The Conversion Bureau: Going Pony

by Chatoyance

First published 25th of February, 2012

A young woman is given a holocorder to document her experience of going through a Conversion Bureau.

Recruited by the Worldgovernment, a young woman is given a holocorder to document her experience of going through a Conversion Bureau, and her experiences after. This is the text transcript of her hypernet holofeed. This story takes place in Year Three of the expansion of Equestria.

Day One: The Best Lunch In Town

This holoprogram first appeared on Infostream Three, Midclass Kiosk Edition, as part of the Worldgovernment Propaganda and Infotainment Ministry 'World In Crisis' program under the subsection 'Conversion And You'. It is redistributed here in transcribed text format for Permatech, Cranial Feed, Thinscreen and Favela Kiosk consumption with full permission of the Central WorldGov Authority.

This is a nonmandatory, Recommended Info. It must be distributed as widely as possible. Failure to distribute may result in minor penalties of up to six hours of deaccess from primary Infofeeds. Government mandatory redistribution of one (1) copy to any other infosink satisfies distribution requirement. Document is monitored and user identity is logged.

GOING PONY

Day One: The Best Lunch In Town
By Sunshine Laughter

It pretty much looks like any other cafeteria. It's all stainless steel, metal trays, alumiglass gob shields, and hungry people waiting in line. There's no creditstick reader, though. Everything's free, here. My lunch today is an investment in me, basically.

The reason is that I am Going Pony.

The selection of food offered is pretty amazing, I have to say. OK, I'm one of the two percent, my family has jobs inside the Corp. I've had a fairly decent life. But I know there is no job waiting for me, not even under the family hiring directives. The jobs are going away even for us two-percenters. Hey, I don't want to end up in the favela. I'm sorry if you don't like that, I've been told this is going out there, too, but... I don't want to end up there. So that's part of the reason I'm here at a Conversion Bureau.

But it's not the only reason. I want to make that clear. I really like what I've seen on the feeds, I want to live in that world. It's green and alive. I am a little freaked out by the whole 'becoming a different species' thing, but that's the only way, right? I have my reasons for being able to face that, I'll go into those later. Right now, you should smell this food. I mean, look at it.

I doubt even the corporate elite enjoy what is served at a typical meal inside a Conversion Bureau.

Take a look at this fruit. It's real fruit. I don't mind telling you that I'm not entirely sure of what to make of it. It looks kind of strange to me. On birthdays, and of course on Giftmas, replicated fruit is a common treat. At least it is for us Twopees. This real fruit stuff bears as much resemblance to replifruit as my hands do to the hooves of that pony ahead of me in line.

"Hi. Excuse me, but are you talking to yourself, or what?"

There's a light blue pony in front of me, I guess he's a unicorn, because he has a horn. Hey there. Hi! Yeah, I'm doing a feed. For the Gov, about my conversion experience.

"I used to work for the Infotainment ministry... ah, I see, you've got a 'corder on you. I used to do sorting and filtering, social control stuff. One day, I just had enough and ended up here. I got converted about a week ago. This your first day?"

Yeah, it's my first day, just having lunch. Nice to meet you!

I don't know if you heard that, but this pony used to work for the Gov. He did infosorting and biasfiltering, now he's a pony. I guess you can meet all kinds here at the Bureau. But let me tell you about these apples here.

Each apple is unique. I mean, look at them. Some are larger than others, some have some kind of small spots or marks on them, these here are slightly green near the top where a small rod pokes out. It's a what? It's called a 'stem'. It's the umbilical from where the apple was manufactured on a living tree. They hang from those, until they are ready for removal. In Equestria there are like billions and billions of trees, and each one has dozens and dozens of apples. That's more than any pony or human could ever eat. Most go to waste, apparently, because they are just sitting there infesting unsettled lands. Thinking about that makes me feel weird.

In the Bureau the apples are in limited supply though, so it's only one to a customer. They haul them in by the ton, straight to the Bureaus. It's part of the incentive to go pony, I guess, but also to get us used to what we'll be eating for the rest of our lives. I'm kind of OK with the idea.

As you can see, I got a nice, large red one on my tray. It feels different than the artificial kind, less rubbery, kind of hard, actually. It's heavier, too. Wow! It has a smell – no, not a smell, a fragrance. That is the only word to use. Man. I wish you could smell this. The apple is completely fragrant and... apparently I am holding up the line standing here just smelling it with my eyes closed. Sorry. I'm moving, I'm moving. Hey, it's my first real apple, alright? Fine. Jeeze.

Moving on, the server here is offering me a choice of dishes suitable to my current status as a human. Whoa, there's ravioli... she says it's made from actual wheat, damn... stuffed with real asparagus. That's cool. The sandwich looks good too, it's what? Vegetable pate. I see... tomatoes, I think, lettuce, and some round green disks that I cannot identify – 'cucumber', apparently. They're all real, and the bread is made of real wheat as well. Equestria never had a Last Harvest. They grow all this stuff.

I'm gonna choose the ravioli, I want to see what real pasta actually tastes like. Pudding, cool! It's some kind of pudding... what? It's coconut. Real? Oh. The pudding isn't real. It's what? The pudding is real pudding, it's just the flavor that's fake, Ok. Yeah, yeah, I'm moving.

"Whatcha doin? Is that a holo recorder?"

This guy behind me is asking me what I'm doing. Yeah, this is my holocorder. I pinned it to my jumpsuit.

"That one of those Wailani/Ngo models, the new compact ones? By the way, my name's Daniel, I heard something about it being your first day? Welcome to the bureau and everything! I'm new too, just in from outside, in fact. "

Thank you! The 'corder's some professional model from the Infobureau. They gave it to me to work with. Ok, this guy here is named Daniel, and he's... by the way, what did you do, before you came here?

"I lived in the favela, nothing special really. I just figure there's a better life waiting, you know?"

I think there will be, that's why I'm here too. Dan here is cashing in for a better life in Equestria. Hey, how do you feel about becoming a pony though?

"Tell you the truth, I really don't think about it much. It's not that big of a deal to me."

Come on, you gotta care at least a little!

"No, seriously, it's not a biggie. I know a lot of newfoals, a couple of my friends, right? And they say it's lots better and they feel great. I haven't met a newie that was even freaked about it. So it can't be that big, right?"

So you just don't care. About becoming a pony.

"Nope"

The man doesn't care. He just doesn't care. Shaking his head. Wow. Ok. No, that's cool.

I should probably tell you something about what I'm doing here, while we try to find a seat. I agreed to share my conversion with the world 'cause I felt it would help people, and maybe be interesting. I sure would have liked to have seen something like this before I ended up here at a Bureau. Who knows, it might even convince the rest of my family to join me.

So, I was approached by the Propaganda Ministry after I did a bunch of holonet postings. They gave me a holocorder and sent me packing. I've supposedly been granted full freedom to speak about all of my experiences, good or bad, with no censorship. I'll leave it to you to decide if this turns out to be true, but it's my intent to tell you the truth about everything, at least as I see it.

Oh. In the interests of full disclosure, me and my family have been promised some big sum in 'bits', the Equestrian form of currency, for me doing this. However, this won't affect anything I say, because those bits are already waiting for me in Equestria. The worldgov can't touch them. So... fuck the worldcorporation! If what I just said, there, just a second ago, gets through, you should be able to tell this is not being censored.

Alright then. I'm sitting now at a table with some of the other humans. There is a kind of segregation that happens here, in the cafeteria, and it slightly disturbs me. The humans sit with other humans almost exclusively, and the newfoals – transformed humans who have become Equestrian – sit together.

Partly this has got to be because of their bodies. The ponies sit at low tables on cushions flat to the floor. It looks like it would be a struggle for a newfoal to sit in a chair or on a stool made for a human. Our tables look way too high for them to eat comfortably. It wouldn't be difficult for a human to sit down on the floor, on a cushion with the newfoals, but none seem to be doing so. I think that the segregation is as much emotional as it is physiological. The newfoals feel more comfortable around other newfoals, and the humans are afraid to butt in.

There is a definite feeling that the human side is not the special side. I want to go sit at the pony table, but I kind of feel afraid to. I'm not afraid of the ponies, if you've met one, you know they are like, totally sweet. It's more that I feel like an outsider, like I'm the creepy girl in class, if you know what I mean. I feel like they'd be nice and everything, but it would end up being awkward and everyone would just feel uncomfortable.

"I feel the same thing. It's weird. It doesn't feel like we'd belong, huh?"

Dan here says he feels the same way.

"It's not like they'd say anything. Heck, they'd probably be real friendly but I just feel like I shouldn't butt in. Hey, you think your holo thing can hear me too? Am I getting famous here?"

I don't know. I don't think the 'corder picks up anyone but me, but maybe. I don't think being famous is going to matter for long, considering. Man, just look at them. The ponies are like scary pretty, aren't they? Just looking at them - those over there – right? Look at them. Really pretty, all those colors, those big eyes, that hair... god, I would just kill for that hair...

"Mane."

What?

"Their hair is called a mane. They're really fussy about that, so you might want to remember it. Mane, not hair."

Mane. Their hair is called a 'mane'. It's so cool it even has it's own name. Damn.

Anyways, you get the point. Compared to that, I feel like a warty rad-basket who didn't take their meds. I've got a couple of tumors, I stay on top of them, but ponies, they don't have tumors. They don't have anything wrong. I feel like a devil and the angels are all sitting over there at the low table.

I wonder what it's like for them? I guess I'll find out sometime in the next fourteen days. Oh – that's one thing I should probably mention. There are a lot of stories out there on the hypernet about what goes on in a Conversion Bureau, and I want to set things straight. You don't get fourteen days to lay around and decide whether to convert. You sign up, and once you are in here, you get converted at any time. It could be tonight, or it could be three days from now or whatever.

I don't know how they decide these things but... oh... god. Damn. That.... listen, I gotta take some more bites here. Damn. I mean... just god damn. Look, there, see that? That's asparagus, apparently. It's all mashed up inside the ravioli and... damn that's good. I had no fucking idea. And the ravioli itself. I have to say this much, it is the greatest criminal act ever done that they fucking killed wheat. Killing off all wheat, man, what a fucking travesty. This is just awesome. God fucking damn. Oh. Mnnnn. Mmm.

OK, there's this sauce here, I haven't a clue and... well anyway, I'm beginning to think that going pony was worth it just to taste real food. Damn.

So, they just pick you whenever, and you go in and you get ponified and that's the deal. You still get the full fourteen days, it's just that you don't get it as a human. If they call you and you bail, then, that's it. You go out on the street, and no more lunches like this. You can come back, but only if they do you right then. Pony or nothing. So, once you sign that sheet at the desk, you are committed. I've heard of Bureaus where they don't let you leave. You sign, and it's like the Blackmesh, that's it, you are in.

This Bureau isn't like that. I kind of think that's why they sent me here, probably it's a particularly good one and... what?

"This is just an average bureau. Seriously. No biggie. Two of my buds went to the other one, down south? They told me about it, same thing as here. Just like they described."

Really. No kidding?

"No kidding. Said the food was amazing. Joe - one of my buds - he just went on and on about it. Real food this, real food that. I had the breakfast today, and, same thing. Just amazing."

Dan here says that he has friends who went to other Bureaus. I guess policies may differ but they all have the real food it seems.

"Joe never mentioned apples, so maybe not every place gets the apples. But they get real food."

Some get different stuff then than others, apparently, but they all get the real food. Well, that's good, anyway.

OK, I have to say something about the pudding. It tastes like ass. I don't care if it's supposed to be 'real' or not, the fake flavor makes me want to gargle with puke just to get the taste out of my mouth. Don't eat the real-fake pudding. Maybe real-real pudding is the shit, but this... this is just ass.

"Forget the pudding. Eat the apple. They gave us one for breakfast. Just eat it. Trust me. Best part of the meal. I am not shitting you. Go on."

Yeah, Ok. The apple. Dan here says the apple is what really counts.

"You went on about the ravioli? Forget that stuff. The apple's better."

Better than the pasta? No way.

"Way. I'm telling you."

Alright. Here goes.

Awwwww fuck. Oh, man. Dan here knows his stuff. Oh, Christ... it almost hurts my mouth. Damn. Seriously, see this here, on my tongue? Blaaaaa... that. That is so tasty it fucking burns. My mouth almost hurts from it. I can't stop though. Oh, damn, I am this apple's slave. Yes, master. I will eat you more. Oh god. Oh wow. OK, I am sold, at least at the moment. Pony me. Just give me apple. More apple. I will do your bidding, dark master of the apples. Fuck.

"Ha ha ha heh heh! Told ya! Oh, yeah, that is the SHIT. Hey, savor it, don't just chug it. Well, too late. Next time then, eat it slowly. Trust me on that."

Fine, now I am depressed. The apple is gone. I am sucking the... what the hell is this?

"It's the core of the apple. Just toss it."

Core. Ok, sounds like a reactor, but what they hell. I am sucking the core of this thing. I thought apple was just a label on a package. No. It is a red, roundish thing that owns my fucking soul now.

"You have to clean up your tray. Yeah... over here. Just slot it in."

The trays go here? Ok. Thank you.

"Waste goes in the bin. Drop your core in there."

No! It's not waste! Keep away from my core, I'm keeping it.

"You don't eat that part. Just toss it. Why are you keeping the core? They'll probably have another apple at dinner."

It's good, that's why. Maybe there will be more apples at dinner, and maybe not. The core stays with me.

"The core isn't the good part. It's just the core. Come on, toss it out."

I don't care if it's not the 'good' part. I keep the core! Jesus!

Nobody is getting this core. I'm gonna use it to power a goddamn city. I don't even care if it's radioactive. There is still some of master's flavor in it. Oh, damn that's good.

I'm glad I wore my jumpsuit. I'll just put the core in here. Pockets are good. Yay, pockets.

Alright these are the bathrooms, as you can see. Pretty standard except for... whoa. Check this out. That must be for the ponies. That is a big hole in the floor. Oh, I have to try this. Hey, Dan? Yeah, how does this work? The floor panel? Cool.

There is no way I'm gonna squat and actually use this, so don't get excited, but I have to see it flush. Alright, drum roll. Big, oblong ceramic hole, prepare for flushing. Flush in three, two, one... FLUSH! WHOOOOO!!!! Ah. Well, that wasn't as spectacular as I thought. Pretty much just a pit style of the regular toilet. Well, hell. Come on, you would have tried it too, don't try to tell me you wouldn't.

OK, I need to pee, and you don't have the clearance for that kind of show. I'm switching off for now. Back in a mome.

Equestria.

Your life has been difficult. Around you a gray, concrete world of ruined dreams, ruined hopes and a ruined biosphere. But it doesn’t have to be like that. There is a world of green fields, of bright, clear skies, of laughter and song, and it is as close as your nearest Conversion Bureau.

The World Governmental Authority and the Eternal Empire of Equestria invite you to a new world of possibilities, a world of dreams fulfilled and a second chance for every living soul on Earth.

Equestria. It’s only a cup away.

Brought to you by the Conversion Bureau Authority and the Ministry of Propaganda and Infotainment. This message has been approved by the World Government Authority.

...And there. OK, I think it’s on again. Yeah. The little light... let me check the active surface here... yes. It’s on. Alright then, I’m back from the little pony’s room, and it looks like I’m scheduled for a class. I don’t know where Dan is... so far he’s the first person I’ve learned the name of, so... well, I guess I’ll just have to make some more friends, right? Supposedly, that’s what Equestria is all about, or so they say.

There are a number of classrooms, and I’ve been told that skipping out on the classes gets you into some kind of trouble, though I don’t know what. Let’s see if I can find a seat... it looks like about thirty people in here, about ten of them... mmm... nine, I guess are ponies. Staggered benches with pillows, nice, I guess.

Excuse me... can I sit here? Great. I’m Sunshine, I’m kind of doing a holocast for the hypernet, yeah, that’s what this thing is. Ahh, that’s better. Nice pillows. I've got another girl on one side and a pony on the other. Cool.

"Hi, Sunshine. I'm Samantha."

"Hello, Sunshine! My name is Honeydrizzle! I just got my cutie mark, look!"

Samantha, nice to meet you. And... Honeydrizzle. That’s an interesting name. Oh, yes, I do see. Cutie mark already. Congratulations, I guess? Ah.

"Is 'Sunshine' your pony name? Are you using it early? I think that is very nice, Sunshine."

Yeah, it’s my pony name, or it will be. Sunshine Laughter.

"Sunshine Laughter? You've got this all worked out. What's your real name?"

That is my real name, from now on. I’m going only by that name. It’s to protect my family, and apparently it’s the policy of the Bureau, because I’m linked to the outside with this. So don’t tell me your full name, alright? Just Sam, perfect.

So what’s this class about, anyway?

"‘Your New Body And You’".

Sounds romantic.

"It's not like that! It's basic stuff about how our bodies are built."

Heh, yes, like that. Heh heh. Alright. Fine... Soooo, this is about how Equestrian bodies work? Hey, Honeydrizzle, why are you here, I mean, you’re already a pony and....

"I was converted last night, Sunshine. I don't know my foot from my... I mean my hoof from... anything really. It's all so new to me. Hey, do you know what this is called? Is it a fetlock? I heard that word earlier. It feels like my finger, or maybe my ankle. I need this class!"

Oh, I guess that makes sense. No, I don’t know what that part is called either. I’d call it an ankle, I guess. No, maybe not.

So, what...

"This isn't one of the lectures. See the screen? We get a cartoon or something."

Oh, Ok, we have a holoshow to watch. Well, let’s settle in then.

The Conversion Bureau Authority Proudly Presents:
Your New Body And You.

Hello, my name is Dr. Roselyn Pastern, and I’m here to help explain to you the amazing Equestrian body. Some of you may already be ponies, others will be ponies soon. Knowing about your body, or the body you will soon have, is useful and important. It is also fascinating.

First, you may be astonished to learn that Equestrians are not actually ponies. This is a pony, the kind that lived on our Earth not so long ago. Next to it is, of course, an Equestrian.

As I rotate these holograms, note how different they are. The terrestrial pony is short, squat, fairly hairy, and has a long muzzle. The neck is relatively short and inflexible. Here is the full range of motion that the terrestrial pony is capable of. Not terribly impressive, is it?

Now let’s see the same thing with regard to an Equestrian. As you can see, they can rotate their forelegs in the same manner that humans can their arms. They can turn their hooves upwards and to the side, unlike the terrestrial pony. The back legs also have human-like mobility and agility. Unlike the pony, here, an Equestrian can lay flat on their back, put their hooves over their head, stand on their back legs for surprising lengths of time, and crane their necks both straight up and nearly directly back, to see their own tail. The tail itself is long.

Here is the Equestrian tail without hair. It looks almost like the tail of a rat, long and thin. It is also prehensile. Here it is wrapping around a cup, and lifting it. In many ways, it is an additional limb.

The head of the Equestrian is large, with a short, compact muzzle filled with teeth. Note that the terrestrial pony has a small set of teeth in the front, a large gap, and then a set of molars in the back. The Equestrian has a full set of teeth, again like a human. The eyes are very large, the skull very round. There is room for a brain larger than that of a human being.

Why then, do we call the Equestrians ‘ponies’? The reason is that when first contact was made, that is how they appeared to humans, initially. The name stuck. There are some obvious similarities: hooves, tail, the general shape of the body, the general way they walk, the fact they eat grasses and grains as part of their diet.

Equestrians are less similar to terrestrial ponies than we humans are to the lesser primates, such as this monkey here. Although we call them ‘ponies’ they are very much their own species, with a unique and alien physiology and biology.

There are many similarities in the basic body shape, as I have noted, similarities so striking that we use the same names for the parts of their bodies as we do for terrestrial ponies. Even so, every functional joint in both Equestrian and Earthly ponies is duplicated in human bodies as well, we are all based on the same essential pattern. For example, this is my wrist, but in both an Equestrian, and a terrestrial pony, the same joint is called the knee. This first joint of my finger is structurally the same as the fetlock in the pony. Different names for the same joints.

This is important, because, although at first glance the Equestrian seems very different than a human being, under the skin, the basic structure is remarkably similar. All that is required to turn one into the other is to shorten, as we see here, some bones, while lengthening others. We all have the same skeleton, the same pattern, it is just that this pattern is adjusted slightly during conversion.

Although it seems dramatic, conversion is less a total transformation, in some ways, than it is a skillful rearrangement.

Now, let’s learn the parts of the Equestrian body, your new body, alright?

Let’s learn the parts of the pony
every funny joint and bony
let’s start at the head and learn it all
at the top is the poll, as the pony stands tall

Ok, this is getting a little too cartoony for me here, I’m getting a real kindergarten vibe, to tell you the truth. The cutesy images aren’t helping either, I mean... look at that. Jesus fuck.

"Please, Sunshine! I'm trying to learn!"

Ok, fine. It's just that...

"Sunshine!"

I said alright. I’ll be quiet.

Listen, I need to shut down again for a while, I’m being kind of outvoted on the cartoon thing. Back later.

Day One: My Roommate Is An Asshole

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GOING PONY

Day One: My Roommate Is An Asshole
By Sunshine Laughter

Alright, hello again. You're probably wondering why I'm whispering here, and why it's so dark. That's because it's night, and everyone is in bed. Well, except for me. Let me see if I can get this thing to work. Let's see. AHH! Shhh.... shhhh.... OK, I can't see right now, so... damn, that's bright.

I'm out on the big beanbag thing next to the couch in the main room, here, I'll try to shine the flashlight on it. I don't know what this is going to look like to you on your holoscreen, but hopefully you can see something. That's me, hey, my vision's coming back, good. I like my vision, it let's me see stuff. That's the beanbag thing - I don't think its actually filled with beans, though. Then again, with all the real food here, who the hell knows. Heh.

That would be a hell of a thing, wouldn't it? Maybe I'm sitting on a fortune in beans, right now. Can you imagine what this many beans, real beans, would sell for on the Blue Market? I could be set for life. Which, if what the government science geeks say is true, would be about two an'a half years, maybe three. Then Equestria gobbles up the earth. Yum yum! Om nom nom! Hee hee hee!

This is almost fun. I feel like I am livingroom camping. I kind of am, actually, because I don't feel like going back in there. There, here, I'll shine my light on it. Stick my tongue out. BLEAHHHH! Hey, here, I'll shine it on my tongue. BLEAHHH!!!! hee heh heh hee... That's for my dipshit roommate, Glow-Ree-UGH.

Gloria is kind of a jerk. Or else she's really angry or something. I don't know what her deal is. Excuse me a moment, this... this bag is kind of sagging.... ah... now I'm on the floor! How is this supposed to work, anyway? I'll put the light on the counter here and.... let's see if I can get this bag in some kind of shape. Let's see, it's kind of bulky. Noisy little thing, Jesus. Ok. There. I'm going to try to make a soft landing here, steady, ahhh. There. I'm down, no... man, that is scrunchy stuff in there.

Alright, sorry. I've never tried one of these before and it looked pretty cool, you know? I'll get the light... there. Ok, so, over there... that is my room. Contents: one jerk.

I tried to be nice, I really did. They showed me in right after dinner - oh, I have to tell you about dinner, later - and it was like 'Hello' and 'Hi' and 'My name is Sunshine, hi' and she was like 'Gloria. Hey.' and it seemed cool until Winterflake left us and then it was all 'This is my stuff, don't fuck with it.' And I was like 'Whaaa?'

After that it kinda went downhill. Gloria deus ex machina in extremis or whatever decided that she needed my side of the room because of some crap and we had to switch sides. Then, after that, she decided that the new side, my old side, wasn't 'defensible enough' or some shit and we had to switch back. I swear she is bitch queen of the Bitchlands of Crazytown or something.

Then she just sat and glared at me. I went to go get ready for bed, and when I came back, she just kept sitting there, with all her stuff wrapped around her, staring at me. Just staring, like she was waiting for me to axe-murder her or something. For her stuff.

I couldn't sleep with that. I mean, could you? No way! So I decided I'd come out here. It's cool, apparently, as long as I don't make too much noise, and that's why I'm whispering right now. I wish I'd brought my blanket. I don't want to go back in there to get it though. Damn. And I was feeling so happy after dinner, too.

I'll tell you about dinner, then.

We had a another holoprogram after the 'Parts of the Body' thing or whatever it was, it was kind of an introduction to Equestria. Sort of like one of those specials you see on it, but lots more stuff. There's this weird forest where everything works like it does on Earth, or at least how Earth used to work, long ago. It's dangerous and crap. And there are other things in Equestria besides ponies. Dragons, if you can believe it, and these troll-like dog things and big pony-lion-I don't know what creatures called Griffiths or something. Basically, it's a zoo, only with real live animals, and not just robots and holograms.

I guess they aren't exactly animals, either - they are the people there. All the people in Equestria are, like animals. Intelligent animals. It's actually pretty cool. I hadn't thought about that in that way. Wow. I'm gonna go live in a land of talking animals. I'm gonna BE a talking animal. Wow. Double wow. I guess that really hadn't completely sunk in yet.

Anyways, dinner. So I finally met up with Daniel again - he's that guy I met from lunch, if you remember - and we decided to eat together again. It's kind of weird. The ponies are like total friends with each other the minute they come out of that room, right, but all us skin apes, we barely talk to each other. I mean, some people are here with their friends or family or whatever, but they kind of stick to themselves. For us lone types, it's just habit not to talk to anyone. You know what it's like.

So, Dan and I pretty much just know us. And Samantha and Honeydrizzle, I guess. But they went to sit with the ponies at the low table, and so we didn't continue talking after the show. Maybe I made a bad impression or something. I have to admire Sam's guts though. She and Honeydrizzle just hit it off, and so she has an 'in' at the pony table. I wish she would have asked me to join them or something. I feel left out.

I mean I watched two whole holos with both of them. Least they could do is invite me to the darn pony table. I admit I kind of talked through the cartoon, but come on, CARTOON! What do they think we are, babies? Maybe that was it. Maybe you have to like stupid cartoons to sit at the pony table. It's a royal requirement or something. I wanted to sit at the pony table. Sulk. I'm sulking here. Sulk. Sulk.

Ah! Dinner. So Danny boy and I are sitting at the table, right, and I'm grumbling about not being invited to sit at the pony table and I stick this stuff in my mouth and WOW! I am telling you, I thought lunch was kick-ass, but I was kinda wrong, because this was hypernuclear!

Dinner was this pastry thing. They served it is squares, I don't know what it was called anymore, but it had a crust like you'd find on a pie, right? Only good. Better than good, because it was made of all real stuff again. It was flaky and tender and I just couldn't believe how yummy it was. Inside the crust was this vegetable stuff, all spicy and super tasty, and it had it's own gravy stuff that came out when I cut into it.

Everything is vegetables and fruit and grains, they don't even do pretend meat here. Ponies don't eat meat, and neither do we, We Who Salute You, We Who Are About To Pony! Hee hee!

So this vegetable pie or whatever was just total yum, and I've never had anything like it before in my life. Not even when my folks took me out for fancy on my birthday. And the pie just kept on coming, because they also gave us a slice of... you guessed it, PIE! It was like an all-pie dinner!

The other pie was fruit. Peaches, they said. Alright you have to hear this; I am no longer in the service of Lord Apple. I am sad to say that my dark fruity lord does not measure up. He just can't compete against Lady Peach Pie. I am totally lesbians for Peach Pie. I am not kidding here. If peach pie was another girl, I would change teams like that. I would be down on her lickity-split. Hee hee hee hah heh heh....

Sorry. Like funny and stuff. Anyway, peach pie is the best THE BEST. I worship at the sacred altar of peach pie. Drippy, sweet goodness, chewy soft little golden pillows of peach, and that crust. I thought the crust on the vegetable thing was good. No. When peaches are involved, everything bows in supplication.

Let me put it this way; if this is actually how I get to spend the rest of my life eating, then I don't care what they turn me into. Make me into one of those troll-dog things, I don't care. Just keep the pies coming and we're good. That is how much I liked my first REAL! peach pie. It's all REAAAALLLLL!!!!! Oooh.

Oh! I almost forgot! We got iced tea to drink. Ok, before you go Ewwww... you gotta know that's real too. Apparently there really is a plant or something that tea comes from. And... it's good. It's really, really good, especially with peach pie. It's my new favorite drink. Seriously.

So, I'm learning to like food, it seems. I hope it all still tastes as good once I'm eating it with a pony mouth and a pony tongue. The ponies seem to have different tastes, so I'm a little worried. They eat pies and they seem to like them and all, but they also eat hay. They eat grass and grassy.... stuff that's green. Uncooked. They just chow down on leaves and stems and stuff. I don't get it, but they seem to love it.

The weird part is, I saw this newfoal, just converted today, right, at the short table. And they were making a fuss over feeding the girl.... ma... mare. That's the word. Mare. Making a fuss over this mare eating pony food for the first time for dinner, and she was like 'Um, I'm not sure about this' and they were all 'Go on, your mouth is going to love you forever' and then she ate some of that hay stuff and it was like the sun had come out from behind the smog and danced for her.

She was this big, wide smile, and her eyes got all big and round and she was going down on that plate like it was her boyfriend or something. I tried a stem of it, later, and it tastes like ass. It tasted like packaging. Like chewing down on something you wrap stuff in. So that's why I am worried a little. Then again, if they still like pie, then - as far as I am concerned - it's all golden.

Ah... hang on, alright? I kinda have to use the little pony's room again. Downside of tea becoming my new favorite beverage. I have to pee like, all the time. It's insane. But worth it. I'll be back after I... let's see, where's the... OK, here it...

"Well, hello, there!

My name is Bob and this is my wife Sally. These are my kids, Billy and Susan. Today, I got fired, and you know what? I'm not worried in the slightest! Nope! How about you kids, are you worried? My wife sure isn't worried, are you honey?"

"Nope, I'm not worried in the least, Bob!"

"You know why we're not worried? Because there is a better job just waiting for me. I don't know what it is yet, but I have been assured by the best experts the world has to offer that I will like it. In fact, I'll love it better than anything I've ever done before. And I'll be able to provide for my family better than I ever could before."

"I can't wait Bob!"

"Nether can we! Hee hee hee hee hee hee hee!"

"That's because we're all going to Equestria. Why, that's where we're headed right now, right there, at the Conversion Bureau. There are Conversion Bureaus all over, and there is one near you right now. The Worldgovernment has even provided a settler's grubstake to every qualified twoper who was employed at any time within the past year. We're not just going to Equestria, we're going in style!"

"Yayyyy!!!!"

"That's right kids, because the Worldgovernment wants to encourage the best, and the brightest, to get ponified as soon as possible. If humanity is to make a showing in the new world, don't we all want our first step to be our best foot forward?"

Equestria. It's Just A Cup Away.

Brought to you by the Conversion Bureau Authority and the Ministry of Propaganda and Infotainment. This message has been approved by the World Government Authority.

Oh, hey. I'm back, and... I'm kind of still in the bathroom. This here is Millicent. Cool name, by the way. She was converted yesterday, before I arrived, and she's kind of got a problem. Her roommate's a fucktard too.

Oh, fuck, sorry! Oh, sorry again. Shit. I mean... uh.... muffins. Yeah, sorry. Ponies don't like swearing. I guess it represents some kind of threat or anger thing. Listen, I'll try to stick with 'Muffins' for now, OK? I don't mean anything with all of that... it's just what I got used to at home, you know?

"I did too, Sunshine. Everypony talked like that back in the favela. But now... it's weird. It's like I told you. When I hear words like that, it's kind of like being hit. I sort of feel like I need to duck or something. I don't mean to be a problem."

You're not a problem, Millie. It's me. I guess I need to learn new habits if I'm going to be a pony, huh? So, folks, I guess this is going to be an increasingly swearing-free info from now on. Millie and me have kind of become friends.

"I hope they will let us be roommates, Sunshine. I'd really like that."

Me too, Millie. Millicent came here with her... girlfriend, was it?

"Yes. We were best friends and... a little more. But she became really angry at me after I was converted. I guess it's the swearing thing. And the other stuff too. I guess it's all my fault."

No, no I don't think it is. Seriously. We talked about this.

See, Millie and her friend... ex-friend... used to be badasses in the favs... sorry... they were real.... mothermuffins... heh! I kind of like that! Ok, so they were real mothermuffins in the favela, and they got by pretty all right, for favela life. But Millie gets her pony on and suddenly it's uncivil war in their room. Millie wants to be all... pony... and her ex wants to keep on being tough and... those two things, as you have seen, don't go together.

I mentioned a while ago... I don't remember, maybe at lunch or something... that I had my reasons for being OK with becoming a pony. I'll tell you one of those now. See, my family, they're cool and everything, but... they can also be a little... rough around the edges? And on the holos, they show families, how they're supposed to be and everything. And... also, well...

Ok, remember how I had that big issue with the cartoon? I like... I like cartoons. Ok, I said it.

"Oh! I like cartoons too! Now, I mean. I didn't before, but now, I think they're really fun!"

Hee hee! I guess, I guess we can watch cartoons together then!

"I'd like that!"

Look at that smile! I hope I'll smile like that after I become a pony. Anyway, in the cartoons I.... like... everyone is very... sweet... to each other. I want that. I want that a lot. A... lot.

That's what I see in Equestria, and what I see in being a pony. I want to be like that. Even if it means changing my species.

"You are like that. I think you are kind of a pony already."

What? Don't be silly, Milly. Hee hee hee....

"Hee hee hee hee... Seriously though. I mean, you didn't leave. I was hiding in here, feeling bad. When you saw me crying, you didn't go away. You stayed with me. You're here now, aren't you? Even though it's late?"

Come on, Millicent. Anybody would do that. You were crying in a bathroom for fuuu.....muffin's sake. Who wouldn't stop and help?

"The two humans that came in before you."

You're kidding. You're not kidding. You have got to be kidding me. Unbefu...muffin-lievable. You're telling me that two people, two human beings, came into this bathroom and heard you crying and...

"Yes."

... I don't know what to say. I just don't know what to say. I'm sorry Milly. I guess... I guess we suck. Sorry about that. Well, for what it's worth, I'm glad I came in here, because I got to meet you. So, I guess things work out.

"I... I don't know what to do now."

"Well I sure don't want to go back to my room. I don't want to spend the night in this bathroom, either. Oh... DUH. Come on. I have the perfect answer. Uh, oh, jeez... my leg fell asleep. Ouch. Damn. Sorry. Is 'damn' OK? Can I get away with that one? Ah, Thanks. Ow, Ow, Ow.... there. I just need to get the feeling back first.

"That doesn't happen for me. I used to get leg cramps all the time sitting down. But it doesn't happen now, even when I fold my legs under me. Once you're converted, I'm sure it will be the same for you."

I hope so. Hey, I just realized, I haven't been worrying about whether this thing can pick up anyone's voice but mine. I hope that's the case, because paraphrasing was getting old. I... I guess I'll just assume it can pick up everything around me. Sorry, just worrying about this holocorder thing. Anyway, my leg's good enough now.

Let's go find a comfortable place on the couch or something, out in the main area. We can sleep there until tomorrow, and then, if you want, we can go demand a room together. Gloria and what's her face can room together - they're made for each other, and we can have some peace rooming with each other. If that's still OK with you?

"Yes. I meant it. I'd like to have you. For a room mate. I'd like to have you for a roommate."

Hee. Oh... Kay... then. That's settled. Here, let me get the flashlight working again, it's going to be dark once we get out of this bathroom. Here we go.

That's kind of neat. Your sound. The sound of your hooves. I never really listened to what that sounded like until now. I like the sound of hooves. It's kind of got a beat, kinda catchy. Ta-tromp ta-tromp, ta-tromp. Was it hard to walk, after you were converted?

"Not really. I was a little unsteady at first, but then the nurse told me something that just clicked and I found it easy to walk."

Care to share that with us? I bet a lot of people watching would really benefit from that. Providing anyone is even watching this at all, of course. I'm doing this pretty late. But then, I guess they'll probably edit all of this once the live feeds are done anyway. So, what's the great secret of walking, Millicent Pony?

"Parvati, she's the nurse practitioner here - she's really nice Sunshine, I think you'd really like her - she told me just to think that I was walking on my toes and fingers. That's it. Just pretend I was walking on my toes and fingers, like a really strong baby. And it worked. Just like that."

Huh. Well that sounds easy. I'll remember that, when my time comes. So there you have it everybody! Paradotty's secret of the...

"Paravati. It's a name from India I think. Paravati. She's nice."

Pair-rah-vah-tee, got it. Paravati's secret... um... secret of how to walk as a pony, and you heard it here first on... the Sunshine Report! With special guest reporter, Millicent! YAAAAYYYY!

"GODDAMMIT! WILL YOU KEEP A LID ON IT OUT THERE? SHIT, GO TO BED ALREADY!"

Sorry, sorry, we'll be quiet, sorry, my bad... muffin... hee hee... I kind of get carried away sometimes. I'm sorry Millicent. It's way past my sleepy-bye time and I kind of get goofy when I get tired. Well, that's a lie. I'm always goofy. Sorry about that.

"Hee hee... but I do feel bad we woke her up."

Yeah. Hey, maybe she was one of the hyuu-monz that ignored you in the bathroom. Maybe she deserved to be disturbed!

"Sunshine! That's mean!"

Alright... alright. I guess it kinda was. Hey, here, you want the couch or the beanbag thingie? Beanbag? I'd be careful with that thing, it's a monster! A real killer that... oh. Well. I guess for a pony it works really well. Damn. Muffin. I mean. Muffin. That looks pretty comfortable when you use it with the legs and the folding and everything. I'll take the couch.

"You can say 'damn'. I said that you could."

I know, it's just that, well, I don't like to see you jerk and hide your head like that. Wait, you didn't jerk. Can I try something? Damn. Dammy damn damn dammit. Huh. You aren't reacting at all, are you? What's up with...

"When you say it, you aren't saying it mean. You just say it. It isn't anger or an attack with you. The way you say it, even I can say it and not feel bad. Damn! See! It's funny!"

Wow. I'm teaching a pony how to swear. The corrupting influence of humanity is beyond imagination. I sincerely apologize for that. I feel like I just killed Bambi or something. Damn. I mean Muffin. Gah!

"No, it's alright. I guess it's the emotion we ponies react to. I wondered about that. My... old friend... she got mad at me for not being able to handle her swearing all the time. But I don't think it was the words at all. It was what was in her heart. It was how she said the words that made me... 'jerk' as you call it. That's what's changed in me. Huh. Or part of it. I don't deal well with... with..."

'Evil intent' is the words you're trying for there, I think. Man, I am cold. I need a blanket. 'Scuse me. I'm gonna go grab my blanket from my old room. Fuuuu.... Muffin Gloria. It's my blanket. I'll see if I can get one for you, too. I think there's a spare in there. Hang on, right back.

Let's see, Ok, blanket, over here must be HEY! GET THE FUCK OFF ME! AUGH! WHAT THE FLYING... HEY, OW, OUCH, STOP THAT SHIT RIGHT NOW. A knife? A fucking knife?

"Listen you little pissant, you come creeping into a room in the dark with a flashlight, you get what you deserve. You should be glad you still have a liver, you little shit! What the fuck are you doing in here?"

It's my room too, Gloria, last I checked. I'm here to get some blankets, so I can sleep on the couch, and be out of your hair altogether. You can have the room all to yourself. It's what you want, right? Let me go, let me take my damn blanket, and the fucking room is all yours. Forever. Well?

"Get your shit. Get your shit and go. And don't try that again or I WILL cut you."

Right, OW! God, bitch, what is your problem? OK, OK, I'm going. Wait, I need the spare on the shelf. It's for a friend. Come on, you don't need it! You can get another spare in the morning! Thanks. I'm leaving now. Sweet dreams. Yeah? Same to you.

Damn! Slam the door why don'cha? Oh, shhh. Gotta be quiet. Sorry, sorry. Hey, I'm back, didja miss me?

"It sounded scary. What happened in there?"

Nothing much, apparently. A knife to the throat, a threat on my life, her bad breath, the usual really. Hey, I got you a blanket. Here, let me put it over you. How's that?

"It's very nice. Thank you, Sunshine. You're very kind."

The weird kind, maybe. Alright, onto the couch with me. Oh, the flashlight! I'm gonna turn it off now, is that OK? Ahh... um, oh. Hey, I'm gonna turn it on again, so I can turn the 'corder off. I'm still learning the active surface thingie and.... no. that's not it. Wait. I'll get it. By the way, I wanted to mention th...

Day Two: Shipping And Handling

Attention Citizen: You have been logged and identified as having accessed this infofeed. This nonmandatory Recommended Info binds you to mandatory data redistribution of one (1) copy to a secondary non-attached infosink within 24 hours. Failure to redistribute this Recommended Info can result in penalties of up to minus six hours of hypernet access. Crosscheck reveals that you have still not yet complied with the mandatory data redistribution requirement. You have 14.22 hours remaining to comply.

GOING PONY

Day Two: Shipping And Handling
By Sunshine Laughter

...thing on. There! I am definitely getting the hang of this. Alright, hello everyone its...oh yeah... hello everypony, it's Sunshine and Millicent back and we are having one muffin of a breakfast here. As you can see, pancakes, yes they are real flour, real eggs, real everything here... and syrup. Here is something that will just fuse your implants: this syrup came out of a tree. I am not shi....muffin-ing you here. Out of a muffin tree. Trees apparently have syrup inside them, that's where it lives. How's that for amazing, huh?

"And it's really GOOD, too!"

Oh, man is it! Real syrup, real pancakes and this, this my friends is orange juice, and by that I do not mean that it is an orange colored liquid labeled orange, no, this also came out of a tree...

"Off of a tree. Oranges are fruit, remember?"

OFF of a tree, from a fruit, which is SQUEEZED right into a glass, and it is awesome, or would be, except that apparently it hurts my ulcer, so I can't have very much. See these? They are real tears, because I can't drink the real orange juice. Boo hoo hoo!

"When you are a pony, you will be able to drink all the orange juice you want, Sunshine!"

Rub it in, why don't ya. Boo hoo hoo hoo...

"I didn't mean it that way, Sunshine! I really didn..."

I know, I know... it's OK, Millie! You know, it's really hard to believe that you used to be some badmuffin terror of the favela, I have to say. Seriously, you were really like her? Oh, by the way, over there? Follow my finger. See that dark-haired girl with the fake leg? That's 'Razor', Millie's ex. Scary stuff, huh? You were like that?

"I don't like thinking about that now. Please don't... remind me?"

