***

Pinkie Pie joined us for dinner at the library, where Lero's herd lived. Despite her excellent cooking, she left the food to Lero. Her explanation was straightforward enough: "You just don't mess with another cook's kitchen," with what I assumed was a rare degree of seriousness.

Rainbow Dash flitted about the place like a mayfly. Not unexpected, considering all I'd seen of her thus far. "So did I win?" she demanded.

My reflextive reaction was to ask "Win what?" but I stopped before saying it. The answer was obvious. "You had the largest difference of all the participants," I told her.

"Yes!" She pumped a forehoof and performed what can only be described as a midair strut. "Greatest at science too! Oh yeah!"

"How come you didn't ask me to try, Gus?" asked Pinkie Pie, giving me a smile. "I bet I could've done lots of science!"

"Twilight Sparkle said, and I quote, 'Science runs away screaming when Pinkie Pie is near.' You seem to have impressed her," I said.

Pinkie giggled. "Silly Twi. She's still fixated on Episode Fifteen. We're way past that!"

"Just go with it," Lero suggested.

I asked anyway. "Does Twilight Sparkle have 'episodes' that routinely?"

Pinkie shook her head. Then tilted her head, thought about it, and nodded. "Hey, yeah, she does! You're good at this, Gus!" She beamed at me. After a few seconds she frowned and pulled a clipboard and pencil from her mane with her hooves. That might be another experiment to investigate later. "Okay, 'praise' isn't it," she mumbled, and tapped the clipboard. "Oh! I know!"

I have no idea whatsoever where she got a bag of flour or why she broke it over her head and said "Ta-da!" to me. Lero and Rainbow Dash were clearly startled, while Lyra remained difficult to read. "Wow, you're a toughie," she said. "That one always works."

"Covering yourself in flour?" I asked.

"You are so not making Spike clean that up," Rainbow Dash warned.

"Clean what up?" Pinkie asked. Everything went to numbers.

I was flat on my back staring up into Pinkie's horrified face when I could see again.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry" and then I could only make out rapid repetitive sounds, so she was probably saying "I'm sorry" faster and faster. She started to cry and hugged me while I was still on the ground. Her voice slowed back down. "I didn't mean to! It was supposed to be funny!"

"What the hay just happened?" asked Rainbow Dash. She was hovering over me, behind Pinkie. "Nopony did any magic or anything, right? Twilight told us about you and magic. Was it a song? I didn't hear anything."

"It was my fault!" Pinkie sobbed. "I won't do it again! I promise!" Her hair fell down from those bouncy curls and drooped flat against the side of her head.

There was only one thing I could possibly do. "We should have a 'Gus Is Okay' party," I told her.

Her eyes widened, and they sparkled. That really did look painful. Her mouth opened in a smile so large it appeared to deform her skull. She hugged me again, so hard I felt my ribs creaking. My heartbeat was a blue balloon thudding in my ears.

And then she let go, and she was standing on her hind hooves. "Yes yes yes yes yes!" she squealed out. She reached to the side - and then she stopped, her eyes wide again, and she exclaimed, "I'll be right back! I've gotta go get a Party Cannon!" She was gone in an eyeblink. Honestly.

Lero knelt down and helped me sit up. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"I feel fine," I told him.

Rainbow Dash was hovering in place, looking at me with her jaw open. "Did... you... just..." She stammered. I waited. ".... Did you just beat Pinkie Pie to suggesting a party?"

Lyra didn't move, but she caught my attention. The numbers were around her. I wasn't blacking out otherwise, but where the unicorn had been, the numbers were there. Not just numbers. Waveforms. Possibilities. Laws. Everything mixed into one. She was part of them, but she was observing them at the same time. Part of the numbers made a choice, and probability moved under Rainbow Dash's chin. The blue pegasus' jaw was lifted up, and reality reasserted itself. I could still sense hints of patterns dancing along Rainbow Dash's wings. It made it hard to see her feathers.

Lyra looked at me. Her eyes widened. "Gus? That didn't hurt you, did it? I didn't cast anywhere near you."

I realized I was staring at her and hadn't been listening to something. "I don't know," I said. "Your magic. It was... different."

Lero's head lifted up and he sniffed at the air. "The fish!" he exclaimed, and ran for the kitchen. I could see black smoke coming out through the door. I sniffed.

I didn't smell anything. At all.

***

According to Lero, the 'Gus Is Okay' party was a restrained affair by Pinkie Pie standards. She wheeled an actual cannon through the door, though she was panting from the exertion. "I usually don't have to pull them very far!" was her rationale, so presumably she normally hosted parties near her cannon storage, probably Sugarcube Corner. She then looked at me, looked at the cannon, shoved it back outside, and started decorating the library by hoof, tossing streamers around and blowing up balloons.

She supplied a cake and a platter of cookies, and somehow was able to get Lero's other friends to come by on short notice. The other Elements of Harmony, along with a cream-colored mare with a blue and pink mane who Lyra introduced to me as her old roommate, Bon Bon. Twilight Sparkle brought out a gramophone, but before she started it up she made me sit down, and they watched carefully. The music played and I was unaffected, and there was an exceedingly well-synchronized exhalation from the ponies.

Pinkie Pie started watching me very intently once the music was going, so I visually searched the room for some sign of what she was expecting to happen. Applejack and Rainbow Dash were talking, Lyra was sitting next to Bon Bon in what looked like a physiologically unsuitable posture, Lero was sitting on the floor talking quietly with Fluttershy. Twilight Sparkle was dancing to the music, presumably. Moving spastically in front of the gramophone, at any rate. I pointed at her. Pinkie Pie nodded enthusiastically. I shrugged to indicate neutrality. Pinkie started to make a gesture, paused, then shrugged back at me. Still trying to make me smile.

***

Twilight Sparkle joined me back at the laboratory in the morning. She was energetic despite the sustained physical exertion of her excitement yesterday. "Good morning, Gus!" she called out to me. "Can we do radios today? I thought very hard about everything Lero's ever said about technology on your world and radios sound like a very key central piece."

I considered it. A spark-gap transmitter and a crystal radio set might be possible to put together. If I remembered it all right. We'd need to make a capacitor first to make the transmitter, and then I'd have to see if I could make a set of earphones to receive with, even if all it would receive would be crackles. And then a diode of some kind. But before that, there was a more fundamental issue. Several of them, in fact.

"That would be a multidisciplinary process," I explained. "Radio waves are themselves a form of light outside the visible spectrum, so first we would want to perform comparative experiments in optics to see if radio waves even exist here. Then the process for generating radio waves, or at least the method we could potentially use here, involves properties of electricity that might be different as well. And then we'd need some sort of earphones to hear the sound with."

"Earphones we can do!" Twilight said eagerly. "I can borrow a set from Vinyl Scratch!"

I should have recalled Twilight's gramophone. They had that much technology, so records weren't out of reach. They might be magical earphones, but we might be able to make them work to translate electrical impulses into sound. We'd have to cross that gap when we came to it.

"Earphones are the last step in the process. We can't do anything unless we know how electricity works," I said.

"I think Rainbow Dash is at work this morning, but I can try to find another pegasus who could help," Twilight suggested. I was starting to get a handle on her emotional expressions. I could see her shifting rapidly from disappointment at not getting to make a radio into excitement at another round of comparative science.

"Before we bring in another pony, can you tell me what Equestrian physics says about electricity?" I asked.

Twilight blushed. "Oh! Of course. Sorry, Gus. I'm just so excited I keep forgetting you want to know my side too."

I didn't correct her. I knew what she meant. She took a deep breath.

"Lightning is the fundamental form of electricity. Lightning is created as a magical wave either naturally when a magical charge accumulates in clouds, or when a pegasus consciously chooses to concentrate ambient magic to cause such an effect. The most common form of lightning is the traditional jagged-bolt form, which delivers a precise burst of kinetic energy, heat, and light to a specific point. This form can range in potency from the hoary pegasus 'cloudbuzzer' prank to frighteningly dangerous intensities. Lightning travels along the path of least resistance from its origin to the lowest-magic point it can reach, which is why it is able to be directed by lightning rods, as these provide a ready-made, safe path.

"An alternate manifestation of lightning is the 'crackle' form, rarely seen in modern times in large scale except in aerial displays or in 'wild' areas such as the Everfree Forest. 'Crackle' lightning tends to be white rather than yellow, moves more quickly, and is much narrower, with multiple branching 'arms' that may loop back to the main bolt. A very minor variant of 'crackle' lightning can be seen in the form of 'static electricity,' often a result of being struck by lightning or during mane brushing in hot, dry areas.

"Electricity gets its name from linguistic drift, dating back to an ancient story regarding mythical seaponies. It is said that a favorite prank on their part was to trick sailors and pegasi fisherponies into consuming portions of a certain type of eel, which used lightning as a defensive measure. As soon as a pony tongue touched their dinner, they would receive a powerful shock, to the amusement of the seaponies. The term 'eel-lick-tricks' developed as a shorthand from some lost original phrase, describing the prank, and over time lost its separation into distinct words, becoming a term for any use of lightning in non-cloud form."

Twilight bobbed her head to the sides for several seconds, as though looking through a set of invisible bookshelves, then nodded. "It's far from a complete examination of the subject and completely lacking in any useful specifics, but that's the schoolfilly version of it. Lero's told me that lightning on your world all acts like 'crackle' lightning, but he doesn't know much else about it. Your turn!"

I nodded. "Without going into too many details, then." I considered. It would be difficult to discuss electrons without going into atomic theory to at least some extent, but Twilight had requested to not know about that at Lero's prompting. I could restrict the topic to just electrons and 'other particles.' That seemed like it would work.

"In our world, electricity is the movement of extremely small particles called 'electrons' from one place to another. Electrons normally are attached to other particles, but in some circumstances can be made to move separately. A single electron carries with it an electrical charge of very low intensity, but they are small enough that a lot of electrons can move simultaneously. Electrical charge will move from an area of high charge into an area of low charge. When this happens from a cloud to the ground, which is usually the lowest area of charge around, the resultant cascade of electrons is called lightning. Lightning rods provide a minimally-resistant path to the ground, as they do here.

"Electricity is tightly coupled to the magnetic force; a magnet rotating within a conductor will cause an electrical charge to form. This is called electromagnetism. There are other forces that are also coupled to electromagnetism, but they shouldn't be relevant to anything we can do with the materials at hand. Similarly, running electrical current through a conductor wrapped around a material such as an iron bar will cause the bar to become magnetic while the current flows, and in some cases persist in weaker form afterward.

"Electricity gets its name from an older language's word for amber; it was called 'electrum' in that language. Electricity was named for the phenomenon where rubbing a piece of amber with a silk cloth would cause sparks; things that also made sparks were behaving like electrum, thus were 'electric.'"

Twilight rubbed her chin with a hoof. "Tiny particles? How small? Grains of sand?"

I shook my head. "A grain of sand would have quintillions of electrons in it."

Twilight blinked at me. "Quintillions. A one followed by eighteen zeroes. In one grain of sand."

I nodded. Twilight took a deep breath. "You come from a really weird world, Gus. How'd anypony even count that many electrons?"

"Statistics, theory, and math," I said.

"Weird but good," Twilight amended with a smile. "Okay. So I'm pretty sure it doesn't work, since somepony would have noticed it by now, but let's try your thing with the magnet and the conductor. You do mean a wire and not somepony who works on a train, right?"

"Correct," I said, and we got to work assembling the apparatus.

The lab had magnets, and the lab had wire. We set up a treadmill to spin the magnet and wrapped fine copper wire around it, with a wooden framework to hold the wires in place just off of the magnet. Every time Twilight used her magic to move things, I couldn't see her or her target at all, only sense the probability waveforms in those areas. I don't have any word but 'sense' for it; it wasn't seeing or feeling. Since all we were trying to do was determine whether any electrical energy was being generated, heat would suffice for an effect, so we simply ran the copper wire out a little ways where I could touch it with a finger and see if it was hot, laid atop a nonconductive glass plate. Not an intensely rigorous process, but I thought it would work.

If it would work at all. As best we could determine, it did not. Twilight ran on the treadmill at first, then went out and found Rainbow Dash to take her place. The treadmill apparatus certainly worked smoothly; the magnet spun freely and rapidly. The wire did not react at all. It stayed completely cool to the touch throughout the experiment.

We tested further to see if Twilight's presence was influencing the experiment, or Rainbow Dash, but even when both of them left the laboratory and another pony with no idea what we were doing came in, the wire still failed to heat.

Twilight seemed to be pleased by the results. "Not that it wouldn't be fascinating to discover two new fields of study in two days, Gus, but I'm glad to know that we're not totally upending all the physics textbooks," she said. "It would be convenient to be able to make electricity without a pegasus or without using a lightning spell, but we can do experiments with the old standbys."

I of course couldn't care less. Or more. Or at all. But it was another piece of information to consider. "We'll need a capacitor next," I said. "Something to store up the charge until it gets intense enough to ionize the air and jump the gap."

The purple unicorn smiled at me. She became an interaction between forces, and so did a cabinet against the wall. A smaller interaction came over and landed on the table in front of me. I could see Twilight and the object on the table. "Capacitors we have," she said proudly. "Some lightning-based welding techniques use them, among other things. I got an assortment of sizes and strengths. Pegasi have had them for centuries, ever since the very first Neighden jar demonstrated a way to capture lightning in a bottle."

"Then we should be able to build the transmitter," I said. "Figuring out whether it generates radio waves will be the harder part." I thought about it again. "Does your lightning make ozone?"

Twilight clearly ransacked her memory for the word, then shrugged. "I don't know. What's ozone?"

"Ozone is the gas that produces a characteristic smell after a lightning strike," I told her. It seemed like the most likely context in which she'd recognize it.

"Usually all anypony can smell after something gets hit by lightning is smoke," Twilight said.

I considered this. "Even if it hits a lightning rod?"

Twilight rubbed her chin again. "I don't remember smelling anything after a hit on the lightning rod. It's going to be stormy weather in a few days, so maybe we could borrow a thundercloud then and test it?"