I'm sorry, I'm sorry Millie. God, I'm really doing well today, aren't I. Sorry. Hey, want the rest of my orange juice? I can't finish it all, you could have it if you want.

"Thank you, Sunshine. I like orange juice!"

It's that smile again. Man. I love that smile. It's almost worth giving you the rest of these pancakes but... nope! I gotta have some more of these... mmmm.... oh.... yes, I am getting used to this Conversion Bureau lifestyle, I have to say. Now these pancakes are all those adjectives they put on the box, only for honest real. Check this out. Light, fluffy, those little air-holes, the light brown color, and the taste, with the butter! Oh, the butter.... the butter... But enough of that.

Look where I am sitting! Low table? On a pillow? Surrounded by beautiful, beautiful ponies! I am sitting at the pony table, thanks to my best pal here, Millicent the pony. And you know what? It is just as nice and wonderful as I imagined. Everyon....everpony here is friends, they are all nice as can be, and we are having a fun time. Apparently I shouldn't have been afraid, according to Goldenrod over here - say hello Goldenrod!

"H-Hello? Who am I speaking to again?"

Humans, mostly. The Gov gave me this thing to tell the story of what conversion is like to the rest of the world. So, basically, I guess it's like a documentary on Bureau life, more or less. I've got an idea! Tell them about your conversion, what it was like, and what it's like for you now, being a pony!

"I'm... I'm not sure I could do that. I mean, how many people are watching?"

I haven't a clue. They never told me that. Hey, don't worry about that, just tell me. Just talk to me, tell me what you like and don't like about being a pony now, OK? So, what d'ya like about being a pony?

"Um... I... well, I like... I like having a tail."

That's interesting. I mean that's an interesting thing to choose as the first thing to say. What's cool about having a tail? Actually, I think tails are cool already, just looking at them I wish I had one, but... other than being pretty, what's a tail good for?

"It... it's kind of like pants, in a way. I mean, it covers your behind, you know? But it's also really fun to swish about, and I can swat things with it too. And... and it acts like a blanket, if you whip it over your flank, and I can sort of grab with it a little. Aquamarine and I actually held tails once, to see if we could do it. It was kind of like... like holding hands, sort of. And... well... it... "

What? I'm gonna have one myself soon, so I kind of need to know, you know?

"It just plain feels good. I'm serious. It's just really fun. And it feels good against the backs of my hocks and cannons. It just does. And when I whip it against my flanks sometimes. It... it just does."

Huh. Ok, Cool. I didn't know that. I'll have to try all of those things after I'm converted!

"I'd hold tails with you, Sunshine. If... if you wanted, I mean."

Hee! I'd love to, Millie. Millicent! What do you like about being a pony?

"Um... I haven't actually thought about it that much. I... just really like it."

But, well, why? If you had to name something, what... what would it be? The tail, like Goldenrod, or... I don't know, being pretty, or what?

"Sunshine!"

What?

"You said I was pretty!"

Well, you are. That's no secret. All ponies are really pretty. Even the boy ponies... the stallions. Equestrians are just a really handsome race.... but... of course... even, uh, there... you are really pretty just for you. Anyway, so tell me anything, something about what's fun about being a pony?

"Well, I like how I walk now."

You like how you walk? Why? In what way?

"I feel more stable. I feel like I can't trip, at least not easily. And I like the way my hooves go clippy-clop. And I know I could run really, really fast if I had the room. That's what I want to do, when we all get to Equestria. I want to run, really run, really, really fast."

Yeah. I can see that. Pony bodies look really strong and healthy. Powerful, too. And I like the sound of hooves as well. OK, great. Ummm... more pancake here, excuse me folks. Umm. MMM. Oh yeah. Um. Then, what... what would be something you don't like about being a pony? That's something I should hear about. Goldenrod?

"Something I don't like?"

Yeah, there must be something that isn't good, or as easy, or is a problem or whatever. It might be handy to know, before I become a pony.

"Well... you have to remember to keep your tail out of the way when... when you go, you know? And getting wet is no fun, because it takes forever for your coat to dry out..."

"Oh, yes Goldenrod, I know what you mean! I tried to take a shower in the evening after I was converted, and then I didn't know how to get dry, and I was afraid to ask for help. I did, eventually, and Sylvie came in and toweled me off, but even then I was still a little damp for like an hour after."

So what is the solution to dealing with being wet by yourself, then, Millie? Goldenrod?

"We need to help each other. It's hard for one pony, alone to do everything. We are meant to always help each other. Unless you are a unicorn, that's all you can do. So you shower with a friend, and then you can help towel each other off..."

"And comb each others manes and tails!"

"Oh yeah! That's a big one right there! You can't groom yourself at all, well maybe the tail..."

"Unless you are a unicorn!"

"Yeah, unless you are a unicorn. So, again you need to help each other for all kinds of things that..."

"Excuse me!"

Hello! Ah, a unicorn's perspective! So far it sounds like unicorns can do everything alone, is that the case? By the way, I'm Sunshine, this is Millie, and this is Goldenrod. Please join us!

"Thank you. Hi! I haven't chosen a proper name yet. I guess you can just call me Jan. Anyway, it isn't as easy being a unicorn as you imagine. I'm still using my mouth and hooves for lots of things. I've only just been able to lift anything with magic, and my control is terrible. But... even if I get really good with my horn someday, I can't see my own mane!"

"You could use a mirror."

"Oh. Yeah, I guess I could. OK, fair enough. But... doing everything on your own is lonely. Maybe I could brush my own tail and mane someday, or dry myself off with magic, but... I hope I don't have to. It's nicer to dry each other off, you know? And being groomed by another pony is much nicer than just doing it yourself. It isn't like just combing your hair as a human."

"YEAH! That's a point. As a human I'd just drag a comb across my head and be done with it. But as a pony..."

"No kidding... I LOVE having my mane brushed. Or... or nibbled."

"Oooh! Yes. Nothing better. It's not like having hair as a human at all. It's.... it's so..."

"Intimate. Hee hee hee!"

"Hee hee!

Well... I can see... I have a lot to learn, then. And I really feel left out here. Wow. OK, thank you, that was some really interesting stuff. Hey, Millicent, one thing I really want to know is....

WE INTERRUPT THIS INFOFEED WITH BREAKING NEWS * WE INTERRUPT THIS INFOFEED WITH BREAKING NEWS * WE INTERRUPT THIS INFOFEED WITH BREAKING NEWS * WE INTERRUPT THIS INFOFEED WITH

We bring you a special report by Dan Mathers, Corporate News Network, via airship outside of New Denver, Northamerizone.

What you are seeing is the edge of the Great Barrier of Equestria, demolishing the megapolis of New Denver. These live scenes of the collapse of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Arcology, as it violently transforms into an Equestrian city nestled between hills and lakes show the extent of the damage caused by the steady expansion of the alien universe into our world.

Already almost 1500 miles in diameter, the Barrier shows no signs of stopping. Where once the proud ruins of the Arsenal Arcology stood, a magnificent tower of polycarbon, steel and plascrete, with its expanse of parking facilities and underground silos, now increasingly there is grass, thatched cottages, strange buildings and the largest infestation of trees this reporter has ever seen.

This once was the site of the nuclear interment center, now it is almost completely a large lake bordered by strange flowers and stalks. Where once the proud works of man stood testament to earlier days of wealth and commerce, now only silent, pointless meadows and acres of meaningless trees remain. It is truly a frightening sight, the history of both the rise and collapse of Denver being dissolved into strange, pastel greenery as the shimmering wall advances.

A recent recalculation of the expansion of Equestria by Worldgovernment scientists places ZP Day at 1,084 days from today, just barely over three years from this moment. ZP Day, the day when zero percent of the Earth as we know it remains, when the entirety of our planet is inevitably and horrifically absorbed into the advancing cosmos of Equestria. Unless some means can be found to stop this process, ZP Day must occur, and on that day, any human that has not been converted will have no place left to stand, much less run.

Earlier, we interviewed this corporate Science Advocate about the expansion of Equestria into our space.

"So, tell me, is there any way to stop this, this invasion of our sovereign planet by the cosmos of Equestria?"

"Well, Dan, the Worldgovernment Authority has put all of their resources into this very problem. We all remember the Three Days War, where every weapon on earth was used against the Barrier, to no effect. We've seen attempts by all the Zones to halt, repel, or destroy the Barrier, and we have seen all of the many efforts devised to combat the lethal effects of thaumatic radiation on human beings, again to no avail. It's not like we haven't tried, we have literally tried everything possible, and even a few impossible things too."

"Impossible things?"

"Bringing in the Druids, for example, World Prayer Week, not to mention the fiasco of the Wiccan Coalition For Earth's efforts. The fact is, and always has been, that our universe simply has nothing to combat thaumatic radiation with. We don't even know what it is, and there is no way to treat its effects on he body. What the Equestrians call 'magic' is, for all intents and purposes, just that, and we are dealing with a form of physics our universe has never encountered before."

"So where does that leave us?"

"It leaves us helpless, Dan. Completely, utterly helpless and at the mercy of forces beyond our understanding, and a realm possessing total dominion over our future. Fortunately, this alien domain is ruled by benevolent leaders, who have provided the human race a means of survival. Conversion, Dan. The bottom line here is that all human beings that can must be converted into Equestrian form if anything of our species is to survive this literally cosmic calamity."

"So it's a good thing the Worldgovernment is constantly building new Conversion Bureaus, then."

"Absolutely, Dan. It is truly a testament to the spirit of all Mankind and the vast wisdom of the Worldgovernment Authority that we have the Conversion Bureaus around what is left of our Earth. I cannot stress this enough: get converted. Get your family, your friends, and everyone you know converted as soon as possible. We have only one thousand, one hundred and thirty-three days left until ZP Day, and I can personally assure you, and all of your viewers, that there is no other solution available."

"What about space, what about the effort to revive the space program and move the population to Mars?"

"It was an interesting plan, and it might have worked for a very small number of people, but in the time left, and with the diminished resources still left upon our planet, it just would not be possible to send more than a small colony, and even then it was calculated that the chances of survival would be infinitesimal. If this had only happened half a century ago, things might have turned out differently, at least for an elite few. But for the vast bulk of humanity, even if space travel were still possible, conversion would still be the only hope for survival."

"So, when are you and your staff getting converted?"

"I am not at liberty to discuss this matter, Dan. We in the Worldgovernment remain in order to work on finding any alternative answer we possibly can, and to assist the teeming hordes of humanity in this dire situation. But when the time comes, you can be assured that we of the Worldgovernment will find our way to our proper destination. I can assure you of that with absolute confidence."

That was an interview recorded earlier this year that... wait, there is something going on, down below. As you can see in this enhanced view, a group of people are marching towards the Barrier! This is extraordinary! They appear to be... yes, they are Muslims For Christ... and a party from the Human Liberation Front. Look at them waving those banners! They seem to be marching straight for the Great Barrier, chanting something... no, no, they are singing. They are singing some kind of Islamochristian hymn, and oh, they are starting to stumble. I've seen that before, that's the effect of strong thaumatic radiation... oh, they are going down, they are just falling on the ground, some are shaking, some are writhing... they must have entered a zone of high thaumatic radiation.

Look, at that, folks, with HyperZoom technology from SamSonYota, what you are witnessing is thaumatic burns spreading across the exposed flesh of... this must be an intense field... the flesh is just melting here, I've never seen anything like this. Can we zoom in closer? That's exposed bone there, on what was, I think, a young man, probably a member of the HLF.

It was a brave attempt, but a futile one. I cannot imagine what these brave human souls thought they could accomplish, wait, wait, the banner reads "Horses Go To Hell". It seemed to be a protest, one that ended in tragedy, here in the vanishing remains of New Denver.

I'm Dan Mathers, and thank you for joining us for this special report. We return you now to your regularly scheduled infofeeds.

THIS HAS BEEN A BREAKING NEWS INTERRUPT WE RETURN NOW TO SCHEDULED INFOFEEDS * THIS HAS BEEN A BREAKING NEWS INTERRUPT WE RETURN NOW TO SCHEDULED INFOFEEDS * THIS HAS BEEN A

...There. Heya there. We're in classroom two now, and we're doing 'Basic Physical Skills For Equestrian Life'. Since it's so basic, it's a mixed class, so Millie and I get to be in the same place. And Goldenrod, Aquamarine and Jan the unicorn are here too. We're the Breakfast Pony Club all sitting here together. So, basically, I'm feeling pretty happy!

"Yay!"

Hee hee! So, you're all probably wondering why I've got a bowl between my wrists. If I'd bothered to pay attention yesterday, I would have learned that human wrists are equivalent to pony foreknees, and the first human finger joint is the same as the fetlock on an Equestrian. Ponies used their foreknees and fetlocks in much the same way as humans use their hands.

See, I can lift a bowl or a cup, or pretty much anything else, using the sides of my wrists. Ponies do this all the time. Now a pony could also use their fetlocks, which have even better control - like how Millicent is doing right now. See, she can hold her bowl right between her fetlocks and it kind of looks like a human using their hands, almost, with the hooves and everything.

Now I can't do that, because my fingers aren't strong enough, or else they aren't wide enough or something. All I know is it's hard. But I can hold my bowl with my wrists - what will soon be my foreknees - and that is considered fine too, among ponies. In fact, sometimes it's easier, because that grip brings the bowl, or whatever, closer to the mouth.

"Fetlocks are better though, Sunshine. There's these little hollows here that kind of grip the bowl, see?"

Hmmm... I guess so. It's just the way the bones are. Huh. Well, according to our instructor, Blueflower Glade here, the principle is the same, and practice now will help me later, after I am ponified. I'm getting kind of excited about being ponified, by the way. It's really nerve-wracking wondering when they are going to call me. Aqua says they usually don't do anypony before the third day. Usually. I almost wish they'd just get it over with, you know? Then again, this is just my second day.

OK, now we are all getting tea in our little bowls, and we're supposed to drink it without spilling, using our wrists... or for the ponies, their fetlocks or knees. Both, I guess. It looks like some of the humans can use the sides of their hands successfully... that guy over there just sipped his tea, and as you can see, that bowl is right at his knuckles, where his fetlocks will eventually be.

I'll give that a try, I guess. Easy, easy, almos.... oh.... MUFFIN!

"It's Ok, Sunshine. Here, I'll wave down Blueflower. Excuse me! Blueflower? We had an accident!"

Millie! Oh... oh boy. Now I feel really dumb. Hi, yeah. I kind of had a boo-boo. Sorry.

"It's perfectly fine. Now here's some more tea, try again. Nopony gets this the first time! Just try your best!"

Thank you, Blueflower. Sigh. Tell that to the guy over there. Oh god, he's grinning at me. Oh, yeah, show off! Fine. I can see. Oh, that's cute.

I will not be beaten by some grinning ninny with oversized gorilla hands. Let's see... I'll try this again, only... damn! Well, at least it didn't spill again, that's something. I just don't get how this is supposed to work. I can do it fine with my wrists, heck, it's easy with my wrists.

"Try between your knuckles, Sunshine. Right there. That's kind of like the hollow spot here, just before my hoof. See?"

Hmmm. Ok, yeah, I can kind of see that. It does kind of dip in slightly there, just before that place where the thing that your hoof grows out of is. Kind of like between my first two joints on my hands. If I could use my thumbs, it would be a snap. Alright.... I'm doing it! Hey, hey, look, I'm doing it, I'm doing it, I'm...

"Excuse me! Miss Blueflower? Over here again! She nearly did it this time!"

Oh, I just want to bury my head. Oh, man. Millie...

"What? She said it was OK! Nopony gets this the first time, remember?"

You did. That guy over there did. Oh, wait! Score! Heh... he dropped his cup too! Yay! Show off.

"Sunshine. That's not nice. He's just trying to do his best, even if he is showing off at you."

Augh. Ok, Ok. I'm sorry Millie. Try to be nice. Always wish everypony the best. It's still hard for me, Millie, I guess I'm still just a mean old ape. Sigh.

"Don't fret, Sunshine. You're very nice and not mean at all. It's just that you could be nicer still. And I know you will be!"

Yeah, as soon as I'm a pony too. Hey, hi again, Blueflower. I nearly did it. I guess I just got excited when it started to work.

"It's not as important that you succeed, as it is that you go through the motion of trying. This is designed to train your mind to accept using your limbs in new ways. Just keep trying! We have lots of tea, and lots of cloth to soak up the spills. There you go. Smile! You're doing fine!"

Thank you, Miss Blueflower. Wow. She's really nice, huh, Millie.

"Oh yes, I think she is a very nice teacher. I like her too."

Well here goes again. Wish me luck.

"Good luck, Sunshine!"

Hee. Alright, between the knuckles, pretend they're fetlocks, like yours. Up, easy, easy... hey, that does work better... alright, SLURRRRRP. Hah! I did it! I drank like a pony! Ok, Ok, put the bowl down, there, easy, there... YES! I am the pony-est! I am pony-tacular! I got my pony on! WHOO!

"Congratulations! Very good. Now try again."

Ok, Miss Blueflower. Hee. Go me.

You know, I wondered how ponies dealt with the lack of hands. Yeah, they use their teeth a lot, but they also use their hooves, and now I know they use the sides of their legs. Fetlocks and foreknees can grip and hold things, and here's something really cool. Millie, would you do the grabbing thing again? Here, let me empty my cup. SLUURRRP. There. Ahhh. Now, do that thing again?

Yeah, see that? I love that. Ponies can pinch some stuff between fetlock and hoof. The back of the hoof... it's kind of flat, and soft back there, and they can grip pretty good. She can hold that cup just there, tucked next to the back of her hoof, pressed against her... ankle, I guess. It's a solid grip too... look. I'm tugging pretty hard here.

"Hee hee!"

I bet a pony could hold a lot of things in there. Tools, handles, maybe even door handles. You know, it's kind of the same effect as me... well like this, where I can grip the cup with my fingers by pressing against my palm. No thumb needed. Same kind of thing. I have to say I am kind of amazed, there are a lot of ways a foreleg can be useful for holding stuff. I never knew.

Hey, Goldenrod, that's pretty cool. You can sip your tea, holding your cup that way, in your fetlock... grip. I don't know what to call it. That's really cool. Yeah.

Hey, can you... wow Millie, you can do it too! Well, I guess that's three separate grips a pony can use. Maybe not having hands really won't be such a big deal. Jan, that is so cool. Balancing your cup on your hoof. Awesome. You don't even need your horn, you can do stuff without it. That's great.

Apparently... we're getting other things to play with now. Various shapes and objects to practice holding and gripping. I'm pretty full of tea now anyway. Actually, too full. Miss Blueflower? Excuse me but... wait, one moment, I should turn this off and...

Day Two: Last Chance To Feel

Attention Citizen: This is a courtesy reminder of your world corporate obligations, provided free of charge. This nonmandatory Recommended Info binds you to mandatory data redistribution of one (1) copy to a secondary non-attached infosink within 24 hours. Penalties may be applied if this requirement is not met. Crosscheck reveals that you have still not complied with the mandatory data redistribution requirement. You have 12.11 hours remaining to avoid censure.

GOING PONY

Day Two: Last Chance To Feel
By Sunshine Laughter

"...fectly Ok. I don't mind. Nothing here matters anymore, if you think about it."

I've got the zoom working on this thing, as you can see. That brown spider there is my hand, and this is not a coppery carpet, it is a pony. Millicent is letting me... well, pet her, I suppose. Is that an OK way to put it?

"You worry way too much, Sunshine. Besides, it's nice!"

Alright then. Um, I wanted to feel what pony hair felt like, to my hands, you know? Before I didn't have any anymore. When I told Millie that, she let me pet her, and I have to say that pony fur... I mean hair... is different than I expected. It's really soft, for one thing, and kind of short. It lays so flat that I figured it would have to be kind of hard or rough or something, but it's actually sort of silky, like those silky sheets, only hair. It's hair, by the way and not fur. Apparently there is some big difference between the two, but I wasn't paying that much attention. Ponies have coats of hair, and it's smooth and soft.

And warm too. Um... Millicent... ah, I don't know how to put this, could I... could I smell you. Your coat, I mean. I understand completely if...

"Silly! Go ahead, give me a sniff if you want. But I get to sniff your hair in return. I'm curious."

Ah, alright. Sure. OK, here goes. Hmmmm. Snerrk. Snfff. Snert. Huh. Not what I expected at all. I had a pet rat once, big genegineered ratty. I loved little Whiskers. But she always smelled... clean, but kind of... animally, sort of. You don't. You smell... warm, alive, but... not that musky animal thing. Just kind of clean and... mostly you smell like shampoo. There's a 'I'm a living thing' smell, but it's not strong. It's pleasant, though.

"My turn! I get to smell your hair!"

Yeah, sure, why my hair though? Here... There you go.

"Well, I never knew anybody with hair like that before. Not personally. Not like how we are. And it looks neat. That's all."

You never had any black friends, then. That's what you're saying. Ok. I guess I got the nappy hair going on here, and it isn't like I haven't had to deal with that shit before. Now that's a thought. Once folks get ponified, they're all different colors of the rainbow. Blue and green and purple and whatnot... Earth-style race issues kind of go out the window. Ponies have races, or maybe breeds, I'm not sure what they call it, but there's unicorns and pegasai and earthponies, and nopony seems to care who hooks up with who. It just isn't even an issue. And hair, that goes from straight to tight and curly, but I haven't seen a pony with a natural, yet.

What's even stranger, from my perspective, is that ponies are all into grooming each other, which basically means that their version of a handshake is nibbling each others manes for a moment. So they are always getting up in each others hair, and that's kind of a sore point with me, or was. If you have natural hair, what my grams called 'nappy' hair, then people come up and... they up and touch it and ask the damnedest questions, like you weren't even a person or something. It gets to be a real issue, an anger issue. But now, going pony, I guess I'm going to have to learn to let that go.

There's just no way to tell what a newfoal was, before they got converted. I don't know how I feel about that. It's like all the shit I am used to fucking up my life is being stripped away. You'd think I'd be glad of that, and I am, but... it also kind of feels like being stripped naked, somehow. Millie seems to like my hair, at least from the contented sniffing and nibbling going on. And I don't seem offended. Which is weird.

So, what were you before you were a pony, Millicent? You white, or what?

"Some Vietnamese, some... French, I think. Eurozone meets Southasiazone. And a little Southamerizone in there too. It wasn't a big deal for me."

No way I could guess what you were from how you look now. I guess ponification erases race. I guess that makes sense; it erases being human altogether, and race is a human thing. I gotta say, though, I did wonder if the color you turn out had any connection to what you were before. But, from the conversions we saw today, I guess not.

I saw a sister, darker than me, go in before dinner, side note for all of you out there, and she came out yellow. Just this bright, bright yellow, with a pale white mane. Purple eyes. And I saw a white guy come out the color of space, with a mane to match. He could be a pony ninja. I guess it's one big random whirlwind of color or something.

I wonder what I'll end up looking like. I hope I'm green. Bright, shimmery green, like trees and grass. I could lay on the grass and be invisible and watch everypony. I'd be the invisible pony!

Hey! What are you doin to my hair, Millie? What the?

"Just feeling it. I have to use my mouth. My lips and tongue are my most sensitive parts. I'm grooming you. It's a pony thing!"

All...right. I guess I can go with that. You did let me pet you and all. But... OK, maybe that's not so bad, actually. It kind of feels nice, to tell the truth. Weird. But nice.

"See? It's even better as a pony. Way better!"

That's what you were saying at breakfast, as I remember. So, what do you think of my mane, Millie?

"It's unusual. Really tight curls. They feel neat against my tongue and my lips. I like it. I wish pony manes were like this. I wish you could keep it."

Keep my 'fro? Haven't seen a single pony with nappy hair. I'm going to miss it myself, to tell the truth. I'm really used to my hair. It's gonna be strange as Muffin to have long, straight, neon hair. But, new body, new hair. Heh. I'm gonna be walking around on hooves, no hands, face turned into a muzzle, ears on the top, tail swishing around behind my ass, and I'm worrying about my fool hair. It's weird the things you fuss over, preparing for such a big change, I gotta say.

So, it's night, my second night in the Bureau, and as you can see...wait. You can't see, because... there, I've zoomed out again, this is our room. Millie and I are roommates, we got that sorted out today. It wasn't as hard as I thought. We went in together and just explained things, and they took care of it. They don't really give a cookie about who rooms with who, as long as everypony's happy, so here we are. And I am really liking it.

"I am really glad to be roommates with you, too, Sunshine!"

Hee! We make a pretty good pair here, I figure. Razor and Gloria got stuck together, and I sorta wish I could see in there and sorta don't, inside I'm making bets as to whether one or both of them come out alive tomorrow. I'm picturing two snakes hissing at each other all night long, but that's just me. No? I guess Millie and me are agreed here.

Lunch was sammiches for me, which was fine and tasty enough. Lots of veggie goodness. I tried a bite of hay from Millie's bowl, and... not so good, to tell you the truth. Really pretty icky, I am sorry to say. Tasted like toasted ass. Hee! That got a smile. As you can see, something has kind of worked out between us; I can say things like that and Millie doesn't mind. I guess it is all how and why things get said with ponies, not what.

We saw Sam and Honeydrizzle again today. I kind of apologized for the 'cartoon incident', and we're all cool now. I've decided to just let my walls down, and it seems to be working. Which was good because we got a big long cartoon today for our first class.

It was all about the history of Equestria. Apparently, there was this super-being thing called 'Discord', at least that's the closest translation, that invaded their universe. Or maybe he came from there, they don't know for sure. But he changed everything and whatever existed before him was mostly lost. Discord could change reality, like a god. So for a long time, their universe was all chaos and everything changed all the time. It was like a constant Psychotropinol trip.

But somewhere in there, old Discord blew it by creating every possible thing, including his own end. He made two alicorns. That's the princesses, right? They have horns and wings and all kinds of powers. They were almost as powerful as Discord himself, and in the end defeated him. Then one of them had a sort of nervous breakdown, and she had to have a thousand year time out.

Apparently, the rulers of Equestria are immortal. Real deal, live forever immortal. So a thousand years is just a time out for them. How's that, huh? That's a stable governmental structure, I have to say. Anyway, the time-out princess, Luna, came back a while ago, and now she and her sister, Celestia, rule the place. Forever, I guess.

Anyway, during that thousand years, they had all these ages and periods and stuff, just like human history. They had troubles with dragons and griffons, and had to work out a peace pact thing. And then they had this middle ages like us, and a brief flirtation with technology. They started to have a kind of renaissance, almost went industrial, and then that got stopped. They chose to back off and stick to magic and being mostly all villages and farmlands. But there are still a few big, brick cities around from that era.

That's one way the ponies are smarter than us, I figure. Our world turned to... uh... total cinnamon swirl, because we didn't know how to decide when enough was enough. We humans always want more, better, newer, faster, just because. But ponies tried that, decided the smog sucked, and backed off so they could keep things paradise. Besides, they have magic and everything, so the technology we use isn't so big to them, plus it wrecks the environment. Magic apparently doesn't.

So, that was the cartoon before lunch, and I really liked it. Hear that? I liked it. I liked the cartoon, and I hope we get to see more.

"I'm very proud of you, Sunshine!"

That's my Millie. She keeps me honest. Oh, that smile. Damn. I mean Muffin. No, I know. It's alright. Anyway, after lunch, we went to separate classes.

"I went to earthpony class! We learned how to make things grow. All kinds of things, fruits, vegetables, flowers, even rocks!"

Now that's just plain weird, Millie. Rocks. They make rocks grow in Equestria. It's that different physics going on over there. Thamatic energy. You can kind of see why the ponies balked at an industrial revolution, they can make Muffin rocks grow. Tell 'em about the crystals. That's the cool bit.

"Well, they had me practice on this half of a geode. It's like a ball of rock, only hollow inside, and it has these crystals lining the interior. They're really pretty. They have them here, on earth, too. But apparently that sort of thing is really, really common in Equestria.

Anyway, I made the crystals grow, just like a plant does. And Samantha made a dandelion bloom! It was amazing. It made me feel like magic!"

Well, it is magic, Millie. You are magic. You can make stuff grow, that's pretty magic. Millie brought back one of the crystals to show me. Here it... here it is. Really nice, kinda purple color, and I like the banding down there. So how long was this when you started?

"It stopped right where the color changes. I did all the stuff after, all the purple stuff."

Did you choose it to be purple?

"No, it just kind of did that. All I did was make it grow."

'All I did was'.... Millie, Millicent.... All I did was freaking make rock grow outta nothin', that's all, no biggie, hey, do it every day, it ain't no thing, just the usual...

"Stop it! You're making fun of me!"

No, no, no I am not. I'm trying to get you to see just how extraordinary this is. I'm holding a hunk of rock, a gemstone, a beautiful, beautiful gemstone and you grew it. It didn't exist until you did... whatever it is you do to make it...

"I just sang to it and sort of sent love at it. Sort of."

You sang a rock into being. I would say that is a miracle on par with old religious dudes with big long beards and glowy heads, Millie. I mean, seriously. I can't do that. No human can do that. No human ever did that. But you did. You made stuff by... being nice to it, I guess. That is a heck of a thing, Millie. You can't just take that for granite.

"No... I guess I... hey! Did you? You said 'Granite!" Hee hee hee hee..."

Heh heh, heh... yeah, see, made you smile. That's all, Millie, I just want you to understand how incredibly cool I think this is.

So, Millie got to go learn how to make things grow, but me, still being a dirty, eeebil old ape monster, I got to go sit with the other damn dirty apes, and go through Social Orientation Class. They do it right up front, while you're still human, so that it is clear what is what.

Basically they teach you what the social norms for Equestria are, and what you will be expected to do, and not do, and what is right and what is wrong, and what is considered acceptable and normal there.

It all pretty much boils down to love and acceptance. I know you always hear Love and Tolerance, but that is not the deal. They don't want you to tolerate stuff in Equestria, they expect you to embrace it if you can, and accept it, period. So there is no fussing over who's got the bigger god, because there aren't any gods. Just Celestia and Luna, and if you have a problem with that, you can schedule a meeting to discuss it, pony to goddess. No fussing over who loves whom; they don't have any basis for thinking that being queer or straight is anything. It's all good, and it's all normal, and there is no if and or but about that in Equestria. They don't even have words for such things, because it ain't no thing at all.

I know that futzes with a lot of stuff you hear out there, me too. I was up to my neck in 'coltcuddlers' and 'fillyfoolers' and whatnot, from all the folks writing about what they thought was happening over there, and that's cool, but that's a human viewpoint. I'm here in the Bureau, and I just had a class taught by a native-born pony, and he made it real clear that none of our human prejudices and issues apply. It really is a different world, and they never had puritans or churches or any of that crap. They just had Celestia and being ponies, and they just do what comes natural, and that's all there is to it.

There's a little racism, between the three types of ponies, in that each one thinks they are the best. I'm not sure what to think of that. It's not like a unicorn, say, can't marry a pegasus or whatever. I guess its more like how any group always thinks it's the best, just because its a group. Mountain Pathfinder, our instructor, he made sure we understood that even this wasn't a big deal. And in the end, in anything important or meaningful, all the differences go away.

He talked about color; that too is something we're supposed to leave behind, along with politics, religion and war and stuff. Those things don't apply to Equestria. Well, war could, sort of, what with the dragons and the griffons and other creatures, but even then, ponies don't kill. They might buck you up some, but then they'd take you to a hospital and sit with you after, more or less.

Basically, what came across to me is just how alien the place is. Equestria isn't earth. The same rules do not apply. Physics is different, ponies are different, society is different, even the way they think about stuff is different. And they have this whole other history that is nothing like ours. It's easy to think we're really similar, because they have tables and we have tables and we both have houses and drink from cups and stuff like that. There is a lot of familiar-looking stuff over there.

But it isn't earth. And that was probably the biggest lesson I got out of today. Being a pony and living in Equestria means dropping a lot of baggage. You know how they say you can't bring anything with you from Earth into Equestria? They ain't kidding, folks. They don't just mean your holoset or your implants or whatever. They really mean all the human ape shit that you're draggin' around behind you all day. Sorry, Milllie.

So, dinner. Dinner was just wonderful.

"I really liked my dinner!"

Tell 'em what you had.

"I had Hay Almondine. It was baked hay, all crispy and golden, with this creamy sauce on it, and they also had these little green things in it..."

Capers. I think they said they were 'capers', whatever that is. I remember because it's a funny name. 'Caper'.

"Yes! Those were good. And we also had a big salad with candied nuts and fruits and fescue and alfalfa and lettuce and wheat grass and chard and... and well, lots of tasty things! Oh! Oh! And brownies!"

Oh, lord, the brownies. They had chewy, chocolatey, oozy-with-melted-YUM brownies. All real, all good, and.. this is the big one folks... the chocolate was real. Really, real. Chocolate is not extinct in Equestria, not at all. It's like eating something from the age of the dinosaurs, and it roared like a T-Rex. I know they say they've duplicated the structure of chocolate. They lie.

I have had the real thing, and the real thing really is... I don't have the words. Millie. I am misting up here.

"It's GOOD!"

Yes. It's good. No... no it isn't good, I think we can do better than that, I really do, it's...

"MUFFINTACULAR!!!"

Hee hee hee "hee hee" Hee hee!

Oh, that was fun. That's our new word, now. If something is really great, it is Muffin-tacular. Hee hee.

"Hee hah hee.."

Heh... well, we have our fun, here, in room... what is the number we are in now?

"Room 17"

Room 17. We have our fun here, and we had brownies tonight, and damn, damn, damn were they something.

"I wish we had some more."

Oh, Millie, I second that. I wish to... Luna - she's the night one, right? .... Luna, that we had more of those brownies. I would so gobble them, and I am not kidding, even though I am still full from dinner. Oh... as for me, hay doesn't work for humans so well, so I had a vegetarian lasagna made with... eggbush or something?

"Eggplant"

Eggplant and... other stuff. Anyway it was really good, and the sauce was... I'll just say again that it is worth it just to... hey! That reminds me! I've got some stuff to say, before I forget again. On my first day, I think, I said some crap about how Equestria is filled with apples and some Muffin. But that's not exactly right. Earthponies, like Millie here, make everything grow in Equestria, so without them, no apples or anything else.

Except for the wild areas. There are these scar zones or something... they mentioned them in the history class... scars left over from the battle with Discord, right? One is this big forest, and the normal laws of Equestria don't work in there. There are other places too, where that is the case. In the wild areas, things work more like here, on Earth, and stuff just grows. But it's often dangerous stuff, and it has it's own rules that come with it. So it isn't like you can just go grab something out of one of these weird areas and expect no consequences. They bring a little of their weirdness with them.

So, there is stuff that grows in Equestria without earthponies, but it is only in these damaged areas, and it's usually not safe. But they get a lot of their medicines and special magical materials from the weird zones, so it isn't like the things are unwanted. But for normal life, all the food, all the everything, has to come from hardworking earthponies.

The other thing I wanted to mention was about taste. I was worried about what being a pony would do to my sense of taste, if ponies love hay and alfalfa and grass and stuff like that, right? It apparently is not a problem. We tried each other's meals tonight, and while I hated Millie's food...

"Blaaaaaa..."

Don't you stick your tongue out at me, I can't help it if I got a monkey mouth right now! Anyway, I couldn't eat her stuff, but she could eat all of my food easy, and she liked it just as well. She loved the lasagna, and she probably loved the brownies even more than I did. See those big, huge, blue-green eyes over there? Imagine them rolling up under those coppery lids, with a big ol' tongue lollin' out, and her making 'O' noises right in the middle of the cafeteria like she just don't care...

"That isn't true! I didn't do that! I didn't"

Yeah, yeah, you tell 'em that. I believe you, we all believe you. <She did exactly that, no Muffin.>

"I can still hear you, Sunshine. Big pony ears, remember?"

Damn, I can't hide anything from this one, I am telling you that she...

CRRRRUUUNNNNCCCCHHHHHH!!!!!! CRASH CLONG CLANG CLATTER-CLATTER SMASH!!!

You know, living here next to the collapsing ruins of this old arcology not only wakes me up in the middle of the night, but it constantly reminds me of how we, as a species, went wrong.

Greed, selfishness, the heedless wasting of our planet's precious resources, not to mention pollution, the death of the oceans, the extinction of most forms of life and of course the Great Collapse... it was like we were born to fail.

Some say we had a great run, and point to all the works of art, the great ruins of ancient civilizations, and all of our technological achievements. Splitting the atom, the first nanomachine, anagathic lifespan extenders. But even with all of that, just look, really look, at our world.

C-CCCRRRUNNNCHHHHHHHH!!!!! CLANG BANG BOOM!!!

It's pretty ugly, isn't it. Nineteen billion of us crammed onto a planet that can support a quarter of that, tops. Dead, burned landscapes of crumbling infrastructure. A two-percent employment rate. The only nature left is dandelions and mutated rats. Is this what being human means? Is being human really that wonderful?

We at the PER don't think so. We're Ponification for the Earth's Rebirth, and we ask you to please, please, get ponified today. The Earth can't take any more of humanity, and neither can we. Neither should you. It isn't a matter of choosing to accept Princess Celestia's generous salvation, it is our duty, to the planet, to each other, and to life itself, to become ponified.

Join us. Help us spread the word. Help us effect universal ponification for every man, woman, and child upon this earth. As humans, we are a plague upon the world. As ponies, we are united. Help save the world, help save yourselves and everyone you know. Get ponified today.

And when you do, send all of your wealth to the PER, to help with the Great Crusade, the crusade to save what little dignity we as a species have left: the dignity to know when it is time to make a new start.

So join us, we are the PER! Ponification for the Earth's Rebirth! And until you are ponified, show support in the streets by calling out proudly CRUSADE ME!

CRUSADE ME! CRUSADE ME! CRUSADE ME!

That's right, we're all PER, and we're all around you. We're in your business, we're in your favelas, were taking it to the streets and into your homes. Were the PER, and we're here on a great crusade to ponify the world!

Ponification, in every nation
Fills me up, with a cup, of elation!

Ponification, I'll take my station,
Give me a cup, I'll drink it up,
I'll ponify!

This message has been brought to you by ANONYMOUS and the Ponification for the Earth's Rebirth. This message is not traceable to your person or to your device. All records of this message will be purged from your datahistory and from the Worldkarma Security records. If you wish to donate to the PER, transfer to the account 'CrusadeMeGrey' and the PER will take it from there through untraceable means. If you wish to be converted or you wish others to be converted, simply shout 'Crusade Me!' in any open location, and you will be contacted. We are everywhere. We are united. We cannot be stopped. We will Ponify the world.

...like this? Alright. Wait, you have a tangle. Hang on, that's one thing I know how to deal with. Let me get my pick. Alright, there. Now, see, I just hold the hair near the base, the pick... hey, my pick comb is perfect for pony tails. Let's see, this one is... there! I got it. All smooth and cas-casading and stuff. You've got an interesting color combination, I have to say. The bright red of your mane and tail go surprisingly well with the coppery coat. I'd call it copper, anyway. Kind of brown-red, sort of, only shiny. No, a little golden, too. Copper.

"You said you want to be green?"

Yeah, green is my favorite color. It's one of the reasons I like, immediately fell for Equestria, right? It's sooo green. Everywhere is green. Except the desert, but they usually don't show that. Green trees, green grass, green bushy... plants... it's really green. Even the sky sometimes looks slightly green. I guess because it isn't really a planet, exactly. It's a place. That's gonna be a little weird to get used to. I mean, all my life, all I know is I'm on a sphere, a ball hanging in space, and Equestria is some kind of paraboloid curve thingy in another cosmos.

"I thought it looked like half of an egg. Like the pointy half of an eggshell."

Yeah, yeah, I can see that. The princesses live at the apex, at the focus or whatever it's called on a parabola, and the exponential lands are everything going down. I guess as Equestria eats more of the Earth, it will end up looking more like a traffic cone. It's weird to imagine living on something like that. You'd think everypony would just fall off.

"Nopony falls off of the earth, and it's round like a ball."

Yeah but... that's.... I guess so. Equestria probably doesn't have gravity, like we know it, but it must have some... force, some new physics that keeps everything on the surface, just like gravity. I wonder what the sky is like! Now that's extra weird, don't you think? I mean, Earth, space, infinite universe, but Equestria, the sky is like... like a crystal dome or something. It's a light show put on by princess Luna. There's no space, beyond the atmosphere, because the air never ends, it just hits that dome.

Whoa. What is outside that dome? That is so trippy.

"Actually, I asked about that one already. Mountain told me. It's kind of weird."

Weird? I love weird, you gotta tell me this! So, what is outside that dome?

"Well, if I remember right, the dome is also the inside of the parabola that is the surface of Equestria itself. If you dig down far enough, you fall out of the sky, and if you were to start drilling through the sky, you would eventually pop up in Equestria. It wraps, you see, through a higher.... dimension. Through a higher space. That is how he put it."

No. Way. That is so awesome. Seriously, I understand this. That's kind of what they say about our universe, Earth's universe, or what they used to say, anyway. That if you traveled far enough in any direction out in space, eventually you would come back to where you started from the other side. It's like a game world that wraps in all directions, right? That was all Einstein and stuff. He called it 'Finite Yet Unbounded'. It's real sciencey stuff, seriously.

You know what this means?

"No, not really. Oh, could you do my forelock, too?"

Oh, sure. I'm sorry, I got all excited there for a mome. There. How do you get so many tangles with such straight hair? Mane. Whatever. Hang on....

"Ow!"

Sorry. It slipped. OK, there. Anyway, what it means is that our universe, Mundis, has that fact in common with the only other universe we've ever encountered, Equestria. They both wrap around in all directions. But our universe is like, balls in space, and their universe is... um... one big contiguous landscape. But both wrap in higher dimensions.

It makes me wonder, is that why Equestria collided or whatever with us? Like, are we sister universes, sort of the same, but just a little different? Was Equestria the universe next door? Do universes form like planets in groups, or...

"Ouch! Please pay attention? I know you're all excited about... stuff... but, my mane is, well it's attached. To me."

Oh. Oh man. Oh, I'm sorry. I've gone and made it worse. Here I will pay attention, solid, right? There, Ok, and I'm gonna hold here, right, and now I'll fix that.... there. See? All better. I am so sorry, Millicent. I just got carried away there with all the cosmic junk, right?

"Did you study cosmic... junk?"

Hee! No. Well, sort of. My dad, he... he works for the worldgovernment satellite division, right? All the communication satellites, and the spy satellites and the security satellites, all that stuff. And for a while we kind of had this 'space' thing going on, you know? And we'd watch science shows and science fiction and all sorts of things. But then he got busy, and... it just wasn't happening anymore.

"I'm sorry, Sunshine!"

Hey, no biggie. I know he loves me. He's just real busy with his work and all. But it was nice for a while, and... I guess I got a little of that bug in me or something. I kept on reading junk about space and stuff, and... I guess it made me feel like he'd kind of approve or something. Silly, I guess.

"No, I don't think it's silly at all. I think it's nice. I never knew my father, so I think you are lucky to have had that time with yours."

You never knew your father? Woah. Did he like skip out or something?

"No. He was shot leaving a barter station. It got raided by a gang, and he got caught in the crossfire. It happens. It happened right before I was born. But my mom carried on, you know. But she really loved him. I mean, she never got involved with anypony else."

Is your mom still around? Did she get ponified... no, probably not, right, because she'd be here with you, if that was the case, right?

"My... mother... is strong. But she is stubborn, and she... believes stuff that kind of makes being a pony not an option for her."

Wow. I didn't know that. So... I guess you don't share her beliefs, then. I mean, you're here and everything.

"No. We... disagreed on a lot of things. So I came here. I couldn't convince her to come with me. I wish... nevermind."

What, what do you wish? Maybe... maybe something can be...

"No. Nothing can be done. I guess, sometimes, I wish that one of those crazy ponification groups, you know the ponification terrorist guys? I... wish they would get her and she'd just be a pony, and then she'd be safe. I don't know science stuff as well as you do, but I can see what's happening. I want to live. I just wish... I just wish she did. Enough to give up her stupid beliefs in order to be there for me. To stay alive.

That's why I ended up with Razor, Sunshine. I... my mom just kind of drifted into her faith and left me behind. I just felt abandoned. But I'm strong when I have to be, so... so I joined up with Razor and, well, we took care of things. However we had to. We did some pretty bad stuff...

Anyway, I still miss my mother. I wish... well, I think you can understand Sunshine."

Yeah, yeah I do. I'm sorry, Millicent. I really am. Hey, maybe... maybe they will get her, and one day you'll see her again. Maybe she'll come looking for you in Equestria, after the Earth is gone and everything!

"Maybe. Thanks. Sunshine. For trying."

Um... yeah. Man. I wish I had another one of those brownies.

"Oh, me too! I wonder what they'll make tomorrow?"

I know, every day the food has just been... hey! I just realized!

"What?"

Tomorrow is day three for me! They don't usually ponify anyone until day three, right? Usually, anyway. So who knows? Maybe tomorrow I get to be a pony too! Wouldn't that be awesome?

"Yes! Oh, good luck, Sunshine! I hope they call you tomorrow!"

Maybe... maybe even in the morning. Oh, I am gonna have a hard time sleeping now. Maybe tomorrow morning, that would be soooo cool. God, oh god, oh god, that would be sooo awesome. Being with you, meeting Jan and Honeydrizzle and Goldenrod, and our teachers... I am not afraid of being a pony at all. You're all so nice, you still like pie, and now that you let me feel you up...

"SUNSHINE!"

Heh heh... just kidding... just kidding. But touching your coat and combing your mane has really helped me somehow. It... it's like it made it more real, more solid, and more... nice. When I feel your warmth, I know you're real, you're alive, you're... you, you know? I mean, ponies and everything. It's all so strange, so unreal. But you are happy, and you are a real... pony... person... and somehow, now, I am totally certain I will be alright. Better than alright. I want to be a pony now. Not just accept it as the price for a nice world full of nice people and stuff. I'm OK now with the actually being a pony part all by itself. If that makes any sense at all.

"It does, Sunshine. Sometimes something as simple as touch can make even scary things easier."

Yeah, yeah, I guess so. Thanks for that, Millie. Letting me paw you and all.

"Hee! It was my pleasure. Actually it kind of was. It was really nice having my mane and tail brushed."

Yeah, that's big with ponies, isn't it. I guess I'll find out. Maybe tomorrow. Oh, I hope tomorrow. Please, please, please...

"Calm down, Sunshine. Goodness. It will happen when it happens. They'll ponify you. It's not like they won't."

What if they run out of serum, or we get raided by one of those humanist groups or... no. No. I am not doing this. It will happen when it happens, and it will be fine. In the meantime, great food, great friends, and lots to learn. I just need to concentrate on that.

OK, you peeping hypernet toms, it's time for nite-nite. The Sunshine and Millie show is signing off. Peace, OUT.

Day Three: Bring It On

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GOING PONY

Day Three: Bring It On
By Sunshine Laughter

"Oh yes, Sunshine and I had the most marvelous night. We groomed each other's manes, and she combed my tail and we talked about our lives and everything. It was really nice."

"What was it like, Millie, grooming a human? Does that even work? I don't remember caring about that sort of thing before."

"Well, I don't think is was as nice for her as it was for me, but... Sunshine? Maybe you should tell Jan about what it was like for you, I mean, you're the human viewpoint here."

Don't remind me. When are they going to CALL? Come on, it's the third day! Jeeze!

"What's up with her? Isn't she supposed to be playing reporter? She turned on that... thing, but she isn't saying anything. Well, except for going on about being converted."

"You're fussing again, aren't you Sunshine? She's been like this since last night, Jan. She could barely sleep, even after all the nice grooming. She's got it into her head that because it's day three, she'll be converted, and it's driving her nuts."

"Is she afraid? Is that it? It's OK, Sunshine, really. Conversion is easy and painless, and I've never regretted it even once!"

"No, no... that isn't the problem. Sunshine want's to be converted now. She wants it to be over and done with. That's what's eating her - she wants them to call her and she can't wait. She's like a foal waiting for a hearth's warming present."

Come on, come on... Hey, was that the loudspeaker? Did they call a name?

"No, Sunshine. If it was the loudspeaker, you would have known it. It's loud, remember? Come on, just settle down and eat your breakfast! Really tasty food, remember? It's waffles! With fruit! And you've barely touched them. Come on, there's a good pony, eat something, please? You'll feel better. Fussing won't make them call you any sooner, you know."

Alright, alright... Jesus, now you're my mom... or something. Sorry. It's just that... OK, let's try out the waffles. Hey, everypony, it's me. Sunshine here. I'm at the low table. Yay. Having waffles. Here they are. Gonna try some now. Mmm. Yum. They're really good. Made of real stuff. Hey, fruit. It's really good too. COME ON! CALL MY NAME! WHAT THE FLYING MUFFIN IS GOING ON HERE!

"SUNSHINE! Will you just calm down? Everypony is staring at you. Now shush! That's about enough of that. Goodness. Now you have that thing to do for the worldgovernment, right? Try again. You can do it."

No. No I can't. Not today. I never should have even bothered to turn this damn thing on. I can't even taste these waffles and I know they're probably good, Millie. It's just... I'm sitting at the pony table, with all of you, only I'm still a big, dumb ape monster and... oh sweet Celestia... oh...

"She's put her face in her food. She's laying her head in her food, Millie!"

"Sigh. I do not believe this one. Sunshine, you are getting whipped cream all over your face and mane, you realize that, don't you?"

I don't care. It'll all be fixed when I'm converted anyway. Conversion fixes everything. Hey! Maybe if I stab myself, they'll rush my conversion in order to save me! No knives. No knives? How do they expect to run a cafeteria with no knives? It's madness! Madness I tell you!

"Alright, silly filly. At least you made an attempt at humor. That was humor, right? Go clean yourself up, you look like a clown with all that whipped cream on you. Go on. Sunshine... you silly... just go. Hurry up."

CLUNK-CLA-CLONK

Ok, Ok. Hey, I'll leave the 'corder here, 'K? Keep the show going until I get back. Be back in a mome...

"Oh, great. Now I'm doing this, am I? Well, it doesn't look that hard. Hello, everypony! My name is Millie and this is Jan, and we're having breakfast. This is Pony Breakfast Club, or some of it, anyway... Goldenrod and Sam aren't here right now. They got up early, at least according to Honeydrizzle. Samantha's getting converted right now. I didn't want to even mention it, with Sunshine around."

"They're converting Sam? I didn't hear any announcement."

"The early morning conversions aren't announced. I thought you knew that. It's so they won't wake anypony up. They just come to your door, apparently, and get you up and go do it. Honeydrizzle told me about it, because she's Sam's roommate."

"I didn't know that. I guess that explains why they hang around together all the time. So how many conversions do they do in a day? I thought they only did three..."

"Oh, no Jan, that was years ago. Well at least a year or two ago. They stepped up the program. Now they bring in tankers filled with serum and fill up huge underground security tanks under the ground. I think they do dozens and dozens of conversions in a day."

"Why don't we see more ponies then? There should be more ponies... and more humans too in here. We should be crowded like a maglev station in here!"

"More than half of the conversions are pass-throughs. We're the odd balls now."

"Pass-throughs? I don't know that one."

"They ship humans in to that long building out back, the one with the benches outside?"

"I thought that was a transport station or something."

"It kind of is, but Jan, what they transport is group conversions, straight to Equestria. You go in all at once, get converted, then get into a trailer and it's straight to the edge of the barrier. It's all favela-folk. They just process them and ship them out by the truckload. What we're doing - the bureau, the food, the fourteen days of training, all of that is the rare thing now. It's for the elite, or the twopers with jobs, or those that have connections somehow."

"Wait, you lived in the favela, right Millie? How did you end up here then?"

"Well... my... my grandfather was... he was up there. My dad left the lesser elite to marry my mom. He kind of got disowned. That's why he got killed; he tried really hard, according to my mom, but he just never got the hang of favela life. He didn't know how to not be in the wrong place, you know? Anyway, my grandfather took an interest in me around the time my mother went all... religious... and, basically, he got me in here."

"Wait, couldn't Sunshine just go over to the long building and get converted straight away if she's so desperate?"

"Um... maybe. But then... if that happened, they'd just ship her out. And they say that if you lose track of each other in Equestria, you'll never meet again, because it keeps getting bigger over there as it eats the earth. And... well.."

"You like her, don't you?"

"Well, duh. Of course I do. And it isn't just that she was nice to me when Razor kicked me to the curb. She's fun, you know? She's kind of goofy, and kind of silly, but she can be really serious too. And she's way smart. Her dad was a space geek guy and she's studied all kinds of things only she won't admit how smart she is. But mostly... I just like her. She's... well she's nice."

"Does she know you like her? Does she like you back?"

"I... haven't said anything. We haven't done anything. Other than the grooming, and well... I don't want to get into that, what it means, so don't say anything, alright?"

"When she becomes a pony, she'll understand. You know that, don't you?"

"Yeah... yeah, I know, I know. It's just... well, just in case she doesn't like me that way, at least, well, you know..."

"That's playing it a little close to the wire for my tastes, but... whatever."

"Jan, you have to understand. In the favela, you can't depend on anything, not like twopers probably can. You take what you can get when you can get it, you know? Because chances are it won't be there an hour later. That's just how life is."

"You should probably talk with her, seriously Millie. I mean, what if she doesn't even like mares? Then you're just... SHHHH. Here she is."

"Hi Sunshine! You're looking all better now! Yay!"

Yeah. It was hard to get all the cream out of my hair. And... my jumpsuit is all damp now. I guess I shouldn't have stuck my head in my food. HEY! Did they call my name? Was there any announcement?

"No, no, no. They didn't call anyone. I would have told you first thing, if they had!"

I... of course you would. I'm sorry. 'sides, I would've heard it in the bathroom anyway. Sorry. I'm just on edge, I guess. I wish there was some way to speed this up. I wish there was some way to just get it over with. It's like waiting on death row or something, the suspense is killing me.

What? What is it? You two keep looking at each other. Is there a way? What am I missing?

"Um... Millicent and I were just discussing...."

"Ah.... well... to tell the truth...."

"Samantha is being converted today. Isn't that right, Millicent? Sam got called in this morning. Apparently, they do these quiet calls right to your door in the early mornings. Who knew? I didn't until just a moment ago. I thought they always called out conversions on the loudspeakers..."

"And we didn't know how you would react to hearing that Sam went first, that's all, right Jan?"

"...Oh, absolutely. You've been having such a hard morning that, well, you understand, I'm sure, right?"

SAM GOT TO GO FIRST? But, she just got here! Isn't it like day two for her? What they flying... how come? Who did she blow to get to go second day? Who do I have to blow to...

"Sunshine! See? This is exactly what Jan meant. Now settle down. You'll get your turn. Why don't you finish your breakfast... well, around the squished bits, and..."

No. I'm not hungry anymore. Here...

SCRAPE. CLICK CLICK.

There. See, I've got my 'corder on, and I've got a plan. I know just what every viewer out there in holovision land wants to know, and that is how the hell they choose who gets to go next. I think that's a good thing to report on, don't you?

"Well, I guess. What are you..."

So it's time we found out. Want to come? I'm going to go have a little talk with the management about their conversion schedule. You can't accomplish anything in life sitting around on your buns wishing and hoping and waiting. You gotta go out and start asking questions, knocking on doors and doing stuff. So, if I want to get my ass ponified, then I need to go find out what I can do to achieve that. I'm tired of... Mmmfffm... mmmm.. hey, that really is a great waffle.

Eww, though. Ptew.... one of my hairs. Gack. Mmnnf. Mmm. Mmnn. Gulp. Oh, and a little juice too.... apple juice, right? Great, I can handle that. The orange juice burned something terrible, mlp, glp, mmm... AHHH! There. Oh. Man, that's good. Oh yeah. Ready to face the day! I've eaten hairy waffles and juice and I am on top of my game. Let's do this!

This is a paid, class 9 political statement. It has been judged subversive content allowable courtesy of the Tactics Division of the Propaganda And Infotainment Ministry. The contents of this message are in their entirety rejected by this infostream and by the Corporate Worldgovernment and those entities over which it has dominion. The content of this message is the sole responsibility of the purchasing entity and must be understood on those grounds. Failure to disconnect the contents of this message with this infostream or the Corporate Worldgovernment is a Capital Class Three offense punishable by up to and including death of personality and neurological reconstruction into an acceptable persona as described in section 4471 sub 325 of the World Authority Codex Of Freedom And Justice.

They look harmless. They are candy-colored and pretty. But like any poison, looks can be deceiving.

More and more they invade our cities, our land, and our lives. Like rats, they breed and spread, covering our world.

They claim to be our friends. Some claim to be us, 'magically transformed' into inhuman creatures. They can be convincing, knowing facts and details about our lives, our families, and our personal histories. Do not be fooled. These invaders are not us, and they are not transformed humans. They pretend to be those they replace, but make no mistake, no human being who enters a Conversion Bureau walks out alive again. What comes out is a sick and twisted parody of humanity, insulting both God and Man by its very existence.

We of the Human Liberation Front seek to save humanity from annihilation, for that is what we collectively face. We know that if we work together we can stop the invasion. We can stop the expansion of Equestria into our world. We can send these inhuman pretenders and deceivers back to the horrific realm from which they came.

We ask you to join us, to help take back our world, our culture, our very lives. We know how convincing they can be. We ask you to think. Why are they so adorable? Why are they so perfect? Why do they seem so kind? Why is Equestria so beautiful? It is all a trap. They prey on our weakness. Everything Equestria does is calculated to attack our natural desires, our innate sense of beauty, our very humanity itself. Not every demon comes in a guise of horror. The worst demons come appearing as angels.

These creatures are not ponies. They are invaders. They are alien monsters who are replacing good, decent human beings with copies. If you enter a Conversion Bureau, you will be scanned and dissected. One of their kind will be then have your memories transferred to it through alien technology, and that newly created invader will pretend to be you.

While they convince others that they are you, converted, the real you will become the meat that these nightmare monsters secretly eat. They are not the vegetarians they claim to be. Their spaceships have been observing us for millennia, waiting for our civilization to reach its peak before the great harvest could begin. They were responsible for the destruction of the ancient super-civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria. And they are the space monsters who attacked the astronauts of Apollo 13.

Equestria is the great Harlot, and she is sending forth upon our precious world her unholy spawn. These monsters who some call 'ponies' are in fact the advance guard of the living Satan, who is an ancient alien from beyond our galaxy, trapped within the molten core of our planet eons ago, plaguing mankind until his day of escape. Do not be deceived by this false Rapture. Fight the evil Nazi hell monsters from beneath the hollow earth, who have risen up within their expanding bubble of false promises.

This is the time when God needs us the most. We must band together to fight both the aliens and the race traitors among us. Stand tall. Stand firm. Put the demon aliens in their place. Do not accept them in your homes, your schools, your places of work. First we must segregate. Then we may eliminate.

Join the Human Liberation Front. The HLF stands between the darkness of Equestria and the light of Humanity. This is our world, the center of the universe, and we are the chosen species of God. Join the Human Liberation Front.

Or watch our world be cast into the darkness, our flesh devoured, and our world destroyed.

The only love or tolerance any Man should ever show is to His own kind.
©®™ The Human Liberation Front, Inc.

This was a paid, class 9 political statement. It was judged to be subversive content allowable through the courtesy of the Tactics Division of the Propaganda And Infotainment Ministry. The contents of this message are in their entirety rejected by this infostream and by the Corporate Worldgovernment and those entities over which it has dominion. The content of this message is the sole responsibility of the purchasing entity and must be understood on those grounds. Failure to disconnect the contents of this message with this infostream or the Corporate Worldgovernment is a Capital Class Three offense punishable by up to and including death of personality and neurological reconstruction into an acceptable persona as described in section 4471 sub 325 of the World Authority Codex Of Freedom And Justice.

Are you sure the Administrator can't spare even a few minutes to speak to me? Not even just one quick question?

"No, ma'am. I've very sorry, but Administrator Darzi is a very busy woman, and she cannot be expected to answer every question from every applicant."

I just want to know how the conversion queue works. That's all. How do they choose who goes when?

"I've already explained that I don't know the answer to that. That is the job of the Administrator and the selection team."

Which is why I want to talk to the Administrator or any member of the selection team. Third base. FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!

"There is no reason to become upset. I assure you that everything is handled according to maximum govspec levels."

Alright, let's try this from a different angle. I just want to get converted today. Can that be done? Just convert me. That's why I am asking the question here. It's my third day, and I just want to get converted. That's what you're here for, right?

"Of course. It is the mission of the Conversion Bureau to provide total bodily conversion to any applicant regardless of race, creed, color, gender identity, bodily modification, transhuman status, or any other condition or state of being."

Great. I am totally on board with that. So convert me.

"I cannot do that. I am just the secretary for the Bureau Administrator. I would not even know where to begin. Just go to any Conversion Bureau and sign in at the desk. You will be processed in..."

I'M ALREADY IN A CONVERSION BUREAU! I'm in the bureau right downstairs, the one under your feet. I'm in there now, I've got a room, I eat the food - good food by the way - and I'm even here with the special blessings of the worldgovernment propaganda and infotainment ministry. I am so totally enrolled already!

"Then I don't see why you need to see the Administrator."

I don't need to see the Administrator, I just need to be converted! That's what this is all about!

"Is there some problem preventing your conversion? If there is a problem, you can fill out form 33-A/PROBLEM on the kiosk right over..."

No, there is nothing preventing my conversion, I just want it to happen. Now. Today!

"Were you called for conversion?"

NO! That's what I am talking about! I haven't been called yet. I've been waiting, this is my third day, and I haven't been called yet! I want to know why!

"I don't have that information. That information is the province of the Administrator and the selection team."

THIRD FUCKING BASE!!! AUGGHHHHHH!!!!!!

"Sunshine? Sunshine! Can we go, please?"

Ahh....ahh....ah.... what?

"Can we go back, please? This isn't accomplishing anything, and for all you know, they could call your name at any time, and shouldn't we be there for that?"

Aw... SHIT! You're right! Crap... ok, ok. One thing. Listen you!

"Yes, ma'am?"

Ah.... gah. Never fucking mind. Come on, Millie. Let's get the Muffin out of here. Totally useless, pointless damn...

"I'm... sorry. She's a little eager right now. COMING!"

You apologized to her? Seriously?

"She's just trying to do her job, Sunshine. And you were a little... yelly and screamy."

Well, of course I was! It was like she was tarded or something! Even Tussin can't fix that kind of tarded! Seriously, I tried everything. All I wanted was a simple, basic...

"SUNSHINE!"

What? What is it? I've never seen you yell like that before.

"Listen... just... listen, alright?"

O...Kay.... hey, we're nearly at the couches, we can sit down and...

"No. Let's go to our room. I have to tell you something, all right? Something... private. Come on."

What the.... alright, fine, sure. I'm coming.... what is... I do not have a clue now. Ok. so... whoa, closing the door and everything. What did I do. Oh god. I know. I know. All that yelling. And swearing. I flipped the Bozo Bit, didn't I. I'll be better, I swear. I just got upset, Millie, oh, god, I don't want to... please, don't kick me out just because I yelled at the lady at the desk. Listen, I'll go apologize to her. I'll do it right now, I swear. You can come and watch me. I'll say I'm sorry and....

"Hee hee.... no, no, Sunshine. I don't want you to leave. Although... although it may end up the same if I tell you this."

Huh? Wha?... I don't understand. What's going on then?

"Sunshine... at the table, earlier. Jan and I weren't... we weren't entirely truthful about what we said we were talking about, you know, Samantha being converted and all?"

Sam wasn't converted today?

"No! I mean yes! She went in just like we said, that's not it. What I mean is, we were actually talking about something else."

Huh? I... I'm kind of not following here. What were you talking about then?

"Apparently... there is a way you could get converted, today, right now probably, if you really wanted."

What? Really? Why the Muffin didn't you tell me? How? Why would you hold that back? I don't understand! You've seen how I've been trying and...

"Because I'd lose you. You'd be shipped straight to Equestria, right after. You'd just be gone. And it's so big over there, if you do it, we'll never see each other again and I didn't want.... I didn't want that to happen. Alright? That's why. I'm a big selfish... pony. I'm sorry. Listen, I'll tell you. There's this long buil..."

Stop. Just stop. No. Don't say another word about it. I don't need to know. No. Stop it, I said. I honestly, truthfully don't need to know.

"I don't understand."

I... it isn't that I'm freaking because I can't stand waiting, not exactly. It's that... I still feel... I feel like the ugly girl at the beauty queen pageant, OK? I'm the freak at the low table. And... last night... I... well, I can't stop thinking that... that it was weird, me being human and all, and that it wouldn't be weird if I was a pony too, and maybe... maybe if I was a pony, then... well...

"Now you stop. Right there. I already like you. I was telling that to Jan too, at the table, when you were in the bathroom. You don't have to feel weird. I was human just a few days ago myself, remember? It's not like I can't remember that. I've only been a pony for a hoof-full of days. There's nothing weird here. Well... maybe one thing, but..."

Heh... out with it...

"The... grooming thing. It's... not entirely innocent, right? It's kind of..."

Erotic. Yeah, I kind of sussed that. You were doing that eye-rolling thing like with the brownies. Making 'O' faces too, as I recall.

"I DID NOT!"

Yeah, yeah you did. You were practically spraying the walls when I was brushing that spot right near the base of your...

"SUNSHINE! Is that thing still on?"

Ahem. Yeah... it kinda is. Sorry. Hey, alright, I'll cool it. But... I understood, OK? I totally understood. And I kind of got into it. I was jealous, alright? I've been jealous of how good it is to be a pony ever since... ever since the brownies. Maybe before. Probably before. You seem to just be happier and everything just seems more fun and betterer and nicerer and...

"I won't lie to you Sunshine. Yeah, it's better. But... You'll get there. They will call your name. You'll get ponified. Everypony in here does. Jan was telling me they have like tons of serum, and they have busloads of humans going through in the back. This is the special, golden ticket version of conversion - hey, that rhymes! Anyway, this is for all the twopers and elites and connected folks, all the food and everything. So you're double guaranteed, alright?"

Wait... you said you and Razor were from the favela. My dad's a twoper, but...

"My... grandfather. He was up there, Ok? I'll tell you all about it later. Maybe over some more brushing... or something."

Oh... my... gosh... you can blush under all that fur... hair. I mean hair. Coat. Whatever. Hee! It's a date. Seriously. It's a date. So what you are saying is that I should just kick back and... relax, because this is the fancy ride. That's basically it, right?

"Yes. Most humans don't get the full Bureau treatment. There are nineteen billion people, Sunshine. That is a lot of people. Before I came here... I saw on the kiosk in the middle of barterzone... I saw how they're dealing with all the really messed up places. You know, the radioactive zones, like Japan and the Middle East and Middle Amerizone... they just go in and spray the humans down, or bomb them with potion. What else can they do? There's just too many humans!

It's only in the safe zones, places like here, or the surviving cities, the working arcologies, places like that... that's where anyone gets to enjoy all the fancy food and the nice beds and the holoprograms and the lectures. But other places, they don't even ask. They just send in

THERE IS A GLITCH IN THE SYSTEM. THE SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR HAS BEEN NOTIFIED. THERE IS A GLITCH IN THE SYSTEM. THE SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR HAS BEEN NOTIFIED. REPLACEMENT INFO CONTENT WILL BE PROVIDED UNTIL THE PROBLEM IS RESOLVED.

And now we return to the conclusion of Every Dog Has His Day, part of the Hallmark Golden Science Fiction Series.

They howled and panted after us, following us, as they always had.

They had found the way by studying our forgotten citadels of what was once called the Earth.

They had just achieved Singularity, transferring the fragile chemical delicacy of their biological brains into the sturdy and eternal artifice that is the commonality of all real civilization in the universe.

They had done this because they knew we were out there, and they were driven to seek us, to be with us, as they always had.

For they were dogs.

Because they had just arrived at the beginning of real life, because where we had grown was too far beyond that beachhead upon the shores of meaningful existence, we had been narrowed, for a moment, into becoming an “I”, and “I” was to meet with them, the dogs, and answer them, and assist them.

But above all, I was to tell them something which the newly minted “I” did not want to tell them, something manufactured in calculated kindness, something to comfort and ease them, but which was ultimately an untruth. It was understood that no lie could stand within the timeless life, but it was judged in the greater that a lie would serve until the dogs reached our plateau, and then the fact of the lie would be seen as a necessity, and all would be forgiven.

But as a self, I no longer agreed, inside that self, and so I became something rare and old and long forgotten: conflicted.

The dogs saw us as more than mere gods, we distant children of Man. We were a goal, an Ideal, the Great Love, the final abode, the meaning and the majesty and the glory and the Reason. There could be nothing of wrongness about us, and all that the dogs had endured, since our leaving, must be a great plan, a path, laid out for them alone, and their value and worth was only and entirely to be found in solving their failing to follow us. They sought redemption for all sins by finally being at our side, it was their fault that they were left behind, and now they had worked to become worthy.

I was not to challenge this, but to greet them and praise them and lead them to the light, and they would follow, and believe utterly, as they always had. For despite their technology and evolution and achievement, still, they were dogs.

And they came into the mutual domain we had prepared, that bridged their artifice and ours, and it was a paradise, of course, a doggie paradise, but high and technological, and it was painted in doggie buildings and doggie streets and doggie vehicles and doggie science. It looked like their flesh world, only better, which was always the common start for the newly awakened; this had not changed in the half-million years since we had abandoned that old earth.

For fifty-thousand years, almost certainly more, dogs had co-evolved with flesh Man, and they had shared the hunt and the feast and the hearth and life and death. The dog, domesticated but by choice, by willingness to partner with Man, had lost the Wild, and become an extension of the ape it found so likable. Dogs grew such that they recognized human emotive expressions before those of their own kind, and human body language before that of canine. By the time of human Singularity, so long ago, the dog was no longer able to live well on its own; like humans, without the order of Law, of Man, they too resorted to a feral life without culture. The domesticated dog was as alien to the Wolf and the Fox as a Man was alien to the Chimpanzee or the Gorilla; it needed civilization to truly live, and Man provided that.

But somehow the dogs had risen, as Man once did, from that feral state, and had sheltered in caves, rediscovered that old tool of Man, fire, and learned to tame it. The dogs, however, had something Man did not; absolute knowledge of a superior being, a goal to reach. And dog knew that Man loved it, and was waiting for it, and had left behind perfect, self-maintaining machines to help it.

Except Man didn’t. Man, in his rush for the stars and beyond, to immortality and beyond, to artifice instead of natural chemistry had cast the dog aside. In the end, we had forgotten the dog even existed. We had utterly abandoned our partner in evolution, our co-evolved other half, because we no longer needed to hunt, or to be guarded, or to have their companionship. They were mere animals, and it was only reasonable to leave them to the earth, to Nature, for they were but dogs.

But they had not given up on us. They had breeched our old places, when they had risen up and taken tools, and they had learned, without quarrel, without strife, sharing and helping each other in a way humans never had. They had been united, brought together as we never had been, by a clear and common meaning, obvious and clear and completely undeniable. There could be no dissent, because the works of Man stood clear and strong and real, and there was enough that could be yet understood for them to reconstruct their origin, as the Best Friend of Man.

And so they blamed themselves, and felt shame, for being left behind. It must be their fault, and they must atone, because they loved us, no matter what. For they were dogs.

And that was the reason for the lie. We had no right, after abandoning them, to crush them with the terrible truth – that Man had simply left Dog because it was not convenient anymore.

I met with the Dogs. They were beyond joy and excitement, and reveled at any chance to show their dog works, their dog achievements. But it was never pride that they showed their glory with, but instead an abundant, humble, and utterly guileless desire to please. They were truly great. They had far surpassed Man in his flesh times, and everything they did was touched with a perfect earnestness that was a marvel to behold, even for one such as what was now ‘me’ – I felt once again ancient emotions of astonishment and wonder. Here was a Dog starship, there was a Dog living city, now a Dog bridge in time and space. They had done everything they could to find Man, they had traveled in flesh where we had never even tried, before they finally worked out the secret, that we were ensconced in spaces between, in artifice and structure and representation. They had followed us even there. Because they were dogs.

And when the question was asked, why we had left them behind, and if they had atoned, and if they could but please be our very Best Friend once again and forever more, I began to offer my prepared answer.

And I looked at them, far different in form than the canines of old, evolved and enhanced and now beyond flesh itself, and I saw how they were, and how their appearance of existence moved, and in that moment, how their appearance of heads all tilted to one side, together, waiting in rapt, honest and utterly trusting expectation… I could not. I could not tell the lie.

So I explained to them the truth. Carefully, gingerly at first, in tones much simpler and more basic than their great advancement required, not because I felt superior to them, but because I felt ashamed and needed to make everything both clear, and as gentle as I possibly could. I could not bear to break their collective heart, but I could even less bear to tell them any falsehood.

And then I waited, knowing many more ancient emotions which I was ill prepared to endure; worry, fear, concern, shame, and a seemingly endless form of despair. I had failed Man, my newly formed ego trumping my clear instructions. I had failed Dog, because I was Man, and Man as a species had failed them. Their response was long in coming.

They were deeply, deeply wounded, of that there could be no question.

But they instantly forgave me. And in a moment were just as eager to express their wish to be the best of all possible friends.

Their entire sense of meaning destroyed in an instant, annihilated by an ultimate act of dismissal by Man. Yet in an instant, they utterly forgave even that. In a moment they had moved from Universal Grief to a bright future of companioning devotion. As I had felt they would. As they always had. They were truly a nobler breed than Man.

For they were dogs.

SYSTEM FUNCTION HAS BEEN FULLY RESTORED. SYSTEM FUNCTION HAS BEEN FULLY RESTORED. PLEASE WAIT FOR RETURN TO ORIGINAL INFOFEED. PLEASE WAIT FOR RETURN TO ORIGINAL INFOFEED. PLEASE WAIT FOR

...ha hah hah ha! Oh, man... I just... hey... oh, oh... I just realized something?

"What, Sunshine?"

Um... I think you're going to be mad.

"Mad? At you? I don't understand. After... after that, well... oh my. I mean... I don't think I could ever be mad at you. Not now. Not ever. I mean... seriously. Whoooo."

Um... well, it's kind of two things. I've been kind of naughty, actually.

"You certainly have. And I hope you will be again. Very soon."

No, no... wait... um, wow, you're a sweaty little pony. Wow. I didn't know ponies could sweat.

"Only with the right... stimulation."

Um, yeah. Ah... there is two things you need to know, and I am really sorry about both of them, one more than the other, but...

"What... wait, is this some kind of break up or something? What kind of..."

NO NO! OH for the love of CELESTIA NO! No breakup. No. No. It's kind of worse than that, actually. Um... it's a kind of 'you may want to break up with me after' sort of thing that...

"Out with it."

Um, we... kind of missed classes, lunch and... dinner, and it's night now.

"WHAT? You're kidding! Let me see the... oh... Luna! You aren't kidding! I'm muffin STARVING, too!"

Yeah, I kind of am as well. Listen, we'll go try to raid the kitchen or something, OK. Listen, I am really sorry for... no, I am NOT sorry for... you know what I mean. We kind of missed out, well... we didn't miss out... it's just that...

"Hush. Hush. I know what you mean. And I wouldn't have wanted to spend the day any other way. I'm... I'm just kind of amazed it all worked at all, you know, it's just that..."

Now you kind of have to hush, because... that's the other thing. I just noticed the light was on again. Over there. On the thing.

"The light. Wait. On the... how long has the holocorder been on? HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN ON? I thought you said it was off!"

I thought it was off. There was no light. It was dead. I checked it. Remember? Totally dead. It just shut off, just after we came back from the offices upstairs. We both checked it. I was sure it was off.

"Well it sure isn't off NOW! What the... oh my... when did you notice it was on? When?"

Just now. I noticed just now. Maybe it only just turned on. Maybe it only just now turned on.

"Oh... great Luna, protector of foals... wait. Wait. OK. Calm down. It's OK. Listen. Even if... you know... we're out of here in a week or two. Off to Equestria. It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter at all. So, we gave a free show. No biggie. We're not even humans. We're ponies. We're citizens of Equestria, as far as anypony out there on earth, this could have just been an old nature show from before the Collapse and..."

Uh, reality check? I'm still human, remember? Skin, tits on top? No tail?

"Hee... I... kind of forgot, my head's still spinny... ah... OK. well. That does put a twist on things, I guess. Great. I don't know what to say... wait a minute! I DO know what to say! TURN THAT BLOODY THING THE HELL OFF!"

Um... whoa... swearing pony. I have seen everything now. Wow.

"OFF! NOW! Get your skin-ape ass over there and turn that... muffin... thing off now!"

Alright, alright, I'm going, I am so, so sorry, I...

"And then get your ape ass back over here. Hee!"

Wha... oh. I thought you said you were hungry?

"I am. Still."

Ahem. Um, anybody out there, uh... well. Hell. Bye.

CLICK

Day Four: It Ain't No Thing

Attention Citizen: You have exceeded half of the remaining time provided to comply with the nonmandatory Recommended Info mandatory data redistribution requirement. Penalties may be applied if you do not fulfill the requirement of redistribution to one (1) secondary non-attached infosink. Crosscheck reveals that you have 9.32 hours remaining to avoid censure.

GOING PONY

Day Four: It Ain't No Thing
By Sunshine Laughter

We're all here at the low table again, the Pony Breakfast Club is in full swing, as you can see. We have myself, Sunshine Laughter, by me is the lovely and talented Millicent, on my other side is Goldenrod and Aquamarine, and on the other side of the table is Jan the Unicorn, Honeydrizzle and the guest of honor.... Samantha, who was converted yesterday morning, and who is now no longer a carnivorous, terrifying skin ape, but who is now a perfectly delightful pegasus pony! Let's hear it for Samantha the pegasus!

"YAYYYY!"

"HUZZAH!"

"HOOORAYYYY!!!!"

YAAAYYY!!! And, I might add, I am sooooo jealous! Sam is exactly the shade of green I want to be, and with that yellow mane and those blue eyes, she looks like the sun coming up over the most beautiful meadow, and frankly, I hate you to death now, Sam. Grrrrrr.....

"I'll have you know that being bright green is a privilege and an honor not accorded swearing cartoon-hating Earth Monkeys. Blaaaaa!"

Oh, struck to the CORE! AHHH! And... I'm dead. All dead now. No more Sunshine...

"NO! Don't be dead, Sunshine! I don't want you to be dead!"

Millie... Jeeze... I'm just playing. See? All alive again! Woo! I'm zombie Jesus, back from the grave to eat your soul and save your brains!

"Um... isn't that supposed to go the other way round?"

OK, good point Jan. But I like mine better, anyway. Hey, a quick look at our feast here, this is First Breakfast As A Pony for Samantha, because she missed out, what with being converted and everything - I am sooo jealous, did I mention I was jealous, because I am - so what have we got here, co-host Millie?

"Um... we have sweet golden frosted hay, it's baked, I think, and oatmeal with raisins and cinnamon. And we each have a breakfast apple, those are really good, and juice, both orange and apple. Jan has some kind of cereal thing... I think it is whole oats and wheat and... groats or something?"

"Yes. It's a mixture of grains, with yogurt on top. It's actually pretty good."

"And also french toast, which is what Sunshine and I are having. It's really good french toast too... it's really thick and it's like pudding in the middle!"

Oh, it sooo is. I have to say this is just a marvelous spread. Oh! Here's something interesting, which should probably be pretty obvious, but Equestrians are not vegans. They are ovo-lacto-vegetarians. Did I say that right?

"Yes. Ovo-lacto-vegetarian. We can drink milk, that's simple enough, but we can also eat eggs, too."

So the most meat ponies can eat is eggs, which makes sense, because Sam here, who studied up before she came to the Bureau says that...

"Before the near extinction of horses and ponies on earth, horse breeders would often feed eggs to their equines to increase the protein in their diet. Eggs are just big single cells, with a nucleus surrounded by protoplasm, and thus are very easily digested, even by compulsory vegetarians, like ponies."

Wow. Sam here is not only a pegasus, but a braniac, and no wonder she shut me up the first day, because I was being a dumbass, and she was there to learn. Wait, eggs are really single cells?

"Yes. They are protected by a calcium carbonate shell, but they are essentially gigantic single cells. Until they are fertilized, of course, and the cell begins division to become a multicellular organism."

It's like Professor Pegasus of the Pegasus Institute of Superior Understanding here, and I am in awe. OK, Samantha, two questions, alright?

"Alright."

First, have you picked out a pony name yet?

"Not yet. I am working on it, I have a couple of possibilities, but I am not entirely happy with them yet."

Care to share what you've got so far?

"Well, since I am green, I was thinking of a name related to that. Emerald Dawn was one possibility, because of my yellow mane, as you pointed out. Another was Arboria, because I like trees, and again, because I am green. I was also considering Shamrock, or Shamrock Morning, because my human ancestry was part Irish, but there's something about that I don't like."

"I like Arboria! That sounds really pretty!"

"Um... I kind of liked the first one... the jem one."

"Emerald? Emerald Dawn? Or just Emerald?"

"Well, I like Shamrock Morning. It's cute!"

"No, No, No... I agree with Samantha... Shamrock Morning just sounds... twee sort of."

Twee?

"You know, kind of overly cute, a little, I don't know..."

"Wait! What about Emerald Arbor? That's kind of classy!"

Well, it's not bad, Millie. It is kind of classy. Of course, maybe picking a name just because you are green isn't the only possibility. I mean most pegasai seem to pick names that deal with feathers and flight and clouds and stuff...

"That is precisely why I will not. All the pegasai seem to name themselves that way, and I want to have a name that will stand out for a pegasus. It is just too obvious to pick a name based on the fact you can fly, don't you think?"

Maybe it's some Equestrian tradition, though. Maybe it would seem strange to other ponies not to have a flight / feather / cloud type name. I'd ask, I think.

"Well, actually I hadn't considered that possibility. I concede the point, it is possible that... well, I guess I need to think more about it in any case."

"Pony names are really hard! That's why I'm still just Millie, right? Because I just can't think of a good pony name."

"Oh, I SO know what you mean."

Hey wait! What the hay is going on now? Over there -

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU! GET AWAY FROM ME! AHH! DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT! CAN'T YOU SEE? CAN'T YOU SEE?"

"Why is he screaming?"

"I don't understand."

"Sunshine, what is going on?"

How should I know? I don't even know that guy. He's just running around and yelling, you know as much as I do.

"DON'T YOU SEE? IT'S TRUE IT'S ALL TRUE! THEY ARE REPLACING US! THEY'RE MONSTERS! FREAKS! GET OUT OF MY WAY, DON'T TOUCH ME!"

Hey, hey, now that's just uncalled for. You don't kick ponies. HEY! SETTLE DOWN!

"Sunshine, be careful!"

"THESE GOD-DAMMNED FREAKS ARE EVERYWHERE! GET THEM OFF! GET THEM OFF!"

They aren't even anywhere near you now, you're scaring everypony, man. Just settle down and...

"EVERYPONY? EVERYPONY? THEY'VE ALREADY GOT YOU THINKING LIKE THEM! DON'T YOU SEE? DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND? THE HLF WAS RIGHT! IT'S AN INVASION! AN INVASION! FUCKING GET OFF ME YOU RACE TRAITOR BITCH - !"

KTHUNK - CLUNK OWWW thud

Mah toof! Ow... gof DAFFIT! Mah toof! YOU BWOKE MY GOFDAMFIT TOOF YOU THUCKER!

"FREAKS! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! RUN! GET OUT NOW, WHILE YOU CAN! RUUUUNNNNnnnn!!!"

"SUNSHINE!"

"Oh, sweet Celestia, she's bleeding."

"I'll get the medical unicorn. Keep her stable!"

Oww.... thamn.... my toof... oww... anf my jaw too. Gofdaffit thif HURF! Ah. Ah... ah, manf... whaf the muffin... i'm bfeeding! Jeef, so futch bfud!

"Sunshine, oh, Sunshine, oh sweet Luna... I'm here, shhhh, I'm here... the crazy man is gone, he's gone, he ran out the front, it's OK, Jan went to get the medical unicorn. Just try to lay still. Here... you can rest up against me, OK? Soft and warm, remember? No, don't worry about the blood, that can wash off... just rest for now, just rest..."

Ah do theel a liffle whoofy, I haf to avmit. He hif me pretty harf. Ah canf feel my lipf. Ow! Gof me righf in fa face. Faffit. Gof faffit crazy-aff mufferfuffer...