"If lightning doesn't produce ozone, it might not cause an ionizing reaction at all," I said.

"Why wouldn't it?" Twilight asked. "If we can see the flash, then obviously it does."

"Why is that obvious?" I asked.

"That's where it gets its name," Twilight said, and then facehoofed. "Or are we using the same word with different meanings and yes of course we are. In Equestria, any reaction that produces light is 'ionizing' because you can keep your eye on it. What does it mean to you?"

"A reaction that causes one particle to end up with a different number of attached electrons," I said.

Twilight sighed. "And there's no such thing as electrons here so we could have gone around that all day. I'm glad we cut that one short. Okay, so how do we find out whether there's an ionizing reaction by your definition, other than getting a thundercloud and smelling it?"

"That wouldn't work for me anyhow," I noted. "I seem to have lost my sense of smell somewhere."

Twilight blinked at me. "What."

"I noticed it yesterday when Lero's fish started burning. I couldn't smell anything. I can breathe perfectly well, but I can't smell at all."

Twilight turned to waveforms and then suddenly back, stomping a hoof on the floor. "Don't break your study buddy," she recited to herself. "Not everypony can do the same things." She took a deep breath and let it out. "Now that brings me back. Sorry, Gus. I'm used to doing spells any time I want. I almost used a spell on you. So. Um. Without magic, I have no idea what anypony could do to investigate you losing your sense of smell. Was it gone when you came to Equestria?"

I shook my head. "I could taste Pinkie's cake before. The human senses of taste and smell are tightly coupled. The cake last night was muted."

Twilight frowned at me. "I think I'd better tell Princess Celestia about this. This might be more serious than continuing to do experiments. Losing one of your senses is a big deal, Gus."

I considered. "Please don't."

Twilight frowned more deeply. "Why not?"

Time for some honesty, then. But without hurting or betraying Pinkie Pie. "I need you to promise to not tell anyone."

Twilight looked at me for several heartbeats, then lifted a hoof and waved it in front of her chest. "Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye," she said, then "Ow!"

That did probably hurt. I told her. "I think it was a result of something Pinkie did after she broke that bag of flour over her head. When I recovered, there was no flour anywhere and I couldn't smell anything. Pinkie would be badly hurt if she thought she did something to injure me, and I think I deflected her with the party. I would rather not raise the issue. Also, I've had another change in symptoms. Magical effects around me are... evident to me now. When you lift things with your magic, I stop seeing or hearing you or your target. I sense numbers and patterns in those areas instead. That's what I meant when I said Lyra's magic was different."

Twilight gaped at me. Then she shook her head. "Gus, you aren't thinking clearly! You absolutely should ask the Princess for help if you're suddenly having whole new symptoms! Fixing things is what princesses do!"

"She told me she doesn't know how to fix me, Twilight," I told her as gently as I could, but I'm very bad at vocal subtleties. Too long without speaking. "It would only hurt her, and hurt Pinkie to find out."

Twilight stared at me. I watched her breathing hard. She stared at me more. Slowly she relaxed. "I... I'm sorry, Gus. You should be scared. You should be really scared. I know why you're not, but I still feel scared for you. But then seeing you not be scared of it, that makes me feel like you're being brave, even if I know better, and it makes me feel braver too." She took one more deep breath. "But I promised, and breaking a promise is a good way to lose a friend."

I felt a sudden surge, and everything began to disappear. I staggered. But it stopped, and I didn't lose my senses, and I caught my balance. A few seconds later, there was a knock on the door, and then Pinkie Pie stuck her head in. "Forever!" she said, then bit her lower lip and waved a hoof. "Sorry." And then she pulled back and closed the door.

Twilight looked at the door, then stared at me. "Gus? I think she knows." She looked at the door again, then at me again. "... Sweet Celestia, did Pinkie Pie literally break your brain?"

I nodded. "Probably. If Pinkie already knows, then you can tell Celestia in your report. But we don't need to stop for today."

Twilight looked at the door, then back at me one more time. "So... you want to do something about ozone that doesn't involve smelling?"

I nodded again. "Not ozone specifically. There's a simple test we can do that should tell me whether electrochemical reactions work at all."

Twilight blinked. "Electrochemical? Making lightning out of chemicals?" She paused. "You said you're not going into anything that might make a Horshoema," she cautiously reminded me.

"Nothing close to it," I assured her, then corrected myself. "Or close to Hiroshima. Similarity in names and suffering a destructive incident aside, the actual cause may have been very different."

"That's not totally reassuring," Twilight pointed out, but frowned. "Well, what do you have in mind?"

"I need a sealed glass tank of fresh water, two wires, a pegasus, and a match," I told her.

***

All of those items were easily acquired. It was another high school science demonstration, if it worked. I was neutral in my expectations. I still didn't know whether I was locked inside my own mind or not, so taking everything at face value was my only sane option. I declined to explain to Twilight what the experiment was supposed to do precisely so she wouldn't be able to form any expectations of her own, having seen the observer effect in play before. She was notably displeased, but accepted my rationale.

Water is made of an oxygen atom with two hydrogen atoms attached by a covalent bond. Supply free electrons and that bond can be broken, resulting ultimately in separate oxygen molecules and hydrogen molecules. Open the tank, wave a lit match, and there should be a brief but impressive fireball as the hydrogen is ignited, combines with the oxygen, and returns to being water.

Rainbow Dash was willing enough to cooperate, bringing a small thundercloud into the laboratory and stomping lightning bolts out of it into the wires until the water was boiling and the tank was creaking. She was less patient about waiting for it to cool back down, and soon departed. Twilight and I waited. If this worked, then at least electrochemical reactions did happen. If not, there were a lot of things I knew that weren't going to work at all. If the water in the tank was at the starting level after it cooled, then none of the water had been converted to hydrogen and oxygen.

Same level. I opened the top and waved a match across, but nothing at all happened. I extinguished the match in the water.

"I don't think radios are possible here," I told Twilight. "If there's no electrochemical reactions, then... to make it short, then the reaction that makes the radio waves won't happen."

Twilight sighed and flopped her head down on a table. "So now will you tell me what that was supposed to be doing, at least, even if it won't do it now and never could?"

I nodded. "Water is a compound of two gases. Running electric current through them should make it separate into its component parts. It didn't work."

Twilight looked at the tank, now with a matchstick floating in it. "Water's made out of two gases? Gus, I may have mentioned this before, but your world is really weird."

I looked at the tank, too. Something was percolating in my head. Then it came together. "There has to be something more going on," I said.

"Why's that?" Twilight asked.

"If electrochemical reactions are completely impossible, I ought to be very, very dead," I explained.

Twilight stared at me. "Gus. I know about the brain injury. I know about the lack of emotions. But could you please pretend to panic just a little when you say things like that?" Her mane was starting to frizz up.

"I'm not dead," I said. "Therefore we don't know everything."

Twilight frowned at me. "Are you quoting someone? That sounded sort of like Aristrotle."

I shook my head. "The human nervous system operates on an electrochemical basis. If electrochemical reactions don't work at all, I should be dead. I am not dead, therefore either my brain is not operating on an electrochemical basis, or we are misunderstanding our results."

Twilight bounced to her feet. "I have just the thing! Wait right here! We're going to do brain scans!" She clapped her hooves together, and then teleported away.

If I have another dream with Luna, I'm going to show her 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.' If she's got a mad scientist on her hooves, she should get familiar with the genre.

Twilight returned more mundanely, walking, along with Lero and Lyra, and a large red pony pulling a cart laden with what looked like old computers and a colander with wires attached to it.

"Exactly what are we doing here?" Lero asked, while Twilight turned into a froth of probability and took charge of the cartload.

"Some of the basic physics behind human bodies doesn't seem to work here," I told him. "We're going to look into why we're still alive."

Lero looked at what I presume was Twilight. "Is there any chance that you might find out we shouldn't be alive and then it might come true?" he asked. It was a very reasonable question.

Fortunately, I had considered it. "I don't think so. We are alive and we know we're alive, so if the observer effect is in play, we have a very strong pre-existing bias in favor of continuing to be alive."

"I'm not sure I like 'think so' as your basis for risking Lero's life," Lyra said evenly. It was again a reasonable point.

Twilight resolved into my perception. "If there was absolutely any chance this could hurt Lero, I would blow up this lab right now and build Gus a new house with my bare hooves," she told Lyra firmly. "Lero and Gus are alive and fine right now, and this is not going to even cast magic on either of them. The scan is completely passive."

Lyra shifted her hooves. It was a slight movement, and I don't think either Twilight or Lero noticed. It seemed significant. "What was that?" I asked.

"What was what?" Twilight asked.

Lyra turned her head to look at me. She looked very calm, very inexpressive. "It's called The Rock Before The Waterfall. You're very observant." She moved again, bringing her hooves closer together. "And I shouldn't have done it."

"Done what?" asked Twilight, looking bewildered. I was really getting very good at reading her expressions.

"Let myself think about getting into a fight with you over whether Lero can go through with this," Lyra said, still very evenly. "Lero can decide for himself and I trust you, and it was a very unworthy response on my part."

Twilight stared at the other unicorn, then shook her head. "What? Wait, Lyra, you were getting ready to attack me? I didn't see you do anything. What?"

Lyra stepped back one pace. "Gus noticed. I wasn't getting ready to attack. I was thinking about getting ready to attack and I started to move accordingly, which itself tells me I'm reacting incorrectly. If you'll excuse me, I need to meditate for a few minutes." She then performed a very crisp about-face and walked out of the lab.

Twilight gaped at the door. "... Over a brain scan?"

Lero hugged his purple unicorn. "I think she's feeling protective."

She hugged him back. "Lero, I would never in a million years do any experiment if I thought there was any chance it could hurt you. I would set every science book in the library on fire and use them to melt down every piece of equipment I have before I would do anything that would hurt you."

He kissed her. The mechanics of the process were themselves probably some sort of physics experiment, but they seemed happy with it.

The red pony cleared his throat. Twilight Sparkle squeaked and broke the kiss. "Oh! Right. Um, Big Mac, if you'd just stand right here? This will only take a minute."

The red pony nodded his head. "Ayup." He stepped into place next to the device with the metal colander, which Twilight placed on his head. I watched. The wires attached to the colander shimmered in the way I was coming to associate with 'low level magical effect' but the part on his head stayed in clear focus. The rest of the apparatus almost went out of view, but not quite. A printer of some sort chattered, and Twilight pinned up the resultant paper to the wall.

"OKay," she said. "Here's our normal pony brain. We can see regular healthy magical potentia all throughout, with different areas showing different levels of activity. We know there are magichemical interactions taking place as well. Totally passive, just monitoring the byproducts of thinking, totally safe. Now, Lero, if you'll put it on?"

Lero plucked the device off of Big Mac's head. "What's this part called?" he asked.

Twilight opened her mouth, then shrugged. "The part that came with the scanner was faulty, and they never did get me a working one, so I replaced it with one of those things from the kitchen you drain pasta in." She sounded defensive as she added, "Spike got another one." She sounded more defensive when she further added, "I don't know everything you know! Spike likes to cook, I deliberately don't learn about making more than sandwiches and other simple meals so I don't impinge on his specific area of expertise! It's being thoughtful and self-aware of my own tendency to make others self-conscious about not being as informed as I am about their hobbies! I've worked very hard to not familiarize myself with cookware and cooking terminology!"

Apparently I am observant.

Lero cleared his throat. Twilight cut herself short. Lero put the colander on his head.

"Right," said Twilight. "Okay. This will just be a moment. And... done." The printer chattered again. Twilight pulled out the paper and held it up. I couldn't see it or her.

"Magic," I said. If Twilight replied, I couldn't tell. I saw her again with another sheet of paper on the wall.

"Sorry," she said. "So, as I was saying. There's zero magical activity on display, but there is a significant amount of electrical activity. An entire field of it, in fact, with some similarities in patterns to the magical activity in a pony brain. There has to be some kind of interaction taking place between the electrical activity and the physical structures of Lero's brain, or else he wouldn't be able to think at all. But I don't know what that interaction is or how it works. Gus, do you have any idea?"

I looked at the image. It did look like a brain map. I hadn't tried neurology when I was bouncing between majors, so that was all the insight I had to offer. But the longer I looked at the image of Lero's brain, the more one particular idea came to mind. It wasn't all that much more likely than a number of other possibilities, but this one kept having a blue balloon tied to it.

"It's possible that chemical reactions and electrical activity themselves are subject to an observer effect, and Lero's brain chemistry is serving to act as an observer to the electrical energy, while the electrical field is acting as an observer on the chemical interactions," I suggested.

Twilight peered at the brain scan. "That's a pretty specific hypothesis," she said. "What makes you think that?"

"Just a hunch," I said.

Twilight whirled to look at me for some reason. I waited. She looked at me for longer, then pointed. "Your turn," she said.

I traded places with Lero. I felt fine with the colander on my head. Nothing went mathematical. The wires themselves were a little shimmery. It took a minute or so, then the printer chattered. Lero pulled the paper off and stuck it to the wall this time.

Most of my brain was covered with electrical activity, just like Lero's. But one section, around my left temple, had a bright spot of magical energy showing. That spot had long offshoots that extended across half of the hemisphere.

"I think we'd better keep an eye on this," said Twilight Sparkle.
> Chapter 7: Attuned
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Twilight Sparkle wanted to start writing up her findings and her report to Princess Celestia, so we were done with experiments for the day. I didn't argue with her priorities. It had been a productive day. She reminded me of my promise to visit Carousel Boutique for a proper wardrobe, and promised that Rarity would entirely understand after a Pinkie Pie Party that 'first thing in the morning' had slipped to 'well into the afternoon.' I'd forgotten all about that promise with everything else going on.

Twilight also warned me to not buy anything at the market unless I had a pony I trusted with me. The salesponies had apparently taken significant advantage of Lero's unfamiliarity with local market conditions and the process of haggling to overcharge him dramatically when he arrived, and Twilight was intent that I not have the same experience.

I didn't bother pointing out to her that I didn't have any local currency to buy things with if I wanted to. I assumed things would work themselves out. The princesses were personally interested in my situation and had provided me with a custom-made house and a brand-new laboratory built to Twilight Sparkle's specifications. There would probably be some sort of stipend or grant that someone would get around to mentioning sooner or later, and I thought that if Twilight were to mention something of the sort in one of her reports then the matter would be promptly attended to. I did not think Princess Celestia would let the sun set on any items on her to-do list.

With no money, the marketplace was an excellent vantage point for observing pony social interactions. I didn't study sociology and even before my accident I was never much of a social butterfly myself; there are some elements of the 'engineer' stereotype with a substantial basis in truth. But I wasn't a hermit either. I could talk to people, I did have a girlfriend, and so on. So watching how the ponies dealt with each other wasn't any odder than my first visit to a frat party and trying to figure out the rules then.

For the most part, the ponies were just people. They walked between stalls on their personal business, they chatted with each other, they bought things. The haggling process was highly idiosyncratic, but I started to pick up on patterns. Not the sort that made reality vanish, though every time a unicorn decided to pick something up I developed a unicorn-shaped hole in the world filled with those. The patterns were behavior. A pony would express some interest in the offerings of a stall. The salespony would praise their wares and praise their customer's eye for either quality or a bargain. The customer would downplay their interest, but suggest some other item at the stall, either because the other item was their original intent or as a distraction. The salespony would allow the customer to guide the conversation and switch to praising the new focus instead. Offers and counteroffers would be exchanged throughout the process, both sides starting with presumably overtly inaccurate valuations and slowly converging based on the flow of the conversation, until either a deal was reached or, more rarely, both sides recognized no bargain was possible.

There were other techniques, but that was the most common pattern. The simplest of them all was one colt whose technique was to put down his money and state its value while pointing out what he wanted, then repeating his offer until the salespony either accepted or rejected it. I decided that if I needed to buy something and had the bits for it, and knew a fair value, then that would be a reasonable way to proceed. But then I had another idea. I saw Twilight's friend Applejack doing a brisk business selling apples and waved to her. She waved back and beckoned me over.

"Howdy there, Gus!" she greeted me. "Y'all feelin' recovered after your first unscheduled Pinkie Pie Party? She springs 'em on everypony. You get used to 'em, an' she's learned not everypony can keep up with her."

"I suggested it," I told her. "She needed a pick-me-up."

Applejack's jack dropped much like Rainbow Dash's did. She recovered on her own, without a magical intervention. "Hold on jes' a moment there, sugarcube. Y'all are tell me that you told Pinkie Pie to have a party on account of she needed one? How in tarnation did y'all get a word in edgewise?"

I couldn't tell her everything, not without unkindly making Pinkie sound bad, so I didn't include all the details. "I had a reaction to magic and she was worried about me," I said.

Applejack shook her head. "Well, ain't that somethin'. Here." She flicked an apple toward me with her teeth, by the stem. I caught it in one hand. "Consider it a badge o' honor of a sort. Th' edible kind."

I took a bite. It was crisp, but the flavors were muted to me. "Thank you, Applejack," I said. She beamed.

"Oh, great, now there's another one?" a loud voice called out from several stalls over.

Applejack shook her head. "Y'all jes' pipe on down, Honeydew!" she yelled back. "Gus ain't done nothin' to nopony!"

"Don't tell me you're courting him already!" the voice sneered. I stepped back a pace so I could see more clearly. Being taller than the ponies made it easy to pick out who was talking. She was at a stand behind stacks of, appropriately enough, honeydew melons.

Applejack burst out laughing. "Y'all wake up with a cooler stuck where it don't belong, Honeydew?"  she gasped out, then looked up at me. "No offense, Gus, but y'all jes' ain't my type."

"None taken," I told her back. "I don't see the attraction either."

The other mare, presumably Honeydew, stomped a hoof on her stall. "Like we're supposed to believe that!"

Applejack looked up at me, blinked, and then guffawed again. "Wellllll, thanks fer th' compliment, Honeydew! Ah didn't know y'all though o' me that way! Thinkin' Ah'm that completely irresistible an' all! Mebbe I oughtta jes' ask Fluttershy fer her ol' modelin' contracts an' get famous!"

A melon arced in the air from Honeydew's booth. I caught it in my other hand.

"Guess that is a human thang," Applejack said, looking at the cantaloupe. "Lero's darn good at that too."

"Like you need any contracts to get more famous anyway, little miss oooh-look-at-my-fancy-necklace!" Honeydew spat out. "You write letters to Princess Celestia and she writes back! No wonder you're getting too good for ponies, got to have a monkey of your own like that walking disaster area in purple! Just go off to Canterlot and ditch your little vanity farm, why don't you?"

Applejack reached up and turned over a sign on her stall from 'OPEN' to 'CLOSED.' She cleared her throat and looked up at me. "Gus, don't y'all take Honeydew fer what ponies are like. There's jes' somethin' wrong with that one. An' Ah'm gonna get in a heap o' trouble fer this, but sometimes some things just need doin'."

"Oh, now your prissy little princess-pet feelings are hurt and you're running away!" sneered Honeydew. "Don't show yourself in front of respectable ponies if you're going to play with stupid monkeys!"

Everything started to go shimmery. The numbers didn't replace everything, the pain didn't come, but they were there. Waiting. I may have been having auditory hallucinations; every step Applejack took I could swear I heard spurs clinking on the ground instead of horseshoes. She walked in slow, deliberate steps in front of Honeydew's stall. The other mare leaned forward over her counter and opened her mouth.

Applejack turned around and bucked her square in the face. I literally believe I felt a shockwave at the moment of impact. Honeydew went flying backward into the side of a building, and much like I'd seen pony eyes sparkling beore, I could see swirls in her eyes. She peeled forward off the side of the building and landed face-first on the ground. Applejack reached up to turn Honeydew's sign to 'CLOSED' as well.

"Y'all might as well keep goin'," she told me, and sat down. "Ah got the feelin' Ah'm gonna have somepony yellin' at me th' rest o' the afternoon." She reached up to adjust her hat. "This sorta thing's usually Rainbow Dash's bit, but Ah admit to havin' been feelin' cantankerous mahself today." She took a deep breath. The numbers pressed in harder.

Don't start nothin' that yer hooves can't end,
ever' pony's got their breakin' point that jes' don't bend,
mock me if ya wanna but go after mah friend,
and yer gonna get a buckin', on that depend!

I could hear banjos and I think every pony in the marketplace joined in on the last line. And then the numbers opened up and beckoned me.

When I could see what was happening again, I was standing atop Applejack's stall with a fiddle in my hands, and the marketplace apparently had turned itself into some kind of line dance; the ponies were lined up in four rows, two pairs each bowing to the other. Honeydew was being carried off on a stretcher and Applejack was waving goodbye to me from between two ponies in armor.

"Come on by Sweet Apple Acres sometime, Gus! Y'all're good folks!" And she marched off with her head held high. The two guards were hunching their shoulders, as though they were embarrassed to be arresting her.

I climbed down off of the stall and looked around. Ponies were back to going about their business like nothing had happened.

A pale yellow hornless, wingless pony with a G-clef mark, cowboy hat, and a blue mane tapped me on the hip. "Pardon me, Gus, but might I have my fiddle back?" she politely inquired. "You played it marvellously, really, and I'd love to share a duet with you sometime, but I'm afraid I simply can't let you keep it." Her voice sounded like she ought to be hosting high society tea somewhere.

"What did I just do?" I asked, and gave her the fiddle back.

She coughed into a hoof. "Three stanzas on the importance of finding a balance between kindness and honesty, two more gently chiding Applejack for setting a poor example for the foals, one making it clear you aren't looking for a herd at the moment, and then one final comic stanza making it altogether clear that Honeydew was very much in need of a vigorous reprimand and regardless of the rest of the lyrics expressing your ultimate approval of the outcome. And one extremely risque pun about Honeydew being in need of 'taking a hike.' A-plus material, really."

I looked around at the ponies. "And then everyone went back to what they were doing?"

She tilted her head at me. "Why, of course, darling. The song ended, after all."

I found the apple Applejack had given me was sitting on the edge of the counter. My bitemark was very distinct. I picked it up and bit down again. It tasted orange this time. Not like an orange. Just orange.

I couldn't hide the question. "If you don't mind me asking," but she interrupted me.

"Married into the clan, Gus, dear," she said. "Music was always my passion, but until I was playing it for family I never understood just what it really meant." And she smiled at me, tipped her hat, and trotted off.

***

Rarity made no comment about my timing, but greeted me warmly and promised to have me fit for a royal reception in no time at all. After that, I repeatedly lost track of what she was saying. Once she began using her magic I couldn't hear anything she said, and I didn't get a chance to explain to her first.

She resolved out of numbers into a unicorn, her hooves on my sides, looking with wide eyes into my face. "Gus! Gus! Are you all right, darling? Speak to me!"

"I'm fine," I said, and put a hand on her hoof. "I can't see or hear you when you're doing magic."

"But those were hardly even spells at all!" she protested. "I was simply picking things up. You mean to tell me that if I simply pick up so much as a needle" and then it was just boundaries of potential again until she came back.

"Yes," I told her.

She sat back and tapped her chin with a hoof. "Well! This is certainly a unique challenge. I shouldn't care to simply push you around like a ponyquin. That would hardly be civilized. Ah! I've just the thing. Sweetie! Oh, Sweetie!" she called out. "Your sister needs your help down in the Boutique!"

That little white unicorn filly from group ten came clattering down the stairs in such a rush that she tripper over her own hooves and tumbled down, ending up in front of Rarity with a dress wrapped around her. She poked her head out and asked, "You need help in the Boutique?" as though Rarity had said "I need someone to eat all of the candy in Willy Wonka's factory for me." 

Then Sweetie saw me and shrank back into the tangled dress. "We didn't mean to wreck it!" she said quickly. "I'm sorry!"

Rarity looked down at Sweetie, then over to me. "Oh, dear," she sighed. "I see you've already met."

I knelt down to help untangle Sweetie from the dress. "Twilight cleaned everything up, and we made some very important discoveries," I told the filly.

She swallowed. I wasn't sure what she was anticipating after that. Rarity prompted, "And Sweetie and her friends are going to apologize to Twilight for making a mess and ask how they can make it up to her, yes?"

I got the rest of the dress off of Sweetie in one piece. "I don't think that will be necessary," I said, to the evident surprise of both unicorns. "Twilight invited you to participate, scheduled you last, and put you all together instead of separating you by tribe like the other test subjects. I didn't think about it before, but now I suspect she was keeping you together on purpose."

Sweetie swallowed again and looked up at Rarity, then shrank down on the floor. "So... you're not even mad about the fires?"

Rarity put a hoof to her face. "Are the three of you simply having a phase lately, Sweetie, darling? I don't recall fires being an integral part of your games before."

Sweetie blushed. "I think maybe it got to be a habit when Spike started joining us sometimes? But Gus isn't mad!"

"The most important question in science is, 'What happens if I do this?'" I told Sweetie. "I think Twilight wanted to see what would happen."

Rarity sighed. "Gus, darling, I know you're new in town, and given Twilight's magical proclivities and your disability it may be somewhat difficult at times, but please. I love Twilight dearly, but I think every pony in town knows she can, how shall I put it, go just the slightest bit to excess in her enthusiasm every now and then. If you can rein in her ideas just the teensiest bit, that might be for the best."

"So I'm not in trouble?" Sweetie asked hopefully.

"I suppose not," Rarity said. "Gus is very generously choosing to give you a very large benefit of the doubt, so I can hardly do otherwise. Now! What I was actually asking for your help with is a little communication issue."

"What kind of communication issue?" Sweetie asked. "You don't have any trouble with Lero."

Rarity gave me a glance, then back to her sister. "Gus has a... condition," she said. "The moment I use my horn whatsoever, I can no longer talk to him until I stop. It's dreadfully awkward, so if you would, be a dear and repeat what I say for him?"

Sweetie stared at me, then over to Rarity, then back again, then sat back. "R... Rarity? Are... are you... are you making fun of me?" She sniffled, and her eyes watered.

Rarity swept her instantly into a hug. "Never, darling! I would never make fun of you! Why would you think such a thing?"

Sweetie pressed herself into the hug. "Some... someponies were making fun of me for not being able to cast," she said. I could pick out 'miserable' easily by now.

"Oh, Sweetie!" Rarity cooed, and held her close. "Everypony develops at their own rate, you know that! It's going to be any day now, really!"

I felt the numbers sweeping me up. No pain. Just numbers. There was a space for me. A vacuum to fill. I heard my own voice this time, briefly.

Filly, colt, or boy or girl,
Some things are so in any world,
you can't rush yourself to grow up,
any more than you can slow up,
take each day begin to end,
spend it with your dearest friends,
and I'll tell you something that's true -
you're going to grow up you!

It reminded me a bit of "Puttin' on the Ritz." And then I was gone.

I was outside the Boutique when it was over, wearing a very well-cut white jacket that really did an excellent job blending 'fashion' with 'lab coat.' I also had on a new set of pants and, I later determined, new boxers as well. I also had a note in my hand.



Thank you so much, Gus, darling! Sweetie is feeling so very much better now, and I've had so many wonderful ideas! Come by tomorrow and I'll have several more things for you to try on. Is every human stallion such a delightful gentlecolt, or has Ponyville simply gotten terribly lucky?

Au revoir, darling!
Rarity



These musical interludes seemed to be working out well for my popularity, but I didn't think frequent blackouts were a positive sign. I headed back for the lab.

***

I should have thought it through before walking all the way back to my new house. Twilight Sparkle wasn't there, and of course she would have gone back to her own home to write in more familiar surroundings. I realized I was very tired when I sat down for a minute. If I was singing and dancing multiple times, then I might have overexerted myself. I fell asleep in a chair.

Things shifted and choices happened. Some of those choices made a sound. "Gus?" was the sound. I knew the moment I perceived it that it was carrying worry with it. I manipulated the possibilities that made up the set of Gus Wainwright and turned. A hyperextended function named Luna was looking at me. She was an alicorn function with dark blue properties.