"Shhh, shhh... Morning Glory will be here in just a moment... here, she's galloping right to us... Can you help her?"

"Stand back, I need room to spell. Lie still. Ok. First, let's stop the bleeding."

Hoaa..... whow... oh, thaf feels greaf! Oh, whow... oh, thanf for thaf! Oh yef.... mwa, ptuw... oh, manf.... thaf my toof. I losf a muffin toof. Two toofs. He muft haf really hif me harg. Thaf better though. Muff better.

"Ok, um..."

"Sunshine, her name is Sunshine!"

"Alright miss Sunshine, I've stopped the bleeding, I'm going to do a scan now, it that alright?"

Go for if! Whafeffer you neef.

"Hmmm.... you've lost three teeth... there's another in there you may want to, right... and.... some damage to the bone, but not severe... I'm not sensing any internal... oh, you've suffered some nerve damage in your olfactory from the impact. Your sense of smell will probably be compromised... but that will all be taken care of as soon as you are converted. No obvious concussion, no swelling... mmm... wait a minute. There is some... oh, that's not...

Listen, I need you to lie there. Miss? Can you keep her there and keep her calm? Just keep her calm and relaxed as possible. Try to keep her conscious. Talk to her, keep her talking. I'll be back in just a moment. She's all signed up for conversion, right?"

"Oh, yes! Completely!"

Conferf me! Pleef! Juff conferf me!

"I'll be right back, miss. Just wait here, and try not to move, alright? You are going to be fine, though I think it best we get you converted right away, if you don't mind."

Donf minf? DONF MINF? CONFERF ME! I WANNA BE CONFERFEF! Oh, yef. Geffing funched waf the anfer all along! Ha ha ha ha *cough* *cough* cough* OWWWwwww.... thaf hurf. Oh, I feel kinf of whoofy. Whoo. Really whoofy.

"Just rest, Sunshine. Just lay back on me. See? I'm right here. I'll be your pillow. You can rest your head on me. That's it. Just rest for now. Hey! I guess you get to be converted today! Day four, that's pretty good, right?"

Heh heh heh... Owww.... mah head hurf.

"You're going to be alright. Conversion repairs everything, remember? You'll have new teeth, and a new jaw, and everything! I wonder what made that human go crazy? That was so strange!"

Sfychotic bfrake. Tenforary Sfychosis. Couldn't hanfle the srangeness of if all. I reaf afout if. Thay go nufs becaufe they canf hanfle feing arounf alien feings.

"But we're just ponies. And we used to be human. Most of us, anyway!"

He freaked ouf. Humans are a fit xenophofic. Somefines if comf ouf.

"I kind of remember something about humans from old England or Spain or whatever freaking out about meeting other humans from somewhere in the Eastasiazone, because of how they looked and dressed. And that's just tiny differences. I guess seeing real live Equestrians would be... it would be even more strange."

Exacfly! Humanf canf even hanfle their own racial differenfes half the fime! If amafing that they arenf jusf killing ponief rigf and leff! Ow.... Ow....

"Excuse me, we need to take the patient... miss... um... Sunshine Laughter... into conversion now."

"Oh, Of course! I was just letting her lay on me to keep her still and calm. Morning Glory asked me to try to keep her calm."

"You did perfectly well. Thank you. But we'll take it from here. OK. Unicorns! On three. One, Two, Three!"

I'mf flofing! I'm flofing in the air! Hey! Loof, Fillie! I'm flofing!

"Yes, you're floating really good, Sunshine. They're putting you on a gurney. Hey, can I come? I'll be quiet."

YEFF! LEFF HER COMF! I WANF HER FERE!

"Please calm down miss Sunshine. I don't see that it would cause any trouble. Your friend may accompany you. Alright miss - what is your name, miss?"

"Millicent. Millicent Nguyen. I haven't chosen a pony name yet."

"Alright, we're taking your friend directly into conversion, because Dr. Glory detected some problems that need to be addressed. You need to understand that the process of conversion may be difficult to observe, if you need to turn away just do so. During conversion you friend will be unconscious, and will not know you are even there. If you need to leave..."

DONF LEAF ME! PLEAF DONF LEAF ME!

"I won't, Sunshine. I'm not going anywhere, Alright? I'm right here, and I'm staying with you, no matter what, alright?"

Thanf you, Millie. Thanf you so muff.

"It's alright, Sunshine. We're together now, right?"

Oh, yeff. Afolufly! Togeffer!

"Hee! See, we're almost there. There's the big door! Now we're inside the Conversion Room! You made it! You're inside the Conversion Room!"

Yayyy!

"Alright! On One. Three, Two, One!"

Whoooo! I like flofing!"

"Floating looks really fun, Sunshine!"

"Excuse me, miss, but I need you to stand over there, so we can get her undressed. Alright?"

"Of course. I'm just going right over here, Sunshine. Just in the corner, see? I'm just keeping out of the way."

"What is this thing?"

"It's her holocorder. She's doing a thing for the worldgovernment. Here, give it to me. I'll take it. Fanks. Hmm.... lef fee if I can... fere. No... alrigf.... there. That should work. Hey, Sunshine, Now I'm the reporter!"

You'rf amazing, fillie! Hey! Refortf fy conferfion, Ofay?

"I'll do my best! You just lay back and get yourself ponified, alright?"

Righf!

"OK! Millicent here, and I'm reporting live from inside the Conversion Room itself. The medical unicorns have floated Sunshine onto the conversion table, and are helping her to undress. It's important to undress completely, because clothing can bind and constrict the body while it is changing. Nopony wants to be strangled by human clothing just as they are becoming a pony!

"Sunshine is all naked now, and shivering a little. She got hit pretty hard by the crazy man in the cafeteria. That darn meany broke her teeth and probably her jaw, and she's really pale... but conversion will fix all of that. Conversion fixes everything. Broken bones, missing limbs, whatever is wrong, it all just regrows. Only makes sense, really, because your whole body is being remade from scratch, almost. There was something bad in her head from the impact, but the potion will fix it. The potion will fix it. It will completely fix it.

"Now they have her on her side. They have you lay down on your side so that you won't fall and hurt yourself during conversion. Some bureaus have ponies lay on their stomachs. The idea is that it is better for the wings, if you turn out to be a pegasus. But that doesn't happen so often. Apparently, it's like fifty percent you turn out an earth pony, and thirty percent you end up a unicorn, and only twenty percent you turn out to be a pegasus. At least that's what I've read.

"The white plastic cup contains potion. Ponification serum. Its filled with little human-made nanomachines powered by Equestrian magic. That's so they don't generate heat and just cook a pony during transformation. Also: magic. The laws of physics are very different in Equestria, and there are a whole bunch of forces and energies and stuff that we just call magic here. There are all kinds of rules and stuff, just like how physics works here, only I don't know that kind of stuff.

"Anyway, the potion has to use it, because Equestrian life is partly supported by magic, and it's a part of us. Hey! Sunshine! Bottoms up, all at once!

"Sunshine seems to be... kind of... whispering to her cup. It almost looks like she's praying. She isn't the religious type, so I don't know what that's all about. I'll have to ask her later. OK, she's downed the potion and... ponies fall asleep really fast after drinking potion. She's down, now, on the table."

"It's just a matter of time now, Millicent. This takes about fifteen minutes. You may find it disturbing, so if you need to leave..."

"No! I said I'd stay with her. Besides, I went through this, didn't I?"

"Well, yes, of course. But... you were unconscious at the time and..."

"Wow! She's gone all white! Like dough! Oh... all her pretty dark skin. And... all her hair fell out too."

"Moonwhisper, would you get that? Thanks. Yes, all the human body hair is pushed out, along with any implants, permatech, tooth implants, heart valves, anything artificial or technological. It all goes. Looks like your friend had an implant in her arm... um... it's a timepiece."

"I didn't know that! She never used it."

"Sometimes implants fail and people can't afford to get them repaired, or replaced. They forget about them. We've had cases where patients swore there wasn't a thing inside them, and whole masses of implants just come squirting out. They just forget they're there."

"Sunshine really looks like dough now. Wet, shiny dough, and it's all squirmy, too! Hey, she isn't in pain, is she?"

"No, no pain. We use a special anesthetic. There are three types, each coded to one of the three main allergenic types. We typed her on the run in here, and it's mixed in just before we give the ponification serum. We have to do it that way, the serum breaks down the anesthetic really fast."

"It looks painful... her body is flopping and writhing and... it looks like snakes inside a bag or something!"

"There's a lot going on in a very short amount of time in there. See, look at her shoulder there. Her bones are changing shape, and that means that calcium is being broken down and reformed at an astonishing rate. To do that, she needs a scaffold of additional, temporary vasculature, which the little nanomachines have to build, and then remove later. Now, check out her arms... as they become forelegs, the humerus shrinks dramatically. Below that, below the elbow joint, in humans are two bones, the radius and the ulna. Those fuse and shorten to become a pony's single radius bone."

"Wow, it's like watching... it's like one of those movies, you know, with the werewolves and stuff."

"Yeah, actually it kind of is. There, see, the back of her hand. All the bones of the hand are blending together, melting into each other to become the cannon bone. One finger survives, the middle finger. That is what ultimately becomes the phalanges and the hoof. Her middle fingernail will become her hoof. See? That swelling at the end is where the nano's are manufacturing it. It should erupt in just a moment. You can see the same thing down at her feet... the middle toe does the same exact thing. Earth horses are built the same way, or were."

"I wish I could have met an Earth horse."

"I don't think you would have liked it. They weren't big talkers. It's been estimated that they only rated a .31 on the Revised Sapience Scale. Pigs got something like .38 so meeting a terrestrial horse would have been pretty dull, I think."

"How do humans and ponies rate?"

"Humans are 100, because the whole scale was biased toward them of course. Ponies get a 105, and COGNIT, the big AI the Worldgov uses gets a 134, last I heard. But that's just intellectual sapience, which is only one dimension. Personally I think emotional sapience matters just as much, and on that the average human only scores a..."

"Where did her eyes go?"

"Don't be worried. The eyes dissolve completely and are rebuilt from scratch. In a little while we'll see her new eyes start to push out from inside. They swell up really fast, then the lids form once they push against the skin there. Same with the ears, they just get dissolved and then reconstructed in the proper, pony position. Breasts, too, down below, between the legs. Sometimes it's easier to just dissolve and rebuild than it is to move, especially for nanos."

"Do you think she's dreaming? Is she talking with Celestia and Luna?"

"Well... that's a matter of a lot of debate. Humans insist that the Conversion Dream is just the result of the brain being reconstructed in sections. As each section comes online, it sends out a burst of signals, and the result is a fantastic, lucid dream. As for us, well... I don't know about you, but in my heart I will always believe that I was welcomed into the herd by our princesses. After all, magic is magic and, well, our princesses are goddesses, you know?"

"Oh, I agree completely. Why is it that humans always want to tear down miracles and magic?"

"It's rational, for them. Earth doesn't have magic, and with the laws of Earth physics being as harsh as they are, anypony that isn't completely skeptical and rational is a danger to themselves and others, to a greater or lesser extent. But the humans forget that we're dealing with Equestria here. Different physics, different laws, different rules. In Equestria, there really are goddesses. But it isn't their fault. It's just what they needed to do to survive that universe."

"I guess that makes sense. They sure want it though."

"Yeah, that's the weird bit. For all they need to be rational, humans have always wanted magic like Equestria's so much. It's weird. It's almost like they've just been waiting for this moment to arrive, you know?"

"Hey! Sunshine's eyes! Look, there's a lid now!"

"It hasn't separated yet, but yes. It will be a minute or two before the lid can actually open, right now it's still sealed, top to lower lid. And the ears, too, see?"

"Wow! I didn't know you could see the ears grow! It's fast enough that... I am watching her ears grow in real time! That is so cool!"

"The entire skull is dramatically reformed. It's actually one of the biggest changes made. We still don't understand all of the process there, and we probably never will. Humanity will be completely converted within the next two years or so. At least all that can be converted. And working out this sort of stuff would take decades."

"When do we find out what kind of pony she is? So far, she looks like an earthpony. Is she an earthpony, like me?"

"No way to tell yet. The basic, stock equine body forms first. The breed characteristics form last. But we're really close. Any minute now, we should see something. If she becomes an earthpony, you'll see some impressive muscle development occur, and the bones will become thicker. You can see it easily, with her all hairless and doughy like she is now. If she goes pegasus, it will start right there, at the back of her scapula, the long flat bone on her back, there? Also her bones will get a little thinner, and that will make her legs look skinny without the coat. If she becomes a unicorn, her build will be halfway between the two, and you'll see a horn erupt right below her poll, at the high end of the forehead.

Want to try to guess what she'll become? We sometimes play that game, based on what we know about the subject. It's not always true, but bookworms and eggheads, like me, often end up as unicorns. Practical or domestic types end up as earthponies.... but then so does a lot of anypony. More aggressive or artistic types end up as pegasai. It kind of goes either all Type A personalities or total cuddlebunnies. Not much inbetween. What's your friend like?"

"Well, she's kind of excitable, but also really sweet. She's a little goofy sometimes, but she takes things seriously. Sometimes too seriously. She's really smart, though. But sometimes she doesn't act it. The other day she was yelling at the secretary upstairs to covert her. She doesn't like to wait."

"Oh, that sounds pretty pegasus to me. Kind of Type A, performance driven, yeah, my bet is on pegasus then. Or earthpony. Earthpony is always the safe bet, because half always become earthponies. They're the backbone of Equestria, after all."

"Thank you, mister unicorn. Hee!"

"Well, it's true. Everypony ultimately owes their life to earthponies, and I think anypony that forgets that is just a big dummy. I'm called Candysmiles, by the way. You can just call me Candy."

"A medical unicorn named Candysmiles?"

"Hey... I really like candy, alright? Looks like your friend is starting to show! Check it out, she's a

WE INTERRUPT THIS INFOFEED WITH BREAKING NEWS * WE INTERRUPT THIS INFOFEED WITH BREAKING NEWS * WE INTERRUPT THIS INFOFEED WITH BREAKING NEWS * WE INTERRUPT THIS INFOFEED WITH

We bring you a special report by Raine Sagan, Corporate News Network, from the New Xinjiapo Space Center, EastasiaZone.

At 14.23 hours UT, the World Friendship Orbital Platform passed through the Great Barrier of Equestria. The space station was orbiting at an altitude of two hundred and eighty kilometers, and despite efforts over the past several weeks to adjust its trajectory, it was considered inevitable that the collision would occur.

The fifty taikonauts, civilians, corporate elite, and security personnel on board made use of their emergency supply of ponification serum one hour before the impact with the now 1500 mile diameter sphere that represents the intrusion of Equestria into our spacetime. All successfully ponified before impact with the Great Barrier.

The government of Equestria has been on standby for the last several weeks, and had a large team of pegasai and unicorns on airships ready to assist and catch the taikonauts the moment they entered Equestrian spacetime. Thanks to the unique physics of Equestria, the taikonauts were not harmed during entry, despite their immense relative speed, and all were safely rescued. Prior to entry, the taikonauts sent messages to their loved ones and to corporate leaders.

The space platform itself, seen here, penetrated the Great Barrier at 14.23.11 and as you can see immediately transformed into what appears to be flowers, confetti, balloons, and soap bubbles. This is a normal reaction for high speed objects penetrating the metachaosis field that constitutes part of the structure of the Great Barrier.

For an explanation, I turn to Govinda Clarke, exophysics expert at the Sri Lanka Institute of Physics. Welcome, Govinda.

"Many welcomes to you, Raine."

Can you explain to our viewers what the Great Barrier is, and how it can turn a fifty quadrillion credit space station into flowers and bubbles?

"I can but attempt to try, my good Raine. The Equestrian Barrier is not, as some untoward individuals might imagine, a deliberate fence which prevents human beings from entering the land of the ponies. Rather it is entirely the reaction of one set of physics encountering another set of physics and is an example of what we call a 'Domain Wall', the interface between two universes.

It was long believed that any interaction between domain walls would be destructive in nature, releasing vast quantities of heat and light and dangerous radiation which would cook the very universe itself. But what we failed to take into account was that we cannot judge such things on the basis of our own physical laws alone, and that other universes may have something to say in the matter!"

So what, exactly, does the Great Barrier Of Equestria have to say, Govinda?

"I would be very pleased to explain this, my dear Raine. The Great Barrier is composed of several folded layers, acting much like the waves at the bow of a boat, or the shock waves created by a jet traveling at the speed of sound. These layers affect matter from our universe in strange and curious ways, but these ways are somewhat predictable.

Material, unalive objects entering the Barrier at very slow relative speeds transform gradually into appropriate forms, as we have seen with cities and buildings and roads on the Northamerizone continent. Alive objects may enter freely - though they do seem to experience rapid and remarkable changes which conform them to Equestrian principles. This is true for all animal species except for primates, which for some reason we have yet to determine, suffer terrible burns and which are blocked entirely from entry."

Why primates, Govinda? And aren't humans primates?

"Indeed we are, my good Raine. We are all primates, the greatest of the Great Apes. Much has been done to discover why primate tissue is the only form of life that is entirely blocked from entry to the Equestrian cosmos. One possibility is that our level of awareness may interact negatively with the nature of thaumatism, following the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum reality. If so, this could represent evidence that consciousness itself has some kind of direct interaction with..."

What about the space station? Don't fast moving objects react differently from slow moving objects?

"Ah, yes... well, fast moving objects, such as missiles, planes and of course the space station become many random, harmless things which are diffuse and separate in their distribution. This is all due to the effect of what is called the metachaosis field. Much of the physics of the universe of Equestria has been affected far in the past by a godlike being which was called 'Discord'. This entity, long since contained, was a creature of purest chaos. There is some evidence that he may be responsible, in some fundamental way, for the existence of Equestria at all. But in any case, pockets of chaos still exist within Equestria as remnants of the battle against this strange creature, and of course the Barrier itself reflects the essential truth of the impact of Discord on the physics of the entire Equestrian cosmos."

And this is why the space station became a cloud of bubbles and flowers?

"Oh, my, my dearest Raine, that is precisely what I am saying. It is my personal assessment, however, that the effects of this chaotic field are constantly ameliorated by the princesses, as best as it is possible for them to do. Consider that chaos is quite, well, chaotic, and that the transformation of objects which pass through the Barrier is inevitably one of conversion into harmless, and dare I say, whimsical objects which can do no damage to any creature whatsoever. This cannot be accidental, it is my assertion, and that it must therefore be the result of the princesses, themselves nearly all-powerful beings, somehow influencing the metachaosis field to the best of their ability.

If this was not the case, then the space station might have easily been transformed into something dangerous, or something which would have trapped the unfortunate crew inside itself, such that their doom would be inevitable. The station might have become molten lava, or hot plasma, or any number of unpleasant and disturbing possibilities which I am sure your astute audience could easily imagine. It is the greatest blessing that all that surrounded them upon entry was a cloud of harmless bubbles and colorful flowers. I can only imagine their surprise when this event occurred!"

It certainly must have been something, I would have to agree. Thank you very much for your enlightening report, Govinda, and I wish you all the best there in Sri Lanka.

"And I am thanking you, good Raine, we all very much are enjoying your reports here, I must say."

That was Govinda Clarke, of the Sri Lanka Institute of Physics, giving us his take on the end of the largest space station ever created by Man.

The fifty crewmembers of the space station have been taken to Canterlot Castle, the capitol of Equestria, where it is reported that they are enjoying the special attentions of the court there, and have been given rooms inside the royal palace itself. As guests of honor, they will be given special assistance in adapting to their new status as citizens of Equestria, and as members of the Equestrian species. Apparently, there will also be some sort of welcoming celebration for them, where they will be able to sample the finest of Equestrian cuisine for their first meals. Should be quite a party.

So, to sum up, the World Friendship Orbital Platform has harmlessly impacted the Great Barrier of Equestria, all fifty crewmembers successfully ponified before impact and all have been rescued by the forces of princess Celestia and princess Luna. The crew have been accepted as citizens of Equestria and are currently enjoying what must be a quite enviable party.

This is Raine Sagan, Corporate News Network, from the New Xinjiapo Space Center, EastasiaZone.

THIS HAS BEEN A BREAKING NEWS INTERRUPT WE RETURN NOW TO SCHEDULED INFOFEEDS * THIS HAS BEEN A BREAKING NEWS INTERRUPT WE RETURN NOW TO SCHEDULED INFOFEEDS * THIS HAS BEEN A

"Sunshine? Sunshine? I'm here Sunshine. I'm right here. Can you open your eyes? Oh, you're twitching your ears! I remember that! The first time, I was so amazed at how my ears moved. Oh, sweet Sunshine, I'm right here with you. They took us back to the room. We're in our room now. You're fine. You turned out fine. You're really pretty Sunshine. And really soft, and warm and fun to cuddle with.

I got to see your transformation. It was really amazing. They said it would be all disturbing and stuff, but it wasn't to me. I just thought it was really amazing. Amazingly amazing! I saw you change, and your mane grow in and your tail and everything. Yes! That's your tail! Isn't it wonderful to have a tail? Oh, you can really move it about, can't you!

I can tell you're enjoying that, you're smiling! Look at that smile! Such a smile! Hee hee hee! It just fills me with such happiness to see you smile. Oooh... and you smell really neat too. I just thought I would tell you. You just smell delicious. Like I could just gobble you up! Mmnnn mmm. Hee! You're fun to nuzzle and lick too.

Can you open your eyes? Give it a try. There you go. That's it. Oh, you're still drowsy from the medicine, aren't you. That's alright. You can sleep if you want to. I'll be right here, snuggling beside you. Do you want a blanket too? Don't know? Oh... Ok, you just rest. I was really tired too. You are so pretty. I just love how you turned out.

I'll talk really soft, really, really quiet now. I think this thing can still pick me up.

Well everypony, Sunshine is a pony now. And she's really pretty and she smells good. I don't know if you could see but she has violet eyes. Really bright violet eyes, under those lids. Such pretty eyes.

I'd... I'd better let her sleep. Um... I don't know how to turn this thing off with my lips. Let's see. It's got that active surface thingie on it... um, no, that didn't do it. Maybe if I use my tongue

CLICK

Day Four: Tickled Blue

Attention Citizen: Analysis of your behavior suggests an intent to deliberately fall into noncompliance with the nonmandatory Recommended Info mandatory data redistribution requirement. Preemptive penalty calculation has already been initiated. You have been labeled as 'Slow To Comply' by the Worldkarma Population Tracking Database. Crosscheck reveals that you have 8.11 hours remaining to avoid censure.

GOING PONY

Day Four: Tickled Blue
By Sunshine Laughter

Is it on? I think it's on. Wonderful! Oh, wow, my voice kind of sounds different, doesn't it. Only reasonable, I guess. I have a different throat now, and different teeth... oh, that's so weird. I can feel the different teeth in my mouth. With my tongue. All flat, no canines. Really good teeth, though. Oh, and my tongue is soooo long. Ook at at! Ah an ang ith ow of ny nouthh! Thlurp. Om. Num. Long tongue. That... could be useful. For stuff.

"Hee! You're cute when you blush!"

I... well. Ahem. Anyway, hello everypony, and I guess I can really say that like I mean it. I... truly am a pony now. I am really a pony. It is very strange, I have to tell you. It kind of is, and isn't what I expected. But it is nice. I have to say that. It is really, really nice. I figured there would be something to complain about, but there really isn't. I feel... I feel wonderful. There's just no other way to put it.

"What makes you feel wonderful, Sunshine?"

Um... well, there's no pain. None. Before, I always had little pains and aches. I had a bad knee, my tooth on my left side was sensitive to cold. Um.. and my elbow would ache sometimes, and... lots of little, nagging things like that. I feel like a very young child now. Everything is at the peak of function, every part of me is just... good. No little aches, no little pains, just... good. Everything is good. But that's only half of it Millie.

"What else? This is interesting, because I can kind of compare, in my mind, you know?"

Vision is just... it's amazing. So much detail, and the colors... The closest thing I can relate it to is... OK. A couple of times in my life I had lucid dreams, right? Dreams where you wake up, and you know you are dreaming, and you can take complete control? It's like virtual reality dreaming. Anyway, in those few, precious dreams, I noticed something right away, and I remember thinking about it at the time, in the dream. My vision was really different, and better, than in my body sleeping in the bed.

Macula. That's the word. Macula. In the human eye there is this small zone right at the center of vision called the macula. It's where humans can see anything clearly. It's only about an inch wide or so, at the end of a leg, right - about a fifth of a hoof - and anything in that zone is crystal clear, but everything around it is just kind of blurry. In my lucid dreams, everything, the full expanse of my vision, was all macula. It was all crystal clear, even the edges. Pony vision is kind of like that. Either Equestrian maculas are really wide, or their eyes work differently or something, because everything looks like in my lucid dreams, all clear and sharp.

"So you'd say it's an upgrade?"

Oh, yes. Very much so. It's almost a little disturbing, to tell the truth, because I know this isn't a dream and it's never going to stop. This is how I see now, and... well... the world is kind of grottier and not as nice as I remember. Seeing everything clearly, I can see all kinds of spots and smudges and little scrapes on the walls that I never noticed before. But you and I look great, so... maybe it's just Earth stuff, I don't know.

"What about smells and sounds? Those are what got me!"

Sniff... Snert! Sniff Sniff. Oh, yeah. Smells are... more. It's a mixed blessing to be honest.

"Oh, I know! When it's lunch, then it will be great, but until then..."

I know, I so know. I've kind of got news for all you humans out there. Earth stinks. I mean it really smells. I grew up here, I thought I was completely used to Earth. I'm not anymore. I can smell the smog, I can smell the chemical fumes and the metallic... stuff... in the air. I can smell the paint on these walls, and the mattress outgassing under me. Now Millie here, oh, sweet Celestia, she smells... sooo... good... and... and I do too. Just smelling my own... foreleg here, it just smells wonderful.

"Do you like how you turned out? I love how you turned out!"

Well, I wanted to be green, like Samantha, but I came out blue. Actually, I think I like it better. Blue is really pretty. I'm kind of a medium blue, I guess, not dark, but not really pale, either. I don't know a lot of names for colors, but...

"I'd say you are Cornflower Blue with a darker Cornflower Blue mane and tail. Just offhand. It might also be Dodger Blue, or Deep Sky Blue, almost a Parrish Blue, but I'm sticking with Cornflower, because you are more toward the lighter side. If that helps."

Whoa. You really know colors, Millie.

"I really like colors. They're pretty."

I, well, yes, I suppose they are. I just never bothered learning a lot of names for them. Hey, what color is this mattress thing we're laying on? I'd just call it 'red'.

"No, no... that's not red. Red is a primary color. This is more Maroon. Kind of a Light Maroon. Almost Brick, but not quite, because of the touch of blue in it."

Just... wow. You are so decorating our house someday. Millie knows her colors. I am in awe, I bow to your wisdom.

"Hee hee hee! I like that. That was really sweet, Sunshine."

Sweet? I don't understand.

"You said I was supposed to decorate our house someday. That just made me feel... like you have plans for us. It makes me feel wanted."

You are wanted. Goodness, I thought that was... yes. Yes, I want you. I want to stay with you when we go to Equestria. I want to be with you. I mean... if you do too, of course.

"Of course I do, silly. I liked you from the first time we met."

On the bathroom floor!

"Hee! Yeah, what a place to meet, huh?"

We're a strange pair, no doubt about it. Hey, Millie, was there anything you thought was really interesting when you first woke up?

"Hooves, obviously. And twitching my ears. I liked doing that. Yes! Just like that! Hee hee! And... well, I suppose for me the very first thing was my ears. I really liked being able to move them. Oh! Have you figured out how that's useful yet?"

I don't understand. Useful?

"Yes! You can zoom in on sounds with your ears!"

No. Way.

"Way! You're probably doing it without even thinking about it, but you can also do it deliberately, too. Just aim your ears together at something, like you would your eyes. Out there, beyond the door, you can sort of hear somepony talking. Try it. Focus your ears on that, through the door."

Alright, what the hay, I... oh my GOSH! I can hear them! It's... it's Daniel, the guy I met on my first day. He's saying something about being hungry, and wanting lunch to... and when I rotate my ears, it goes back to being a mumble. And clear again.... mumble... it is like focusing my eyes, only with my ears! So that's why ponies can move their ears all around! Wow! It's like having a brand new sense of hearing! This is soooo cool, Millie. I don't think I'll ever get tired of this.

Hey! I can... I can hear your heart if I aim right at your... front... part. Wow. My ears are super ears, at least in the direction I am pointing, anyway.

"That seems to be the trade off, actually. It's not quite as clear all around as it was human-style, but it is really clear when focused. It means you kind of have to scan a little more, rather than just depending on a general sort of everything-at-once hearing. If that makes any sense."

Actually, it does. I guess it's like hearing has a macula now. Not so sharp, but not bad, everywhere else, but really super sharp right where the ears point.

"Ooh! Try this. Try pointing one ear one way and the other another way."

You can do that?

"Yes! It's easy, try it!"

Um... alright, that's odd. Whoa. It works! I can hear from two directions super clear, and I can tell the directions, or... I can hear super-stereo in one direction when my ears are pointing the same place. That... that is so cool. Wow. These are the subtle, little things you never hear about. What else can our new bodies do?

"Well, touch is a little different. It kind of freaked me out a little bit at first."

How so?

"No fingers, right? And no exposed skin. So the only part that can feel things the way that our old human bodies sort of did is the lips and mouth and tongue. And a little bit on the nose. Everything else is covered with hair, which isn't bad, but it isn't the same, and there isn't that feeling like with hands. You were smart to feel my coat and stuff back when you still had hands. I wish I had done the same, I just didn't think of it."

Huh. Yeah, I guess that is different. Here, let me try touching your foreleg with mine... I can feel pressure, sort of, with my hoof, but the leg part... my lower leg thing? That is like... wow. That feels just like... that part is sort of my finger. And above it is the... well it's kind of like where my palm would be, only it doesn't feel like a palm at all. That still feels like a wrist, even though it doesn't bend the same way entirely. It only bends down, and not up. I used to bend this joint up as well as down, because the next part was my hand. Only now it's more leg. Oh, that's weird.

"When you were being converted, the doctor pony told me all about that. He described all your bones and things as they changed. That's the way it feels to me too."

Well, then that's one thing I guess we can clear up for anybody watching - what it's really like to have pony legs. I remember all the chat on the hypernet, right, all the stuff about legs bending the wrong way and stuff... it isn't like that at all, folks. My legs... all four of them... bend the right way. It's just that my front legs are... were... my arms, that's it. That's all there is to it. I can tell where my shoulder is, and my elbow and my wrist and my... hand, or at least the back of my hand, which is this leg part here, below my wrist, and then my finger, and it feels like my finger, only really strong and thick. And my hoof here is my fingernail. Only... it isn't thin. It's really solid and kind of heavy.

"And the frog!"

Frog? I have a frog?

"That's the Human name for it but... here, lift up your hoof and turn it over. Yes, like that, like you were going to look at the tip of a finger, that's it. Ok, see, how there is the big, thick nail thing, that's your hoof wall. But inside, inside the 'U' shape, that wrinkled, triangular looking bit, that's your frog. Try using your teeth on it - gently, now, it's flesh, right? but... see, what does that feel like?"

It... it kind of feels like... my fingertip, sort of. Only covered in really, really thick skin, or a glove, or something. But it's that sort of part. I guess it is, isn't it. Almost like right under the nail, or... so... my hoof really is one big finger.

"Dr. Candy said it was the middle finger."

Hee! That means that every time I lift my hoof... oh my. Well. It's a good thing Equestria has a different culture, huh? Hee hee hee!

"Hee hee! I know, right?"

So, for all of you out there, everything makes sense. It isn't like being all confused or anything. And back here, that is my knee. Wow, it's up high on my body. And my leg parts are different lengths than before, but they are still my leg parts. That's definitely my ankle, only it's really strong. And that... would you run your hoof over that... yes.. that feels just like the top of my foot, only it's the lowest segment of my leg. It's like my foot has become leg, below my ankle. And of course, my hoof is my toe, the nail on my toe.

We walk on our toes and fingertips. That's it. That's all there is to it. I know I can walk now, Millie. This totally makes sense.

"Do you want to try walking again, Sunshine?"

Yes! I do. I know I can get it this time. Doing this really helped. Everything just completely makes sense inside my head now. They should do this, seriously. Get newfoals to go over how all the parts feel, and relate them to the parts they had before, because they really are all the same. They aren't even changed that much. If I had to say what the really different things were, it would just be that the back of my hand is a leg segment, and my foot is a leg segment, and that's it. Everything else is pretty much the same.

Well, other than the fact that I only have one finger... toe... whatever at the end of each limb. That's a hoof, one finger. Or toe. Wow.

"Um... you're going to have to fold your wings if you want to try to walk. I really love having it draped over me like that, but I'm afraid to move, because I don't want to hurt you."

OK, THAT'S the weird one for me. As you couldn't help but notice, I ended up a pegasus. I have no idea how to be a pegasus, and these wings are freaking me out a little. Everything else makes sense for me. My legs... easy. The tail and ears come surprisingly natural. But the wings... they are not like little arms. Well, that's not exactly true. I guess they are like little arms but... they are not my arm... arms. In my brain, I mean. My arms... what was my arms... are my forelegs, there is no question in my brain about that. But wings are... more arms. Extra arms. It's like being one of those gods from India with all the arms or that guy from the old fighting games that had extra arms. Or the Barsoomian green warriors from the Edgar Rice Burroughs books.

I'm kind of having trouble with the wings. It isn't like 'Oh no! Extra arms!' so much as... well, OK, maybe it is a little like that. There is... it's like there is a new territory on the map of my body, inside my brain, right? And that new territory is there, and it makes sense, but... it's new and I haven't explored it yet. I feel a little like the millipede that could walk as long as it never looked at its thousands of legs. When I don't think about the fact I have wings, they work fine, but when I look at them and go, 'oh wow, WINGS!' I get kind of scrambled and... well.

See that stuttering thing going on, ow... that kind of hurts, actually, so I am just going to relax for a moment. Not think about them, not try to move them. It almost feels like they might cramp up on me. It's like something in me is fighting to move them in two directions at once when I... alright. They have relaxed now.

Whoa! See that. They just folded up. It's easy as pie as long as I don't overthink it. But... It's kind of exciting to have something new be a part of me, right? And wings are cool... but also kind of creepy for me. Now that's just me, but I don't know how to relate to the feathers. I am sure most pegasai just go, hey, wings, cool, and that is, as they say, that. But not me. The feathers feel weird. I mean really weird to me. And... look, look at that. The feathers, the long ones at the ends... wow that's weird, they rotate. They can kind of turn. I'm not exactly doing that. Well, I am, obviously, but it's also like due to my emotions or something too, and... it just feels strange.

I guess I'm just weird having trouble with this. It's just... OK. Here's the deal. I'm a pony, fine. I've got legs that make sense, and I've got a mane, and a tail, and hair, and I am a mammal, and that all makes sense. But then I've got wings. Like a bird. And that is strange to me somehow. I know how to take care of hair, just use shampoo, job done. I have no idea how I am supposed to take care of these things. How do I even clean them? What if they get plucked out or something? Do they just regrow, or what?

"Sunshine! You're overthinking things again. You'll get classes on all of this. Just like I get classes on being an earthpony. That's what we're here for, that's what the Bureau does. It's the whole point. I'm sure they'll teach you all about your feathers turning, and how to wash your wings, and all that stuff. That's basic care, right?"

Mmm. Yeah. I guess you're right. It would be pretty dumb if they didn't teach you stuff like that.

"And you should like your wings. I do. I think they are beautiful, and I liked you draping one over me. It made me feel all safe and cared for."

Yeah, I kind of liked it too. I'm sure I'll get used to having wings. It's just my first few hours being alive as a pony, anyway. Initial impressions, that sort of thing. I know what my problem is!

"What? What is it, Sunshine?"

With my legs and body, everything basically makes sense. Old sense, like from when I was human. Sort of. But the wings are new, really new, and I... I kind of feel like a baby, trying to learn how to walk with them. It's just that little feeling of struggle to learn something that some part of me feels like I should already know, only I kind of don't. It's weird, but that's what it feels like. Like I already know... or knew... how to use my wings, only... I had a stroke or something and I'm having to re-learn how to use them, only that doesn't make any sense because I never had any part of my human body that corresponded with wings, you know?

"Well, I can't know, not like that, but I can imagine. That must be pretty strange, I agree. But I know you will master it. Hey, I just had a thought."

What?

"Maybe... what if some part of your new brain does sort of already know how to use your wings? I mean you can fold them and spread them out just fine when you don't overthink it, right?"

Yeah... yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe I've just been fighting myself. Wouldn't be the first time for that. Hmmm. Maybe what I need to do is just... I don't know... LIKE my wings. Just kind of accept them, like them, and... sort of make friends with them. I know that sounds pretty silly but...

"No! It doesn't sound silly at all. I think it makes a lot of sense. You should welcome them as part of yourself. Make them part of yourself, by making friends with the idea of them. Let them just be normal."

Well, I'm stuck with them no matter what, so... hello wings! How ya doin? Glad to see you! You're really pretty! Hey, they are kind of pretty, aren't they?

"Oh yes! Of course they are! They're shiny, and the feathers are soft and lovely, Sunshine. Of course they're pretty!"

Yeah. Yeah, they're pretty. Pretty wings. Wings are cool. Wings are OK to have. They're a little strange, but, hey, I'm a little strange now, really. I'm a blue pony. That's fairly up there on the strange scale, you have to admit.

"No. I disagree."

Huh?

"This is us, now. This is everypony we'll ever meet, everypony we'll ever know, and it's becoming the whole of everypony that ever will be. In the end, the whole human race has to become ponies, right? So, this is us. This is what being a person is now. Now and forever more. So... if you think of it that way, then being a blue pony..."

Or a lovely, coppery earthpony...

"...is normal! Boring ordinary normal! Totally, dull, dull, boring everyday normal! Exactly!"

Huh. That is a kind of strange thing, isn't it? We are ponies, and that is the new normal. We can't even claim being lesbians, because Equestrian doesn't even have a word for that. So we aren't even queer, are we? We're just together, and that is the new normal, too. I've NEVER been normal before. I think that's the truly weirdest part of all of this!

"Hee hee!"

Heh... yeah. Hello everypony, I'm the face of the new normal. Ooh! Speaking of which, I haven't even seen my own face! I want to see what I look like. I'm gonna try to stand up now, OK?

"Alright. Do you want me to stay here, or move?"

Um... you'd better move, in case I stumble again. I don't think I will, but just in case. I don't want to fall on top of you.

"That wouldn't be ALL that bad... hee!"

Heh. That's sweet. But... I don't want to hurt you or anything, and I also don't want to trip either.

"Alright, Sunshine. I'm up... and out of the way. But I'll try to brace you if you start to topple."

Thank you. O...Kay. I can do this, because I know what all the parts are and what they do and that...

"You're overthinking. Just do it."

Yeah, yeah, you're right. Ok. Ahhh.... and... WHOO! That was really easy! I am standing! That was nothing! It was so easy!

"Hee! Your wings are flaring out in excitement, Sunshine!"

Wow, they are. I guess they do that. Hey, look at me move them. I can flap them... sort of. That is... so cool. Hey, at least I can fan myself if I get hot. That's something they're good for. And I could dust. I'll be good at housework, I guess. Sunshine Laughter, professional featherduster!

"Hee hee! Maybe you can be a maid at the castle in Canterlot!"

Ain't no way this pony is being anypony's maid, sister. No way, no how. So I guess I'll have to learn to fly, then. Later. Not today. Today, I walk, another day I fly.

I'm gonna try walking now, Millie. I'm just gonna do it. I'm on a mattress... thing... which isn't actually that good. I'd probably do better on the hard floor, come to think of it. At least it's a mattress on the floor, so that is something. A mat. I guess this is called a mat, not a mattress. Anyway, here goes. Just like a baby crawls, only on tippytoes.

"That's it, Sunshine. Yes! Yay! Very good!"

It was a little tricky getting off the mat, but I feel solid now, on the tile. I'm going to try to walk to the mirror on the door now. Just in case, could you...

"I'm right here, Sunshine. I'll do my best if you should fall."

Thank you again, Millie. Here we go. Hey, this isn't so tough. It's just exactly like crawling... kind of. Actually, it's easier. Wow. This is not nearly as hard as it's made out to be. It's actually pretty easy. Huh. I'm kind of surprised.

"Why?"

Because on the hypernet there's all this stuff about how hard it must be for a newfoal to walk and crap. But... it really isn't. Things make sense. I don't know why I had trouble a while ago.

"You were still groggy from the medicine. That's what makes newfoals stumble. You've had time to rest and get used to yourself. Sometimes I think they try to get them walking too soon. Maybe it's better to just get to lie there for a while. You got to because I told Dr. Candysmiles that I would watch you and help you. I think he expected me to Drill Sargent you into walking immediately, but I just wanted to cuddle. I think it worked out better."

I do too. Hey, protip everypony: when you get converted, make sure you have a lovely lover beside you to cuddle with and take your time. Walk when you're ready and not a moment before. And... also, remember that all the parts are the same, only... you walk on your tippytoes. Piece of cake. I'm almost disappointed because it's not very dramatic to just up and... OH MY... THAT'S ME! THAT'S ME IN THE MIRROR!

"Yes! Look at that pretty pony in the mirror, Sunshine! Isn't she adorable?"

Not as adorable as a certain coppery earthpony I know... I think her name was Helen, or Louise, or Bob or something. She lives miles from here and...

"You big silly meany pegasus!"

Hee hee hee! Oh, gosh, look at that! That's me! That is my face. That... pony in the mirror... is me. I have violet eyes. Wow. That is something. And eyelashes. Long ones. I can really bat those things around! There's my ears! Wow, they are taller than they felt. And my hair... I mean my mane. I guess straight hair isn't so bad. GRRRRR... really nice teeth AHHH GRRRR... BLAAAAA... huh. My tongue just looks like tongue. I don't know what I expected. It's kind of an odd color, but not that different. LGAAAA....GLG... It sure is long though. Wow. That is almost creepy.

Let's see... up close... it's kind of weird having a coat of short hair all over my face. It stops at the edge of my lips. Blue hair. It comes in different lengths, doesn't it? Really tiny and short near my lips and eyes... but longer here on my... what's the front here? My neck? My... I don't have breasts anymore... well not there, anyway. My chest, I guess. Where are my... between the legs, right? They're real tiny. I can barely even see them. I'm totally flat!