"You're burning, Gus," was the meaning of her next decision. A mirror virtualized and I reflected in it. Half of my upper vertex was asymmetric. Six-colored fires were emergent. Where they intersected with the set of Gus Wainwright was alternate elements. Six different things that were not part of the set of Gus Wainwright and were distinct objects themselves, not functions.

Perspective shifted. I was looking in the mirror. I had a hole in my head. Apples, balloons, butterflies, diamonds, stars and lightning bolts were all around it, where fire was leaking out. It didn't hurt.

"They're trying to help," I said. Then I said because then I knew, "It's not working, but they can't stop. They don't choose. They just are."

"This bodes ill," Luna told me.

"I think I'm going to die," I agreed. "It'll all work out in the end. Would you like to watch another movie?"

I held up Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

She glanced at the DVD case, then back to me. "You are strange beyond belief, Gus Wainwright."

"I don't think my circumstances are likely to have ever happened before," I agreed.

"You fear nothing. You accept your own death as blithely as I would choose a flower to pluck in a field. I could offer you neither reward nor punishment, for you would enjoy nor dislike neither. You truly do not care about anything or anypony, you cannot care about anything or anypony. Why then do the Elements burn you, why do they leave their mark on you? Why do you help ponies you care nothing for?"

I put the DVD in the player and sat back on the couch. Luna sat beside me, though I could read her misgivings. "They're factors of reality, here," I told her. "They can't help it any more than the sea can help washing over a sand castle." The disc began. Even in dreams, the FBI warning about unauthorized duplication. "But they'll make something work. In the meantime, I can still make choices. I can choose to make friends."

"How can you call them friends when you cannot care for them?" asked Luna.

"I can choose how I define a friend," I said.

"That is a very dangerous path," Luna told me quietly.

"It's all going to work out in the end," I said.

"How?" Luna asked. "How do you know?"

"Just a hunch," I said.
> Chapter 7.5: I'm just like you and you're just like me [3 of 6]
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



Xenophoolia - A trilogy in six parts.


Part 1 of 6 - “If you follow me we'll put our differences aside.”

Part 2 of 6 - “But I look a little closer and it starts to feel familiar too.”

Part 3 of 6 - “I'm just like you and you're just like me.” (YOU ARE HERE)

Part 4 of 6 -“Everything is turned around, this crazy world is upside-down.”

Part 5 of 6 - “Helped me to see all the possibilities.”

Part 6 of 6 - “I couldn't see what was right there in front of me.”



The Lost Chapter (7.5)

I dreamed. I’ve no idea if I used to dream so vividly or frequently as I did since coming to Equestria; much of my ‘lost time’ is a muddle. Having a magical pony personally charged with watching over dreams seems a likely explanation for the crisp, realistic intensity of my unconscious visions. Certainly I could not have remembered every line and scene from ‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow’ on my own, but I watched the entire movie on my college dorm’s community couch with Luna alongside me.

She left when it was over. She had other duties she had to attend to. She didn’t have to tell me; we were in a dream. I just knew. I don’t think she intended for me to know some of those duties, but an inability to fear isolated me from what I suspect would otherwise have been some serious mental consequences.

I went straight into another dream when that one ended. Luna had left, so I did not think it was her doing. This was a very different sort of dream. For one thing, I didn’t seem to be in control of my own actions. For another, it had a very different tenor. I couldn’t feel it, but again with that dream-certainty I knew it as clearly as if someone had gone through and written ‘powerful and capricious, not malevolent’ on the scenery.

Then I saw that someone had written ‘powerful and capricious, not malevolent’ on the side of a building, with a chalk picture of a sort of snake-like thing with mismatched limbs underneath it. The picture winked at me. Then it climbed off the wall and waved at me. I could see it, but not return the wave. It fell in alongside me. Then it reached out and patted me on the head. Something crinkled and clung to my scalp.

“There,” the thing said. “Wouldn’t want to vaporize your brain by accident this time. A little tinfoil hat is just the thing for the fashion-conscious human these days anyhow.”

It waggled its fingers, and I heard myself talking. “Golly gee, Mister Discord, that sure is swell of you! I bet there’s a bunch of other Guses who wish their Discords had been so thoughtful as to spare my poor little head!”

It laughed. “A very paragon of consideration, I am,” it, apparently Discord, agreed. “Fluttershy has been a terrible influence on me, I fear. But, in any case! Your timing is badly off for some of the more interesting experiments that I want to run, so I’m simply tweaking things a bit.”

It moved its fingers again, like moving a puppet, and my mouth reacted the same way. “Shucks, Mister Discord, I’m awful sorry! I didn’t mean to mess up like that! What are we gonna experiment on tonight?”

The chalk-outline entity laughed again. It seemed to be prone to that. “Why, we’re going to find out just what sort of reaction those amusingly alien brains of yours have to fluctuations in the fabric of space and destiny themselves!”

Space and destiny instead of space and time had certain implications about the structure of Equestria’s universe, but I couldn’t think of any way to meaningfully test them. In any case, I was talking again. “Wowzers! And that’s why you were so kind and generous and loyal and friendly and optimistic and honest as to protect my messed-up head? You’re swell, Discord!”

It buffed a claw against the hollow space where its chest would be. “Of course I am! So kind of you to appreciate me. Now! We have a dream for you to enjoy, as much as that’s possible, and then we’ll get things really rolling!”

It moved a claw, and my hand lifted; there was an eraser in my grip, and it guided my arm through erasing the chalk outline from the air.

A raspy voice called out to me. “Hey, Gus! Whatcha doing?”

Two strong, blue legs hugged around my waist, and something nuzzled into my spine from behind. I still had no control over my actions. Overhead, I could see pegasi leaping down from the clouds, while several unicorns were twitching their heads in time with the otherwise now-undirected movement of those same clouds. Almost every pony in sight was moving; some were abandoning their shops and taking up other positions, while others were sliding into place behind newly-open counters.

“Just taking care of a little cleanup, Dashie,” I said. 

“Aww, that’s my Gus!” she said happily. “Town handyman, always keeping everything in tip-top shape. Hey, you wanna… Okay, okay, I know, mister too-cool-for-everything never ‘wants.’ You got time to come watch me do some stunt practice?”

“Sure, Dash,” I agreed. “Who knows? Maybe this’ll be the time you get me to jump and cheer.”

She snickered against my back, still hugging me. “You do that anyhow. This’ll be the time I get you to really mean it. I’m gonna get through to you sooner or later!” She released the hug and trotted around to grin up into my face. “You’re amazing, you know that? Got that weird freaky head-thing of yours going on and you still recognize awesome when you see it.” She went up on her hind legs and I found myself bending forward.

Her tongue was broad and strong, and she rubbed it along my teeth as we kissed. The shape of her mouth was different than mine, but not so troublesome as I had considered when I saw Lero and Dash sharing a moment.

Then she broke the kiss and we went to her stunt practice.

What happened after that was, in a manner of speaking, unscientific.





I awoke in Twilight’s library, not in the house the ponies had given me. I was sitting in a chair in a circle of moonlight, and a warm, winged shape was draped across my lap. This was in keeping with where we had ended up in the dream, but not with where I knew I had fallen asleep. I had no further sensation of being in a dream now, neither Luna’s inexplicable certainties nor Discord’s instability. I had simply relocated in my sleep and ended up with Rainbow Dash in my lap somehow. Perhaps Twilight Sparkle had been linked to the dream and teleported me. Perhaps Discord had done something to the fabric of space and destiny.

The moonlight through the window changed its angle and began to play against a wall. It was clearly magic, but I felt no impending arrival of a numerical rush, and nothing vanished around me into a haze of probabilities. I reached up and felt tinfoil crinkle under my fingers when I touched my head. Discord’s protection was still in place, then. 

Cartoonish pictures took shape in the moonlight; I recognized myself, in silent black and white, being found in a dangerous jungle by a pegasus with worry-lines all around her. The exaggerated emotional cues were very useful for me. An ambulance bounced in, being pulled in large hops by a very recognizable Pinkie Pie, and the cartoon-me was loaded in. One scene-change later, and two ponies in medical gear were making various non-alphanumeric symbols at each other over my prostrate form.

Princess Celestia walked in. She was highly detailed, not stylized as everything else in the show was, and her fluid grace was captured perfectly. She lowered her head to cartoon-me’s temple and a bright light shone. Then my cartoon representation jumped from the table and hugged in her overt gratitude.

Another scene change, and my avatar was strolling around a bouncing-to-the-music Ponyville, wearing a carpenter’s toolbelt and leading the ponies in a dance, though I didn’t see how Thriller fit the setting.

The scene darkened, and a robin’s-egg-blue unicorn mare in a wizard hat and cape entered the scene, twirling a long black moustache and wearing an enormous necklace that dragged on the ground. Another unicorn, Twilight Sparkle by the mark on her flank, came out. The two of them exchanged word bubbles, tossing small cloudy shapes full of the words ‘blah blah blah’ at each other, then began firing their horns instead.

Twilight was getting the worst of the exchange until my cartoon figure jumped in, suddenly wearing full plate armor and carrying a sword and a spool of wire. He pulled a loop of wire around the villainous unicorn’s horn, tied the other end to his sword, and jammed the sword into the ground, shorting out the interloper’s magic.

Several ponies rushed forward with small hearts wafting up from their heads - one streaky pegasus immediately identifiable as Rainbow Dash, a bandaged Twilight Sparkle, and one pony I recognized as the hostile one from the market, Honeydew. The three of them picked up my cartoon self and carried him bodily off to Twilight’s distinctive tree-library. A profusion of hearts emanating out from that structure made the ending to the story quite clear.

Rainbow Dash yawned in my lap, and the moonlight ceased its display, returning to a  bright spot on the floor. She stretched, catlike, and her feathers brushed across my face. They were very soft. “Nnnnnnghaaaaah…” she yawned out, then added sleepily, “Dozing off in your lap’s great for a nap, Gus, but I gotta get into bed or I’ll be all kinks tomorrow.” She snickered. “ And that’s Honeydew’s job. Carry me!”

I could tell what was going on, and saw no particular benefit to opposing it. If Discord had chosen to place me into some sort of altered timeline, that was not much more unbelievable than waking in a land of talking magical ponies in the first place.

Or I could be going mad, and losing track of my own insane mind’s internal consistency. If all else failed, that hypothesis would be difficult to disprove. I carried the pastel-colored pegasus athlete to our shared bed.





I awoke alone in bed, with the sound of voices coming from the library’s kitchen. I was familiar with all three - Rainbow Dash’s gravelly voice, Twilight Sparkle’s higher pitch, and Honeydew’s higher still. Honeydew sounded very different when she wasn’t jeering. I got up, found and donned my clothes, and went downstairs to join them.

“Gus!” they greeted me together, and left the table to meet me with a group hug.

“Didja get a good sleep after we got to bed?” Rainbow Dash inquired. I nodded.

Honeydew gestured at the table. “We’ve got everything all set out for breakfast, snugglemonkey!” she said cheerfully. “I kept one of my best melons of the whole crop this year, and today seems like the perfect day to take it out.”

Twilight Sparkle smiled at me. “I don’t know what it is, but today just feels like a good day.” She took in a deep breath


Life in Ponyville shimmers!
Life in Ponyville shines!


I held up a finger. Twilight blinked at me. I hadn’t felt a thing, this time, no numbers or music. Apparently Discord’s tinfoil hat was doing its job.

“Breakfast first, please,” I said. 

“Oh! Right,” she said, with a pinkness to her cheeks, and settled back into her seat.

Honeydew giggled. “You must be hungry, Gus. You’re always the first to jump into songs when they start.”

Dash nodded. “Yeah!” She grinned up at me. “One of your best qualities. I mean, you’re always too cool for Equestria, nothing ever bugs you, but then you sing and we all know just what’s hiding under that flat face and stiff ears of yours.” She landed herself back at the table as well.

Honeydew nodded, and leaned in to nuzzle at me. “Yeah! Not like that creepy new guy.”

“Honeydew!” Twilight scolded. “Lero can’t help not being able to hear the music. He’s not being creepy, he’s handicapped. You should be nice to him.” Twilight looked up at me apologetically. “I know it doesn’t seem like a handicap to you, Gus, but not being able to join in with everypony in a musical number makes him seem… well, alien, in a way you don’t.”

“I’m sorry, Twilight, but he’s creepy,” said Honeydew firmly. “I can stand him not knowing how society works, since we went through all that when Gus arrived, but standing and gawking when everypony around is singing along? He could at least try.”

“I’m… kinda on the fence,” Rainbow Dash added. “On the one hoof, he seems like a nice enough guy. Not, y’know, cool like Gus, but nice enough. But Honeydew’s kinda got a point, Twi. I mean, if Gus hadn’t sung that song while he was taking down Trixie, I dunno if I’d’ve ever realized what you were seeing in him. Loyalty and kindness like that doesn’t come along every day.”

Twilight blushed again. “A scholar from another world? How could I resist?”

Honeydew laughed and nudged a plate of melon slices toward me. I sat. “I wasn’t all that convinced until the duel either,” she said. “Sure, you two had been swanning around town, but I’ve always been a conservative kind of pony. If you heard the music, you couldn’t be that bad, but you have to admit you look really funny compared to a pony.” She then sighed and smiled. “But then Trixie came in and challenged Twilight.” She winked at Twilight. “Beat her all over town square, too.”

Twilight hmphed and stuck out her tongue. “She was cheating.”

“Yeah, well, cheating or not, she did,” Rainbow Dash chimed in. “And then Gus comes running in!” She waved her hooves for emphasis. “Big ungainly weird-looking Gus, waving around that big monkey wrench, while everypony is still gasping at the sight of Twilight shielding for her life, and you start singing to her about how much you love her, while you smacked Trixie’s spells away with nothing but an iron wrench!”

The three mares sighed together happily, then began to sing our song.