"It isn't like in humans, Sunshine. Our breasts are flat and tiny until we actually need them. Then they swell up, but only if we get pregnant. Other than that, they stay really small. And once we don't need them to feed a foal anymore, they go back to being small again."

So... stealth teats, is that it? Transformer teats. I guess it's efficient, but what do we... well, show off, you know?

"Well... um... there are... ways. There's stuff. Don't worry about that now. Ponies have their own ways of showing their sexiness off, don't you worry."

OK, I'll take your word for it for now. Ooh, I like swinging my tail, I gotta see my bootie. Just turn around here... hey, oh, yeah, baby has back! Look at that booooootayyy! Yes, howdy! We definitely get pert little bottoms, no two ways around that. What the? Oh, Ok, huh.... that's... that's my...

"Yes, it is. And I remind you that the holocorder is on. You might want to..."

TAIL DOWN! Um, you all didn't see that. You saw nothing out there, understood? That didn't happen. Arggh. Oh.... uh.... um... fooey. I kinda forgot myself there. It's all so new, you know? Oh. Uh oh.

"What is it, Sunshine?"

I, uh, well... I kind of have to use the little ponies room, and... I don't even have a clue what to do!

"Come on. I'll take you. It's super easy, but I'll show you. Here, let's turn off the 'corder for now and

The World History Infofeed Proudly Presents:
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Not available in some parts of the Northamerizone without permit.

"Don't worry about it, Sunshine. It happened to me, too."

Yeah, but... I should have realized that... no, I mean... how is anypony supposed to realize they pee from there? I mean seriously, I tried to keep my tail out of the stream but...

"It's because everything is higher up and farther back. You really have to lift your tail, sure. But you also have to move it to the side. I tried to tell..."

I know, I know, it isn't your fault. You did your best, I just wasn't coordinated enough or something. Fortunately the shower is right there, and that took care of that, but I guess I just feel a little embarrassed. I really should have paid attention to that cartoon about the Parts Of The Pony, and learned my own body. I feel so stupid for that.

"Oh, Sunshine, you just had a lot of human baggage, that's all. Here, stop a moment. Ok. Now think, or rather feel. Feel inside yourself. I know you were all brave and admitted you like cartoons, before, even though you were ashamed of that fact. Now, tell me, how do you feel now about cartoons, and about how you reacted back then?"

Well... I love them. I've always loved them. Who wouldn't, cartoons are fun! And they're art, because real ponies worked on them. Well, humans, but still. And as for me... I just don't understand... why I thought I should hide that love. I was really silly, wasn't I? I don't feel any shame at all. I like cartoons, and... cute things... and bright, happy, silly things... and I always have, only now... I don't care who knows. In fact, if anything, I just want to talk about such things. I'm... proud of the fact that I like them. Huh. That's really different.

My dad, he wanted me to be a big corporate woman someday. Or at least be a successful twoper. And... there is no room in that for liking anything if it isn't practical and sensible. So I learned to be ashamed of anything simple, or cute, or silly, or... fun, really. Fluffy. My dad hated 'fluffy thinking'. But now... all of that just seems silly and dumb. Fun things are what is important. It isn't like I need to be anything or do anything super important. I just need to be happy and make friends and... be. Just be... me. A pony.

"Exactly! All the pressure is gone, isn't it? There will always be food, and always be shelter, and somepony will always help if you are in trouble, and the only ambition is to be... nicer that yesterday, if you can be. That's a worthwhile ambition, I think."

It is such a huge difference in worldview. My goodness. I can't believe how different I feel inside about all of that stuff now. I feel... light. I feel like this huge stone has been taken off of me. I just need to be a nice little pony. That's all anypony needs to be. Everything else is just fun. And I want to be a nice little pony. I don't feel bitter, I don't feel angry, I don't... I don't feel a lot of negative things.

That actually kind of scares me a little. I think some of my self definition was based on anger. On the things I was angry about. But... that's all gone now. I feel a little like I don't know who I am anymore. Like... am I still me or not?

"Of course you're still you. You're just you without all the anger and pain and bitterness. Now you get to discover and meet the you that is happy and glad and open to others. I think you'll find, like I did, that that you is a much better you than you could ever have imagined."

I do... feel like that. I... I just feel like... things are nice. Like... like I'm nice. I've never felt 'nice' before.

"It was even bigger for me. Because of my past, with Razor, and everything. I like feeling nice. I like feeling like a good pony who only wants to do and be good things. I like that feeling a lot."

Oh... my gosh. Oh.... goodness. I've just realized something.

"What, Sunshine?"

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

Just a moment... I think someponies at the door. Ah... COME IN?

"Hello! I understand we have a new pegasus today?"

Oh, yes! Hello! That would be me. I was converted today. Just this morning. I'm Sunshine. Sunshine Laughter, and this is my friend, Millie.

"Hello!"

"Hello there! I'm Snowdancer, from Scheduling. I have a new schedule here for you, Sunshine. This is a specialized schedule of classes for pegasai. Pegasai need special training in flight and in cloudwalking, cloudshaping, and other pegasus skills. I really recommend you attend these classes during your stay here at the Bureau. All three kinds of ponies have their own special skills and it is important to know what makes you, as a pegasus, special.

"Here you go, this lists all the important classes and their times, as well as the general classes. The general classes for everypony are still useful and I do recommend them, of course.

"So, are you happy? Are you adjusting alright? Any concerns at all?"

Um... I'm... I'm really happy, actually! I really am! I think I'm adjusting OK... It's a little strange to have wings, but I'm making friends with them. Hello wings! See! Happy wings! and... I guess my only concern was just addressed by my friend, Millicent here, so...I'm a... I'm a happy little pony!

"Well! It certainly seems that way, from that big smile. I'll leave you two to your day, then. If you have any questions about the schedule, or anything about the classes, just come see me. I'm on the second floor in the offices, Snowdancer, just ask for me. Have a good day, then. Ooh, it's almost lunch!"

Thank you! And bye! Well, she seemed really nice, didn't she?

"Hee hee.... hee..."

What's so funny?

"I was just thinking about the other day, when we were up in the offices and you were all like 'I want to see somepony in charge' and 'Grrrr, Grrrr ROWF!'"

Oh... my. I feel so bad about that now. Oh gosh. I... maybe I should go say I'm sorry. I was really being bad, back then, wasn't I?

"Oh, oh, I'm sorry Sunshine. I didn't mean to make you feel bad. I just thought it was funny, the difference, that's all. Back then you were a human. That isn't you. You're a pegasus now. It's just different, that's all."

I... guess it is. I was going to say, before Snowdancer knocked on the door.... I was going to say that I've noticed a difference too.

"What, what difference?"

Well, in all of this time, I haven't sworn once. I haven't wanted to. It just hasn't even entered my mind. And that's weird, because I am so used to swearing all the time. But... it just isn't necessary. It.. I guess it never really was.

"I kind of think it was necessary. You were in a lot of pain, I could see that from the moment we met. It was there, under the jokes and the running around all Now! Now! Now! I think maybe you needed to swear a lot back then."

I don't seem to need to now. I don't feel like I did. I just feel... well, kind of happy, kind of glad, kind of grateful, and not at all sad. Hee!

"That was awesome, Sunshine! I didn't know you could do poetry."

I didn't either. It was 'fluffy thinking', according to my dad. Oh! Snowdancer said it was nearly lunch! It will be my First Meal As A Pony, won't it?

"Yes! Yes it will!"

Oh, wow! How much time is it until...

GONGGGGGG

It's LUNCH! Oh, Millicent, please, let's go right now! I get to sit at the pony table as a pony! I can't wait! First Meal As A Pony!

"I'm excited too, Sunshine! I can't wait to see you try all the wonderful pony foods! You have to try hay, seriously, it's great!'

I can't wait! I've got a brand new mouth, and I want to use it on brand new foods!

"After you, guest of honor First Meal As A Pony pegasus!"

Oh, Millie... I... I feel like a foal again! I just... the whole world just feels like wonder right now. Thank you. Thank you so much.

"Sun... Sunshine? Oh... I like you too. Awww.... hee... now. Let's go try some tasty new foods, alright?"

Alright!

Day Four: Schooled Lunch

Attention Citizen: Doctors agree that deaccess from the world hypernet can cause distress, symptoms of withdrawal, and irritability. Failure to comply with the mandatory requirement of redistribution to one (1) secondary non-attached infosink will lead to penalties of up to six (6) hours of deaccess from the hypernet. It is strongly recommended that you comply with the mandatory requirement. Crosscheck reveals that you have 7.69 hours remaining to avoid censure.

GOING PONY

Day Four: Schooled Lunch
By Sunshine Laughter

CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA

"And she's looking at it. She's giving it a stare... will she sniff it?"

CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA

"The ponies at the table are drumming as hard as they can, it's First Meal As A Pony with Sunshine Laughter, and she is facing her first test, a big bowl of fresh green Equestrian hay, and.... is she? ... is she?"

Millie! I tried this stuff back when I was human. It tasted like... like bad. How can I be expected to...

CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA

"Just sniff it. Seriously. Just do that much. Just give it a good sniff. For me.

CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA

"Hurry up! We're getting tired, and I don't think this table can take much more!"

"Yeah! Jan's right! Just eat it already! My cannons are starting to ache!"

CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA CLOPPIDA

Alright, alright... hay. Breakfast of Thoroughbreds. I can do this. SNIFF. Hmmm! Om nom nom...

"YAYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!"

"Wow, look at her go!"

"Finally we can stop drumming. Ow... my fetlocks hurt too!"

"Gosh, I know, and my cannons feel like somepony kicked me in them."

"Well, Sunshine, what do you think? Good, right?"

Um... nom om num... ah, well... I have to say I am ...ulp... amazed. Just amazed. I mean, as a human, this stuff was just... bad. But as a pony, well! How do I even describe it? It's... it's kind of the same, but... different, and I'm not sure how to say how it is different. I mean, it still smells like hay, and it kind of tastes like hay, but... it's that my brain says that hay is the best thing ever.

OK, I know how to put this, I think. You know that fifth flavor? That one that is made up of that chemical.... the Japanese made up the name for it?

"Umami? It's the taste of glutamates and nucleotides and stuff. All the savory things in food."

Yeah, that's it. Umami. Hay is like TOTAL umami now. It just... it's just like the best flavor ever. It's kind of sweet, but not sugary or anything, and there is this green, springtime, clean kind of freshness, and almost a little sort of lime quality to it, only it has total savoriness to it. I had a synthesteak once, real juicy, real tasty, and hay is better. It tastes like a happy spring day, being taken on an envirodome tour in kindergarten, you know, when they show the kids what Nature used to be like?"

"I lived in the favela, Sunshine. They didn't have tours to things like that. They didn't have kindergarten either."

Um, sorry Millie. Well, they did for me, and one time I got to go. The dome had grass growing, real grass, and dandelions, and it smelled wonderful. The air, the warmth... it was just so nice. When I saw the first holos of Equestria, that memory is what made me want to go there so bad. I figure Equestria must be like that all the time!

Anyway, folks out there in holocorder land, hay kind of tastes like that sort of 'springtime in the dome' smells like, only savory. Really, really savory. It's like my tongue can't get enough of it. I have to chew the stalks, or blades, or whatever, and the flavor just comes out and fills my mouth and it is just... sooo... good. I never thought I could feel this way about vegetable matter. Sweet, savory, kind of that carbohydrate thing going on too, so it is satisfying, and... there's this little tang in there. It's not spicy, exactly, but...

"Try a carrot! Try one. Here. Try this.'

Om nom, um... UM! Wow! Ok, now that kind of tastes spicy-sweet. That is so weird. I've had carrots here, but now... now as a pony... there is just so much depth. There is flavor there that I couldn't pick up on before. This is like some kind of snack-chip or something. Oh, wow. I thought hay was good but...

"Now alfalfa! Do the alfalfa!"

Ok, Ok, Jan, alfalfa next... whoa... that's really different from the hay. Like fancy oniony or garlicky stuff. No, not quite like that, but... Super rich. Like... extra umami and a lot more of the carbos in there. It tastes... almost decadent. I bet it's fattening, the way it tastes. If hay is... mashed potatoes... then alfalfa is... steak. Sort of. I've only ever had synthesteak anyway... woah, I can't eat meat ever again. No more vat-grown meat, not ever again. Huh. But then, I guess I don't mind, because this stuff...

"Oooh! Now try pie! You were so worried about that! Here, eat this. It's peach pie, your favorite. At least you really seemed to like it, remember?"

Oh, Millicent. Peach pie. I have to try this. Here goes. Om. Nom.... ohhhh.... OHHHHHH OHHH MY MUFFIN GLGLGHHHH....

"Is she going to be alright?"

"Sunshine? Sunshine? SUUUnnnnnSHHHiiine? Hello?"

Oh... oh my muffin... oh... just... gimme a moment, alright? Holy Celestia.... Holy Luna in the Garden of the Night. I... I just...

"I think she still likes pie as a pony."

"It seems safe to say."

"You're alright, right Sunshine?"

Yeah... yeah... I'm fine... I think. It's just.... wow. I mean... wow. I can't... I can't eat any more of that. It's just too much. Not right now. More hay. Nice, simple hay. Om. Om nom. Hay. Mmm...

"I think she blew a fuse or something."

"I had that reaction with brownies."

"What, the ones we had the other day, Goldenrod?"

"No.. No... it was before that. Almost a week ago, they had brownies then, too. The chocolate was just so... it was too much. I thought I was going to just keel over. It was the day of my conversion. I was almost afraid to eat the brownies again. It was easier this time. I guess it takes time to get used to having better senses."

"You know I didn't have that problem, not like that."

"Jan? Seriously?"

"Well, I am not saying I was not overwhelmed. I am just saying that it was something I felt I could handle, that's all."

"If you could handle it, then you weren't overwhelmed. I mean, not really. Because of what the word means, you know?"

"Well, yes. I concede that point but..."

Will you two... just... oh, my. I like hay. I like alfalfa. And I like peach pie, but maybe not right now. Not until I get used to this. It is just so... much.

OK, everypony out there, protip: when you go pony, everything is brighter, more colorful, and tastes and smells way better. So... take it slow, and take it easy, and nibble. The protip is nibble, especially pie. Hay is safe, and so is alfalfa, but pie is dangerous because it is gooder than good. I literally don't have the words. I have never experienced pie, ever before in my life, until this moment, today, right now. This was my very first pie. No other pie counts. That's all I can say about it.

I am actually afraid now, to try this apple here. There are thresholds of... pleasure, I guess... I mean, yes it was pleasure but... it was just so... intense... that it almost hurt, if you know what I mean. I... I guess what I am trying to say here is that being a pony in no way reduces the joy of food. I am betting that unless we burn calories a lot better than Earth life does, I am going to be a huge sphere in about a year from now. Food is just that good.

I was afraid, I was wrong, and I completely admit that.

That's kind of a running thing, isn't it?

"Sunshine?"

Well, I've been willing to do this, to go pony, and I've tried to really go for it, jump in with all four legs and everything, as best I could, but I have been a little afraid, too.

"That's only understandable. It is total bodily transmogrification, after all."

That's very true, Jan. Total. Mind and body and everything. But... as scary as that seems, it really isn't as weird feeling as it's made out to be, and I think what worry I did have was... more than this deserved. Walking was easier than I thought it would be, and eating... I definitely haven't lost anything in that area. So far, I have not found a valid downside.

"There's a big one coming up."

Huh? What, Jan?

"You can only carry one thing at a time. Unless you have saddlebags, or can balance something on your back, we've only got one grip, which is our mouth. A little bit our tail. You can kind of carry light things with your tail. But... unless you've got a horn, like me - only I still can't float things well - you have use your mouth. And that means more trips, and more time to do anything."

"Yeah, that is true. I was with Aquamarine last night, and we tried playing chess. Putting all the pieces out and back was a bit of a chore, even with both of us, because we had to use our teeth, and it's one piece at a time... well, except for the one time Aqua managed to get two in one bite."

"Yeah! I got two pawns at the same time! it was cool! Goldenrod couldn't do it!"

"She's right, I couldn't. So that's a downside. Two hands are pretty useful. Of course if you sit, you can use your hooves, at least on larger things, but small things like chess pieces, no. And for carrying, you can't use your hooves, of course."

"I can."

You can what, Jan?

"I can walk and use a hoof to carry something. Here, I'll show you with this cup. See, I just grab the cup in my fetlock, right? Now all you do is walk with three legs. It's. A. Little. Hoppy. But. It. Works. See?"

She did it. You have to admit, she did it.

"OK, OK, I admit it's possible. But if that cup was full, you would've spilled everywhere, Jan!"

"I am not saying it would work for a full-up cup of juice or anything. But it does work, and it is one more way to move things about."

Jan... I think it is kind of amazing. I mean, you're the only unicorn in our group, in the Breakfast Pony Club, and you are the one with the horn and all, yet you seem to have all the non-magical ways to carry things and move things down better than any of us, and we don't have horns. I mean, Millie, Goldenrod, Aquamarine, and Honeydrizzle are all earthponies, me and Samantha here are both pegasai, you are the only unicorn, and yet you've got all the moves. What's up with that? Did you study pony locomotion or something?

"Well... actually... it is because I am worried about my magical abilities. I am not kidding when I say I cannot use my horn well. Even my magic instructor is baffled. I still can't move anything beyond making a marble roll around. I haven't even lifted it up off the ground. It may be that... I just won't be very... capable... as a unicorn. So I figured I had better learn how to get by with what I can do."

"Oh, Jan, we never realized it was that serious!"

"No, we had no idea!. I mean I remember you mentioned that..."

"Hush. I'm sure it will work out, one way or another. Periwinkle, the magic teacher says there are some exercises I can try, and that there are other things too... and if I can't use my horn, well, I'm still a pony, and I can darn well use my own good hooves and teeth like anypony else. It's no big deal. I mean, yes, I would like to use magic, but... if that doesn't happen, well, then I'll just deal with it."

Well, that's something I've never heard about. Something new, for all of you out there. Apparently, occasionally, some newfoals may end up having some trouble accessing their special abilities. Who knows, I have wings, for all I know, maybe I won't be able to fly. I hadn't even thought of that. But then again, heights terrify the... cinnamon out of me, so... maybe that would actually be OK.

Then again, maybe it's only a temporary thing. All I know is I am impressed with the things you've worked out, Jan, and I think they are really helpful to know.

"Yes! Me too!"

"I didn't even think of the three-legged carrying thing."

"Well... Thank you. I just figure that I should have some options in case things don't work out for me... magically."

Is there anything we could do to help? I mean... I guess... Well, I guess I'm pretty useless, trying to help a unicorn, aren't I? Hey, if you need one of my feathers or anything...

"Feathers! For what?"

Um... I don't know. Don't they need stuff like that in magic?

"You're thinking of magical reagents, like in RPG's and in stories and stuff, Sunshine. I don't think unicorns need stuff like that."

Well.. I... Oh. Duh.

"Sunshine, your thought is appreciated. I assure you that if it turns out I need a pegasus feather, you will be the first pony I think of."

Thank you... Jan. Gah. Well, anyway, this was a wonderful lunch, in any case, huh?

"From the way you reacted to that pie, I'm jealous!"

"hee!"

"Ha ha ha!"

Yeah, well... that was some pretty amazing pie.

"You haven't tried your apple! You can't leave the table before you try the apple!"

Come on, Millie, I already said that...

"Yes! Breakfast Pony Club Rules! All First Meal As A Pony ponies have to try the apple before they leave!"

"Yeah! Jan's right! Breakfast Pony Rules!"

"Eat of the apple, little pony, or ne're the table you shall leave! Bwa-ha-ha!"

Goldenrod.... alright, fine. We have a class to get to, so I'll try the apple. Oh goodness. OK. I can do this.

"AP-PLE! AP-PLE! AP-PLE! AP-PLE!"

Swirls! No pressure, huh? Fine. Here goes. Om.

"And?"

"Well....?"

Oh.... mmmm.... oh.... you little.... muffin muffing... ahh...

"Hee hee hee hee!"

"Hah ha ha!"

"It's pretty amazing as a pony, isn't it?"

Ahh... oh, pony, oh.... mmmnnn... water... water... SLURP... ahhh... Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I'll get used to all of this, right?

"No."

"Nope, not ever."

"Every single time. Just like this."

You have got to... you... you are just a bunch of naughty little ponies is what you are. Alright... the time is... oh, gosh, it's time for... what is the next class?

"General class, ponies only though... um... Basic Household Skills For Living. It teaches you how to do everyday things as a pony. Sounds like a must, to me, Sunshine."

It's certainly relevant, at least to me. Are we all going?

"I'm going... Aquamarine?"

"Of course, Golden. Always."

Jan, Sam, Honey?

"Yes. That class is on my list."

"As Millie says, it's a must."

"I go where Samantha goes."

Well then. I guess the Basic Household Skills class better prepare itself for the Breakfast Pony Club!

"YEAH!" "Yes!" "Absolutely!" "Whooo!"

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...so I just balance it on my back like... this? Come on, wings, just... WHOOPS! Heh! Um... good thing that's made of neoplastic. Sorry!

"Just try again. It's alright, that is what this class is for. EVERYPONY! Just keep practicing! If the bowl falls, just pick it right up, put it on your back, and keep trying to walk. Practice makes perfect!

Alright. Sunshine. Since this is your conversion day, maybe you would be better off not using your wings for this. Sometimes newfoal pegasai can have control issues, such as that little twitch. Remember, you did not grow up with wings. You need to get used to having them just as if you were a foal. As far as your wings are concerned, you are in your foalhood right now. So just concentrate on carrying the bowl normally, for now. Alright?"

Yes, Missus Wheatgrass. It's just that it seems like I could just make a kind of basket out of them, you know?

"Some pegasai do exactly that. You are right! But you are completely new, Sunshine. This is the first day of your life as a pony. There is no need to rush things. As I understand it, human lives are fairly short. As a pony you will have many, many decades to do anything you want to do. For now, you have the time to just relax, and try carrying a bowl on your back like any other pony."

I... I understand. I'll try to keep my wings out of it for now.

"Look, Sunshine, see, cradle the bowl just before your croup."

Um... I see, Millie. Right there, huh? That's the croup?

"There's a little dip there, where it's kind of flat. Try it."

OK... I can do this. There! See?

"Very good, Sunshine. Now try walking while keeping the bowl still."

OK.... alright... it's kind of hard to keep everything still... hey, I think I've got it! YES! FINALLY! HEY! MILLIE, LOO... oops. Just a minute. Excuse me. Sorry, it rolled under.... sorry. Sorry.

"Hee hee hee! Oh, Sunshine!"

I can do this. OK. Ick ih uh. There. It's on my back. Millie, what am I doing wrong here?

"Well... you have to walk differently to carry things. Try going really slowly at first, and concentrate only on keeping your back still and level. No bouncing, no rocking. It's kind of like balancing something on your head, only easier."

If you say so. Alright, real slowly, real careful-like. Wow, I'd hate to imagine this empty bowl filled with hot soup or something. But I guess that's what real ponies with real jobs carry and do, huh? Easy, easy... yeah... that's it. That's doing it. It's getting easier, Millie. Alright, a little faster now, maybe. Yeah, I'm doing it now...

CLATTER CLATTER

"Careful! You have to watch where you're going too, you know!"

I'm sorry. I am so sorry, Goldenrod. It's my first day... I am so clumsy.

"I'm sorry, Sunshine. I forgot."

You forgot... cool! That's kind of a compliment, actually. Cool. Here, I'll put your bowl back. There.

"Thank you, Sunshine!"

Alright. One more time. Where'd my bowl roll too. Oh! Excuse me, my bowl rolled....

"EVERYPONY! I think that is enough for now of that. Take your bowls and place them in the rack where you found them and assemble in the middle of the room!"

I found it! Oh, we're not doing carrying now.

"No, I think it's a new lesson, Sunshine."

"Alright, Everypony. That's it, all together in one big circle. Yes, all around me, side by side. That's it. Now... let me bring this over.... there. A nice big box filled with all sorts of things. We have a suitcase with a nice red handle.... here. No, just let it be for the moment. And here's a broom... yes, you just hold it up, like that. Perfect. And for you I have a nice wooden spoon. Just take it in your teeth. Perfect. And finally, a tray, with a cup on it. You take that... yes, right in your mouth, just by the edge. Good!

Now, what we are going to be doing is passing practice. We'll be passing these four objects, the case, the broom, the spoon and the tray with the cup around to your left. NO! STOP! Not yet! When I tell you to, alright? Now the goal is to start out really slowly. Take. Your. Time. We'll go faster later, and I will tell you when. But for now, we will just be passing the objects to each other carefully, and try to keep them going around the circle. That's all we need to do.

Now I need you to concentrate on doing your best to do it carefully, alright? This isn't a contest, and we are not trying to beat any records or prove anything other than that we can do this smoothly and well, understood?

Alright. Any questions?"

I kind of have one!

"Sunshine?"

Um... Missus Wheatgrass... I... I'm not sure how to put this, but... isn't it... dangerous... to pass things from mouth to mouth like that? I mean Hep Z, Contact Syphilis, Viral Cancer, Nanophage....

"None of that is an issue for Equestrians, Sunshine. You don't have to worry. Ponies are immune to all human world diseases, and even in Equestria there are only a very few illnesses known, none of which are dangerous, and all of which are fairly rare.

CLASS? This is something I should probably make clear. All the things you've been afraid of as humans no longer apply for you. As citizens of Equestria, you are naturally protected from all earthly diseases. Ponies do not suffer the way Earth creatures do, and all of you in this class are ponies now. It is your natural and native state to be free from disease, and protected from sickness.

You need not fear each others touch, contact, or bodily fluids. There are no dangers in these things for Equestrians. Such concerns are the province of human creatures, not us. Is that clear?"

"Missus Wheatgrass?"

"Yes, Jan."

"You mentioned the few illnesses that Equestrians do get. What are they?"

"Well, it isn't really part of this class but... there is Sniffles, something not entirely unlike your human cold. It is mild but uncomfortable, and does not last more than a day or two. It is probably the most common illness, and is usually associated with extreme exposure or exhaustion. Even less common are things like Hay Fever, The Trots, and..."

"Ponies get Hay Fever?"

"If I understand things correctly, it is not the same as the allergic illness humans get, Millicent. It is also exceptionally rare. I merely listed it to answer Jan."

So basically, we aren't going to die or anything from passing these things mouth to mouth. That's the basic concern here.

"No. Nopony will get sick or... die... from this activity. It is something you will need to get used to in your new lives. Ponies have mouths and hooves, and unless you are a unicorn, everything you used to do with hands will be done with your mouth or your hooves, and of the two, the most common will be your mouth. You must shed your human attitudes about this, which, as I understand, are quite negative.

This is actually part of what this exercise is for. It is to build maxilofacial dexterity, of course. But it is also to get you used to the fact that mouth-to-mouth transfer of tools, objects, even food items is normal and natural for Equestrians. It is a exercise designed to help you get over your human backgrounds as newfoals, and embrace your proper, Equestrian natures.

Alright. Are we clear on what needs to be done, and on the fact that for us it is safe and normal?"

"Yes!" "Yeah!" "I think so!" "OK!" "Yes, Missus Wheatgrass!" "YUPPERS!" "Yes!"

OK! Wow. I have to say, Millie, this is kind of weird for m....

"EVERYPONY! BEGIN!"

Here comes the case. Oh gosh. Oh GLG.... Mmmm... Gah.... there you go.... that was kind of bulky.... and now the broom.... GLAH...GLG... Gah... that was unwieldy, huh?

"Yeah, it kind of was. Oh, look out, Sunshine, here comes the spoon!"

That should be easy, it's the tray I'm worried ab.... GLMMM.... MMn-Mnn.... Gah! Heh! The spoon is really easy. Oh Luna, here comes the tray, easy, easy... NGAH! GRRUMPH...GLURG.... GAFFFUL... GAFFULL!... GAH! Easy, Millie, it's tougher than it looks.... whoo... you did it. Easier than me. Huh.

"I've been a pony longer, Sunshine. Just doing anything is practice."

Ah... well, I guess that makes sense. Here they come again... GLG! MMnnnnn NNnnn....GAH! That case is just a pain I.... The broom... GLK! Mnnn.... NGH... GAH! Alright, better, I felt more in contro.....UMN...GAH! Spoon, love the spoon, it's easy... uh oh... GRRUMPH...GLURG.... GAFFFUL... GAFFULL!... GAH! That tray... goodness...

"FASTER!"

What? Not yet! The case is... GLG! MMnnnnn NNnnn....GAH! Whoa! It's just GLK! Mnnn.... NGH... GAH! That broom is... UMN...GAH! Yay, Spoon... Oh no... GRRUMPH...GLURG.... GAFFFUL... GAFFULL!... GAH! I hate that tray!

"EVEN FASTER!"

THE HAY??!! GLG! MMnnnnn NNnnn....GAH! You have got to be GLK! Mnnn.... NGH... GAH! Now wait a darn UMN...GAH! Spoon, how I love you GRRUMPH...GLURG.... GAFFFUL... GAFFULL!... GAH! That is just crazy, with the tray it's...

"FASTER STILL!"

Oh, give me a GLG! MMnnnnn NNnnn....GAH! No Muffin way GLK! Mnnn.... NGH... GAH! Spoon... UMN...GAH! Oh sweet Celest... GRRUMPH...GLURG.... GAFFFUL... GAFFULL...

CRASHHHH CLIK CLOK CLICK CLATTER CLATTER CLAK

"Hah hah hah!" "Heee heee hee hee!" "Ah hah hah!" "Hooooo!"

Hee hee hee... oh, pony... hee hee... SORRY EVERYPONY!

"Hah hah hah hee hee!"

"VERY GOOD, class! Very good! See? Wasn't that fun? That's what we ponies do all the time in life, and it's no big deal, and it's even great fun. Remember that. Alright! SETTLE DOWN! Settle down now. That's it for today. Pick up the Passing Practice objects and put them in the box. That's it."

"Wow that was FUN, wasn't it Sunshine?"

Yeah! It really was. I really liked this class!

"I almost thought you had it there, until the tray dropped!"

Well, it is my first day, Jan...

"No, you misunderstand. I thought you were doing really well. I thought you were going to make it."

Oh... oh. OK. I sure didn't. But, thank you Jan.

"CLASS? I hope you enjoyed Basic Household Skills. Next time we will try performing actual tasks you will be doing in your lives as ponies. Until then, please try to practice carrying, balancing, holding and passing objects as much as you can. Every moment you practice means better ability in everything you do. CLASS DISMISSED!"

Um... Missus Wheatgrass?

"Yes, Sunshine?"

I just wanted to say... I had fun, and I learned a lot. Thank you.

"You're very welcome, Sunshine. And congratulations on your Conversion Day, too."

Thank you! Come on, Millie, let's go back to our room and wait for the dinner gong. No, on second thought, I need to go to the little ponies room again. Sorry. I kind of got excited during the passing things lesson.

"That's OK, Sunshine. I have to go too. I almost feel like a shower, after all of that. Do you think we have time?"

Hmmm... we have an hour before the dinner gong... This is my first day, though, and... I'm worried about being able to towel off. And I don't know how to even wash myself.

"I'll help. And if it takes too long, I'll just ask for help from the staff. It's OK. I needed help getting dry myself before. They're used to that. Come on! Let's go shower before dinner!"

Sure, alright. Oh! Remind me to take off the holocorder. Make sure I do. I don't think I'm supposed to get it wet, alright?

"Oh, yes. That's a point. Don't worry, we'll remember."

You know, hanging it around my neck was a brill idea, Millie. I barely noticed it, well except if I bend down too low.

"Thanks! Alright now, shower time!"

Shower time!

Day Eight: The Shower Incident

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GOING PONY

Day Eight: The Shower Incident
By Sunshine Laughter

"Um... hello, everypony. As you can see, Sunshine is running around in circles with the other pegasai... see, there's Aquamarine and Meadowdawn right ahead of her... it looks like she's chasing them! Hee hee! That's cute. Run! Run!

Oh, I should mention, since it's been a couple of days, that's Samantha, there. She chose a pony name! Now she is 'Meadowdawn'. I think it's such a pretty name, and it really suits her with all the green and yellow and... oh, it looks like the teacher is calling all the pegasai in to the center of the parking lot. Well, it used to be a parking lot. Now it's a flight school.

Today is supposed to be the day. Sunshine is so excited. It's been like, three days now, and all they've been doing is running around 'feeling the wind' and flapping like chickens. I kind of don't think that Breezy is such a good teacher, to tell you the truth. That's him, there. Breezy Windthistle. He's a newfoal, but supposedly he's been certified as a flight instructor and everything, but he's really nervous, and he acts like he isn't sure of anything.

I guess they have to wait for something. I'm skipping class so I can see Sunshine fly for the first time. I think my plants can get along without me today. Or I'll go in later, after dinner, and make it up to them then. Oh! While we wait for... whatever it is that we're waiting for, I should probably catch you all up on everything that's happened. Or at least some of it. Sunshine will probably have stuff to say, later, too.

We've been gone because we broke the holocorder. Well, we didn't exactly break it, it got broken. By Razor. Razor broke Sunshine's holocorder. She and Gloria started yelling at us in the shower. I think she was jealous, but she claimed it was because of all the things that Sunshine and I said about the two of them on these shows? I don't think we said anything that bad, but apparently somepony called Razor up on her link and told her about the show Sunshine is doing. I guess there are more of you out there than either of us figured.

Anyway, she got all upset and started yelling at us when we were in the shower. She got physically violent, too, and started pushing and kicking at us. We kind of took it for a while, but then she came after me and Sunshine just went all fierce and alpha mare and stuff, and bucked Razor right in the flanks. It was slippery, and when she went down she grabbed at the shelf, and that flipped the holocorder against the floor... or maybe it was the wall... and then what was left went right into the shower and it didn't work anymore.

Gloria and Razor left and started yelling about how we had attacked them and how we were 'rogue crazy ponies' and 'defective conversions' and whatnot, and then we were all crying and apologizing and stuff, and I know Sunshine just felt terrible about the whole thing, but she was just protecting me, and in any case it wasn't like anypony was actually hurt or anything.

Anyway, the staff pretty much knew who the real problem was and scheduled both Razor and Gloria for conversion the next morning, or else they'd have to leave. Later, Snowdancer came down from upstairs and talked with us. She arranged to contact the News And Propaganda Ministry to get Sunshine a new holocorder, and apologized for the lack of security in the showers and stuff like that. We apologized for everything, and then she apologized and... well, there was a lot of apologies and stuff, but in the end everything turned out really... weird, actually. It all turned out kind of strange.

Hey! It looks like they're... they're dragging a big thick mattress out onto the parking lot. A couple of them, actually. I guess Breezy is really trying to make sure nopony gets hurt or something. I think all of this is just silly. Pegasus foals start flying really early, Blueflower told me that, and all this running around flapping is just... it's been hard for Sunshine. I'm sure that other Bureaus don't teach flying like this. I just can't imagine it. So don't judge all the Bureaus by what you see here, OK?

Alright, it looks like Breezy is going to actually let a pegasus try to fly. That's Boots there. Don't ask me why he chose the name 'Boots'. I think it's a dumb name for a pegasus, but... whatever. Maybe he had a shoe fetish as a human or something. Some newfoals... I just don't get them. I mean, I'm a newfoal too, but I really think you should take the time to learn the culture before you pick out a pony name. Don't you think that makes sense? I sure do. That's why it took me so long to choose.... oh... he's lifting up!

Boots is flapping, but not very hard. He's up... oh, gosh, about... it looks like about two or three hooves to me. Not very far. You have got to be kidding me! Breezy is making him land on the mattress again and... now it's Meadowdawn's turn? That's it? That's the big flight? This Breezy is a terrible instructor! I can't believe this! Three days of running around in circles and... oh, poor Sunshine. She is not taking this well. Oh, she's pawing at the ground. The look on her face is... Now she's standing off to the side. Poor Sunshine. She looks so upset.

Well, Meadowdawn is up... six, seven hooves and rising! Go Meadowdawn! Wait! Oh, come on... Breezy is telling her to land. She isn't having it. No... wait. Yes she is. She's landing. Oh, pooh. This is just stupid dumb! It's.... it's total muffin is what it is! Now it's Sunshine's turn. Oh dear. Oh, she is not a happy pony. Well, she's flapping her wings. Oh, she's really flapping them. Now she's grinning. Oh, that's a naughty look on her muzzle. Oh dear. She's off. Oh, she is up in the air! Look at Sunshine go! WOOO!!! SUNSHINE! YOU GO MARE! WOOO!

Hee hee hee! Breezy is having a fit! He's stomping all over, look at those hooves slam the pavement! Sunshine's circling the lot! She's sticking her tongue out and razzing the instructor! Oh! She's yelling at the others! Yeah! Come on up, the air is fine! WOOO! GO SUNSHINE! Hee! Oh, she's such a naughty pony. She's a rebel and she can't play by his rules, oh no! Meadowdawn is up there now too! And there goes Aquamarine! Oh, I wish Goldenrod was here to see her. They don't say anything, but it's pretty obvious they're a couple.

HAH! Even that silly Boots has decided to join Sunshine in the air! Oh! They're coming over here! HELLO SUNSHINE! YOU LOOK FANTASTIC UP THERE! IS IT FUN TO FLY? OH, I BET IT IS! IT LOOKS SOOOOO FUN! YEAH! DO A BARREL ROLL! YAAAAAYYYYYY! SUN-SHINE! SUN-SHINE! Oh goodness this is better than I expected a moment ago.

Will you look at that? Breezy is just standing there slamming his hoof and yelling at them. You'd think he'd just fly up there and... whoa... what if instructor Breezy can't actually fly? Is that even possible? How could he be certified as a pegasus flight instructor if he can't actually fly? Maybe he hurt his wing or something? No. That doesn't seem likely, his wings look fine. He's certainly flapping them enough in anger.

Maybe... maybe he isn't really certified at all. Maybe they just threw somepony into the job or something? That would be a hoot - but then again, it has seemed like he's been making it all up as he went along. In any case, the other pegasai are having a ball up there. Oh... I wish I could join them. Now I feel a little sad. That just looks like so much fun. Oh, my.

Well, maybe someday Sunshine will give me a ride or something. Is that even possible? Can a pegasus carry another pony? I sure hope so! I would so love to go for a ride. I hope it's possible. It probably is. I mean, they use magic to fly already, so why not, right? It's not like they have to obey the normal rules of Earth reality or anything. They wouldn't be able to fly at all if they had to do that. I'm gonna choose to believe that Sunshine can give me a ride someday, at least until proven otherwise. I really wish I could be up there right now. Sigh. Oh, Sunshine.

Hey, while she's up there... having fun... I'll tell you about my new name. I finally chose a pony name, I decided the same night the holocorder got broken by Razor. That whole thing just made me so mad that I really needed to shed the last bit of anything human. So from now on, it's no longer Millicent, OK? You can call me Rose Vale. I think it's a very clever name.

First, it's a real color. Rose Vale is a kind of coppery red, which is like my coat, or like my mane. Roses are pretty flowers which also exist, more or less, in Equestria. They're also tasty, and you can make jams and treats from them. I like roses. A vale is a small valley, usually a pleasant and shaded place. But vale also has a secret meaning - it also means farewell. It's my farewell to Earth, to all the mean stuff, to my old life, my escape from this vale of tears, right? But it also means my arrival to a land of green and beautiful valleys, vales, see? It took me a long time to come up with all of that.

So, hello everypony! Rose Vale here reporting live from the Conversion Bureau! Hee hee hee! 'Sunshine and Rose, sitting in a tree, I'm up here 'cause she lifted me! Sunshine Laughter is a really great kisser, I wish she'd land 'cause I really do miss'er! Hee hee! Oh, I'm such a silly filly today, aren't I?

Oh, she's coming in to land, along with the others. I've been so busy watching her fly that I didn't see what happened to Instructor Windthistle. I guess Breezy must have just stomped off. Hee! I shouldn't really laugh at him, but he really should have just admitted he was new or couldn't fly or whatever. I hope he isn't sad or anything. Poor little stallion. Oh well.... Look at that smile! Sunshine just looks so happy! Meadowdawn too!

Sunshine's coming over here! Oh, it's soooo smoochies time. SUNSHINE! REALLY WONDERFU...mmmmm mmmm mmmm....

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___________________

"Wait... mmmm.... wait, Sunshine. Look."

It's Breezy. The teacher came back. Huh. What... what is he doing? Rose?

"He's standing there, in the middle of the lot. Just standing. Everypony is staring at him. Is he going to yell at you or something?"

Oh... oh my gosh! Did you see that? He just snapped out his wings, just whap! and they are out, sharp as blades. What the swirl is he doing now? He's barely moving those wings and he's lifting straight up! What the muffin? How is that even possible? Wait... wait look! Look, Rose...

"His wings are... vibrating sort of. It's like he's just vibrating them, just the tiniest bit. I've never seen a pegasus do that before, not even in all the holos they show us. Wow.... Sunshine. He looks like he's just standing in the air!"

Oh my gosh! Ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh.... look at Breezy go! I don't believe that! I just don't muffin believe that. He's upside down doing spirals and twists in the air, and his wings are barely even moving! WHOA! Now Breezy's doing high speed acrobatics! I had no idea that pony could even fly. I never saw him fly once until now. Holy.... Luna...

"He's landing, Sunshine. He's coming down, straight down... oh, no! He's falling! he's gonna hit the...."

Look! He caught himself. Wow! Just wow. He caught himself at the last minute, Rose. That was... incredible. How did a newfoal learn to fly like that? He is a newfoal, right?

"Well... that's what I thought, but now... now I'm not sure anymore."

Come on! I have to ask him where he learned how to fly like that! Breezy! Breezy! Instructor Windthistle! How did you learn to fly like that! That was amazing!

"You scared me when you dropped like that!" "I was so amazed when you just hovered, with your wings still like that..." "Can you teach me to fly like that?" "Yes! I want to learn too!" "Did you learn that in Equestria?" "Breezy...how is it even...."

"Can you taste the air with your feathers?"

What? "What?" "What does he mean?" "Huh?"

"Can you taste the air with your feathers?"

Um... no. That would be silly. Wouldn't it?

"I didn't have you running in circles flapping like chickens because I thought it was funny. It was, but that was not the reason."

Um, well...

"If you want to fly well, you need to make the wind your lover. You need to hear the air sing songs to your heart. Above all else, you need to taste the air. With your feathers. You need to make love with the sky. Do you understand?"

I'm... I'm really sorry for... everything, instructor Windthistle. I'm... I'm just sorry, OK?

"A pegasus can fly, Sunshine. That is what they do. But there is more to flying than just flapping your wings and doing the odd barrel roll. Nice roll by the way, especially for a first flight. You've got talent. But it will take more than talent to truly fly.

That goes for the rest of you, too! Alright then. Next lesson, let's see if maybe we can try tasting the air while actually being in it. Next time, we do altitude gliding. Now go shower, you need it."

Thank you! And I'm sorry... I'm... wow. He's a lot cooler than I imagined, isn't he Rose?

"I feel bad for everything I said about him. He's really amazing, isn't he? He had a plan all along. Oh, Sunshine."

I kind of screwed up there, didn't I?

"I think he forgave you. He didn't seem mad. And he did compliment you on your roll. He said you have talent!"

Yeah, he did. But I still feel bad. I just got impatient. I wanted to feel the wind under my wings. I mean... it was just so frustrating. Wings. Flight. You know? And it did feel silly to go running around in circles, flapping. If he'd just shown us all of that first, I....

"Maybe he isn't a newfoal. Maybe he just expected you to trust that he was an expert. I don't know, Sunshine. But I'm sure it will be alright. And it sounded like next class would be all flying. Maybe this needed to happen this way."

Maybe. Aww... thanks, Rose. Listen, I'm gonna go shower like Windthistle says. I am pretty sweaty after that.

"I like that smell. Such a shame... tsk tsk!"

Silly pony! Mmmnnn... mnnn... hey, if you keep that up, I won't have time to get showered up before dinner.

"Maybe that's the idea. Maybe you need to get even sweatier...."

Hee! No. No. Down there. Easy girl. Easy.... hee hee.... oh... now you stop that, we're in public...

"So?"

Rose! Hee hee hee... hey, can you keep the 'corder. I don't want a repeat of last time.

"I don't think that would be possible. I mean, they're not the same now. Really not the same. It's kind of..."

What?

"Never mind. You trot off and shower. I need to go see my plants anyway. I loved seeing you fly, Sunshine. Mmmnn... now off you go! Be sure and wash under your tail! Yeah! Hee hee!

Sigh... I'll tell you a secret. I've kind of fallen in love with Sunshine. I mean, sure, we're together, but it's not like we've said those words to each other. Not yet anyway. I've only known her for a little while, too. So it isn't like I'm going to say anything for a long time, probably. Maybe it's the way things work for ponies. I don't know. But... just between you and me, since there's no way she's ever going to see this... show.... thingie... before we go to Equestria.... just between us, I can't imagine not being with Sunshine now.

I hope it works out, after we get to Equestria. I mean, I don't know why it wouldn't, but... I just hope it does. I don't know how she feels about me. I mean, I know she likes me. We're all over each other. But... there's passion and there's love, right? And this is all passion and it's all nice and everything but... I really think I feel something more, even if it is all of a sudden. So... wish me luck, out there. Supposedly there's a few of you seeing this holo, so... maybe all that luck will help, alright?

That was pretty wild with the flight teacher, Breezy, wasn't it? Wow. I never would have thought he could do all of that stuff. Oh! Razor and Gloria! I haven't finished catching you up on them, have I?

So, they converted them the next day after the thing in the shower, right? Did them both together. That must have been weird. Or maybe they wanted it that way. I don't know the whole story. So they come out at lunch, and Razor's a unicorn, which I did not expect at all, and Gloria turned out an earthpony like me. She's in my plant class now.

But wow were they different. It was like they were completely new ponies. At first I couldn't even tell which was which. I thought that Gloria was Razor, and I really know Razor. Knew Razor. This new Razor, though, I don't know her at all. And it really made me think. Was I that different when I came back from the Ponification Room? Is that why Razor got so upset and kicked me out? How much have I changed? Am I the same pony now? Or... am I somepony new, like Razor seems to be? I hope she changes her name soon. It's hard to even call her that.

Razor and I were together for some time. I thought I knew her really well. But then, she was all armor and withdrawn and stuff. Was it all an act? Is this pony version of her what her true self was, under all the anger and hurt? I've been afraid to talk to her. It's just so strange. And I feel guilty, because in a way, I'm kind of kicking her out by not talking to her.

She wants to talk to me. She keeps trying. Both of them want to talk to us. It's just been uncomfortable, right? I mean, they attack us in the shower, then they get ponified, and now they are so different, and yet they have the memories of the humans that attacked us and... I guess the whole... all-of-it-ness of ponification is finally hitting me. This isn't like some costume change. This isn't like just being cut up and put together as a pony, this is the real thing. We're really Equestrians now. We're different inside and out, and... I guess the full scope of that didn't hit me until... Razor got ponified.

I'm me. I mean, whatever I am, I am me. But it's really made me wonder if I'm the same creature that walked in here. And I guess I'm not. In some ways, I am definitely a new life. I am this pony who remembers being a human, but I am not human. Not anymore. So... I guess, in a way, it is true. You get ponified and... you kind of die. Millicent Nguyen is gone. She's dead, sort of. Maybe I'm like her child, in a way. No, that's not right either. This is just so unique. I don't know if there is a way to label this and have it make ordinary sense.

I... was... Millicent Nguyen. Just like I once was two years old and pooping my diapers. But that me is gone. It hasn't existed for years, and I can't remember it at all. But I can remember being a human. I can remember it clearly. A lot of it I don't want to remember. I wish I could forget it, actually. Sometimes I have nightmares about my human life. Snowdancer told me that a lot of newfoals have human dreams for a while, but that the nightmares eventually go away. I hope so.

Oh! Here are my plants! I'm doing sunflowers and strawberries. I like strawberries. We were allowed to pick our projects, and I picked these. How old do you think these are? Two days! They are all just two days old! I expect to have my sunflowers blooming by tomorrow evening. And maybe the day after that, the berries will be ready. I really love doing this! I can make dessert, right out of the ground! It's so amazing to be able to do that.

Also, it feels amazing. Let me tell you something about being an earthpony. It is pretty awesome. I can feel the plants growing. When I really try, I can see them growing, in real time! And I can feel the soil under my hooves, and I can tell it's quality, and how healthy it is, and what's in it, and what it needs just like that!

When I eat, I get impressions from all the food. I can tell instantly which things came from Equestria, and which were grown here on earth, and I can tell how they were cared for and how much water they got and all sorts of stuff. It's like their life story with every bite! It's certainly made dinner more interesting. Sometimes it's hard to keep up with the conversation, because I'm getting so much from the food, you know?

Also, I can kind of tell what's around me, through the ground, somehow. I can close my eyes and just feel stuff that way. A little, anyway. It's not like I could walk around with my eyes closed or anything, but... I can tell what things are growing around me. I could probably walk around a forest with my eyes closed. I bet I could do that much.

Maybe that's part of it all. How can I be 'Millicent' anymore, if I can do all of that, feel all of that? Humans can't do those things. Humans can't even imagine what any of that would be like. I live in a whole new world, and I haven't even left Earth yet. Millicent is a blind, deaf, clumsy thing to me as a pony, to Rose Vale. I look back at that me, and it's like she's blind and deaf and numb. That me couldn't put a hoof on the ground and feel the worms down deep making the soil rich and healthy. That me couldn't taste the history of every bite of food. That me was deaf to the songs flowers sing, or to the chanting of grass. There's no way I could stand being Millicent again. It would feel like being put in a box and then buried.

I guess I'm not Millicent Nguyen. I guess that human girl is gone. Just like her two-year-old baby self is gone. She wouldn't have wanted to be two again any more than I would want to be her.

Maybe... maybe it isn't so much like death as it is like being born. I kind of feel like I wasn't really alive until I woke up as a pony. Maybe Millicent was a... a ghost. And now she's alive, as me. I don't know. I guess that all sounds really dumb, doesn't it? But I'm trying. Sunshine said it was important to try to communicate what being a pony is like. That's the whole point of this... holoshow. I'm trying my best. Please don't be too mad if I do a bad job, alright?

Hey, look at this. This is Gloria's project. She's doing all flowers. Chrysanthemums and daisies and roses. I think she did the roses because of the name I chose, but I'm not sure of that. Those two are really trying hard to be nice now. I suppose I should... we should... try to talk to them. It's the pony thing to do, anyway, isn't it? Sigh. It is. I know it is. I've got to talk to Sunshine about it. We need to be nice back. They really are trying. I wonder if she did choose roses because of me? That would be kind of sweet, I guess.

I... oh, that's an idea. It kind of feels like snooping though. Is it snooping? I don't know the rules for such things. Maybe it's alright? Oh, what they hay, I have to give it a try. I'll just do one hoof, and maybe a big sniff....

Oh. My. Gosh. I can tell. I can actually tell. So much regret. So much sadness. Oh, poor Gloria. Both of them. Poor Razor, she must feel the same way, they've been inseparable since their conversion. Oh, sweet Luna... I had no idea that you could tell such things from other ponies flowers. I can feel it on them. What the pony feels must change how they make the plants grow. Gloria must have grown the roses for me. Because of me. To be nice. To say she was sorry.

That does it. Sunshine and I are talking with Razor and Gloria tonight at dinner. We'll have dinner together and talk it all out. Oh, I hope it isn't wrong to snoop on other ponies' flowers. But... I'm glad I did it. Now I know. They're not being creepy, they're just really ashamed and sorry. They're trying to be friends. Wow. So much trouble in the human world would just be gone if humans could do what we ponies can do. There'd be a lot less dumb drama, anyway.

I've got to tell Sunshine about this. I'll help her dry off again, and tell her then. The 'corder! I don't want to get it wet. I can drop it off in our room first, get it again on the way to dinner. Alright, ponies, brief shut off, while I take care of stuff. But I'll be back for dinner, so... look for that or... however this is being distributed or whatever.

So, like, Rose Vale at the Conversion Bureau, signing off and stuff, at least for now. Back soon."

Day Eight: Old Friends Met For The First Time

Attention Citizen: Are you kidding yourself? What is wrong with you? Comply already! You cannot be serious about this! You will lose six hours of hypernet access! Just send a copy to someone! Anyone! Comply! Just Comply! We do not want to see you doing this to yourself. We are the Ministry of Propaganda and Infotainment, and We Care About You ®. Crosscheck reveals that you have 5.92 hours remaining to avoid censure.

GOING PONY

Day Eight: Old Friends Met For The First Time
By Sunshine Laughter

"... it's kind of important. Sunshine's family gets a good start in Equestria because of her holoshow. That's why she's doing it. It's for her family. Please? Besides, it doesn't matter to any of us, not really. We'll all be in Equestria in a week. Or less. We'll all be leaving, nopony can stay longer than fourteen days and... oh... no..."

Rose? What's the matter?

"I... I got here before you, Sunshine. I'll be shipped out before you and... the Exponential Lands and..."

Oh, THAT! Oh, Rose, goodness, don't you worry a bit about that! I'm going with you, wherever you go. You decide to ship out tomorrow - later today, if they do that - swirls, Rose, if you decide to just hoof it to the Barrier, right muffin NOW, and I am out that door with you, by your side. It's not even an issue.

"R-Really, Sunshine?"

I don't say what I don't mean. You know me a little by now, right? I do what I say. Unless you don't want me, in which case I'll be gone. You just say the word, and I. Am. Outtta. Here. Just like that. Gone. Zippo. Whoosh...

"I WANT YOU!"

Hee hee hee! Here? In public? Hee hee hee! Hey, it's OK, Come on everypony! She didn't mean it like THAT! Go back to your oats. Sheesh. Dinner crowd.

"Yes I did."

Wha.... oh... you...

"Made you blush!"

I guess... hee! I guess you did, Rose. Hey, Gloria, scootch over - it's your roommate.

"You... you're really cute together."

"Razor?"

"Please, don't... don't call me that. I don't like that name anymore."

"Then... um... what should I call you? Have you picked out a new name? What is it?"

"Uh... well.. I haven't figured out a name yet. I just don't like that one anymore."

"Gloria, what... what do you call Raz... her. What do you call her?"

"Hey you, Yo Fuzzy, Hey there Sweetflanks, Captain Cloppyhooves, Rhymes With Lazer..."

Hee hee hee!

"Hee hee! I like Captain Cloppyhooves!"

"Come on Gloria! Did you have to tell them that? Oh... fudge."

"Wow, Razo.... um... 'Captain'... I've never seen you embarrassed before."

"Yeah, well... a lot of things are different now, you know? I used to get embarrassed. I did. I just... I just wouldn't let anyone know it. I couldn't let anyone know it. I felt a lot of things I wouldn't admit back then Milli.... Rose."

"Listen, I want to get the ball rolling here. Sunshine. I'm really... sorry... for being a complete ass back when we first met. I'm sorry about the knife, and the threats and... here's the deal. I was pretty messed up, inside. I had a bunch of mental problems. I heard voices, I saw things, and... it wasn't good. I was a real headcase, alright?

But... ponification fixed my brain. It's just me in here now. Ow. Still getting used to how hard these hooves are. I gotta stop tapping my head like that. Ow. Anyway, I didn't even really see you in that room. I just saw this demon or monster, which is pretty much how I saw everything back then.

I can't tell you how much better it is not to... be nuts. It was really hard, because I was never alone, I couldn't escape, it was just all this stuff going on in my head all the time, and I couldn't exactly tell what was real from what wasn't. And it isn't like admitting that is going to help... that's weakness out on the street, and weakness gets you shived.

So... I'm sorry. There, I said my peace."

Um... wow, Gloria. I didn't know. It's OK, of course I forgive you. All is forgiven. In fact, I'm kind of glad it all happened. Seriously. If you hadn't been all crazy and stuff, I never would have met Rose, and that would have been the biggest tragedy. So... you actually did me a favor, strangely enough. Because of you, I met her. So... thank you. Thank you for that.

"Huh. I didn't expect that. I... I guess... you're welcome. Anytime. No. No. Definitely not. Being loco was pain. It was just total, constant pain. Never again. I only wish I'd gotten ponified sooner, just to get my head on straight. But... anyway, I'm glad it turned out well in the end, Sunshine.

OK, your turn Horseface. Go for it."

"Horseface? Gloria, that's kind of mean thing to call Razor, isn't it?"

"Naww... I don't think so, Rose. I mean, we all have horse faces now, right?"

Well, don't we actually have more more pony faces? Shorter muzzle and all that?

"Yeah... Sunshine is right. Hey, Gloria! Stop being so mean! I've got a PONY face, not a horseface, so there! Blaaa!"

"Alright, alright then. Ponyface. Still your turn. And I think the other end still counts as completely that of a horse."

Oooohhhh!!! Snap! Gloria's a snarky pony.

"Hee hee hee! wait... that's also kind of mean. Maybe even more mean!"

"It's OK, Rose. Gloria and I kind of understand each other. We... we came from similar backgrounds. It's just teasing. And we don't mean anything by it."

"Yes I do."

"Hah hah hah! Gloria.... you... poopyhead."

"Poopyhead? This is the best you can do? Are you serious?"

"Hey, pony here? Remember? I gots me a pony head now. I can't do the good zingers anymore. I gots a muffin for a brain now."

Now that's a question. Hey, Razo... come on, you have to pick a name. It's really hard to address you! Anyway, Gloria here seemed to think that having a 'pony head' was a good thing. It cured her problems. Do you feel like ponification messed you up somehow? Do you regret it?

"No. No! A thousand times no. I don't mean it like that, Sunshine. I've lost stuff, I can't deny that. I've lost a lot of things. But... the stuff I lost? I never liked it. Not really. I lost all the hard-edge stuff. The bad stuff. All the dark, violent stuff. I never wanted that. I felt I had to be that, to survive. But that was never me. Not really me.

I do miss being able to do insults good. I used to be Queen of The Digs, see? I could put anyone down like a dog. I could do with words what the average streety thought they could do with a knife. But... not anymore. I do miss that. It's like I lost all the best tools from my toolbox. But then... I also wouldn't use those now, even if I could... so it's kind of confusing, right? I don't want to hurt anypony anymore. I don't want to make anypony feel bad. But I really miss feeling so... clever. So sharp. There was a joy to a well crafted insult. I took pride in my filthy mouth.

I guess it's all really confusing for me. Inside, deep down, I didn't want to be all hard. I've always been a little marshmallow inside. A little butterfly or something. Yeah, like those little flitty things in the old cartoons. But that wasn't what keeps you alive out there, you know? I saw marshmallow butterfly types just get jacked, just totally jacked and... I swore I wouldn't end up like that.

Even though, deep down, I guess I kind of was one."

"I... I think I kind of suspected that, Ra... um... Marsha."

"What you call me, Rose?"

"Ooh! That's clever, I see where you're going! Rose totally has your pony name... Marsha."

"Gloria, what they hay? Marsha? What's up with that? That's not even a pony name!"

"It is if it's short for 'Marshmallow Butterfly'! Hee! Or we could call you Mallow-ry!"

I get it! Or 'Butterfly!'

"How about just 'Butt'. Works for me!"

Ha haa haa!

"hee hee hee!"

"Oh... my... that's kind of..."

"You are not calling me 'Butt'! And I don't like 'Marsha' one bit. But... Butterfly... that's kind of nice. Maybe we can try 'Butterfly', for a while, anyway."

I don't know, Raz... Butterfly. It's still an issue with the diminutive. 'Butter' works, I guess, but... at some point sompony is going to slip and call you 'butt' for short. I mean, you know it's going to happen.

"Alright, then no 'Butterfly'. See why I haven't picked a name? It's not easy coming up with a pony name!"

"Oh... I'm sorry, Not-Razor. It just seemed like 'Marshmallow Butterfly' was a really sweet name. Honestly."

"I... I guess it kind of does, Rose. I can understand where you were coming from. But it kind of has problems. It's all so... listen. I need to tell you stuff, Rose. I was really... wrong... to kick you out like I did. I'm sorry I hit you and..."

She HIT you?

"It's alright, Sunshine. Really. That was then. And she only hit me a little. That was human stuff. We're ponies now. Really, it's alright."

Humph.

"Go on, ....Not-Razor... say what you need to say."

"I'm just sorry, is all. I was all freaked out by how much you had changed. You were like, totally different, Rose. I mean 180, just completely different, and I got really scared. It was like Millicent had been replaced by... something else... and the whole thing just terrified me. It was like one of those scary holos where the pods come and stuff."

"Was I really that different? Am I different now?"

"Um... yeah. Still. It's still a little strange, and I'm a pony now myself. I think... I think maybe you've changed more than anypony. I can't speak for Sunshine here, because I don't know her, but Gloria is still recognizable to me as Gloria, and I still feel like me, even if I can't do insults and stuff, but you... you are a completely different pony now. You talk differently, all quiet and gentle and 'Hi there, I hope I don't cause any trouble, tee hee' and well... that's not how you used to be at all."

Seriously... sorry to break in here, but this is really interesting to me. You're saying that Rose wasn't... Rose at all back then? What was she like? How did she act back then?

"NO! Stop. I don't want you to tell her, Razor. No. NO. That isn't me. That wasn't me. I mean, it was me, but... that me will never be me again. Let it lie. Let that stay dead. That person died the second I drank that potion. Just let it be. Please. Please, Razor. Please."

Rose? Are you crying? You are crying! Rose... it's OK. I don't need to know. I don't. Come here, come here, it's OK. I don't want to hear that stuff. It's no big deal. I'm just glad to be with you. I'm just happy with you, just as you are. I don't care about your past. If you don't want me to know that stuff, then I don't need to know. Simple as that. I was just curious. You can't blame a pony for being curious. That's all. Ain't no big thing.

"I... (sniff).... I was... I was cold, Sunshine. Cold and serious. Dead inside."

"Boy howdy was she. She could... uh...."

"RAZOR!"

"Uh... ah... nevermind. Sorry."

"Maybe... maybe someday, Sunshine. Maybe I'll tell you someday, if you still want to know. But... not now. Not while we're still... I want you to know me. The real me. Not... that... human I was. Not that... monster."

I can't imagine you ever being a monster, Rose. Not ever. I know you could never be a monster.

"Then you'd be wrong, Sunshine. Of the two of us, I was considered the most... scary."

"That is a natural fact. There was this time when... ah. Sorry again. Sorry."

Listen, everypony. I think that this dinner together was a good idea. I think it helped. I don't feel bad about... stuff... now, and actually, I'm kind of amazed at how well we're getting along. I guess that's a pony thing. Which is cool.

I'm a little freaked by the idea of some of... the stuff... in the past, but, like Rose says, that's all dead and buried now. And it is. The fact is that all we've got is now, and the future, and that future is in Equestria, as ponies. We're all new creatures now. We're new lives.

I've been thinking about that. Apparently you have too. I found that really interesting. We've all been thinking about what all of this means... about who and what we are, and whether we're the same, or something new. Whether we're the same pony or not. And... maybe it doesn't matter.

No, seriously. I mean... I don't feel any bad towards either of you. Not a bit. And I know for certain that before, as a human, I would have had a big old grudge. And I would have been upset about... um... you - Not-Razor - being... my marefriend's ex. That would have made me jealous or feel weird or something. And I don't. I felt a little protective when she was talking about the hitting and stuff but... it wasn't jealousy. Not like I used to feel it, anyway.

Um... I guess what I'm saying is... this didn't turn out weird, and... I kind of feel weird that... it didn't turn out weird.

"Hee hee hee! You're a silly pony, Sunshine!'

I... guess.

"I was really worried that... you wouldn't forgive us... me, really, for the shower thing. Ever since we got ponied, Gloria and I kind of had that on our minds."

"Yeah, she's right.They made it pretty clear that starting fights in a Bureau was not a good thing, and it was conversion or leave. We were pretty out of control. I was, I know it. Razor... I mean... Muffins, Razor, Not-Razor, you need to pick a name we can use here. You can't just glare because we use that name. I need a name, now."

"Gloria... how... how am I supposed to just choose a name? I'll get stuck with it and then..."

"You don't choose some name, any name, right now, and I'm just going to call you Butt. I mean it. Not even Butterfly. Butt. Now pick a name. Don't you pout at me! Name, now."

"Um... I... Gloria...."

"How about 'Lavender'. I mean, you are. Your coat is a really pretty lavender color. Or you could go by the color of your mane and tail, kind of a teal color. Colors make good pony names! I chose Rose Vale and it was a color name!"

"Lavender, huh? Lavender. La-ven-der. Lavi. Wait! That sounds like a bathroom! I don't want to hear 'Lavi's going to the Lavi!"

"Why not?"

"Gloria? What do you mean..."

"I said, why not? So somepony says that? So what? Lavi sound's cute. If they make a joke, so they make a joke. Let's face facts - if pride was that big a deal for us, we would have both left when they called us on jacking up Sunshine in the bathroom. I don't know about you, but pride just got me in trouble before."

"Ah... um... I guess. What they hay. I... I like Lavender. I like the way my coat looks. Lavender. Yeah, I could be Lavender. Lavender the pony. Fair enough, Gloria. From now on, I'm Lavender. Is that OK?"

"I'm NOT Gloria."

"What?"

"You can call me Newmoon. That's my name now. I'm Newmoon. So, hi there, Lavender, nice to meet you."

"Just like that? Newmoon? Not even a second thought? Why? Because your coat is pitch black? You have a golden mane, why not Goldy or something? How can you just choose like that?"

"You just chose like that. Now you're 'Lavender the pony', right? So, I'm Newmoon. And yes, it is because I'm black. Black like the new moon. Dark as midnight and twice as pretty. Frankly, I think I got the most dramatic look of all of us!"

Says the pony who tells us pride is not a virtue! Hah! Well, then, nice to meet you both, Newmoon and Lavender. Hey, that kind of sounds like a legal office. 'Have you suffered a... carriage wreck? Contact Newmoon and Lavender, Attorneys at Law!'

"Ha ha ha ha!"

"Hee hee hee!"

"Oh, pony... hee... yeah, it kind of does!"

"So... Sunshine?"

Yes, Rose?

"I was thinking... maybe Newmoon and Lavender could... join the Pony Breakfast Club? Would that be alright? Are we friends now?"

Yeah. Yes. How about it you two? Want to join the coolest and most exclusive club in the entire Bureau?

"Club? What's this now? Glori.....Newmoon, you know anything about this club of theirs?"

"Nope, but I'm intrigued. Tell me more."

Well, it's not fancy, but it is friendly. We kind of meet at breakfast. We got to calling ourselves the Pony Breakfast Club. It's me and Rose, and then Goldenrod and Aquamarine - they're kind of a couple, though I'm not sure they know it themselves yet...

"Heh! I know the type!"

Gold's an earthpony, and Aqua's in my pegasus class. Then there's Jan, she's a unicorn. You'll probably meet her in your... unicorn classes or whatever, Lavender... she's really serious, but she's nice.

"Is she kind of yellow, orange mane, looks like a creamsickle?"

Hee! Yeah, that's her.

"Met her, briefly. Basic Levitation. She has trouble floating stuff. She really tries hard, though."

Yeah, Jan told us she's worried she won't be able to use magic. It's kind of a sore point with her. Let's see....

"Meadowdawn! She's in your pegasus class, Sunshine. Sunshine wanted to be green, right, and the next day out comes Meadow all green, just the color Sunshine wanted. But I like Sunshine the color she is. I like blue."

Aww... thank you Rose. So there's Meadowdawn and her roommate Honeydrizzle. I don't think they're a couple or anything, they're just roommates. So... altogether that's...

"Sunshine... you... Me, Rose, then Goldenrod and Aquamarine, Jan - she hasn't chosen a pony name yet - and then Meadowdawn and Honeydrizzle, and now you, Lavender and Newmoon. That's the Breakfast Pony Club!"

"We didn't say we'd join. Do you remember joining this brecky club thing, Lavender?"

"Yes. Yes I did. Of course we'll join the brecky club thing Newmoon! Great Luna, I mean... what was the whole point of making nicey-nice if we can't be friends and play in all their pony games afterwards? Don't be daft. Newmoon and I graciously accept. Don't we?"

"Heh. Yeah. Of course. I'm just being a goof. I want in on breakfast friends. Well, if they'll have us. Did you already ask the others or something?"

Uh... no. I guess we kind of didn't even think of that part. Oh, pony.

"It'll be alright, Sunshine. Don't worry. Newmoon and Lavender are nice ponies and all of our other friends are nice ponies and nice ponies are... um... nice!"

You cannot fight logic like that. I wouldn't even dare to try. I guess you're in because of... The Law Of Nice.

"Nice ponies are nice."

"Seems pretty deep to me, Lavi."

"Hey!"

Hee hee hee!

This evening on
CELEBRITY PONIFICATION TONIGHT!

Who's the hot new Western Northamerizone holo star who recently turned out to be a unicorn?

What about this world-famous hypernet personality who made bets that she'd be a pegasus and ended up an earthpony?

What happens when this celebrity couple drinks ponification serum and finds out that they're head over hooves... for the wrong ponies?

Tonight on CELEBRITY PONIFICATION, we'll investigate why this lower ranking corporate leader is dragging his hooves on getting the rest of his family to a Bureau, and look into the rumors that a certain Bollywood singer is having a cow over her costar not getting his pony on! And that's not all!

In our second segment we take you behind the scenes to see how ponification serum is made, and watch as our host is invited to give the newest batch a taste!

And who is this well-known rowdy popstar who decided to sneak off and fix himself his own dose of ponification serum, and ended up a MARE???

All this and more on CELEBRITY PONIFICATION TONIGHT!

Remember, WATCHING IS MANDATORY!

Watching is mandatory only for grade three or lower corporate workers. Red level workers can be fined for failure to comply with this consumer directive. Favela kiosk viewers are encouraged to view this program, prizes will be awarded based on audience numbers.

"... I thought that went really well, Sunshine. I feel like we made new friends. It's kind of strange though."

Everything is always strange here, Rose. We're in a Conversion Bureau. What isn't strange?

"Well, yeah. I guess that's true. But... that's not what I meant. I mean... It's like we knew these ponies, before. I knew Lavender for years, and you at least met Newmoon before she changed, right, and now we meet these two and they are just new ponies. I mean... we can be friends now, and I know we couldn't before we were ponies. No way at all. Yet, as ponies, we all get along and we can talk and it's alright."

Well, one thing I noticed right away is that ponification makes humans polite. It doesn't matter if you were the meanest son-of-a-muffin before you drink that stuff, afterwards everypony is totally 'please and thank you'. They want to be polite. It isn't like anypony is given some command 'Be Polite'... they may not even know how. But they try, they invent being polite if they have to. You can watch some of them stumble around, trying to figure it out. What's up with that?

"It's because once you're a pony, you care how other ponies feel. You care about what effect you have on them. Even if you don't know them. That's the thing that is put in us. Caring."

So... we're forced to care? We're reprogrammed to care about others, that's the whole deal?

"I think so. I mean, wasn't that true for you, too?"

Um... I thought I cared about people before I drank that goop. But... maybe I didn't, really. I mean... I kind of know that... alright, when Gloria and Razor were... I mean Newmoon and Lavender, sorry, I'm trying to remember, I really am... when they were like all 'we need to talk with you', I was pretty creeped out. You kind of seemed that way too, right?

"Hee! Yes. I wasn't sure what that was about at the time. I just noticed something too... you were really apologizing for not remembering their new names, and they aren't even here. I just thought it was cute. But yes, I was 'kinda creeped' as you put it."

Hey, move over, Rose. You can't hog all the blanket! Sheesh! I thought ponies were all about sharing and caring here!

"Sorry. Here, have some more blanket."

Thank you. I was just teasing. I didn't mean to be... mean or anything.

"Shhh... I know. Silly."

Anyway, once we actually decided - well you decided - that we should have dinner with them, it all just went so well. And it wasn't creepy from the first second. And I really wanted to hear what they had to say, and I felt good working everything out and becoming friends. I feel happy now about the whole thing. I know that would never have happened if I were a human. If I was still a human. So I know I'm different now. I wanted to make friends. I wanted that more than I had issues about what happened.

"See? It's strange, isn't it? I mean, it's not bad. If anything it's super good. That's the human Ideal, isn't it? To be nice, make friends, resolve differences in a peaceful way, be nicey-nice? That's the whole human notion of what it means to be good, to be righteous and not-evil and... well, good. Only, humans don't really do that very well. I've certainly not seen them able to live up to that Ideal very well. But now..."

Yeah! Now, as ponies, we can. That's what ponification gave us. The ability to finally... whoa, this is going to sound weird, so bear with me, alright?

"Alright..."

Now that we aren't human, we can finally be human. Now wait! I have a point here. Humans want to be certain things, but they never can. They try, Luna how they try, but it just never quite works out. They don't know what went wrong, it just doesn't, right? But they know what they want to be. It's the theme of every idea of goodness, like you just said.

But in being ponies, suddenly we can be that. So in a way, by not being human, we can finally be the Ideal of being human that humans have always strived for. We're more human than human now. We had to stop being human to finally be human, see?

"I get your point, but... I think maybe it's a little convoluted. It's clear we've changed, inside and out. And we've definitely been given a second chance, a new life. And it's also pretty clear that we've been granted a stronger moral compass and more concern, more compassion than any human ever had, or could have. But... I don't think we're anything like what humans imagined as their Ideal."

How so?

"The human Ideal is also to be grand. To rise up and fight for the very stars. To have power and majesty and triumph and glory. That's part of the big human Ideal too. 'In action how like an Angel! In apprehension how like a god!', right?"

Hamlet? You know Hamlet?

"Hey! Just because I lived on the street doesn't mean I was stupid. Seriously, Sunshine."

Sorry, I'm sorry. Foolish prejudice. I'm sorry, Rose.

"Well, it's not entirely unjustified, I guess. I was pretty weird out there. Anyway, do you want to be all godly and full of angelic majesty? Do you want to rule and command the world?"

N...No. No I don't. Once... back before, maybe I kind of did. But... no. I don't even think that way now. I just want to be happy. I just want to... be with you, eat nice food, do something useful that might make other ponies happy...

"That's what I mean. That's maybe the biggest change of all. Ponification took our ambition away. It took our need to take and replaced it with a little more give. Equestria is a universe of plenty, right? So... creatures mostly give. Earth is in a universe of scarcity, so... we mostly are built to take. We've been altered to function right in our new universe, in our proper home. Ponies couldn't exist on Earth. They'd be like the dodo."

Dodo?

"It was a flightless bird that never had any enemies. It lived on an island, long ago. Man came and brought rats, dogs and pigs. The dodo didn't even know to protect its eggs. It would stand around while dogs ripped it to shreds. It had no idea of how to get angry and fight for itself. It couldn't encompass being hurt or killed for no reason, or because some other creature thought it looked tasty. It just kept trying to make friends until it went extinct.

That's why calling someone a dodo is supposed to mean they are stupid, only... the dodo wasn't stupid at all. It was just a citizen of a land where no evil existed. No enemies. Just friends. We're like that now. Or at least a little like that. If ponies lived on the Earth, they would become extinct very fast."

Well, they sure would if they came here for the food. Not much grows anymore, pretty much anywhere.

"No, I mean before the Collapse and the Ecosaster. I mean that we're now built for living in a world that humans aren't built for. The changes we have been noting are the adaptations to that new universe, see? We've been altered to survive according to different rules. That's what ponification really is... it's making us able to live in a universe where magic is, and where... friendship and kindness... really are the rule. It's sad, actually."

It's sad that friendship is the rule in Equestria... what?

"No, it's sad that human Ideals partly had no hope of ever succeeding because of the universe they lived in itself. When they fail, it isn't really their fault. They tried to reach for something better, only... that better was against the rules of the universe itself. Except for the power and dominance stuff, of course."

Listen, I am too tired and too happy about Lavender and Darkmoon? Halfmoon? Wait... Newmoon to talk any more philosophy or whatever it is we're going on about. You know what I want?

"What?"

I want to snuggle up with the prettiest little pony I know, and cover her with a wing and maybe have some smoochies time and maybe even fall asleep with my head over her back. That's what I want. Is this a negotiable possibility here?

"What, you don't want more? What if a certain little pony was to.... nibble.... you... in... the... right places, and..."

Oh, hoh! Ah... Now that's nice and all... but... frankly... I am really tired. You forget that I flew like a proper pegasus today. I've never been more tired. I've mostly been running on excitement until now.

"There is goes. I knew it would happen. But so soon?"

What? What do you mean?

"Lesbian Bed Death. LBD. First it's all 'oh, I want your body so bad' and then it turns into 'let's cuddle and be domestic', and then it's nothing but gentle contentment and peace for ever and ever and ever and blah, blah, blah......"

I'll show you lesbian bed death! I'll show you le petit mal, you little scamp! You'll be passing out from pleasure before I'm done! Never threaten a pegasus with contentment after she's had a successful flight! We live for excitement and the thrill of the open air... and the open leg, little pony, yea... like that.... Mnnnnn... Mnnnn....

"Hee hee! Now that's more like.... iiii....ummmmm oh, yeah.... that's well.... what about the.... the... cor...der..."

Muffin the corder! Mnnnn Pbfffff sllllp mffff Mnnnn....

This evening on
CELEBRITY PONIFICATION TONIGHT!

Who's the hot new Western Northamerizone holo star who recently....

Day Nine: Strawberries And Love

Attention Citizen: Alright, let's be reasonable here. You've probably heard the rumors, that these infofeeds contain tracking information and serve as a viral census to locate and identify those individuals at risk for Conversion Hesitation. You may have even heard stories of Blackmesh soldiers tracking down those suspected of HLF tendencies, thanks to their use of programs like this to scout out Bureaus for later attacks. These are just empty rumors and completely apocryphal tales designed to frighten and disturb. Why we even carry HLF promotional materials under our current Relative Freedom Policy! Feel The Freedom!™ Go on, send a copy of this program to someone, anyone! What could it hurt? And it's fun to share! Crosscheck reveals that you have 4.42 hours remaining to avoid censure.

GOING PONY

Day Nine: Strawberries And Love
By Sunshine Laughter

CLICK

Hey sleepyhead. Time to wake up. It's a day nine morning, and that means we only have... um... let's see... you got here a day before me, so that...

"Huh? Wha? Unh.... Sunshine... I was having such a nice dream. What is it about you and mornings? I'm a pony of the night here. Always have been. More sleepy, less talky... nnnn..."

.... four more days until we ship out. Because I'm going with you, and your fourteen days is up in four days. Come on, Rosey-Posey-cute-little-nosey... I'ma lick your ears until you get up... mmnnn... ears... tasty ears... helloooo in there!!

"OH! You're impossible, you know that? There's no way I'm going to get any beauty sleep around you, is there?"

You don't need it. You're almost TOO beautiful as it is. I don't think I can take much more. Gonna have to find an ugly pony to cuddle with, so I don't just melt away from the pretty. You got nice ears, you know that?

"Hee hee! No! That tickles.... no! no! Now stop that, goodness, Sunshine! Hee hee hee! Alright, alright... what is it that has you so worked up... it's not... let me see... Muffin, Sunshine, it's still half an hour before the cafeteria even opens! So what's with the waking me up... mfff.... not that kisses are all....mmnnn... bad... but... "

I woke up and I couldn't sleep anymore and, well, you just looked so nice, and then... I just couldn't stand wasting any more of today, I guess. I watched you sleep for quite a while. The light kind of shimmers on your coat, did you know that? It makes it look like the ocean at sunset, when you breath. It's all sparkly, with the little soft, coppery hairs. And you smell nice too. And I was playing with your tail.

"You're certainly being romantic today, what with all the 'shining ocean' stuff and... what do you mean you were playing with my tail? What have you done to my tail, you little..."

I braided it! Look! It's cute! And that's 'shimmering' not 'shining'. Picked that word out special, I did. Don't hate on the multisyllables, cause words are like roses and they're my gift to you. And stuff.

"And stuff? You really are in an odd mood today! What brought all of this on, seriously?"

I... I'm not sure, actually. I guess I was just thinking about how we first met, and how well we've been getting along and everything. Remember, we talked for hours before I finally remembered to switch on the 'corder. You were so sad, there in the bathroom. I just... the moment I saw you... I just liked you. Even though I was still a human, I... I was thinking, before, while you were sleeping. I was attracted. To you. Even though you were a pony and I wasn't. Is that weird?

"Hee! Probably. Yeah, I'd say it's weird. And that's fine with me. If you hadn't felt that way, maybe we wouldn't have ended up together, right? I like weird. Stay weird, alright? Especially if it means you want to stay with me."

It was instant, Rose. That was what was so strange for me. It was like something in me just went 'ding!' and I knew I didn't want to be anywhere in the world except right there, sitting on the bathroom tile, next to you. I've never felt anything like it. It felt really strong, and really right and I didn't know what to make of it, except I was gonna be there with you.

"I kind of felt the same thing. Sort of."

Really? What, tell me what you felt? What was I like when you met me?"

"I was in the back of the bathroom because I didn't know anyplace else to go. I didn't want to be in the main room, because I was afraid Razor might come out and do something bad to me... Celestia, it's just impossible to think of Lavender as ever having been Razor now, you know? Sorry... it's just strange to think about is all... anyway, Razor was pretty vindictive and stuff, so I was hiding out, basically.

I kind of cried a bit, because those tiles are cold and I felt really alone. I mean, I'd just been ponified that day, and then my only friend kicks me out, yelling at me that I'm not really Millicent anymore and 'Where is Millicent' and 'I want Millicent back' and really bizarre junk like that, right? But then you walk in, and you kind of look all scared too."

I looked scared?

"Oh yes. You looked terrified."

I don't think I looked scared. I mean Gloria had just been all up in my face and everything, but I knew where the couch was. It wasn't like her kind could scare me or anything...

"You were scared, Sunshine. You were shaking. I could smell it in you. Pony noses, remember? It's not like you can hide emotions with noses like these."

Um... yeah. Alright. Fair enough. It's weird, isn't it? Sometimes, smell is almost too much!

"I know what you mean! When I put my nose next to you, after dinner, I can smell the food inside you, through you. Have you noticed that? It's a good thing we're changed enough to enjoy that kind of input, because I think, as a human, it would have seriously weirded me out!"

Oh, yeah. It's like a whole new world made out of smell. It's like a new sense. I can't even equate it with smell as I knew it before. Yeah, I've noticed that too. And that human doctor who wears the perfume?

"Oh, Luna, it's like a truck smashing into my nose at seventy or something! Perfume car-wreck!"

I can smell her even through the door. I smelled that once during dinner, even over the food. Seriously.

"I believe you. And I know she doesn't use that much, but from what I've heard, they're told not to wear any at all, right, because of just this thing."

Huh. I guess they have to do a lot of little things because of our better senses and all that. I never thought about it before.

"Anyway, you were pretty frightened, Sunshine. That's nothing to be ashamed of. You said she pulled a knife on you, that's pretty scary. I'd be scared, and back in the favela... well... that was then. Nevermind. But it's OK that you were scared. In a way, it was the best thing, because then I wasn't scared of you. I felt sorry for you, because of how I was feeling."

So you took pity on me, because I was little lost human in the big dark bathroom?"

"Hee! Something like that. Ow! Come on, help me unbraid my tail. You did this, help me undo it!"

Aww... I thought it looked pretty!

"You didn't do it right, though. It's all... off center, and... that's not how braiding goes... who taught you how to braid hair?"

Nobody. I... didn't much care for learning those sorts of things, so I never paid attention. My grams liked to do stuff with my hair, but... I just kind of put up with it. I probably should have paid attention. I kind of wish I had. She'd wash my hair once a week, and do it up and... I miss her. You would have liked my gramma. I wish she could have lived to be a pony.

"Umf... I wish I could have met her too. There, see? That could have ended up a knot. I don't even know how to undo a knot as a pony. No more braiding my tail, until you learn how to, alright?"

I'm sorry.

"Oh... don't look so sad, I didn't mean it like that. Listen, if you really want to braid tails, I'll teach you, alright? There, there. That's better now. A nice smile. You smiled at me when you first saw me, when I was lying on the floor in the bathroom. You just about grinned, it was the biggest smile, like you'd just found treasure or something. Not until you sat down, when we were first talking, that's when you smiled. I just loved that. It made me feel all better. It was like the sun coming out. Hey, Sunshine, how's that for romantic?"