I wasn’t hearing any music but their voices, nor seeing waveforms take shape, but I sang along anyhow. Every other song had come to me on its own, but I knew the words to this one. Either my madness was getting less inventive, or Discord transcended dimensions.

A blue apple agreed with that second suggestion. I hadn’t seen that one before. It had some other ideas attached, too.

Someone knocked at the door. I got up to answer. Lero was standing there. His face looked gray. One hand was raised to knock at the door; the other was clutching the blue feather woven into his hair so hard his knuckles had gone white.

“Gus?” he said. “I… I think I need to talk to you.” 





The ponies gave Lero and me a large amount of extra space as we walked. He was tense, twitching at infrequent intervals. That might have been why the ponies were shying away; being able to identify an overstressed individual and avoid them would be a survival trait. Then again, these ponies were sentient beings, so it could have been rumors spreading.

“I think something’s wrong with me, Gus,” Lero said, rapidly looking around. “I thought I was getting a handle on this whole place, but I’m just falling apart today. I think I might be cracking up.”

“I’m familiar with that self-analysis,” I told him. “It’s very difficult to disprove the hypothesis, but there’s very little benefit to operating under that assumption, normally. The most efficient response is to deal with the world as you perceive it.”

“That’s just the problem,” Lero said, then bit his lip, looking at an aqua pony who I recognized from his herd. Lyra was her name, but she was glaring at Lero angrily enough that even I could identify the look at first glance. She was behind a stall in the market with a well-scuffed padded mat behind her, and a sign reading “SELF DEFENSE LESSONS 5 BITS.”

“Oh, look, the freaks are here,” she snapped loudly. “Why don’t you two just move along?” Her horn began to glow, and I felt a slight pressure on the side of my head, but apparently Discord’s tinfoil hat was still isolating me from the effects of magical exposure. Lero swallowed and tugged on my arm. I took that as a cue to hasten my pace with him.

When we got past the market, Lero stopped to lean against a building, running the back of his free hand over his forehead. “You see? That… that wasn’t right. Or maybe it was. I can’t tell. Everything’s gone wrong, or it hasn’t.” His other hand was still gripping the blue feather in his hair, but he seemed otherwise unaware of the token. “At least I know who she is.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked. 

He exhaled loudly. “Is it just me? I think almost all the ponies I thought I knew… aren’t. Or… aren’t who I thought they were. That was Lyra Heartstrings, but… which is it? Does she hate humans, like just then? She hates you because she thinks you’re some awful perversion of her philosophy, being emotionless and everything? Or is she one of… well, one of my mares? Gah, that sounds bizarre, doesn’t it?” He held up his free hand. “No, no, sorry, I know, you have your herd, and if I stay here the rest of my life, maybe I’ll decide to… to…” Then he swallowed and doubled over, clutching at his head. “Arrrgh!”

“Do you need medical attention?” I asked. I had a blue apple bouncing along in my thoughts that said he didn’t.

“No, I just… this is so weird, Gus.” He stood up and rubbed his face again. “... I had a dream last night,” he admitted. “About… Rainbow Dash.” He shook his head and shuddered. “A very vivid dream. We were… I don’t even want to think about it… except I think I do… and all the whole time, she kept urging me to remember her. And I did, and…”

I waited to let him talk. It may have been theraputic, or it may have just let me get more information about what was going on. Either way, it was going to work out.

He shook his head sharply. “But she’s your wife, isn’t she? The animal caretaker? How could I remember any of that? Nothing’s making any sense! At least I still know her name. Half the ponies I talked to think I’ve forgotten who they are. Applejack’s sister looked the same, but she told me her name is Diamond Tiara and she wasn’t wearing her bow. Derpy’s the mayor but her name’s Cheerilee. Mister Cake is selling sofas under the name Time Turner, and Time Turner said his name was ‘Valeyard,’ and all the pegasi were down on the ground while unicorns were moving clouds around with their magic. What’s happening? The only ones who aren’t crazy are the ones with the Elements!”

That blue apple was definitely impatient for me to tell Lero what was going on. So I obliged.

“Let’s get back to… your place. This may take some time.”





It didn’t take as long as I’d estimated. I’d barely begun to lay out my theory when Lero screamed vigorously, clutched his head, and collapsed on the couch. I felt a pressure against the side of my head again, and I observed a visual distortion around him, like a ripple in the air without any particular origin. His color improved within a span of a few seconds, and he relaxed; his hand gripping the blue feather was still holding it tight, but no longer in a white-knuckled deathgrip.

A door opened on the far wall, which was notable for its lack of a door. Lero walked in, identical to the one on the couch save for the characteristics of being upright, conscious, and not suffering from visible mental confusion. Discord walked in right behind him.

Lero blinked at me, and a smile began to form on his face, then looked at his unconscious doppelganger and the smile faded. “Err… Hello?” he said.

“Hello, Lero,” I said. “Since you didn’t know me when we first met, I assume Discord is doing something with alternate universes rather than time-travel.”

“What?” he said.

Discord rang a bell. “We have a winner! Gus, you make the most difficult situation in all of Equestria, really you do. I can’t get you in on the fun without going all Scanners on your head, and you spoil the big reveal right off the bat.”

“I’d say I’m sorry if I could,” I said.

“Wait, slow down, please,” Lero asked, looking between me and Discord. “Do you two know each other? Have you done this before? Is that why you’re so calm? And what happened to… me, over there?”

“Oh, do go ahead, Gus,” Discord said. “You really should admit everything to Lero. At least one of him.” And held up a glass of water, dropped a pill in it, and offered it to me. I declined.

“I’m calm because I have a brain injury,” I explained to Lero. “I don’t feel emotions.” I reached up to touch the tinfoil on my head by way of explanation. “Discord put this on me to isolate me from the effects of whatever he’s currently doing. To the best of my knowledge, he’s caused every pony in this town to exchange portions of their identities, as well as you and me. I have shown negative effects from being subjected to magical influences, so including me would likely have harmed me, which Discord is avoiding doing.”

“Well of course I am,” Discord huffed. “The whole ambiguity gets wiped out if I simply explode your head. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twelve times, shame on you still but I do feel a trifle to blame. Besides, the expression on Twilight Sparkle’s face afterward is perfectly priceless.”

I declined to analyse Discord’s statements for logical implications. I could provide no frame of reference for his remarks, other than his suggestion of having accidentally killed several other Gus Wainwrights in other timelines, and that he had some foreknowledge of events to happen involving Twilight Sparkle. Who, at least for the moment, had her trust placed in me to be her husband. Artificial sentiment on her part or not, it would have been disloyal to do anything that might end up with her widowed after all, such as annoying this extremely powerful being for more details.

“In this reality, you are the husband of Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle, and Lyra Heartstrings,” I resumed. “The current identity-exchange effect appears to be magical in nature, or else I would not be damaged by it. Here, the local Lero Michaelides is incompletely under the spell, and may have successfully broken himself free when I began to explain the situation to him. This is likely due to the difference in the physical structure of human brains from pony brains.”

“How so?” Lero asked, looking at his unconscious self again.

“Pony minds operate on a magical basis,” I explained. “Ours do not.”

“I know that,” Lero interrupted. “We had a magic-devouring plague at one point, and I was immune, but all the ponies were acting like animals while they had it.” He shuddered.

“That makes sense,” I agreed. “However, here, electrochemical reactions do not take place.” I pointed toward the lab. “Passing current through pure water should cause it to form hydrogen and oxygen. No such reaction occurred. Since human brains rely on electrochemical activity to function, something else has to be operating.”

“Electrochemi… But that doesn’t make any sense!” Lero objected. “I’ve seen…” He trailed off, then nodded. “Yeah, I have. Twilight’s done some experiments that had chemicals and electricity involved, anyway.”

“Not to be in too much of a rush, but I do have a schedule to keep,” Discord commented. “Different universes, Lero. Different effects. Different you. And, of course, our little one-off guest star here.”

“In this universe, human brains appear to work by a mutual observer effect between the electrical field of the brain and the chemical interactions of the brain,” I resumed. “A magical attempt to create an ongoing influence to a human brain therefore has to affect both components. The current effect is not correctly adapted to ‘my’ Lero’s brain, so he is experiencing partial integration into the mass delusion, and partial rejection.”

Lero inhaled, then exhaled. “Okay. I… guess that makes sense. And you’re just going along with it?”

I nodded. “It’ll all work out.”

“How can you be so sure?” Lero asked. “There’s… something like this happening in my universe too, but it ‘s not going so well. What did Twilight do differently here?”

“I don’t know what involvement Twilight Sparkle had,” I told Lero, honestly. “As far as I’m aware, Discord is responsible for the current situation.”

Lero turned sharply. Discord pre-empted him. “Oh, calm down, you silly little angry monkey. Yes, yes, I set this one up myself - didn’t you figure it out, Gus? The Elements have protective spells on them, which protected their Bearers, so I could only do some little bits of editing around the edges for them.” He put a bear arm around my shoulders. “Take a lesson from Gus here, Lero! ‘It’s all going to work out for the best.’” He laughed. “Or, at least, so he insists. Poor little plaything, trying to pit his will against the universe and define his own destiny. Only I have that luxury.”

“It’s going to work out,” I told him. A pink balloon smiled inside my head.

“You see?” Discord chortled. “Such a wonderfully unique agent of chaos he is, while thinking he’s being so logical all the time! Upending pony beliefs, leaving little Lyra so very disturbed by his mere presence, stubbornly insisting that he can pick the future, in a world where little fillies and colts have their entire destinies laid out for them before they even hit puberty.”

“Insanity is still one of my primary working hypotheses,” I reminded the amalgamated entity. “I might well be hallucinating everything.”

“What? How can you even live if you think nothing around you is real?” demanded Lero.

I looked to him for emphasis. “Whether it’s real or not doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s the environment I am in, and the only rational course of action is to move forward to the best of my ability within that environment. If I had a way to restore the history in this universe that I’m familiar with, even though the ponies now remember it all differently, I would. Since I do not, the only logical thing to do is function in this society until an opportunity presents itself to repair it or bring myself into alignment with it.”

“How can you keep going when you’re the only one who remembers what really happened?” asked Lero. “Isn’t it much more likely that you’re just going mad?”

I pointed to the blue feather in Lero’s hair, then to the one that my Lero was gripping so hard. “Find something to hold onto, believe it until it becomes an unassailable fact, and don’t let go,” I said.

Lero blinked at me, then looked down. His hand reached up to touch his feather, then jerked away as though it had given him an electric shock. His eyes widened and he touched it again. “Where did this come from?” he said quietly.

Discord laughed, and snapped his fingers. There was a bright flash of light. I saw my Lero vanishing from the couch, and a force lifted me, moving me to the chair I had been in when I dreamed with Princess Luna about Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I felt the tinfoil vanishing from my head, and then…





"That is a very dangerous path," Luna told me quietly. The movie was just starting. Within the dream, I had the unusual sensation of having been dreaming just then, but I had no idea what it was about.

"It's all going to work out in the end," I said.

"How?" Luna asked. "How do you know?"

"Just a hunch," I said.

> Chapter 8: Waving
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was still in the chair when I woke up. The sky was starting to lighten. Princess Celestia was raising the sun. I could see it now. I'd watched her standing in my hospital room raising the sun before, but now I could see the actual process itself. I couldn't see the sun's disc; it was a single overwhelming vector made of pure willpower, laying out in no uncertain terms exactly where and how fast the sun was moving. The colors of the sunrise around it were touched by shimmering twirls of potential, as though that single burst of will was radiating out the rest. It sounded like diamonds.

Maybe that was exactly the case. Physics in Equestria is much more subjective. Regardless, whether or not I could enjoy it, I could recognize that with my new perceptions, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I watched it until the colors settled and there was just the sun again, moving steadily upward. If I ever did get myself fixed, I suspected I would want to remember that.

A pencil moved. I looked away from the window. Pinkie Pie was sitting in another chair. Her mane was drooping, but not limp. She had her clipboard in her hooves.

"Not the sunrise either," I told her.

"I asked Princess Celestia to make it a really good one just for you," she said, and slumped. "I came in through the door, promise. I just held real still so you wouldn't notice me until after."

"That was just for me?" I said, and looked out the window again.

"Uh huh," Pinkie responded, and yawned. "Princess Luna helped. She said you should get to have it and she looked sad."

"I never had a sunrise before," I said. "It wasn't possible, on my world."

"I never heard of Princess Celestia making a sunrise just for one pony before either," Pinkie agreed. "But I'm gonna pull out all the stops. I'm going to see you smile, Gus. I Pinkie Promised."

She wasn't that bouncy, energetic pony who pounced me outside the hospital. Her jaw was set and she was holding that clipboard tightly.

"Can you smile, Pinkie?"

She lifted her head and put a small, watery smile on.

I shook my head and patting my knee. She tucked the clipboard back into her mane and walked over. Not bounced. She climbed up over my lap, and I set my hands on her back.

"Can you smile for me, Pinkie? A real smile. From inside, like you said. Not smiling at me. Smiling for me, smiling because I can't." I didn't want her to, I didn't care, but I couldn't. Just because you don't care doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

"I don't know," she said in a small voice. "Smiling because you can't smile doesn't make me want to smile."

"Don't smile over me not being able to smile," I told her. "Smile the smile I should have because I got to meet you. Smile the way I should have smiled when I met your friends. Laugh for me at the idea of having my own sunrise."

"Those are your smiles," she said. "It's sad you don't get to have them."

"Then smile with the smiles I should have," I told her. "Smile because it's all going to be okay."

She sniffled and looked up to me. "Pinkie Promise?"

I ran my fingers through her mane. "I Gus Promise. Cross two worlds and all the rest, this'll turn out for the best."

I don't know where that came from.

She turned and sat up in my lap and hugged around my neck very hard. "Nopony ever got that," she breathed, and then she started to laugh and cry at the same time. I hugged her back until she fell asleep holding me.

***

The first thing Twilight Sparkle wanted to do in the morning was run another brain scan. She put it up next to the first one.

She dropped onto her rear, looking up at it. There was a clear visual difference.