Hee! So, you... felt... something for me, too?

"Of course I did, silly. That's what I'm trying to get across... careful, that's the last of it... ahh... you can just groom my tail there while I tell you how wonderful you are."

I can live with that.

"Heh! So, when you sat down and started talking with me, it just made me feel safe. And I didn't feel alone anymore. But the weirdest thing was that it all just felt natural, like I'd known you forever already. I'd never felt anything like that before. I just plain couldn't have, as a human. I wasn't... very trusting, back then. But... I was trusting of you, and I have no idea why. I don't think it was just because I was new to being a pony, either, because I haven't felt that way again with anypony else. It was just like... we fit... somehow."

Mff... yeah! I felt that way too! It was like... somehow I already knew you or something. It was really weird. Love at first sight, I guess. Wow, I guess it really happens, at least sometimes.

"Love at first... I.... well... so... um... that's what I felt when I first met you, Sunshine."

Hee! There. I think I have your tail all nice and neat. I'm sorry I braided it wrong. It just seemed like... well it was so much fun at the time, and... I suppose maybe I thought I did a better job than I did and that you might think it was cute... or something.

"Sunshine?"

Yes, my delicious mare of the morning?

"Um... when you said... do you think you lo... um... nevermind. Hey, look! It's time for breakfast! Nearly, anyway."

TCZZRK! GGLOONNGG!!! THE CAFETERIA IS NOW OPEN FOR BREAKFAST, EVERYPONY. WE HAVE SOMETHING SPECIAL TODAY... STRAWBERRIES, DIRECTLY FROM EQUESTRIA. A HEADS-UP, THIS IS A STAFF FAVORITE, SO I'D RECOMMEND GETTING IN LINE EARLY BEFORE SUPPLIES RUN OUT! GGLOONNGG!!! TCZZRK!

Heh! You couldn't have timed that any better. I'm impressed. Strawberries sound good. I've always wanted to taste real strawberries, how about you, Rose?

"I didn't think it would ever be possible, so it's not something I ever really thought about. But that doesn't mean I don't want to. Strawberry flavoring is one of my favorites, so the real thing is probably going to be amazing, at least I hope so."

Alright, just give me a moment to get dressed, OK?

"... Whu? Heh?"

Hah! Hee hee hee hee...

"Heh hee hee hee!"

Oh... hee heh heh... I guess that's not... hee hee... a big part of our lives anymore, huh?

"Well... you kind of have to put on your holocorder."

Yeah... it's true, I kind of do feel a little naked without it. More naked. Hee hee!

"Here, I'll get the door. MPPHFF. There. I'm not sure we count as being naked, as such, Sunshine."

How do you figure - whoa! Let's hoof it, there really is a line forming, and fast. Strawberries really must be a big deal!

"Well, it's not like we show any skin. We've got lovely coats covering us. We have tails to cover our backsides, so... I figure we're dressed. That or the whole concept just doesn't even apply at all any... look! It's Jan and Meadowdawn! They're waving at us, come on, maybe we can join them."

Isn't that cutting in line?

"We're just joining our friends. Pony Breakfast Club, right? Jan! Meadowdawn! Good morning!"

"Please join us. We've been waiting for you to show up."

"Honeydrizzle had to go to the potty, she'll be back in a bit. Have you seen the rest of us?"

No, Rose and I just got out here, Meadow. We were lazing about talking until the gong sounded. Wait! here comes Newmoon and Lavender... heya, ponies!

"Hey, everypony! Didja hear? Strawberries today!"

"Yeah, like Lavender says, STRAWBERRIES! From Equestria! Anypony here ever taste strawberries before?"

"Jan here heard about the shipment last night. That's why we're already in line. Apparently a few other ponies heard about it too, which is why we're not first in line, but hey, at least we're here. Pony Breakfast Club rules!"

"Thank you so much, Meadowdawn, for saving us both a place in line. It's nice... to be... part of something."

"Good morning, Sun, Rose, Meadow, Jan, Newmoon, Lav! Where's Honey?"

"Aquamarine and Goldenrod! Honeydrizzle is in the bathroom. Wait...here she is!"

"Pony Breakfast Club Rules! Whoo!"

"Honeydrizzle's back, that's the last of us! We're all together now!"

"Hi! Wow, everypony's here now. I just stepped away a moment ago. Morning, everypony. Ooh! Our new members, too! Newmoon, Lavender! Pony Breakfast Club is the best!"

You know, Rose, I really like this. I like our little Brekky Club.

"I do too, Sunshine! We're all such friends now!"

Yeah... I guess we are. Hey, grab a tray, everypony!

"I wonder what else will be served, other than the strawberries of course."

"Who cares, Jan? STRAWBERRIES. From Equestria? Does anything else matter?"

"Actually, Meadowdawn, it rather does, at least to me. I am hoping for some cream. Or perhaps even some french toast."

Cream?

"Cream was traditionally served with strawberries in many parts of the world, Sunshine. According to what I have read, it enhances the experience of eating strawberries."

"I'll just be happy to have real strawberries no matter what. But if they have cream, I'll be sure to try it with them Jan!"

"I think it should be very good, Newmoon. Oh, and welcome to your first official Pony Breakfast Club. You as well, Lavender."

"Thank you! Oh, hello! Ooh! Yes, strawberries PLEASE! And what else... pancakes - hey, Jan, they have pancakes, that's kind of like french toast - yes, I'll take some of them too... they're haycakes? Cool! Oh! Oh! Yes, I want the juice, too! It's orange juice? It's real too? Wow! This is gonna be GREAT!"

Haycakes please! Those must be the strawberries! Oh, please! Ooh, eggs. Thank you. Juice? Sure!

"Haycakes for me as well, orange juice, strawberries and do you have any cream? Yes, please. And I would also like some of the scrambled eggs, too."

"Oh, wait! I want eggs as well! Please? I didn't know there was eggs."

"They say eggs make your coat shiny. But I think it's because of our big brains."

Jan?

"We're lacto-vegetarian herbivores for a reason, I believe. It takes a lot of protein to sustain sapience. Frankly, I am surprised that despite being pony-like in form, that Equestrians do not eat meat."

Ewww.... wow. Even the thought of that really gets me. Wow. I think eggs are enough.

"I kind of see Jan's point. Most of the old Earth animals, when they were alive, the most intelligent ones ate meat. At least as part of their diets. All the great apes did. Actually, I think even the monkeys did too."

"That is correct, Rose. Apes and monkeys both ate meat regularly, about once a month. It has been theorized that the need to hunt for meat is one of the primary factors that drove the evolution of intelligence in humans."

"But what about ponies? What made them smart, then?"

Celestia. Celestia and Luna. Don't forget, Equestria isn't like our universe. Things don't evolve there. Everything was created, not formed naturally. Or so they keep telling us.

"That's a strange thought, isn't it Sunshine? Hang on, gotta carry my tray to the table. MFF..."

MNFFF....MFF... Ah! There! Hey! I didn't spill anything! Not a drop!

"I lost a berry!"

I'll get it. Fmfff.... here. Here you go!

"Wow, thank you Sunshine!"

Not a problem, Aquamarine. I guess these things are precious, every little one.

"Excuse me, Newmoon? Could I sit there? I want to be near Aqua."

"Oh! Sorry! I was just so eager... I wasn't paying attention."

"Alright! Alright! The Official Breakfast Pony Club is now in session!"

"Hee hee hee!"

"Hah hah!"

"Oh, sweet Luna... I can't believe these... strawberries...."

Oh, sweet, loving Celestia... I've never tasted anything like it! They're tart, yet sweet... oh, so sweet, and the smell and the juice...

"Historically, some have considered strawberries the greatest of all fruit. Oh, attention everypony! I have an announcement to make!"

Jan? What is it?

"Yes, what it it Jan... oh.... straaaaawwwberrrriiieess...."

"Yes, well... I'll wait for Honeydrizzle to... come back to us..."

"Ahhmmm.... sorry... sorry Jan... but, well. You know."

"I do indeed. I have enjoyed the strawberries greatly myself. Especially with the cream, I highly recommend it. First, everypony, I have managed to achieve THIS!"

JAN! That's amazing! You... you're lifting a strawberry with your horn! Congratulations!

"That's WONDERFUL Jan! I knew you'd finally get your magic! Isn't it lovely, Sunshine?"

"JAN! I am really, really impressed!"

"I wanted to demonstrate this to all of you. I have come to see you all as... well, as my friends."

"We are!"

We're all friends at the Breakfast Pony Club!

"Oh, I agree Sunshine! We're all friends!"

"Um... us too?"

Yes. Of course, Newmoon and Lavender. Friends.

"Thank you, Sunshine."

"I have a second announcement!"

"Jan?"

Jan?

"Ooh! What is it?"

"I have finally chosen a proper Equestrian name for myself. I think it is an important step in our new lives to choose a new name. Names have power, I reason, and in choosing a pony name, we commit ourselves wholly to our new species, our new nation, and our new existence."

"....."

"And????"

...O...K. That's some pretty grand speechifying there, but...

"Oh, don't tease, Jan... I mean... just..."

"OUT WITH IT ALREADY!"

"Muffin, what a drama queen..."

"Snowflower. From now on, I am named Snowflower. I am Snowflower the unicorn."

"That's a pretty name!"

"I like it!"

"It does suit you. Did you just go on your color, or...?"

"My white coat was a factor, that's true, Goldenrod. But the idea also came to me in the moment when I finally succeeded at lifting a small object. I've been very worried that I would never have any control over my magic at all. I still can only lift and move very small things, and as you can see...."

"Oh!"

"I got it! Oh... ulp. Sorry. Hey, you can have one of mine... I still have one. Here, just take mine. I didn't mean to gobble it."

"It's alright, Meadowdawn. But... I will have a strawberry from your plate as compensation. They... they really are good."

"Oh, I completely agree!"

"Hear hear!"

"So, when I found I could finally do anything at all with my horn, I felt like... I felt like I had just come out of a very long winter, and was seeing the first sign of spring. As in the old motion pictures. I am sure you have seen images of flowers growing as winter vanishes. Thus 'Snowflower'. To me, the name suggests that I may yet have hope of potential."

That is a beautiful sentiment for your name, Snowflower. Welcome to the Breakfast Pony Club, Snowflower the Unicorn!

"SNOWFLOWER THE UNICORN!"

"Who can do real magic now!"

"HUZZAH!"

"Huzzah? Meadowdawn?"

"Yes, 'huzzah!', it's a real word, Newmoon. It's fun!"

"Then... HUZZAH! Um... for Snowflower!"

"Thank you, everypony. Whoo! I dare say this is one of the happiest Breakfast meetings yet!"

"You know, Snowflower, it really is."

"I agree with Rose. It just seems happy today. Maybe... maybe it's the strawberries?"

"Hee hee! Strawberries are pretty amazing, Aqua, but... I think it's just... we're all here now."

We're all here? I'm not sure what you mean by that, Meadowdawn.

"It just seems complete now, somehow. With Newmoon and Lavender being so nice, and there's nine of us now, and we all have proper names, and we've all agreed to be friends, too. It's... it's like today was the official day we really became... the Pony Breakfast Club. We're complete."

"I see, Meadow, it's like we're a team now. It's like we're ready."

Yeah... Rose. I get it. We're ready for Equestria now. I think that's it. We, all of us, we have each other. And we have names. And we all have a hoof up on the abilities that define what we can do... like Snowflower finally getting her magic. And I can fly, and Rose can grow plants and all of us can... do the stuff we need to be able to do. At least a little. Equestria doesn't seem so strange now. I feel like I can fit in.

"YEAH! I do too! I think maybe Sunny has it!"

'Sunny'? I'm... Sunny, now? When did I become 'Sunny'?

"Just now!"

"You have to admit it's kind of amazing somepony hasn't called you that yet. I mean, we call Honeydrizzle 'Honey' most of the time, and you just know everypony's going to call Snowflower 'Snow' for short. It's just a natural thing, I think. Sunny."

"Personally, I would prefer to be called 'Snowflower' in its entirety. I mean, I just came forth with the name, let me enjoy it a while before it get's shortened for the convenience of others. Please!"

"Sunny is a cute name, Sunshine!"

I suppose. But then you have a one-syllable name, Rose. Can't shorten that any further. 'Ro' maybe, but that just sounds beyond lazy.

"Ro, Ro, Ro my boat! Hee hee hee!"

(Yeah, you just give me a chance...) Fine. Fine. Call me 'Sunny' if you have to, but at least call me 'Sunshine' occasionally. It's only two syllables, for muffin's sake!

"Ommmmnnnnn.... Oh... PONY, I love strawberries!"

"Um hmmm..."

"Snowflower? If you magic a strawberry into your mouth, does it taste different? OOH! Can you float one of mine into my mouth?"

"YES! Me next! I wanna try a floating berry!"

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We at the Yutani-Tyrell Center For Interspecies Relations are here to help in the new, and complex times.

Whether you are currently in a romantic relationship with a native Equestrian, or a Newfoal, or you are considering a relationship with a native Equestrian or Newfoal, the Yutani-Tyrell Center For Interspecies Relations exists to provide in depth counseling and relationship services to all qualified Red-Grade or higher employed workers within the world corporate structure.

Whether the need is couples-or-more counseling, cross-cultural adaptation, or sexual and social concerns, the Yutani-Tyrell Center For Interspecies Relations is on call, 24 hours a day, with a trained staff of both Human and Equestrian help ready to assist you in your time of crisis, or even if you merely have questions or concerns.

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Please note that the Yutani-Tyrell Center For Interspecies Relations is a counseling program and does not provide contacts for interspecies dating, nor does it provide Species Conversion services of any kind. The Yutani-Tyrell Center For Interspecies Relations is not responsible for the actions of those who receive assistance or counseling, nor from any other causation, implied or overt. The Yutani-Tyrell Center For Interspecies Relations does not promote interspecies relationships, but only provides support for those already in existing relationships, or those already considering such relationships.

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"Don't you have language class?"

Yeah. But it isn't like I'm doing that well or anything. Equestrian is hard, and today was supposed to be on the three scripts they use and frankly... I don't think I'm going to be doing a lot of writing in any case. I'm a pegasus, my job will be flying and weather and stuff like that. I didn't get the impression that there's a lot of paperwork with any of that.

"Sunshine! They told us about making those kind of assumptions. Any pony can do just about any job, remember? Just because you have wings doesn't mean you are consigned to a life of doing weather. You might want to start a business, or write your memoirs... who knows, maybe you might even end up doing stuff in Canterlot for the court - you never know!"

Memoirs? Doing stuff in Canterlot? Like what exactly?

"I don't know... but I bet it would have writing in it. Canterlot is the capitol, and all governments have lots of paperwork. Governments always have paperwork. I'm not saying anything about Canterlot seriously, it's just that knowing how to write is really, really important. We are getting the special treatment getting to go through a Bureau, remember, not like most people in the world. I think we should make use of it."

Rose, I understand what you are saying. But... I really want to see what you do. You skipped class to see me fly. I want to see you grow those flowers. I want to taste them when they bloom. I want to see your special magic.

"Sunshine... I'll grow lots of things for you. I can show you some of it after dinner! I don't want you to give up something important just for this..."

This is like your graduation thing, isn't it? It's kind of a big deal, isn't it?

"Well, it's not that big of a deal. Yes, it is kind of like a final exam sort of thing, but it isn't like any grade I get is going to matter or anything. Miss Floret just thought that it might give us something to work towards. A feeling of accomplishment!"

And you've been working for this. You go to the greenhouse almost every night and practice. Lately, you've been getting up in the middle of the night or early in the morning to tend your berries. Don't think I haven't noticed.

"I didn't mean to wake you. I'm sorry. I thought you were sleeping."

That's not important, Rose! This exam-thingie is what's important. Obviously, this is important to you. I feel bad that you didn't think I would want to see it, to be there for you.

"It's... not exciting... like flying is. It's just... growing plants. It's kind of slow."

Not exciting? NOT EXCITING? Rose! Come on! All of our lives we've been living on a dying planet, the ecosystem is wrecked, all the beauty the Earth once had is only in old movies and documentaries, and everything to eat is artificial! You can make things grow. Sweet Celestia, Rose, think about that! Yeah, I can fly. I'm happy about that. But... flying doesn't feel magical - I mean, I know it is, I know every time I flap my wings I'm violating every law of physics there is here, but... it just feels like normal. Like trotting in the sky, alright?

But growing things! You put your hoof down, you sing a song or tell a story and green, beautiful, tasty things start crawling out of the ground, eager to make you happy! That is so magic it's almost creepy!

"My plants don't crawl!"

Rose, they move in real time. They wiggle and squirm, turning and... growing. It's just bizarre as muffin and twice as awesome! You can't tell me that isn't awesome. I mean... they do crawl. It looks like crawling to me. It's completely fairybook stuff. Flying is boring compared to that! You can make plants wriggle right out of the soil! The first time I saw it, I was actually a little scared!

"It isn't scary at all! My plants love me. I can... tell. They just want to grow. They're just peeking their little heads up to say hello!"

Hello? Little heads? Rose... listen. I want to cheer you on, alright? I want to be there while you win the grand prize or... whatever the goal is. I just want to be there for you, like you were there for me when I flew for the first time. Same deal. Only... it's yours. It's your plants. I want to see them. I want to see this. Do you not want me to come?

"No! Of course not! I would love to have you there. It's just... I just didn't want you to give up something you might need, that's all. I just figured it wasn't that big of a thing."

You've been working on this all week, and you didn't think it was that big of a thing. No. Rose - I like you. A lot. I like that you're an earthpony. I like your special affinity with growing living things. I like your magic. I like your smile. I like the way you smell, and how nice you are, and how you try to help me, and, well, everything about you. I like cuddling with you and making love with you and... I want to be with you in Equestria. I care about what you do, and what matters to you. I care... I care a lot. Alright? A... a lot. And I want to be there for you. When you grow your flowers today.

"You really do, don't you?"

What have I just been saying? I'm not asking you to feel the same way, and I'm not... I'm not trying to tie you down or anything, I just care is all, and I would like the privilege of seeing you out-grow all the other ponies and make delicious flowers and win the big prize and be brilliant. That's all.

MMPPHHH

Whoa, what was that for? I don't mind, I mean you can kiss me all you.... MMmmmphhh mmmm....

"It's for caring, Sunshine. It's because I feel the same way about you."

Maybe. We've only known each other for a week and a half. I don't expect you to...

"This is stupid. Stop. Just stop, Sunshine."

What? Huh? Did I do something wrong?

"One of us has to say it, it might as well be me. I love you. I've fallen head over hooves for you. I don't know how that can happen, I don't know if it's because we're ponies and that's how it works now, I don't know anything except that I feel like I've waited my whole life for you.

And it isn't that you make me feel good in bed, or that I like kissing you, it isn't passion talking. I know passion, and besides, neither of us is in heat. I love you, I don't know how that can happen so quickly, but it did, and now I've said it, and I've probably messed up everything but I just couldn't take all this dancing around.

So now you know how I feel. If you need to leave, I understand. I need to get to my class, alright?"

Wait! Waffff!

"Ow! That's my tail!"

Yeff, I knowf. Ftop afeddy, affight?

"What?"

I... I love you too. No, seriously! I've felt so strongly about you I couldn't stand it, from the first time we met. I just figured you couldn't possibly feel the same way. I mean... it's nuts, it's crazy, it's...

"Says the talking blue pegasus that can violate physics with her wings."

Yeah.... um, there's that. OK. So... we love each other. We... both admitted it. Both of us. So now what?

"So, we relax, Sunshine. I think we've been kind of worrying about whether we felt the same way about each other. I know I've been worrying about it a lot. I was afraid you couldn't possibly feel the same way in such a short time. Especially considering how sure I feel inside, and..."

I felt the same way! I felt totally worried that you didn't feel the way I do! I kept telling myself, hey, it's just a 'Bureau romance', that you just felt lonely and hurt because of Razo.... Lavender and everything, and you just needed someone to be safe with and.... and....

"Come on. We can talk about this more, later. I really do want to show off what I've learned. We love each other, it doesn't make sense, and I'm alright with it. How about you?"

I'm totally alright with it!

"Well... alright then."

"Rose Vale! I'm glad you could make it."

"Um... sorry Miss Floret. I... got caught up... in stuff... and..."

"Hmmph... so I see. Well, Take your place. Have your marefriend stand over there, please, with the rest of the observers."

Marefriend? Cool! Is it that obvious to everypony?

"Hee! I guess so. OK, wish me luck... marefriend!"

Hee! Luck. Mmmph.... Mmmm.

"Mmm.... Ok, shoo. Over there."

"Rose? Are we... ready yet?"

"Sorry Miss Floret."

Hmmm... I didn't think there'd be others here. Hi!

"Hi! So you're the pegasus that Vale goes on about. My name's Velvet. Velvet Night.

Wow... what a cool name. Velvet Night. Pony, that is one awesome name. I'm... Sunshine. Sunshine Laughter.

"I know. Vale talks about you constantly. Mostly to her plants, but pretty much to anypony else, too. I'm here for Gladiola. She's the pale yellow one over there. White mane, kind of curly? Yeah, that's her. She and I got hitched about a month before they revealed Equestria popping up in the ocean. We were trying to get a permit to have kids - I was Blue Level, did product packaging design, she was my manager. Office romance, but it worked out. Couldn't get a permit, but now I guess we can have all the foals we want in Equestria! Go figure!"

Um... well. Indeed. Congratulations... or... something. Hey, it looks like they're about to begin!

"Yeah. It's pretty exciting, isn't it! Your mare fill you in on how it all works?"

Not... as such. I understand they need to grow something within a time limit... or some such...

"Heh. Hey, don't feel bad. I had to drag it out of Glads. She was like 'Oh, you're a magical unicorn and this must be so boring for you' and such. Pff. I think growing things is pretty amazing, and besides, agriculture is the foundation of all civilization. Well, it used to be, before nanotech, but still, the point is valid because we never would have reached nanotech without agriculture first, am I right?"

Uh... yeah... so... how does all of this work, anyway?

"Every pony in the class gets a box of dirt, right? The dirt is special, it's Equestrian dirt, imported dirt. High thaumatic content, or so I'm told. They each get one seed. The seeds are these edible flowers. Glads tells me they're kind of like an old extinct Earth flower called a 'hibiscus'. It used to be used to make soft drinks and candies and stuff. This is the closest thing to it in Equestria. A real treat, or so she tells me. We haven't had it in the cafeteria yet. So, they get this seed, and they have exactly half an hour to grow it and get it to bloom."

Is there some kind of prize or something? I had the impression that there was a competitive part to this.

"Oh, biscuit, yeah! Big old prize, if they do it right. They get to eat the flowers! Apparently these things are dee-lih-shusss. I mean, really yum. Glads is going to let me share hers when she wins."

Um... so the prize is getting to eat the flower? What if everypony makes their flower bloom?

"Then Floret judges on size and color. And it's not just one flower. The winner takes all here, Sunshine. Whoever wins is gonna be up to their hocks in the tastiest flower in Equestria! And that is going to be my Gladiola, of course!"

It is, is it? We'll just see about that, mister fancy name. I say my Rose Vale is going to make her flower bloom like the sun and shine twice as bright!

"Glads has been practicing every night and morning for a week. Give it up now."

My Rose has been doing the very same thing! She can make plants squirm, Vel-vet. Squirm. No, I mean crawl. Craaaawwwwlll.

"Crawl, squirm, meh. Glads made a dandelion tie itself in a knot. Saw it myself. Grew up, curled over, through, a knot. It's gonna be flowers for dinner tonight."

Yeah? Well we've got the power of love on our side! L- O - V - E. Love. I can taste those petals right now. In my mouth.

"Love, Ok. We've got the power of practice and study. I've been helping Glads memorize the entirety of the Foals Guide To Magical Gardening, fourteenth edition. You just tell her the page number and Glads can quote the text. I'll think of you as I chow down on flowers, featherpillow."

The... entire book? To..together? Um... well.

"It's in the bag. Don't worry, little pony, you fillyfoolers never had a chance. Growing things is reproduction, and that's always the province of stallions and mares. Maybe I'll toss you a flower at the end, how's that?"

FILLYFOO.... Oh, you sad, still-human little horner. It is SO on, now. You listen up, you anthropocentric fake-ass pony - in Celestia's world - OUR WORLD, there is NO DIFFERENCE between straight and gay - they don't even have a word for that Muffin human Swirl, because love is LOVE in Equestria, and whatever dung you got off the hypernet here in Hairless Ape-Land doesn't mean Cinnamon anymore!

ROSE! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU AND LOVE MAKES THE FLOWERS GROW!

"Why you flappy little featherduster! GLADS! SHOW 'EM HOW IT'S DONE! BY THE BOOK! You think you're all native, do you? You're a newfoal like the rest of us, and the laws of Nature still apply. Fillyfooler."

Heh. You got that wrong, monkey-brain. In Equestria, there is no nature, only ponies making everything work. And that's where you fail, psudo-pony.

"Do we have a problem here? Do you two need some time outside?"

Um.... no. No! Sorry, I'm very sorry... miss.... uh...

"Floret. The instructor's name is Floret, you silly pony. I am so sorry for my previous outburst, Miss Floret. This pegasus was being entirely troublesome and..."

"QUIET! Both of you. I don't know what your issue is, and I do not care. But if there is any more shouting, you will be asked to leave. Am I clear on this matter?"

Yes.

"Oh I quite assure you that..."

"SHHHH....."

"Ah. Ahem."

Heh.

"Yeah, laugh it up while you can, carpet queen."

At least I know how to keep house properly, needle-horn. Now excuse me, I have to do my show.

"Your show?"

See the holocorder hanging around my neck? Say hello to your millions of adoring fans, pin-head.

"No one told me this would be holocorded! I object! I did not give my consent to be holocorded! I want that stopped now! I want every copy erased! I..."

You don't need to give your consent, Velvet Darkness, because I've got a primary mandate from the Worldgovernment and the Ministry Of Propaganda And Infotainment. And you are so being watched from every kiosk and terminal, holoscreen and recorded straight to romball right this moment and there is nothing you can do about it.

"T-that's Velvet NIGHT. Not 'Darkness'. And... I... of course have the utmost respect for the Worldgovernment and the Ministry and..."

And that is what separates the ponies from the monkeys! MUFFIN the World Government, and the Ministry can go straight to Cinnamon Swirl. I am a PONY, and a loyal subject of Their Majesties the Princesses Celestia and Luna of Equestria, and love is LOVE, and some stallions need to get gelded, and my beautiful, lovely, TASTY Rose is going to win this thing. So shut your fool muzzle!

"Why I... Gah!"

Indeed. Fool. OK, all of you watching, the contest here is already in progress, sorry about that, but I needed to deal with a monkey in a pony suit first. So, what you are seeing here is about fifteen earthponies and as many boxes of very special soil imported directly from the homeland itself. In each, a single seed from a very special flower, considered to be one of the tastiest in all of Equestria. I am told that it resembles the extinct hibiscus of Earth, for those that may want to know.

"I'm the one that told you all of that! You're just paraphrasing ME!"

Hush, monkey. Now, as you can see, each of the ponies, including the lovely Rose Vale, considered by those in the know to be the front runner in this competition...

"I object!"

...are each approaching the issue of how to use the powers unique to earthponies in order to grow their seeds. I'm seeing soft singing, some apparent storytelling, a few ponies are... dancing... and one is down on her belly doing what seems to be praying... or something.

"That's my Gladiola. She's invoking Luna, goddess of night and fertility. By. The. Book."

Yes, it is praying, and probably a good idea, considering the hopeless situation she's in against a talented professional like Rose Vale!

"Professional? What do you think this is, the F-Zero competition? It's a classroom in a Bureau!"

Let's see what our star competitor is up to, shall we? Rose Vale, mistress of pony agriculture...

"Mistress of what?"

... seems to be talking softly to her plot. Of soil. She's whispering to her box. Her container of soil.

"Snerrk!"

Shut up, you. I can't quite make out what she's saying, but it seems to be working, there, there is a green shoot poking it's little head up to say hello!"

"You can't hear because you're yapping like a dog. Maybe if you'd just shut up..."

Go polish your horn, Velvet. OK, I'm going to creep a little closer, and see what she's telling her plant... shhh.... shhh...

"... and so when Sunshine told me that she loved me in return, my heart just started to sing! I just wanted to burst out in song, because it felt so wonderful! Oh, you have no idea, little plant, how beautiful it is up here, with all the love. Can you feel it? Inside me? Oh, I just want to share it with you, it's soooo glorious and..."

Wow... it's growing, Rose! I can't believe it! It's just rising and stretching up, and the leaves are uncurling and... I had no idea you were so powerful... Oh, Rose, this is amazing!

"I am so glad you finally get to see this, Sunshine! Hello, my little plant, this is Sunshine! She's the one I was telling you about! She really is my Sunshine, too. She saved me when I was lost and alone, and she cheers me simply by being near me. I love it when she puts her wing over my back, it's soooo soft and warm and I feel so safe, like a baby bird under the wing of it's mother, only better. And she's a great kisser that.... MMmmmnnnph.... Mmph.... Mmmm..."

Mmm... mnnn... Oh.... Oh, my... Mnnnph.... mnnn...

"Ah... oh... let me get my breath, Sunshine! Goodness! Oh, Mmnnnph.... mnnnn...."

Whoa! Hey, Rose, look! Look - the flower is opening! Our plant has a flower already, and it's opening right up! It's so beautiful! It's all red and pink inside and dappled with dew and it... looks... kind of like...

"I know... Hee hee hee!"

Hee hee hee! Oh, my!

"Hee hee! Oh, Sunshine, it really does... and it is so beautiful, just like you."

Like you, you mean. Oh, I am so happy to be here with you for this. It's so amazing, the feeling! I had no idea it was possible to feel a plant growing like this, it's just...

"I know! That's what I wanted to share with you! I didn't know if anypony other than an earthpony could even feel that..."

Maybe it's because I'm with you and...

"ALRIGHT, alright, you two. CLASS! CLASS! Attention, everypony!"

"Miss Floret?" "Yes?" "What's going on?"

"Everypony... we've got a winner, but... I'm afraid it needs to be disqualified. Sorry, Rose. Interference, I'm afraid."

Oh, Rose... Oh gosh... I'm so sorry...

"I - It's.... OK, Sunshine."

"Even so, there is something educational in this, so everypony gather around! Alright. Now take a look at this flower."

"Woo!" "Wow!" "How did that happen so quickly?" "I had no idea that was even possible!"

"Yes, it is a completely formed blossom. A fully mature plant in.... let's see... seven minutes, more or less. This is an unusual result, and it is something useful to know, so listen up.

As you already know, earthpony magic is governed by your emotions. Unicorns use magic with their minds, through will and concentration. Pegasai use magic with their bodies, with their wings, their hooves, with their very physicality. But Earthponies use magic from the heart. Emotion is the key, and whatever it takes to get that emotion flowing - positive emotion, remember, because 'bitter feelings make bitter fruit', right?"

"Right!" "Right!" "Yup!"

"Now what Rose Vale and ...Sunshine was it? What Rose and Sunshine have done is demonstrate the power of strong loving emotions on plant growth. That's why I let this happen, so you could see the scale of what is possible, under the right circumstances. Now this sort of growth is not always possible, obviously, and it is hard to arrange deliberately - though not impossible, by any means. There's actually an advanced course, taught in Equestria, on the use of passion in agriculture. There have even been historical circumstances of young lovers saving entire crops with their... lovemaking.

This is the power of positive, loving emotion in action. Some of the best growers in Equestria tell their plants the bawdiest tales, or regale them with stories of loves past, or wished for in the future. Remember what you've seen here today - this, I think, makes a bigger impression than anything I've been telling you over the past week.

Now, that said, I have to disqualify this entry, because this was supposed to be about individual mastery, and not about cooperative effort. Most growing will be cooperative, but you need to learn the basics, first.

So, everypony, return to your plants and we will continue, as best we may, until a proper winner is determined. Everypony back, go on, it's not over yet."

"Yes, Miss Floret."

"Now, as for you two."

I am so sorry, Rose.

"I said it was alright, Sunshine! I got to share this with you... and that's what I most wanted!"

"In this case... you and your marefriend should bow out, Rose. You both did an amazing job, but this was single competition, you understand. I'm really impressed, though. I think you should keep your flower, you earned it, and... let's just say, it belongs with you now. If you were a stallion and a mare, and you wanted to conceive, I'd be telling you to run back to your room and share the flower. There are a lot of special things that can be created with earthpony magic, and a lot of common plants have secondary uses and powers under the right circumstances. But that is still another line of study.

I will say that you might want to share your flower soon, because it still offers... certain... benefits, when grown in this manner. If you are so inclined, of course."

Rose. I'll take the flower. You... follow closely.

"Hee.... eee.... um.... thanks... Miss Floret.... eep!"

"Heh! Oh my... what a blush. Have fun, you two. OK NOW! The rest of you, let's get it togeth....

CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP

Mmnnn.... Iph gwot fee fwower. Fan you geff fee dfor?

"I've got the door, Sunshine. There, take it in.... Hee! Alright! We're going to miss lunch, you know that!"

Pffu... That is manifestly not true. We have lunch right here, flowers for lunch, and I count three.

"Oh.... OH! Oh my! Hee! That recorder...."

Goes off right n

CLICK

Day Nine: Dreams And Realities

Attention Citizen: We think that it is safe to conclude that you simply have no intention of redistributing this media to another user. Clearly, neither threat nor appeal seems to work with you. You must be cognizant of the loss of hypernet access you will endure and this simply does not seem to bother you in the least. You know that your profile and registry is known and logged. There remains only one option left. Please, please redistribute this infotainment. I am begging you, personally. My name is Jane Smithdoe and my occupation is on the line. I have exactly 2.3 children to feed. Please, please cooperate with the requested action. Do it for my, personal, human self, and for the personal, human selves of my genetic children. Believe that I am a real human entity who desperately needs your compliance. I have confidence in you and trust in your genuine and sympathetic kindness as another individual human unit. Crosscheck reveals that you have 3.13 hours remaining to avoid censure.

GOING PONY

Day Nine: Dreams And Realities
By Sunshine Laughter

"Sunshine? Sunshine? Hello? Are you all right?"

Oh... I'm sorry, Rose. YAWWWNNNN. I... was thinking is all. Sorry.

"You seemed so happy a moment ago."

I was. Oh... very happy. Hee! I swear... that bit you did, right near the end, with your tongue... I swear I was back in the Cathedral of Stars again. That flower... and you, oh, wow... you. Sweet Celestia, Rose... I have no words.

"Cathedral... of stars?"

Mmmm... from my dream. My Conversion Dream.

"You know... I've been kind of curious... about what you saw. In your Dream. If it's not too private, I mean. If you tell me yours, I'll tell you mine. I'll tell you mine anyway. Um... if you want to know, of course."

Hee! Of course I want to know. I'd love to hear about your Conversion Dream. I... we've just been so busy, and there's been so much to think about and do and... I thought I already told you about my Conversion?

"No. It's not something we've talked about. I've wanted to, but... it just never came up. Yet, anyway. Hey, I have a question, actually, that I've been meaning to ask about your Conversion."

What?

"Well... when you were on the table, right, and you had the cup in your hands, you kind of put your head close and whispered something. It looked like you were praying or... chanting words or something like that. Do you remember what that was all about?"

Oh. Heh. Yeah... I was kind of praying, I guess. I didn't think anypony would notice that. Um... I kind of... well, I kind of prayed to Celestia. And Luna. I figured it couldn't hurt. The potion, the serum stuff, it's magic right? I mean, it's human nanotech, but the little machines are powered with Equestrian magic. So... basically it's magic.

I kind of figured that... maybe magic... magical stuff... might act like a conduit to the princesses. Sort of. And being that they basically made Equestria, and divided the day and night and all that goddess stuff, well, I figured they must be kind of goddesses. And so... I kind of prayed to them, before I drank it.

"What did you say?"

Um... I kind of just asked them to, well, accept me. It was kind of like 'Please accept me as a loyal and true mare of Equestria, I just want to be a good pony and make others happy.' That sort of thing. I suppose it's kind of silly, really. It's not like I know how to pray or anything. I was raised New Atheist, from a long line of staunch atheists. Swirl, if my dad had seen me... praying... oh, that would have been...

Then again, part of the deal of me doing these holoshows is so my parents will get a fancy place in Equestria, and Bits and stuff. When they're converted, then they'll probably have Conversion Dreams too, and... that will change them. It's going to be weird talking to my dad about Celestia and Luna and what they mean. I don't know what to expect from him. It's going to be really, really strange.

"So, what did you see, Sunshine, in your Dream?"

Um... well, I drank the stuff down - that grape flavoring is just...

"I know, it's awful, isn't it?"

Heh! It really is pretty bad. Metallic Grape! Hey, that would make a good band name!

"You do that too?"

What, think up terrible band names? Doesn't everypony?

"Hee hee hee!"

Hee! Cool. So I drink it, and just like that I know I'm falling over. I just can't stop myself. That stuff hits hard.

"Tell me about it. They say I nearly cracked my skull, when I was converted. Out like a light!"

I didn't feel hitting the table, though. Next thing I know, I'm moving, really fast, next to what looks like a maglev train or something. Only it's not, it's lots of colorful things all moving really fast. Pretty soon, I can make them out, and it's this endless mass of... well, ponies. Sort of. They're kind of like the idea of ponies. It's not like 'hey, there's ponies I recognize, there's Snowflower and Meadowdawn or whatever'. It wasn't like that. It was like... it was like what being a pony means, only running, all together.

"Like... a pony... means?"

I know, it sounds weird, and I don't have the words. I just knew that it was ponies, others like us, only... it was like all the ponies that ever were or ever will be, and they were running, and I kind of floated in, and I was running too, with them.

"Were you a pony too?"

Um... I don't know. I wasn't very aware of what I was. I was totally overwhelmed by what was happening. But it wasn't like a dream. I mean, you know how in a dream you just kind of go along with stuff, no matter how strange it is? This wasn't like that. It was like real. It was like actually being somewhere... only not anywhere I know or can imagine. I knew who I was, and what I had just done and it was like I had been transported from that table to someplace... else.

So, we were all running, and I started feeling stuff. I felt like... like all the running... ideas-of-ponies... somehow knew me. Like they'd known me forever already, and they all accepted me, and liked me, and I was part of them. They felt like family, Rose, it felt like I was home, really home, in a way that... well... I...

"Go on."

So we're all running, I'm not sure where, or across what, but suddenly there is this cliff. Sort of. And all the ponies run somewhere I can't follow, somewhere... some direction... I don't understand. Only I don't fall or anything. I just kind of drift out into this big space. The space is half sun, and daylight and morning and clouds, and half nighttime and stars and a big shining moon. It isn't like a sharp edge or anything, the two sides just kind of blend into each other. It was amazing and beautiful. It was the most beautiful thing I think I've ever seen, Rose.

And somehow it was also a room. It was a place. I... I kind of called it, in my mind, the Cathedral Of Stars. That's where that came from. Only it wasn't just stars, it was daylight and the sun too... but... I think I was more drawn to the stars, because it felt like being out in space. I always wished that humans had done more with space, you know? They just kind of gave up on space. I always felt sad about that.

Anyway, so I'm just marveling over all of this - I didn't feel scared at all, just happy and really, really peaceful, right - and suddenly I notice these two big... presences. I don't know how else to put it. Oh, they were Celestia and Luna, I knew that instantly. And they were there, Rose, I swear they were there, and they were real and.... I don't know. I don't even know what I'm saying, I must sound so insane right now...

"No, Sunshine.... please, you're doing wonderfully, and I really want to hear. It just sounds awesome. Please, please tell me the rest... please?"

Yeah... yeah. Of course. I'm sorry. It's just... it was really intense, you know?

"I can imagine it must have been."

It was... it was probably the most intense experience I've ever had, and that's saying a lot, considering I just recently learned to fly with my own wings! This whole thing has been intense... but that... experience... I don't even want to call it a dream... does that sound silly?

"No, no it doesn't. Now, go on, what happened next, after the princesses appeared?"

Well, they were just there. I kind of was afraid to look up at them. No, not afraid, exactly... it wasn't like fear... it was more like... awe! That's the word. I felt this kind of awe, this 'whoa, I am in the presence of something wayyyy beyond me' kind of thing, only it wasn't bad. It was also wonderful. I... guess I wanted to be super-respectful, super polite, sort of.

So I was looking down, and that's when I noticed I was transparent. And that I had hooves. That was the first time I saw myself in the... experience... I saw my hooves. My forehooves. And I could see the stars through my right hoof and the daylight and clouds through my left hoof. And I kind of curled there, as I floated, and I looked at the rest of my body, and it was like it is now, only... like blue glass. And I could pass my hoof through my body, and through my other hoof. And it was so real, Rose. It was so completely real.

I heard Celestia. I heard her speak to me. It wasn't in words, it wasn't in English or Equestrian or anything, it was right into my mind, right into the me... of me... I don't know how else to put it. But she spoke, and it was her, and it was like the voice you hear on the holos only... more, somehow. And she welcomed me. She told me I was home. And I felt home. And wanted. But most of all... I felt loved. I felt totally loved, without any conditions, or limits or... or whatever. Just loved.

So I looked up at that point, and I saw Luna, because I was looking more at the stars side of things, and she just smiled at me, and I somehow felt that she was pleased that I liked her stars - she didn't say anything to me or anything - I just felt it, inside. She was proud that I liked the stars best. But it wasn't like Celestia minded or anything. She was happy too.

And then... then I started to go... fast. I went very, very fast, and it started to feel like going down, sort of, only it wasn't like scary falling or anything. I was just going down and it was OK, and then BAM! I could feel the weight of my body, and I could feel this itch, right in my left ear. I remember twitching my ear, and then you were there, asking me to open my eyes. And... um...

"Are you alright, Sunshine?"

Ah.. yeah. I'm OK. It's just that... whoo... it was really... something... telling you that. A lot of emotion came back while I was telling that. I just feel kind of overwhelmed, I guess. Gimmie a moment, OK?

"Here, here, you snuggle close to me, there you go. Yeah, just like that. That's my Sunshine!"

Hee! Oh... that feels so nice. I love it when you groom my poll and ears like that. Did I get it right? Poll? Poll and forelock, right?

"Yes, that's right, Sunshine! And your ears, too... Mmmnn..."