"Gus," she said in a very uneven voice. "That's grown by almost five percent overnight. At that rate of progression..." She trailed off. I'm certain she had the math down to well beyond the last significant digit.

"All the more reason to get to work while I can," I said. I could do the math too. About fifty days, more or less, if my eyeballed estimates on volume and growth were right. Assuming that I'd stay conscious and functional right up until the last brain cell was overtaken by the magical graft, which was probably not a reasonable assumption.

"No!" she said, and she dissolved into possibilities. Most of the rest of the lab did, too. The pain came. Everything else became numbers again.

Then it all came back. Twilight was holding onto me with her hooves and gasping out something at high speed, her eyes shut. I reached up to pat her side. Her mane was frizzy.

"GUS!" she all but screamed, and then collapsed on top of me. She was definitely hyperventilating. The question of what to do about that resolved itself a few seconds later when she fainted. Her breathing quickly returned to normal at that point.

I worked myself out from under her and sat up. I took stock of the situation. Unconscious unicorn who just had consecutive panic attacks and dropped me as a side-effect of the first one. Brain-damaged human. Lab that doesn't look like anything exploded in that first magical thing she did. First order of business, decide what to do about Twilight. Hyperventilating is just breathing too fast, so she should wake up shortly, I guessed. I didn't know if there might be anything else to do; I was studying to be an engineer, not a doctor or a veterinarian.

Between trying to wake her up and letting her sleep, I choose to let her sleep. If she woke up in the same emotional state, nothing productive would get done. She seemed to be much calmer, unconscious. The next question was to stay or to go try to get medical help, in case she was in some danger. If she needed help and I stayed, she could be in trouble. If she did not need help and I left, she would wake up without me there and might have another emotional reaction. She made it this far in life without self-destructing, so I should go get help to avert the worst-case scenario.

I fell over trying to stand up. I felt fine, for my recent definition of fine. I just couldn't execute. I got onto my knees without incident, but I could only get on my feet by supporting myself on a table. The moment I tried to take a step away, I toppled.

It didn't take too many experiments to confirm a new hypothesis: I'd lost my sense of balance. Much more of a problem than losing my sense of smell. That made walking across town to the hospital to get help for Twilight a much more significant challenge. I recalled an alternative.

Pinkie was still asleep where I'd left her, laid atop a couch with a blanket pulled over her. The couch was in the house when I moved in, and human-sized. She fit on it easily. I didn't have any trouble crawling in from the lab to the house. I sat down at the side of the couch and put a hand on her side, trying to wake her without startling her. My head has enough problems without being bashed with a hard hoof like a cartoon alarm clock.

Her eyes snapped open and she beamed a smile into my face. "Good morning, Gus! I feel a lot better now! You're right! Everything's gonna be oooooo-kay!"

I should have thought ahead to exactly how to tell her. She caught my hesitation. Numbers and pain slammed into me, but a hoof grabbed around my shoulders and kept me upright, and the moment passed as fast as it came.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry," she said, but she looked me right in the eyes. "You and Twilight were taking a brain scan and it showed something really really bad and she started to panic and you fell down and she snapped out of it realizing she hurt you and then she hyperventilated but now you can't walk and she's fainted and you need me to go to the hospital and get an ambulance but everything's going to be okay just a hunch be right back!" She let go of me and galloped for the door. She didn't bother with the handle and it swung inward. She just lowered her shoulder and charged right through. 

She looked like she was trailing red lightning. The jagged bolt kind.

***

Doctor Vital Signs ran me through a series of tests, checking my legs. They seemed to be working fine. I could lift well more than my own weight with them, I could move my foot and wiggle my toes, and I passed the bucking test with flying colors. The last was a target set up with a weight attached, with marks set for eath pony, pegasus, and unicorn adults and juveniles. My results, according to the doctor, were in line with Lero's. Precision high-end for an adult earth pony's buck, strength at the low end for a unicorn juvenile. I mentioned Applejack and he informed me that the Apple family has a separate scale entirely.

I simply couldn't balance on two feet. I didn't feel any vertigo, nor did I feel drunk. My ears were fine, or as fine as Doctor Signs could tell. Given supports for balance, I could walk perfectly well. As for neurological examinations, he checked me for a concussion and then told me frankly that Twilight Sparkle's equipment was better than anything the hospital had that didn't require active spellwork, and that she was by far the pre-eminent expert in Equestria on human mental functions. Anything else he could do would be redundant. He did, however, send word to Princess Celestia, and she sent a scroll back via Twilight's dragon to say she would come in the evening, before sunset. I'd somehow managed to miss finding out that Twilight Sparkle kept a dragon in her library. That must be a fire hazard. I'd been busy.

Twilight was fine; she woke up before the ambulance arrived, but the pony paramedics insisted she come along and be checked out anyhow. She, Lero, and Lyra escorted me out of the hospital again. Rainbow Dash was at work. Nurse Redheart told me on the way out that they'd have crutches for me and in the meantime to stay in the wheelchair. It was too small, still, but I could manage.

I noticed that Twilight Sparkle had a horn inhibitor on again, but she wasn't wincing the same way. I asked her about it.

"Princess Celestia's orders," she said, and the hangdog expression on her face gave me an urge to hug her. "She said not to cast any spells around you at all, and do whatever I have to to make sure I don't. So... inhibitor. I'm so sorry, Gus, I lost control and I should know better than that by now. Maybe I should just wear one all the time until I learn to stop overreacting."

"No," said Lyra firmly. "That's not learning control, that's training yourself to stop using your magic. For a unicorn like you to stop using her magic would be a tragedy of historic proportions."

"It'd be better than getting Gus hurt!" Twilight said. "Or anypony else. I could hurt somepony. It'd be better to just shut myself down until I'm not a danger to Ponyville anymore!" Her mane was getting frizzy again.

Lero stepped forward, putting himself between Twilight and Lyra. They both froze in place, and then their heads ducked down. Lero looked between them and waited. Twilight mumbled, "I'm sorry, Lyra. I'm overreacting, aren't I?"

Lyra nodded her head. "Yes," she agreed. 

Lero rubbed them both on the cheek. "Better now?" he asked.

"Better now," Twilight said. She sighed. "So... what do we do now? Something without magic."

"There's always science," I said.

"What? But? Even after this morning? I mean when I?" Twilight sputtered. "I almost killed you, Gus! And now you want to go back?"

The numbers were swirling around me.

This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here.
HUGE SUCCESS.

Then they went away. My stomach hurt, but only moderately. 

Lyra pulled her hoof back. "No songs," she said sternly. "No magic, no songs."

"Lyra!" exclaimed Twilight. "Couldn't you have interrupted him some other way?"

"I don't have a bucket of water handy, I didn't want to hit his head, and I don't have your variety of options, so no, a poke to the barrel was the best I had," Lyra said. "I didn't hit you too hard?"

"I'm still alive," I told her.

***

We went to the library first. Twilight had some books on Equestrian physics that she thought I might be interested in. I asked for information on light and anything she had on chemical theory. She knew she had lots of the first, but the second was unfamiliar. Given that she hadn't known the composition of water, that wasn't too surprising.

"Anything about the theory of what things are made of at very, very, very small levels," I said instead.

"I'll see what we have," she promised, but I believe she was dubious.

I met Spike. I revised my earlier statement from 'Twilight kept a dragon' to 'Twilight adopted a dragon.' I had been using a mental image of one of Anne McCaffrey's firelizards, which was a grossly inaccurate model for Spike. Once I learned his name, Sweetie Bell's comment about fire becoming a habit made a lot more sense.

Spike was a friendly little dragon, and Twilight's personal assistant along with being her de facto son. He was running the library while Twilight was with me, in fact, and knew better than she did where everything was located. He also had a great deal more restraint than she did.

"Okay, Gus, here's Practical Optics by Cut Glass, and the best I could do on that very-very-very-small stuff was this one," he told me. The second book was Light Within Dew by one 'Princess Celestia.' "It's all about what's inside a single drop of water," Spike apologized. "There's some books about microscopic life and genetics and things, but they don't get as small as this one."

"Thank you, Spike," I told him. "This should be a good starting point."

Twilight started writing, but quickly discovered that her mouth-penmanship was tremendously rusty, and the inhibitor prevented her usual form. She recruited Spike to take her dictation instead, writing up an initial monograph on our discoveries regarding gravity's subjective nature. The cadence of her voice was steady and calm; she was very clearly in her element.

The book on optics was, in a word, illuminating. Equestrian light does not straddle the boundary between particle and wave; it straddles the boundary between physical and magical. White light is a type all its own and apparently pegasi can condense light into a liquid form. There was no mention of prisms or of refraction separating light into different frequencies, nor did I find any concept of chromatic aberration. Refraction and lenses were the primary focus of the book, and a variety of familiar formulae were waiting there for me in that regard.

Different colors of light, instead of being different frequencies, apparently feature different weights, creating a superficially similar pattern to the red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet of my world's rainbows. The colors of light can be blended, but tend to remain separated unless something forces them together. There was a photograph of liquid light running from a pegasus weather factory built of clouds, streams of color remaining separated even as the fluid flowed freely.

Light is also distinct from heat, though the book noted the difficulty in separating the two; the only known process involved what it indicated was a tricky bit of spellcasting for little practical benefit. There was a section on X-rays, and then a chart that made the matter very clear. Equestrian light is quantized at a much more macroscopic level. Infrared light, heat, separates out from visible light and requires much higher energy inputs to force into a different state. Visible light occupies a bucket of its own, with internal segments. X-rays are a completely different area of the spectrum. Large parts of the spectrum were blank and annotated with 'No process has been found to interact with or generate light in this range.'

Magic had a large mention as well. It could be summarized like this: Light is the easiest thing for magic to influence, and even a relatively unskilled caster can make most of the other rules about light go out the window. The book also noted that it was difficult to explore the non-visible spectrum magically, as most unicorns need to visualize what they want to do and have great difficulty trying to visualize non-visible light. Some pegasi innately exude light-altering magic, and when I mentioned that Lyra confirmed that their alpha mare, Rainbow Dash, frequently leaves an extended rainbow trail behind herself.

All in all, Practical Optics moved radio and related technologies far to the back shelf. There was nothing that could detect radio waves, and absent electrochemical reactions I couldn't think of a way to make a semiconductor to use in an antenna.

The other book, Light Within Dew was much more of a philosophical piece. Princess Celestia wrote in a fluid, inviting style, though it was wasted on me. A large portion of the book involved relating the drop of dew to various factors in pony life, though it did also give some indications of the level of talent and power the princess had relative to her subjects. The final chapter was the only one that had anything useful to me.



As we peer deeper into the heart of our droplet, what do we find? We find water. A single ray of light searches as delicately and tightly as it can, and even at that deepest level, so small the sharpest-eyed pegasus who ever lived could not see it through a microscope, we find... water. There is something comforting in that, in knowing that the small and the large are one and the same.

Can we look deeper yet? We can, but there is little use to it. Magic and light ultimately both come upon their limitations, and the most perfect ray of light the sun can produce cannot shine itself any tighter. There is simply a point at which nothing can be distinguished any longer. At a certain point, even water becomes indistinct.



I had another hunch. I couldn't think of a way to test it and be sure, but the idea had a blue balloon with glasses and a mortarboard attached.

I do remind myself periodically that there is an excellent chance I am completely insane and sitting in a hospital somewhere, unaware of the world.

In any case, I had my hunch. "I don't know how to blow up a city, Twilight," I announced to her.

Lyra and Spike both gave me very intense looks. That probably was an excessively dramatic way to make that declaration.

"Oh, good!" was her response. "What made you figure that out?"

I tapped Light Within Dew. "My world operates on an atomic, particulate structure that devolves into probability fields below a certain threshold, around the level of electrons, more or less. Your world, based on my interpretation of this, goes into probability fields at a much higher level. You remember how I told you that water is made of two gases?"

"Of course," she said. "So that's related to your... two cities?"

I nodded. "In the very short form, our world is made of tiny particles called atoms. Like I told you, quintillions of them in one grain of sand. Atoms make up the fundamental elements - gold, for example, is a pure element, one that can't be changed into something else, because a single particle of gold is still gold."

She asked the natural question. "So what happens if you cut a single particle of gold in half?"

"Then you start to lose cities." I set the book down, since I didn't need it any more. "There are components inside each atom that make them different from each other. At the center of each atom is a nucleus made of even smaller particles called proton and neutrons. Protons have a kind of charge, neutrons do not. Electrons make up a probability cloud around the nucleus, and they have the opposite kind of charge from a proton. Two forces in our universe, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force, govern how atoms hang together. They have very short range, but immense amounts of energy. When you break atoms apart, you release that energy."

Twilight bobbed her head for a minute, and I was fully aware she was taking my very basic and imprecise description of the atomic model and internalizing it. "Since you were able to put together a civilization, I assume it takes more than hitting an atom with a hammer to break one apart?" she said.

"Much more. I can go into that later, if you want to. The contrast is with your world. I'm not entirely sure what sort of experiment could prove this, but I believe that the strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force are fundamentally undetectable here, because the atomic structures themselves are below the level of uncertainty here. You can't identify a single atom, only an area where an atomic structure probably exists, but every point inside that area is functionally indistinguishable from any other. At that level, there's only probabilities that something exists."

Twilight's eyes did that sparkling thing again. "And since we've determined that magic influences probabilities based on the user, that's why magic can transmute substances from one thing to another! Because you're redefining the local probability structure!" She began bouncing around again. She got very excited about scientific discovery. "It all makes sense! And so when you and Lero came here, your atomic structures 'blurred' into probability forms, while your consciousnesses acted as observers with the innate expectation that you'd continue to exist just like you had been, so you did! And if I went to your world..."

She stopped bouncing, and her eyes went wide. "... If I went to your world, you don't have any magic there, so even if my waveform structure successfully resolved itself into discrete atoms, my magichemical-based brain wouldn't work, and you don't have anything that could substitute the way Equestrian chemical and electrical reactions could adapt..." She swallowed hard. "... So Project Technology Transfer would end up with a brain-dead pony."

"Project Technology Transfer?" asked Lero.

"I may have been doing an eensy little tiny bit of thinking on theoretical things that might possibly be able to visit your world, but so far all of them involve the step 'assume Twilight conveniently discovers an impossible new form of matter,'" she confessed guiltily. "Also assuming that I could find a way to get to your world instead of some other one."

"This is my world now," Lero said firmly.

Twilight sighed. "Yes, Lero. And I couldn't go to your old world without breaking my brain anyhow, so I have to come up with a new project." She brightened again. "Like expanding on Gus' theory! It doesn't change magical theory or existing physics very much but it's so very fundamental and hard to experimentally prove without an atomic-structured basis for comparison, there's going to be years and years and years of debates about just how to define the very basic terminology of the field!" And she was back to clapping her hooves together.

I noticed I couldn't feel the book under my hand. I could feel a pink star, though.
> Chapter 9: Magic
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was getting worse. It was a simple factual analysis. I couldn't smell anything or stand upright, and now my sense of touch was being affected as well. Anything my hands touched on was a color and a shape, unrelated to the object I was in contact with. I was probably fortunate that I wasn't completely overwhelmed; the part of the brain that filters out ongoing sensations, like the feel of clothing in touch with your skin, was still working. For now.

Twilight would probably not be very happy to hear about this. But she would also be unhappy to find out I hadn't told her. So it wouldn't be kind either way, but it'd be more honest to tell her, and more in line with what she would want. Simple decision, then.

"Twilight?" I told her. "I'm having a new symptom."

She dropped her hooves, and her expression went quickly from glee to worry. And then it went to pain as she dropped onto her rear and put her hooves up to her head and yelped. She still had the horn inhibitor clamped into place. Lero picked her up and hugged her to his chest. However long he'd been in Equestria, the low-tech lifestyle had clearly done well for his physical condition. She took a moment to catch her breath, then pushed herself away, giving him a brief kiss. When her hooves were back on the ground, she walked to me.

"What's wrong now, Gus?" she asked.

I set my hand on the armrest of the too-small wheelchair. "This feels like a purple diamond," I told her. I touched her shoulder. "You feel like a pink star."

Twilight looked at me, then over at Lero. "Lero? You don't feel things in color, do you?"

He shook his head wordlessly. Twilight looked back to me. "Have you been... experiencing other things like this?"

I nodded. Simple body language, easy to use. "Several. I saw red lightning, tasted an orange apple, and I've felt several blue balloons."

She began to pace. "The Elements of Harmony? Why would you be seeing the Elements of Harmony? And how can you feel purple and pink? This doesn't make any sense! And not in the Pinkie Sense sense, that's just impossible, this doesn't make sense just in the words! What does purple feel like?" She turned back to me. "What does purple feel like?"

I tried to find words to explain it. I don't think I did well. "It's purple. Like your coat. When I look at you, I know that you're purple because that's what my senses tell me. When I feel the purple diamonds, I know they're purple because that's what my senses tell me."

Twilight returned to pacing again. "All right. All right. So your senses are... crossed. Spike, I need books on neurology! What do we have?"

The little dragon looked upward for a moment, then scratched his head. "Just Welcome To Your Brain. We ordered all those other ones on inter-library loan, but they haven't arrived yet."

"How can they not have arrived yet?" demanded Twilight. "A pegasus could have visited all those libraries in a day and picked up all the books for us already!"

Spike coughed. "Not every librarian has a number-one assistant, Twilight."

The unicorn groaned. "Right. They probably haven't even got the request forms in yet. And then they won't process them until the end of the day, and some of the books might be out. Okay. Then we can solve this with what we have on hand. Information. I need more information. Without using spells on Gus. Or around Gus. Think, Twilight, Think!"

Lero took a chair. "You know you just frazzle yourself when you pace, Twilight," he told her. "Come over here and sit down with me."

She stamped her hooves. "This is serious, Lero!" she insisted. "Yes, I relax with you, but I need to concentrate!"

"Have you ever heard of the Cardboard Dog Theory, Twilight?" I asked.

"What in Equestria does a cardboard dog have to do with anything?" she snapped. "Are those what you have instead of timberwolves? I don't see how it's relevant!"

"The Cardboard Dog Theory is that when you have a complicated process that you need to review, the best thing you can do is to explain it to someone else. By saying it out loud, you make yourself think through all of the steps. Since the listener doesn't need to provide anything but a target for you to talk to, you can replace a living listener with a cardboard cutout of a dog. The rest of us don't know about neurology, while you know enough to have and operate your own brain scanner. We can be your audience. So. Start with the basic question and define the terms," I explained.

Twilight stared at me, then turned and resumed pacing. "Fine. The basic question is, 'Why is Gus having freaky sense problems that manifest as the Elements of Harmony?' Gus is the human in the wheelchair, freaky sense problems are touching colors, and the Elements of Harmony are ancient and powerful artifacts in the form of five necklaces and a tiara, with gems in the shapes and colors that Gus has been experiencing, that let me and my friends manifest our personal attributes, Honesty, Loyalty, Generousity, Laughter, Kindness, and Magic, as an incredibly powerful magical rainbow beam that undoes evil magic, restores damaged... minds..." She trailed off.

"That does sound useful," Lyra commented.

"Oh, shut up," grumbled Twilight. "It's not that simple! The Elements are kept in a vault in Canterlot to keep them safe, and they're only supposed to be used to protect Equestria from threats. And Gus is already experiencing the Elements as it is, and he's getting worse, not better. Using the Elements of Harmony might kill him outright." Her eyes widened. "And if we killed someone with the Elements of Harmony, we'd be the worst possible ponies to have the Elements of Harmony anymore, and Equestria would be defenseless, and the Diamond Dogs and griffons and dragons and six million kinds of monsters we don't even know about would all attack us at once and Ponyville would be destroyed and OW OW OW OW!"

She dropped on her rear and grabbed at her horn again. "Stupid thing!" She clenched her eyes tightly shut and gritted her teeth.

"Impressive," Lyra mentioned. "I think that's the fastest you've ever stopped spiralling into panic."

"Not. Worth. It," Twilight forced through tight-clenched teeth. Lero came over to rub her neck. They took a few minutes while she calmed down. I waited.

"Okay," she said when she was settled. "So the Elements of Harmony may or may not already be involved in Gus' problem. They may or may not be doing any good, or might even be part of the problem. So... the next thing to do is to investigate. But that means magic around Gus and Princess Celestia said not to do that. So how do we find out whether Gus is being affected by magic without doing any magic?"

"What about your brain scanner?" asked Lero. "You said that didn't do any magic."

"No active magic," Twilight said, shaking her head. "It has magic involved, and Princess Celestia said not to do any magic around Gus. What am I supposed to do?"

"Nothing," said Lyra, sitting herself back onto a seat.

Twilight's eyes lit up. Not literally, this time. Not like the sparkles. "That's it!" she exclaimed. "Perfect! Even if I'm not doing any magic, there's always some magic around Gus, because Equestria has magic everywhere! So to find out whether magic is affecting Gus, I need to do... nothing! No magic at all, and see if there's any change! But to do that without doing magic, I have to..." Her voice accelerated past my ability to understand her. Lero looked to me and shrugged. Lyra had closed her eyes. She was sitting up, so I guessed she was meditating, not sleeping.

Twilight raced to a blackboard and let out a scream. This time it didn't stop her. I watched her and the board dissolve into numbers. I watched two red-hot glowing pieces of metal fly in opposite directions from her horn hard enough to embed themselves into the walls.

Lero gasped. "Twilight! Magic!" he called out.

I held up a hand, watching the probabilities dance against the wall. Not watching. Sensing. There never will be words. "It's all right," I told him. "I'll wait outside."

Lero looked at the blank part of my vision, where decisions were turning into realities and weaving themselves into the world. "If you're sure," he said.

"It'll all work out," I told him. He wheeled me out of the lab.

***

Lero and I spent the next few hours talking about home. He left a few years before I did, or at least before I lost the ability to meaningfully interact with most of the world, so I could tell him about some things he had missed. It was getting late in the afternoon when Lyra came to tell us Twilight was ready.

The blackboards and several walls were covered in writing. Some of it looked like mathematical functions using symbols I couldn't recognize, some of it was writing in such sloppy form I couldn't read it, and a great deal of it reminded me a lot of the numbers and waveforms that replaced the world when magic happened to me. That made sense, if those swirling, waving lines were representations of the same thing. She had a magic horn; of course she would have some experience with magic, even if not expressed the same way I perceived it.

The tables and equipment had all been shoved against the walls. The middle of the room was largely occupied by a circular device laid out on the floor, a ring about fifteen feet in diameter and a foot tall. It had wiring, tubing, copper bars, several large feathers, and a number of pieces I didn't recognize built into it. There was a circle of some white granules around the entire thing, and the floor of the interior of the ring was coated in more. It looked like salt or sugar.

"There!" Twilight said, pointing. "A triple-buffered localized magical exclusion region generator! Nopony ever thought about something like this before!" She was prancing in place. "Just get inside and I'll power it with my horn, and you won't be affected because the exclusion region will insulate you from the M.E.R.G.'s own operation! There's going to be all sorts of uses for this!"

"Is there any point to asking how it works?" asked Lero.

Twilight opened her mouth. Spike spoke first. "It blocks outside magic from getting in and it sucks up all the magic inside to make it into lightning," he said. He must have seen someone look surprised, because he followed up with, "I haven't been Twilight's number one assistant all this time and not learned about magic! I probably know more magic theory than anypony who's not a unicorn."

Twilight had a range of expressions run across her face. Even with my growing familiarity, I didn't get all of them. She settled for hugging the little dragon. "That's my Spike! The best assistant there's ever been. And yes, you could describe it that way. So, Gus, would you step into the ring?"

I tried to make sense of the device. It didn't make an electrical circuit anywhere, some of the tubing was open at both ends, it had crystals of various colors and shapes stuck to it in apparently-random places, and there was an eggbeater poking through a ball of yarn at one spot. That was all the sense I could make of it. I assumed Twilight knew what she was doing. "Lero, could you help?" I asked, since stepping wasn't much of an option for me at the moment.

"Oh. Uh, right. Lero, could you help Gus in?" Twilight added, blushing.

"This is safe, right?" he asked, but he helped me stand, leaning on him long enough for him to put the chair inside and help me sit back down in it. He felt like a swirl of apples, butterflies, and lightning bolts.

"Absolutely! One hundred percent totally safe," declared Twilight. She looked at one of the blackboards, frowned, stuck her tongue out the corner of her mouth, erased a spot, then wrote something else in. "Perfectly safe."

Spike and Lyra were underneath one of the lab tables with flak helmets on. They had one waiting for Lero when he joined them.

Twilight turned around, then stuck her tongue out at the others. "It's going to be fine!" she told them. "I checked very carefully. There might be a little noise, but it's not going to hurt anypony."

"How about the lightning?" Lyra asked.

Twilight paused, then trotted over to a cupboard, pulled out a long metal pole in her mouth, and stuck it into a spot on the ground. "Perfectly safe," she said.

Then she aimed her horn at me and fired.

A large bolt of lightning shot out from the eggbeater and hit the long metal pole, which glowed cherry red. A sensation of dropping pressure around me came to me, but my ears didn't pop. For a moment there was a crystalline pattern in the air, and then... nothing. I didn't feel any different.

"Sorry, Twilight," I said. "I don't think it did anything."

She regarded me, purple light still flowing from her horn to the ring, then broke out into a wide smile. "Oh, yes it did! Did you just say you're sorry, Gus? As in, you feel sorry?"

I thought about that for a moment. "It's the polite thing to say," I said. "Conversational habit. I don't actually feel anything."

She was still grinning at me from beneath her magical beam. "But you haven't said you're sorry about anything until now, because you didn't feel sorry. You couldn't. You were being influenced by the Element of Honesty this whole time! How does your chair feel?"

I looked down and ran my hand along the armrest. "I don't feel anything at all," I said. I pressed harder. "No colors or shapes. If I wasn't looking, I wouldn't know I was touching it."

Lero, Spike, and Lyra crawled out from under the lab table. They kept the helmets on, though.

"Can you stand up?" Lyra asked. 

I tried. I dropped back into the chair. "Still no sense of balance," I reported. I sniffed, then added, "Or scent."

"So those are actual damage, not magical influences," Twilight said, still projecting her energy at the ring. "But the mixed-up sensory impressions are. Without magic around you, your senses don't report the Elements of Harmony. So the MERG is insulating you from magic!"

"Yay!" said a voice from under the table. Pinkie Pie jumped out, also wearing a flak helmet. She bounced across the room, over the ring, and into the field with me before anyone could react. "Gus is saved!"

Blue balloons.

Everything blue balloons.

Laughter, laughter everywhere, laughter inside me and outside me and everywhere there is.

Happy joy laughter hope delight parties togetherness optimism laughter laughter laughter.

Not being happy. Being made of happy.

I was face-down on the ground. There was salt on my lips. That answered that. Someone was pulling me upright. I looked. Lero. Redheaded, bearded. My head was swimming. I realized I was still laughing and stopped. He said something, but I had trouble making out his words.

Pinkie Pie was holding Lyra in a death grip and sobbing. Lyra was holding her back. Twilight was staring into the ring, projecting her energy into the device she built, but her legs were shaking.

"Say something!" The words came back to me. Lero was talking to me.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Pinkie jumped in with you," Lero told me. "You started laughing like a... hyena."

"Pinkie has the Element of Laughter," Twilight said, but she was starting to breathe hard. "Not the physical one, with her, but that's the Element she wears. When she jumped into the MERG's interior, you were being isolated from all other magic, but Laughter was right there with you."

Pinkie was still sobbing against Lyra's side. Lero's eyes widened. "Twi! If there's no magic inside the field, how did Pinkie keep going?"

"Ponies have their own magic," Twilight said. "The MERG only drains out environmental magic. If Pinkie stayed inside for a long time, it would start to drain her, but it was safe to walk into for a while. I said it's perfectly safe. That's for ponies too. Um... I may have made one teensy little miscalculation, though."

Lero put his arms under mine and started to lift. He wasn't moving toward the chair, but toward the edge of the ring.

"Not about safety!" Twilight insisted. "Just... about how tiring this is. I... think I'm not going to be able to hold it very long."

"How long is 'very long?'" Spike asked.

"Maybe a few more minutes?" she said, and swallowed. "At most?"

Pinkie was still sobbing, but Lyra was paying enough attention to the rest of the room to ask, "Can I help? I'm not remotely in your class, but you know what I can do."

Twilight's beam wavered as she started to shake her head 'no,' then stopped herself. "You'd have to be perfectly synchronized to me, and we're not even sisters, let alone twins," she said. "The odds of any two random other unicorns being perfectly matched up is... carry the... let's just say that there probably haven't been any non-sibling perfect matches, ever."

Lyra nodded and returned to comforting the pink pony.

Spike looked up at the board, then to the lavender unicorn, then back to the board. "So one unicorn has to power the whole machine alone, Twilight's the most powerful unicorn in just about ever, and Twilight's not going to be able to run it for more than a few minutes. That explains why no one's ever tried it before!"

"Very... good... deduction," Twilight said. "I think... it's an accelerating drain... not ... linear..."

She dropped to her side, gasping for breath, and the beam broke. Everything went to pink stars. Since Twilight's mark was the star and one of the Elements was magic, it made sense that a sudden inrush of magic would manifest itself to me as pink stars. It was still disorienting. But friendly.

Lero's grip on me was apples, butterflies, and lightning again. He helped me back into the chair and wiped the salt from my face. "You okay, Gus?" he asked.

"I don't think I'm hurt," I told him. He nodded, then ran to Twilight. She was panting, but she didn't seem to be hurt. He picked her up and held her anyhow.

***

Spike and Twilight spent the next half-hour copying down the notes Twilight had drawn all over the boards and walls. Lyra brought Pinkie over to me, and I hugged her.

"You promised you'd make me smile, Pinkie," I told her. She was still crying. "I smiled. It was a real smile, even. And laughed."

She switched to throwing her hooves around me. "Not like that! I didn't mean it like that! I didn't mean I was going to make you make you smile! Just make you smile!"

"Maybe that was the only way," I told her.

She stopped crying, but she squeezed me hard. "Nopony breaks a Pinkie Promise," she whispered to me.

"I promised too," I told her. She released the hug and stared into my eyes.

"Say it again," she demanded.

"Cross two worlds and all the rest, this'll turn out for the best," I told her.

Pinkie nodded, then beamed at me. "Kay then!" She let go with one hoof, and I felt things starting to vanish on me. She eeped and let go of me entirely. "I stopped! I stopped!"

The door opened. Princess Celestia was standing there, mane already turned pink. Her body was very still as her head moved, looking around the room. Her eyes narrowed. That was a very upset pony. "TWILIGHT SPARKLE!" she bellowed out. "IS THIS YOUR IDEA OF NOT CASTING SPELLS?"

Twilight Sparkle whimpered and shrank against Lero. "... Yes?" she squeaked. "It was keeping magic from getting to him at all, but I couldn't keep it going I'm sorry Princess" and then I lost what she was saying.

Her words apparently did the trick, in any case. Celestia's expression softened, and then she sighed and walked over to nuzzle Twilight's cheek. "Very well, my faithful student," she said. "You never cease to surprise me with your capacity for inventive thinking. But Twilight? When I tell you something is a royal command, I do mean it as a command, and I expect you to honor the spirit of it, not find ways to work around my words."

"Yes, Princess," Twilight said, in a very small voice. "I'm sorry..."

Celestia nuzzled her again, then rose and turned to me. "Gus Wainwright. Were you harmed?"

I shook my head. "No, your highness. We did discover that I am being influenced by the Elements of Harmony."

Pinkie Pie nodded her head very rapidly. "Gus said a lie and then when I jumped in he turned super-laughy and it was totally not how that was going to happen in my head but how it did happen when I tried it and I was super-sad and then Gus told me it's all gonna work out so it's totally okay again!"

Celestia gave Pinkie Pie a smile. I recalled a similar smile from my second-grade teacher when a classmate proudly told her how snakes shed their skin, which was endlessly fascinating to my classmate.

"Thank you, Pinkie," she said graciously, then gestured with a wing. A Day Guard pony pushed a cart in from the hall. It had a wooden box on it. Four other ponies followed. Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rarity, and that yellow pony. Fluttershy. Twilight, Spike and Pinkie gasped. Lyra and Lero looked at each other and shrugged.

"The Elements of Harmony?" Twilight asked. "But Princess! If the Elements are what's hurting Gus, we need to keep him away from them, not bring them here!" Her eyes widened. "Maybe we shouldn't be around him! If we're the ones who use the Elements, then just being around us might be making his situation worse. We should get Gus on the first train to Appleloosa, or further!"

"Hush, Twilight," Celestia told her gently. "Lero, would you help Gus into Twilight's brain scanning device?"

He nodded stiffly. "Of course, Princess," he told her. She winced slightly, but smiled at him anyhow. Lero's expressions were harder to read than ponies, by now. Their faces were very mobile, to say the least.

"But Princess, the scanner uses magic. You said to not use magic, and it might make him even worse," protested Twilight.

Celestia shook her head. "I have something to show you, Twilight, and Gus as well. I fear I know what is happening."

Lero pushed the brain scanner out from where it had been shoved to the wall, and handed me the colander. I put it on my head, and Twilight activated the machine. I saw the probabilities dancing around the wires, but nothing else. The printer chattered, and Lero pinned the output to the wall.

"It's... almost five percent larger than just this morning," Twilight breathed. "Oh... oh, Gus! I'm so sorry! I'm sorry!"

Another apologetic pony hugged me. Twilight was notably weaker than Pinkie. I hugged her back. "It'll be all right," I reassured her.

"Twilight, if you would scan yourself next?" Celestia asked. I put the colander on Twilight's head. It rested against the horn.

She ran the scan. Her brain was bright glowing shapes of magic all throughout, much more intense than Big Mac's chart. Celestia pointed to one section with her horn.

"Do you know what this is, Twilight?" she asked.

Twilight looked at the indicated part of her own brain. "The annulus thaumatis?" she guessed.

"Exactly," the alicorn said, then gestured to my scan. "And this?"

Twilight stared. "But... Celestia, I don't know the regions of the human brain. Nopony does. How can I tell what that part is?"

Celestia tapped the chart with the tip of her horn. "Don't tell me what you've memorized, Twilight. Tell me what it looks like."

Twilight looked at my chart, then back at her own. Then at mine again. Then at hers. Her eyes went wide. "That... that's an annulus thaumatis. Backward. But..."

She pulled away from me and began to pace, tail twitching, staring forward as she went. Princess Celestia watched her expectantly. Lero, Lyra, and Spike just watched.

"The annulus thaumatis is the region that lets a unicorn regulate her own magical energies as they're supplied into the horn. Gus doesn't have any magical energies, so there's nothing to regulate and no purpose to him having one, and Lero doesn't have one, so this is the problem. But with no magical energies to regulate, it wouldn't do anything, but it's backward, so that would mean..." She slowed in her pacing, then stopped, facing the wall. "That would mean that energies from outside Gus are flowing into him through the annulus thaumatis, pumping more and more magic into him all the time..."

Celestia lowered her head. "I am sorry, Gus."

Twilight whirled. "Princess! You knew about this? You knew this was going to happen? That Gus was going to get worse?"

The princess shook her head quickly. "No, Twilight, never. I did recognize certain aspects of what happened to Gus, but it was not nearly this fully formed. I believed that certain beings had done something cruel to Gus, to make him able to feel magic but never understand it or be able to use it." She lowered her head. "I underestimated the depths of their depravity."

Twilight's hooves dragged across the floor as she stepped forward. "Celestia... What are you saying?"

The white alicorn looked me in the eye. She looked sad. I had an urge to hug her, but I couldn't stand. "Gus did not escape. He was thrown to us to make us watch him die."

The room was very quiet. Then Pinkie Pie said, "So how are we going to fix him?" She bounced over, nosed open the wooden box, and pulled a necklace onto herself. It had a blue balloon on it. I couldn't see her necklace, I could see it only as probabilities, but those probabilities were a blue balloon. It was an identity function. A fundamental lemma of this universe. Laughter is Laughter.

The others, save Twilight, took their necklaces as well. Twilight was breathing heavily, looking up at Celestia.

"Princess," she said. "What are you suggesting?"

Pinkie came over to me. I hugged her. She was a pony who was supposed to be hugged. I felt a blue balloon in my arms. "You know what to do, right?" I asked her.

"This is the best way?" she asked me.

"You'd better believe it," I told her.

She nodded, and rejoined her friends.

"If Gus remains in Equestria as he is, he will die, Twilight," Celestia said. "The only things that can save him are the Elements of Harmony."

"But Princess, the Elements are magic too! They're stronger magic than anything Gus would ever be exposed to just about any other way," Twilight argued. "This might just make his head explode!"

"Twilight," I called to her. She whirled. "I was much more disabled back on my world," I told her. "Coming here and being able to think clearly for even a few days is better than spending the rest of my life like I was. Even without being able to feel. The Elements aren't going to do anything bad. They need help. They need your help."

She stared at me. "Gus. What is it you think the Elements of Harmony are going to do to you? Just regular magic has made your brain worse today alone. That much magic is going to... I don't even know what it's going to do!"

"Neither do I," I admitted. "But it's going to work out."

"How do you know that?" she spluttered. "You keep saying that, but how do you know that?"

I nodded to her. "Because that's what I'm choosing."

Twilight stared at me. I looked back, calmly. I couldn't look back any other way.

Her head dropped. "Gus... You're sure?"

"I'm sure, Twilight," I told her.

Her hooves barely cleared the floor, but she walked over. She picked up the Element of Magic in her hooves and set it atop her head. Lero, Lyra, Spike, the guard, and even Celestia stepped back.

"Formation, girls," Twilight said quietly. Six ponies moved. Only Pinkie was smiling. The rest looked very still and serious.

"Thank you," I said to them all.

I saw the rainbow, and I made my choice.
> Epilogue: Choices
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Twilight?" Pinkie Pie asked, walking with her through the market. "Do you have time tonight for a party?"

Twilight Sparkle blinked. She couldn't remember the last time Pinkie had checked with an attendee before organizing a party. She couldn't remember the last time Pinkie had checked with the host. "I guess so, Pinkie. What's it a party for?"

Pinkie smiled at her. "It's a birthday party! Just for you and me."

Twilight blinked again. There was an awful lot of back-up-and-think-again involved in talking to Pinkie Pie sometimes. "Pinkie, it's not my birthday and it's not yours either." Another thought occurred and she added, "You don't mean a... private private party or anything, do you?"

Pinkie shook her head. "No, silly! This isn't a courting thing at all. Okay, I'll see you tonight!"

Twilight watched her pink friend bounding merrily away, shook her head, and went back to her shopping.

***

"So now will you tell me what's going on?" Twilight asked, standing on the library balcony next to Pinkie. The party pony had been intensely restrained, for her; the railing of the balcony was wrapped with streamers and a trio of balloons flanked the door, and that was it. She'd brought a small cake, too, barely larger than a cupcake, unfrosted.

"Do you remember Gus?" Pinkie asked, looking down at the cake.

"Of course I remember Gus," Twilight answered. She smiled sadly. "Poor guy. He turned physics on its head. Most of what he came up with wasn't possible to discover on our own. We might never prove some of it. There's just not enough detail. It only works if you start with his assumptions about the underlying model. Most of the most interesting bits don't work at all in Equestria, but they're still a framework for the rest."

"Do you remember how Gus left?" Pinkie asked. She took out a box of candles, opened it, carefully took none out, closed the box, and set it down.

"Yes," said Twilight, and looked away. "There wasn't anything left. I couldn't look at my tiara for months."

Pinkie took out a match, lit it, waved it over the top of the cake, then blew it out and set the extinguished match aside. "And a great big silly you were being, too. He didn't leave nothing behind."

"That's a double negative, Pinkie," Twilight pointed out. "And what are you doing with that cake, anyhow?"

Pinkie reached into her mane and pulled out a contraption. It looked like a plate with one of Tank's spare rotor rigs attached to it. She put the cake onto the plate. "You were worried he left nothing behind, so he didn't leave nothing behind, he just went forward. That was eleven months ago."

"Elev... Pinkie, anniversaries are supposed to be after a year."

Pinkie shook her head, holding the cake. "It's not an anniversary party, Twilight. This is a birthday party. Somewhere there's a pegasus mommy who just had the cutest little peach-coated foal with a yellow mane and funny little black rings above his hooves and a white mark on his head, and he didn't cry at all when he came out, he laughed and hugged the doctor right then and there. And they named him Rainwright because he's going to be so good at clouds."

Twilight stared at her friend. Hope surged in her chest. "Pinkie... are you saying... Gus is alive? You had... a hunch?"

Pinkie shook her head again. "Gus didn't know what was going to happen to him, but he kept believing it was all going to be okay. He never smiled except that one time that totally didn't count and that other time that was my fault, but I was so busy trying to make him smile that I never realized he was doing something totally else and it was my Element even. He was hoping. He didn't have any Pinkie Sense or hunches or twitchy tails or anything else at all, he just decided it was going to be okay. So... I'm not taking any hunches for him or Pinkie Senses or anything else. I'm just..." She looked up at the clouds overhead. "I'm just deciding he was right and it's all okay and he's going to have a long and happy life doing anything he wants and getting to have rainbows all day. And if I meet him and he doesn't know me then I'll have a party for him all by myself. But it's been eleven months so that means he should be getting born today."

Pinkie let the cake go. The rotor spun, lifting the plate up into the sky.

Twilight put a hoof on Pinkie's shoulder. "You can invite me too."

They started to sing Happy Birthday.



[ Edit: This was later found on Pinkie's wall: ]