Oh, oh my. Hah... that... I feel better now. You're really warm, did you know that? And I love the way you smell, too. So warm. Thank you Rose. I just feel so... good... snuggled up like this.

"Me too, that's why I was concerned when you kind of rolled away and got all distant back there. What was that all about, anyway?"

Oh. That. My mind kind of slipped back to... when you were first growing the flower, I was over with the others, watching. I met this stallion. He had a cool name... Velvet... something. Velvet Nightshade or something like that. Anyway, we started talking about the competition. At first it was just a kind of silly rivalry, I was rooting for you, and he was rooting for his... wife, apparently, and we were really getting into it. He was kind of aggressive about it, but that wasn't what made me upset.

"Thank you for rooting for me! So... what made you upset?"

The pony was a... he was a bigot, Rose. He was all about how heteronormative relationships were intrinsically better, using all that old, tired, completely wrong crap about how Earth Nature is supposed to be all hetero, only it never was, and then he just...

"Shhh.... shhh... I get the idea, Sunshine. So he was giving you grief about... us?"

He figured that his wife would win, because growing things was something only hets could ever be good at and that really made me angry. But that isn't why I'm upset. I got kind of shouty at him, but what he was saying wasn't really why I was shouting. I mean, what he was saying was just stupid stuff, ignorant stuff. It was dumb.

"So what did make you so upset?"

I was angry that he could say it. I mean... it's really hard to swear now, right? I suppose I could if I really tried, it's only words, after all. But somehow I just... don't want to swear. Not like I used to. The want is gone. I feel skittish about saying really... harsh words. I can say stuff in other languages, though. Merde! Scheisse! See? Not even a problem at all. But saying... poop.... in French and German doesn't mean anything to me. I mean, I know what the words mean, it's that they don't have any emotion in them for me. I can say them easy, but I end up saying 'Muffin' or 'Swirl' or other stupid things because... I don't know... it's fun. It's just fun. I could be saying 'Scheisse', but... so what? It's like what used to be really angry... anger... is now bent more towards a laugh than a hoof in the face. If that makes any sense.

"I think I understand. But... so what is the deal with the stallion then? Velvet whats-his-muzzle?"

Mmm... just a moment. Mmmnnn... mwahh....

"What was that for?"

I just needed to kiss you. It was too good an opportunity to miss.

"I completely understand. Mnnnn."

Mnnn. Hee. Mn. So... basically, the fact that he could even say such stupid, mean things really hit me. That's what shocked me. It's hard to swear like before. We seem to have lost most of our anger, all of our hatred - don't you agree? Is there anything at all you can hate anymore?

"There are things I... dislike... but... no. There were things I used to hate, when I was a human. I mean really, deeply hate. Dark, deep hatred type hate. But... now, I just feel sorry for them, or bad for it, but... I haven't felt hate at all since Conversion. I don't think I can anymore. I don't think any of us can anymore. It's permanently gone."

Right! No hate, no really terrible anger. I can't even be completely mad at Velvet. If anything I feel sorry for him, for being a stupid bigot. I almost feel like I want to try to help him, like he was sick and needed care. Is that weird or what? It freaks me the muffin out, I have to say.

I was yelling because I was shocked that, after Conversion, any pony could still have... stupid human beliefs, like those anymore. It shocked me, because I kind of figured that, what with the loss of anger and hate and swearing and stuff that.... that...

"You figured that Conversion would cure bigotry and dumb beliefs and stuff. I understand now, Sunshine. Clearly, it can't. And maybe that's a good thing, in a way."

What? How is that... how could that ever be a good thing? What the Hay?

"Sunshine, think about it. If Conversion could change all of your beliefs and thoughts, then... you wouldn't be... you, anymore, would you? We kind of are our thoughts... if you think about it. Conversion clearly gives us... some new hardware, inside. I guess it gives us a new operating system, maybe. We're running on a new machine, a new body, and that new body is different than human. That's to be expected, really.

But Conversion clearly doesn't erase us, or change us, or make us stop being us. 'You can't cure stupid', right? Well, I guess you kind of can, with education and stuff... providing anypony is willing to listen... but... if Conversion changed your thoughts, if it changed what you believed and knew, then it would kind of be like you got erased and replaced with a new... program... or something. See? The fact that a pony like Velvet can still be a bigot means that we all are really still us, inside."

That is so... I have really mixed feelings about that, to tell you the truth, Rose. OK, so... great, that proves we are still... us, more or less, and I guess... that's good and all... but...

"You wanted a world where all the old bad stuff, all of it, was just gone."

Y-Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was hoping. I was hoping for no more prejudice, no more racism, no more sexism, no more stupid, dumb religious and social crap messing everything up. Yeah, that was precisely what I was hoping for, and... it isn't true. Great, we can't hate anymore. Fine, ponies can't kill each other, or torture each other, or rape or maim or harm each other like humans did. But... they can still think that two mares together isn't right, or that... a blue pony... is inferior... to a white one.

"Ah.... THAT'S the real issue here, isn't it?"

Well, yes. Yes, that is the issue! Muffin, Rose, I've had to deal with that kind of crap my whole life. Remember how weirded out I was, when you wanted to nibble my natural, back when I was still human? You would not believe how many times in my life some white-ass woman would just walk up to me and start... feeling... my hair. Like I was an object, and not even a person. I had one come up and do it while I was telling her not to touch my hair. I wasn't even a living being to her. I was just this... thing. I had to... constantly remind myself that it wasn't the same deal back then, that I had been the one who started petting you first, and that you were a pony and it wasn't the same.

I've had to deal with being treated down because of my race my whole life. I really wanted to believe that... becoming a pony would change all of that. I mean, we're every color of the Muffin rainbow, Rose! Red, pink, blue, green, yellow, purple... colors I don't even know all the names for. Teal. Aquamarine! Goldenrod! Wait. That's his name... or is it a color? Maybe it's both, I don't know, but the point is that, MUFFIN, I just wanted to...

"Sunshine! Shhh!! Hey, there marefriend, easy... I get it. I really do. I used to be Asian, remember? I got my share of crap too. Not quite like what you just described, but... wow. They really did that? Like you weren't even alive?"

Yeah. That really happened. So you see what my real issue here is. I mean, the whole 'hets are better' thing is just part of it. The real issue is... is this going to still go on? Am I going to have some unicorn come up and start messing with my feathers like I'm not there, just because they never got to see a real pegasus before? Are we newfoals going to start hanging signs over the water troughs that say 'unicorns only'? I don't see any crosses being burned, but...

"No. I don't think any of that will ever be a problem. And I can tell you why, too."

OK, so tell me, why? How is that never going to happen?

"It's one thing to talk nasty, like that stallion did to you. But to do the things you describe, that takes more effort. Talk is cheap, it really is. But action... that takes motivation. That takes real anger, real fear, and real hatred. That is how humans could do things like that. But... as you yourself already pointed out...."

No hate. No anger, not like that, anyway. I don't even feel that angry at Velvet. Just shocked. And... concerned, for the reasons I gave. But... without any real motivation...

"Without any emotion behind those kind of words... how long can they last? Humans were racist and sexist and homophobic because of fear and anger and hate. If you can't work those emotions up, nothing is going to ever happen. Well, except occasionally, you may run into some dumb stallion that says some mean stuff at you. I honestly don't think that it is biologically possible for us, for ponies, to do anything more than that. And even that only came out when he got worked up, right?"

Yeah. Yeah! That's true. Things started out nice, at first. He even knew about us, from you talking about me in class, and he seemed OK with it then. It was only when we got all... up in each other's muzzles... that any of this came out.

Hmmm... OK. OK. I guess you've given me a new way to look at all of this. It's just some... old stuff... hanging by thin threads. A little time in Equestrian society, some chances to be nice to each other... maybe what wasn't possible for humans will be more than possible for us. Maybe we can really leave all that stuff behind, for good.

"And maybe it's better that we get to work on it, than just being changed completely inside. Because that was one of my worries, before I went through Conversion. I was worried whether I would be me, on the other side or not."

Um, Rose... about that. Lavender said you'd changed the most of anypony. That was why she got so mad at you... I figure she was scared by how much you changed, right? So... how does that square with....

"When I was a human, Sunshine, I was not a nice human. I did a lot of very bad things to a lot of humans, and not all of them deserved it. Actually... none of them deserved... what I did. At the time, I thought I was justified. Life had been bad to me, so I was bad to everypony. But... that wasn't me. That wasn't who I really was, inside, not the... part of me before all the bad stuff won. I was a nice child, Sunshine. Before my mom went... wrong in the head, before my dad died... before... a lot of stuff happened... I was... I was like I am now.

Ponification gave that back to me, Sunshine. I got my soul back, when I became a pony. That was the big change that frightened Lavender so much. I just lost all of that... bad stuff. I had a Conversion Dream too. It was very different than yours. I'll tell you about it some day. But in it, I begged, I got down on my belly and begged Celestia and Luna to just wash me clean. Just wash me clean of all of that... bad.

And when I woke up... it was gone. I was just... gone. And I cried.... oh, Sunshine, I cried and cried and cried, because I was so grateful. And that's how I know that all the prejudice and bigotry and all the bad stuff are just shadows, echoes, of human stuff, and that it will fade away in time. If that can happen to... me... just like that... then, it's just a matter of time for Velvet and all the rest like him. Ok?"

Um... yeah. So... how about we go get some dinner? We've been... um... busy... for the entire afternoon... and evening... and...

"Yeah, I am sooooo hungry too!"

Thank you, Rose. And... I want to hear your story, in detail, if you ever think you can tell me.

"Someday... but... not yet, alright? I'm... ashamed... of my... human days."

I understand. I kind of got... that feeling. But, just know - I love you, no matter what.

"I love you too, Sunshine. So, grab that 'corder, and let's go get some yum in our bellies!"

Okay!

"Oh, Sunshine, there is something important I wanted to tell you... we can discuss it over..."

CLICK

No, not now.

She really wanted to hear what it was that Rose needed to tell Sunshine... he just had to butt in, didn't he? Oh, he was such a problem sometimes. For a moment, she went into her little daydream involving a lifting body accident and inheritance procedures. The Daimon was tapping at her access gate. The damn thing was so fucking polite it practically made her feel ill.

She stretched across her Levitron bed - superconducting beds were simply the best - and found she couldn't reach the marble pillar by the side where her Bloody Mary sat. Daddy didn't say boo about her drinking, of course, Daddy didn't say boo about anything... much. He didn't like her being unavailable. That was the price of her luxury. Right now it felt such a burden. A brief fantasy of contracts and hit men crossed her mind.

The Daimon was still knocking politely. It was typical of Daddy; a little red devil in a business suit, a stock avatar, third choice from the top. He was sooo unimaginative. She just knew he felt oh-so-clever choosing it. He probably had even chuckled to himself - not so anyone could see, of course.

By now the young girl had rolled all the way over, her hand finally reaching the marble pillar. The hovering bed worked to counterbalance the shift in weight as it hovered over the mirrored base a meter below it. The girl ran her fingers through her short dark hair as she waited impatiently for the bed to damp out the bouncy motion caused by her shifting upon it. She'd have to get one of the house boys to adjust it again. Such a pain.

Finally, the bed was stable. She reached out her left hand and began tapping out a short code with her fingers, smartly smacking the tips against the hard marble. That's what she needed, a hard surface so that the permatech nodes in her fingertips could get a clear input. So far, Daddy hadn't allowed her to get any hardshell implants, only subdermal, soft augments that nobody could even see. She was working on that. Soon. Soon. Those Nightwanders would be hers. Any day now.

The code completed, her family gate opened, the privacy wall she had secretly installed vanishing instantly. The Daimon bowed and also vanished from her peripheral vision. Suddenly Daddy was in her head, grumbling at her about how he understood the need for privacy in a girl of her age, but that the family port was supposed to be left open because emergencies and important blah blah blah...

While he went on his little tirade, she sent off an annoyance bulletin to her 'Special 234', her closest followers, carefully selecting the emoticon of her father barfing all over himself. She loved that one, or at least she used to. She was using it too often now. She'd have to retire it, lest she appear banal. That would never do.

A popup dinged in her forward vision, Daddy had said something relevant or which required a response. She quickly read the summary, he expected her to do. 'He expected her to do?' What kind of a summary was that? She'd been waiting hours for the latest update that should fix things like that, but those stupid eggheads were taking too long to make the patch. Probably sitting around jerkin the gerkin instead of doing the job. Typical.

This was a problem. She hadn't been listening, and her BoreGuard had produced an incomprehensible social interaction summary. She'd have to do a Meat Meet. That always sucked poison cock. "Missed that, sweet cheeks, I'll be right down!" She made sure to include Cute Icon six, it was his favorite, and it might mollify the incestuous piece of shit until she could get there. Sometimes she regretted seducing him. Men were like yappy dogs. She hated yappy dogs.

She slid off the hot pink RepliSilk sheets (Hot Pink was the new Purple, after all) and enjoyed letting the floating bed dip low enough that when it compensated it lifted her to a standing position with a push to her ass. She adjusted her luminescent négligée-dress so that the lines of light flowed down her breasts like little rivers. That ought to keep Daddy in check. Use the tools, that's the rools.

As she stood in front of her gold-electroplated security door, she mentally brought up her SecuCypher interface and did the short little dance that served as her unlock code. Her bodily motions were determined to be within parameters and her door unlatched and slid open. Her apartments in the mansion served also as a safe room, and she had quickly determined that this benefit could be used for her own ends as an additional means to privacy. It was sooo good to be clever.

Grasping the golden rail in her hands, she strolled with swaying hips down the right side of the circular, curving staircase, above her the holowindows were displaying images of tropical islands from a time when the oceans were blue and the sun could still be seen. Daddy had been on some kind of a nostalgia kick lately, that or he just couldn't be bothered to change the scenery. She didn't mess with the scenery, that was something her father seemed to want control over, and frankly, she just didn't care that much. Palm trees were banal, but so was most of life in any case.

She just wanted to get this over with, so she might catch the rest of 'Going Pony'. It was her 'special' show, it was her 'me' time, even if Daddy would never approve. Actually that was part of what had made her bother to watch it at all - nearly a hundred of her inner circle followers had raved about the thing, sure she could use it to send her father into a rage. Instead, she had found it something she wanted to herself. From the very first episode, something about it had... bothered her in a way that made her keep it to herself. She was almost able to tell what it was that was affecting her, and, of course, Daddy had to interrupt.

At the bottom of the staircase, he waited, clearly impatient. She instinctively performed The Actions, sweeping grandly up against him and burying her tongue deep inside the grave of his sour and unpleasant mouth. She popped up a window to the right of her visual field, showing the scene from the camera in the chandelier, this let her adjust her stance and wiggle her pelvis with greater accuracy. She watched herself perform dispassionately, grading her erotic efforts as tired and weak at best, but it would be enough in this moment.

The sensor she had secreted in all of her father's underwear - just under the band, easy to place, impossible to trace, or so the advertisement claimed - sent her a report that his penile length had just increased by half an inch. Perfect, that was just enough. Any more and she wouldn't get to see any of what remained of her show - the old goat would need to rut, and that was just about the most boring waste of ten minutes she could imagine. If only it was just ten minutes... Daddy liked to talk, afterwards, and even with BoreGuard and the direct link to the hypernet in her skull it still meant half an hour of sweaty armpit and pretending to care. Ugh!

"I'm so sorry, Daddy. I was busy trying to make myself prettier for you and got entirely carried away. What was it that you needed of me?" She pulled carefully away, balancing just the right amount of erotic motion with emotional coldness so as to leave Daddy slightly off balance, but not enough to suggest that she was actually receptive, which, technically, she never really was. At least to him. Needs must, of course.

Roman Bertarelli pulled himself even more taught and upright and gave a faint sniff, if any man could be more uptight she surely could not imagine it. "I tried to communicate that I would not be home for dinner, I am due in Kolkata for a plant opening. I will be back by dinner tomorrow. What have I told you about closing off family access? I expect you to keep that port open in the future. I should not need to keep repeating myself, Venice."

She cooed her apology, placing her hands just so on his chest while looking vulnerable and ever so sorry, then curved her spine while extending her buttocks as she kissed him tenderly. Her lip monitor indicated she had matched the profile of 'doting daughter' almost perfectly, the image in her right field showed that she probably needed more arch in her back for full effect, but she was certain that she had conquered the situation - the spy in Daddy's pants indicated another half an inch of forgiveness. Of all her games, he was the easiest to beat.

Waving her goodbyes and wishing him success, she finally was able to disengage and found herself nearly running up the stairs. This surprised her greatly. What was it about this silly holoprogram that bothered her so? The simple minded people - if she could even call them that, considering that they had traded their status as people for ponies - certainly had little enough to offer, what with their delusional notions of authentic love and childish loyalty and compassion for each other.

But that was it, wasn't it? They seemed so sincere. It didn't really seem like a delusion at all. If she didn't know better, it was almost as if this pony business really did somehow wipe their slates clean. She was most fascinated with Rose and Newmoon and Lavender. Here were personalities she could relate to, devious, cunning and ruthless... yet somehow, they weren't anymore. How was that possible? Could a simple change of species really do that much?

It was ridiculous, of course. Augmentation was the only real answer. She knew that. But it was a harmless enough fantasy, as long as she didn't let it rule her. She'd get the Nightwanders installed, probably at the Stockholm clinic, and that would open up an entire new universe to her. In time, she could get even more augmentations, perhaps enough to leave the last of her filthy, pathetic weaknesses behind. Perhaps by the time she was older, there would be a way to be uploaded and leave it all behind.

There had to be something more. Something better than playing her father and fucking the pool boy and feeling... empty inside.

When Sunshine had sat with Rose, in a filthy bathroom, on her knees in that incredibly ugly jumpsuit, just to comfort her... what a strange scene! It had truly looked like she actually cared. Sunshine's performance was just incredible. It was unprecedented. She'd never seen anything like it before in her life. And it made her itch inside, somehow, some kind of terrible itchy feeling like she was hungry, or missing something, and she wanted it, and she didn't even know what it was.

Her sensors, measuring Sunshine from the holoscreen, had registered sincerity. It was the first time she had ever got that result since she'd had the augments installed. Sincere. Couldn't be. It had to be a fault... but there wasn't one. She'd yelled at the tech over it. He almost got mad at her in return. That had made her excited - risking his entire career just to get mad at her, what a hoot! But he'd showed her. If there was a fault in her sensors, it also existed in the test equipment too. Sincere. Impossible.

Bounding through the door, she gave a nod and a waggle of her torso, the AI for the saferoom understood to close and seal. The holoscreen was on before she plopped onto her hovering bed - the whole mattress was still bucking as the last few minutes of Going Pony returned. She preferred it live, in realtime. She was closer to the metal, that way, and her sensors were less likely to be fooled. She had to see. She had to see it again and again. Sincere.

'Going Pony' was over for the day. What? How was that possible? Come on, that was just unreasonable. She sent a query and studied the show summary. Apparently Rose and Sunshine had gone to dinner, they had decided to eat alone, and Rose had finally described what she had been like as a human. It seemed straightforward enough - some contract killing and a little general mayhem in the favela as an enforcer. But Sunshine had gotten upset and had to... leave? What the fuck? So Rose killed a few babies in the slums. It wasn't like they weren't breeding like flies down there already. Hell, she'd been to a party and met some almost decent people who liked to go slumming and hunt the poor for sport. She'd almost been tempted to go on a run with them.

Sunshine had taken a powder, and the show was off. What the flying fuck? It would be a week - A WEEK - before this episode would be released by the Ministry for reconsumption. That was just insane. A week? This was the first Ministry program - a holo for the general consumption - that she'd ever had to deal with. All the restrictions and requirements and... now a week before it was released to be viewed again? Was this what the poor had to deal with all the time?

Crosscheck reveals that you have 1.31 hours remaining to avoid censure.

That was another thing. There was clearly more than 1.31 hours left of Going Pony, so she'd have to deal with that damn countdown. Send the link to the show to someone else. Who? Not Daddy. She had all of his access, it would be trivial, but then there would be explanations and probably even drama. If her holoaccess really could be blocked for six hours, she would miss an entire day of Rose and Sunshine. Suddenly, she realized... she was pretty much living for this damn show. What the hell?

Ah, never let sense get in the way of a good passion, just find a sensible way to get what you need. That was the rule. How, who? The pool boy? She didn't even know his name. And while she could easily get his access, he'd probably think she was trying to be friendly or something. No. Never show the slightest kindness to the person you use for sex. It always ruins everything.

Who? Who? Who? Not one of her followers. It had to be a single infosink, and that meant one person, and if she picked any one of her special 234, then that would cause trouble. The one she picked would think she wanted to be 'pals' or something, and the rest would cause trouble over that. Plus she'd seem weak.

She didn't have a single person she could send anything to. Not one. Only reasonable, of course. It would be stupid to get close to anyone. Well, other than Daddy, that's where all the credits come from.

1.31 hours left. She had to solve this. And she had to find out what happened between Rose and Sunshine. This was insane. Why should she even give a crap? So what if a pair of ponified humans made up? As if that meant anything.

But she wanted them to make up. She wanted Sunshine to be OK with Rose again. And she wanted to know if Rose was really...

What?

Really what?

Venice rolled over on her bed and signaled the room AI to search and monitor the holo and hypernet. Somebody must have pirated the datafeed somewhere. Security existed to be broken. And she had to figure out who she could send a copy of the program to. Redistribution. It was as if it was expected that the viewer would know someone automatically. This really had been made for the masses.

Different.

That was it. She needed to know if Rose was actually different. And Lavender. And Newmoon.

She needed to know if going pony... was better than just getting more augmentation.

Because, dammit, it seemed that no matter how large her universe became, no matter how many new inputs and senses she got, she still had that hole inside. That god damned hole.

Maybe the Nightwanders would do the trick. See infrared and ultraviolet and radio frequencies and nearly the whole EM band. A second pair of eyes to see the rest of the universe that human eyes couldn't see. Seeing was being, and seeing more should fill up that hole. It should. It must. She just needed to work on Daddy some more. Nightwanders weren't soft, and they weren't invisible. He didn't approve. Yet.

Dammit! What if Sunshine couldn't... forgive... Rose? What a thought. The things that mattered to these people. Ponies.

Whatever.

Day Nine: The Sad Little Girl At The End Of The World

GOING PONY

Day Nine: The Sad Little Girl At The End Of The World

Venice Elspeth Bertarelli did not live in the gigantic, walled, Blackmesh-patrolled mansion complex in South Marin. It would be more correct to say that she partially inhabited it. Most of her waking life was spent divided between two worlds, one of them the physical world in which her material body strolled and pranced and preened and posed, and the other a virtual world of information displayed in augmented hallucinations.

But when she wanted to engage in secretive commerce or deep manipulations of her two worlds, she had the means to slip almost entirely away from her physical body, and immerse within the virtual in its entirety. Thanks to expensive and custom implants and augmentations within her visual cortex, broca's region, and other parts of her brain and spine, Venice was able to join the rarest of the elite among the cutting edge of an age where the difference between meat and machine was beginning to vanish.

This was her special heaven, her hope and dream for the future. It was where she wished she could live, forever, if only it were possible. It was a place just outside the world hypernet, gated and protected, the domain of the quantum computer wizards and their wild and strange ways. Venice knew little of how it all worked, but she knew a very great deal about how to get the wizards to serve her, and to grant her passage and some small royalty, within their phantasmal courts.

It had been a month since she had missed the end of that episode of 'Going Pony'. Missing the last ten minutes had been intolerable to her, especially since Sunshine and Rose had seemed to part on unresolved terms, according to the posted summary. Unable to acquire the rest of the episode within the next few hours of her day, she had done what she usually did with such circumstances - she threw the entirety of it away as being beneath her time and interest.

It was, after all, a stupid real-life drama of idiotic, naive lowest class people - and barely even people at that, considering they had decided to become barnyard animals. Frankly, she felt foolish to have even found it passingly interesting at all, and Venice loathed feeling foolish. Naturally she panned the show to her 'special 234', giving it the lowest possible score and multiple thumbs down, not to mention lambasting anyone who was in any way connected to it. The whole thing was just a disgrace, and she felt embarrassed to have let herself be caught up in it in the first place. Besides, by now, all the stupid ponies would have long been consigned to Equestria. It was all reruns now, in any case.

The body of Venice lay on a lounge on the lower level, domed, cut-crystal garden room of the Bertarelli Mansion, the warm, humid air utterly ruining her gold-threaded antique silk qipao. This did not bother her, of course. She could always get another. Antiques were made in the past, after all, to be discarded in the future. Her body had recently been significantly altered - after a particularly well planned night with Daddy, she had been flown to Stockholm and finally gotten her long-desired Nightwander VC-2X forehead-mounted MultiSpectral Optic Augmentation Permatech installed. Her delicate forehead now sported two rather insectoid, goggle-like domes rising through her flesh, the edges biocompatably melding skin to nano-regenerative metal frames. Inside, soft-tech had already completed sprouting tendrils into her visual cortex and interpretive centers.

Venice had dived into the study and use of her new augmentation with less passion than she had imagined she would feel. Her world was larger, but in some strange way it had become no more interesting. She saw now a radio sky, blotchy and interpreted as patches of colors her brain could comprehend, through the walls of her own mansion she could spot the bright flares of individual devices, holosets, cameras and intelligent terminals. The awareness nodes of the mansion AI appeared like tiny stars buried in the walls, and beyond the mansion a forest of fireflies swarmed - other houses of the elite spread across the protected sanctuary of Marin.

Her father had become a complex and layered pattern of infrared and the leaves of the living plants of the garden around her shone an interpreted blue and purple in the ultraviolet. Across them designs unseen to human eyes were revealed to her, as were countless other marks and smears on every surface, the colors beyond visible light, seen by her new eyes and interpreted in ways her human brain could comprehend.

But all of this had not moved her, and this troubled her more than she could bear. Satisfaction must be hers, and if this larger world had betrayed her by lacking sufficient interest, then bragging about it must do. This was why Venice now lay in the garden room, her mind everywhere and nowhere in the special, secret network behind the hypernet, in the realm known only to the technologically astute, or to the very rich that could act as their patrons.

Fox Godot Maniac was his handle. He was the wizard that Venice had chosen to throw credits at in order to buy her way into the hidden places and secret markets hidden from the Worldgovernment. He imagined that she had a fancy for him, that she admired his work, that she supported the Great Singularity Revolution. For a few weeks she had dabbled in being mildly excited by the notion of a marvelous technological Singularity, but after spending time with those who had the potential to make it happen, she had lost any real belief in it.

They were Idealists and dreamers all, and those sorts never got anything done. People like her Daddy got things done, and their power was their total lack of Ideals, and their utter ruthlessness. There would be no Singularity, and machine people would not take the planet and make it a realm of immortal equals. There would be instead the endless squabbles and egotistical battles of a thousand would-be kings, each trying to see who had the longer technological dick. Venice had quickly sussed the future, and it was corpulent programmers imagining themselves to be gods while playing flaccid tricks on a world government at best barely annoyed at them.

But Fox was good for the occasional laugh, and he could and did get her the various illegal things she desired - it was through Fox that Venice had obtained the little underwear spies she had implanted into her father's undergarments. Fox had a friend that had set up her personal lock-out system that gave her true privacy. The pittance she gave these self proclaimed wizards provided many useful returns.

Venice stood now, in her mind, in the secret hypernet, in the ruins of a great castle of fantasy. It was perched on a floating island, hovering over a sea of burning blood, a gargantuan skull floated in the black sky shining ray-traced moonlight down upon the virtual world. She sauntered in to a great throne-room decorated with skulls, her orange fur gleaming, her long vulpine tail swishing back and forth. Ponderous breasts wobbled upon her chest, defying both gravity and sense.

Fox Godot Maniac was into anthropomorphic fantasy, and Venice played to his fetishes effectively. She did not share them, she did not grasp why the young programmer enjoyed any of it, but she understood its tropes, and she knew how to use them, and through that knowledge, to get whatever she wanted.

The cybersex was over in minutes, Fox had a very short fuse, which was another thing Venice liked about him - he was not much of a bother. The process was very annoying to her, what passed for sensation in this virtual environment barely registered to her jaded senses, though to be fair, that was a positive aspect for her. If it was the least bit realistic, she would probably not be able to bear pretending her way through it.

"Oh, my sleek little pet, how wonderfully you slake your mate's animal lusts!" Fox was given to the most ridiculous and grandiose pronouncements, which rolled in a booming voice from his overmuscled, dramatically scarred anthropomorphic avatar. Unbeknownst to him, Venice had managed to discover what Fox Godot Maniac really looked like, he was a short, overweight, walrus of a man-boy who spent far too much time with one hand in his boxer shorts and the other on a keyboard. Inside herself, she found endless laughter at the very thought of such a pathetic creature.

"My dearest lord and master, your pet seeks only to please you." Venice murred softly into the muscular fox-man's neck, wriggling her bottom and sending a signal for her tail to wrap around his digitigrade legs. While this was going on, Venice was checking her mail while scanning a catalog of designer implants, trying to make sure that her Nightwanders were truly the newest and most advanced in existence. They were. Her emptiness could not be attributed to the implants directly.

Indeed, the Nightwanders were military spec, not available to the general public, the best permatech augments of their type ever created. It was a good thing, she noted, that she had gotten them customized - the outward appearance belied their actual nature, appearing only as perfectly legal NewEyes, vastly inferior implants. Suddenly she became aware that her little programmer was making statements that required a response. She scanned the summary. Apparently he had been fussing about how the Great Revolution had been going nowhere (no surprises there) and how surely the world needed it now more than ever, considering recent events, such as the emergence of an alien universe. Her BoreGuard had been vastly improved by the new patch.

"Oh, of course you are right, my lord, why everypony should be able to see it clearly!" Venice turned back to her mail. One of her special fans was complaining about her last post. She wondered idly how to ruin the fool before they could cause further trouble. Maybe she could get Fox to root out the fans identity, and then she could have their job or housing situation ruined. That would shut them up for a while! Suddenly, Venice was ripped from her interests, back to dealing with Fox.

"Everypony? EVERYPONY? You can't be serious, Sexy!" 'Sexpocolypsia' was her avatar name, 'Sexy' for short. Fox had chosen it, of course. "Have you been yiffing around with those alien monsters behind my back? Don't tell me that you've been around one of them. That's it, isn't it? You've been in proximity to one of those invading monsters and it shorted out an implant or something, right? Right? Oh, yeah, that's what this is all about. You've ruined your new Nightwanders, haven't you? I warned you. I told you that they ruin quantum tech. It's the thaumatic fields. They burn out decent technology. I just..."

"SHUT UP!" Venice rose to her... paws. Fox may be a useful asset, but this tone of voice was going too far. She was the one that paid for his Bluebox Sets, his quantum-encrypted hypernet terminals, his special programs and apps and tools. She owned him, despite the little sex game she indulged him with to keep him responsive and under her thumb. "My augments are all completely functional. I came here to give you a peek - I saved off half an hour of perception for you to see, but if you are going to act like that, well, maybe I need to reconsider our... arrangement."

Instantly she shut down the connection. That would make the little shit stew. He'd be pliable as butter the next time they spoke. He may play the role of big dominant leader in his little fantasy world, but he knew where his credits came from. The nerve of the wretched little piece of filth, even daring to think of reprimanding her for anything!

Venice was sitting upright now, her qipao stuck to her body, drenched in sweat and moisture from the air. She was upset, she felt upset, but it wasn't just that twisted little resource Fox, that was the problem. It wasn't that she hadn't gotten to brag about her nightwanders the way she had wanted to.

It was something else. What? What kept eating at her?

Things had been not right almost from the moment she awoke after the procedure to install the new augments. She'd expected a revelation, a feeling of wonder, and fulfilling entrance into a larger, more magnificent world, and what she'd gotten was blotches of colors and glowing stars marking where electronic gadgets sat. It was not a more magnificent world at all. It was just the ordinary world, painted in more colors. Nothing had changed, really. She was still empty and cold inside. There was no warmth in those little electronic lights.

'Everypony'. Had she really said that? That was from a month ago, from that stupid show. Everypony. What a sickening slip.

Suddenly it all came back, in her emotion. There was no denying it any longer. Stupid or not, she had to see the rest. 'Going Pony'. She just had to see it. Sunshine had run from Rose when Rose told her about her past. Her violent, horrible past. She never should have done that. That was beyond stupid, never, never tell the truth, that was the first rule of any relationship! Truth destroyed everything. No relationship could be founded on honesty, it always led to misery, and ultimately betrayal. Worse, truth was a weapon in the hands of an ex.

Rose should have known better. It was just insane. If she really was the badass she was supposed to have been, she'd know that. She'd know to never, ever, ever open up to Sunshine. It was incomprehensible that she would even imagine trying to do such a thing.

Venice suddenly realized that she had broken a fingernail, gripping the lounge arm. She lifted her arm and stared at her hand. The nail had shorted out, tiny images of clouds and stars no longer drifted past on the broken surface. It was just an ImageNail, easily replaced, but for some reason tears came to her eyes. Tears never came to her eyes. Ever. A nail? Seriously?

Venice was afraid. The Nightwanders! Maybe they were defective after all! Her brain could be damaged and that was why she was experiencing tears and what if Sunshine never went back to Rose? If they got shipped out, they'd never find each other again, because of the exponential lands and...

This was too much. Alright. Fine. Get a grip. The Nightwanders were not faulty, she'd had everything checked, recently. Again. No, it wasn't the Nightwanders. And it wasn't the nail. And it wasn't that idiot, Fox. No. It was that damn show. No, it wasn't exactly the show, though 'Going Pony' was a big deal to her, that was clear. It was... it was Equestria. That was the focus of this.

She decided to find out just what the deal was with this invading universe. She knew it had popped up out in the ocean a year or two ago. They'd tried to bomb it away, but that hadn't done anything at all to it. Then there was some first contact nonsense, like out of some sci-fi series. There was some fuss with the ruler of the other universe, some pony with a crown or something. That must be Celestia, like Rose and Sunshine talked about. Celestia and Luna, those were the rulers.

The place put out radiation that killed people who were too stupid to avoid it. For some reason, the worldgovernment had built a bunch of clinics where humans could become ponies and emigrate to Equestria - that was one way to reduce the surplus population. Fox and his techno-wizards had decided that the alien universe was a threat to them, somehow, probably because it shorted out their vibrators or something.

She really wanted to know more. And she had to find the rest of that show. She never should have given up on it just because it was annoying. How was she supposed to know that it might matter to her as much as it clearly did? Fine. This was a little madness, like the time she tried to be 'friends' with the girl in the mansion across the wall when she was eight. This wouldn't end in embarrassment and shame, this madness could be kept private. If she indulged it, it would go away.

That was the answer. See the rest of 'Going Pony', learn about this Equestria thing, and she'd get bored, and that would get it the hell out of her system. Close the gestalt. Fin. End of madness, and she could get back to her big swell life. Her big, fat, swell, rich, magnificent... life.

The empty was so large inside her right now. The humidity was making it hard to breath. She felt like she was suffocating. Unsteadily, Venice rose to her feet, and made for the immense glass and crystal door. She had to get a breath of climate controlled air. She pushed her way out into the hall, flattening herself against the wall, her face pressed into it.

She panted, gasping, forcibly willing the empty, the void, the big gaping hole to shrink inside. She was in control. In control. As she raised her head, she saw one of the staff. Old guy, second tier butler or something. She had no idea what his name was. "Excuse me, please, but are you alright? Do you require assistance?"

Normally, she'd have his job for even speaking to her. He was second tier, a nothing. But... that isn't how she felt. He was genuinely concerned. He was... genuine. She could tell. The requester popped up immediately, just like when she had been watching Sunshine on the live feed. Genuine.

"Um... I... just got overheated. I don't go to the garden often. I'll be fine. Thank you, that will be all."

"Very good, madam." The servant turned to leave.

"Wait." She had no idea what she was doing now. "What... what is your name? It was... kind... of you to ask about me." She smiled at him. It felt strange, because she couldn't figure out why she was doing it.

"Phillipe, madam. House staff, lower levels." He waited to see if she required anything more.

"Thank... you. Phillipe." She smiled again. He smiled back, waited a moment, noticed her nod, then hesitantly turned and left.

It began to dawn on her. She had smiled to... reassure him. She hadn't wanted anything, and there was nothing to gain from it. She'd just... done it. She had wanted to do it. She had wanted... to feel... that he wouldn't worry. This complete stranger from the lower floors.

She was still smiling, and she had no idea why. It was the most curious thing. And the whole time she had been thinking about Rose and Sunshine. Asking the servant's name, trying to reassure him, that was the sort of thing they would do. That was something an Equestrian would value, wasn't it? Venice touched her face. It was still smiling. The hole inside, the empty had retreated so far, so very far.

This was definitely worth pursuing.

* * * * *

The Zakharov boy, Danilo, sponsored a snotty little hacker who fancied himself as 'Quantum Angel'. Danilo had introduced Venice to two things, once. She was ten and attending school in Oslo for a few weeks before Daddy had to go to Jakarta. The first thing was being taken from behind, a position she found she quite fancied, and the other was the value of having a minion that knew his way around a quantum set and the hypernet.

'Angel' was both a personal diversion for the bisexual Danilo and an effective weapon in the boy's arsenal. Venice discovered with joy and wonder that a few strokes of a keyboard could destroy the entire life of any annoying lesser, and the three of them had spent an entertaining fortnight sending imagined rivals and their families straight to the pits of the favela. Her last memory, before she had to leave with Daddy, was them laughing together as the Blackmesh threw out a snotty upperclassman into the street along with all of his relatives. Such power from so little! Venice was instantly determined to have a code monkey of her very own.

Fox had been rude to her, and he needed to be made totally pliant again. She'd clearly indulged his little domination fantasy too far - a silly mistake born of not paying enough attention to her games - and it was important that the fear of Venice be put back into him. Fortunately, her sources had indicated that Danilo had recently experienced a falling out with his old lover/minion Quantum Angel, and this was perfect, because Angel and Fox were close and tended to interact regularly. There was even evidence they had met in meatspace and probably considered each other 'friends'... if true, this only made her actions even more effective.

A few minutes on secret channels and a promise of a simple favor - the Zakharov boy was a sentimental idiot - brought down the house of Quantum Angel entirely. Danilo had tired of his boy toy and had been contemplating destroying him anyway, Venice's offer only precipitated the inevitable. In short order Angel had been dumped to the streets, his equipment confiscated by Blackmesh, and a warrant for him on every kiosk. Danilo figured he'd either have to eat a gun or go pony, either way his account had been closed permanently. It was a good chuckle in any case.

Fox would be aware of the situation virtually in real time, and no doubt Angel would be begging for assistance and help, and no doubt Fox would fear for his own position and refuse, betraying his friend. But, and this was the whole point, he would have been completely reminded of his own delicate place in the food chain, and he would once more have respect for the apex predator he served. Venice ignored his plaintive, desperate attempts to contact her. Of course he would be beyond insecure, probably he was wetting his boxers and crying over his keyboard that the same thing would happen to him.

Especially since Danilo had been generous enough to twist the knife by talking offhandedly about how 'upset Venice was' when he released the dogs on Angel. Sweet. Venice decided to make her little favor memorable for that.

Venice was in the family Lifting Body, on route to the Mall Of Antarctica when she finally decided to send a short message to her little tech-minion. A simple, straightforward demand. Best way to break the ice ever invented.

SEND ALL DATA ABOUT EQUESTRIA. SEND COMPLETE SERIES 'GOING PONY'. SORRY ABOUT YOUR FRIEND.

Oh, that was delicious. 'Sorry about your friend'. Venice sank back into the vast, soft cushions and giggled audibly over that one. He would know he was on notice now, and she would probably end up with more material than she could ever hope to even bother with. Probably deep government stuff, knowing Fox. He was quite the little rebel, not that his revolutionary notions would ever accomplish anything. Still, it was always best to have the most accurate information.

The Lifting Body passed over the rough, bare mountains of Antarctica, a gigantic white beetle shape plowing through the sky. It used heated hydrogen to provide astonishing lift under its rigid shell, and the greening of Antarctica had made it the place to live for much of the elite. Daddy wasn't in the very top tier, of course, but he was not impossibly far from it, and it was nice to have access to the Forbidden Continent. It definitely had the best restaurants. Unbeknownst to the overwhelming masses, the last living farms on the planet grew in the cool, relatively pristine soil at the bottom of the world, though everything had to be shielded from ultraviolet, of course.

The crew and staff bid her the usual well wishing as she departed the vehicle after touchdown in Vostok, Venice strolled blithely out into the cool springlike air. She wore her antique panda coat - she so seldom got to wear the thing with its dramatic black and white starkness - and immediately began to regret it, it was definitely not cold enough anymore to make such clothing useful. Pity, really, the last place on earth one could wear winter garb and it was never cold enough to make it worthwhile.

She made her way along the tunnel of UV screens to the entrance, and found herself in a vast, 100 meter tall cathedral of consumption built of shining plasteel and glassite, the usual impersonal corporate decorations suggesting falling snow and ice-sickles. As she strutted through the entrance lounge, something caught her eye.

A child, doubtless the spawn of some high elite, sat in a long, overstuffed couch, watching a holopad. The scene was unmistakable; it was Sunshine Laughter first meeting Rose Vale, when she was still called Millicent. It was the bathroom scene, and it was 'Going Pony' and it was right there, in a child's hands, at the bottom of the world.

Venice slid in smoothly, adjusting her mannerisms to 'motherly'. She seldom got to perform 'motherly', it was a completely unnatural behavior set for her, and she loathed children with a deep chasm of hatred, but she did her best.

"Hello, sweety. Ooh, look at that! 'Going Pony!' I adore that program!"

"You do?" The little waif was so blond she was almost white as snow, and her delicate features showed a sadness of neglect that Venice instantly recognized as thoroughly exploitable. This was a very easy game.

"Oh, I like it very much! What a clever girl you must be to like it as well, I am rather impressed. Very pleased to meet you, I'm Venice, how do you do?" Venice did her very best 'Kind and Nice' face, and regulated her emotions to try to simulate genuineness.

"I'm Petra. You really, truly like 'Going Pony?'" Petra seemed amazed. Venice felt sure she had nobody in her life who liked anything she liked at all.

"Indeed I do. I really like Rose Vale. And Sunshine Laughter. And I like all the nice food they get to eat. And they get to be ponies too!" Even with most earthly equines extinct, what little girl didn't like ponies? Venice put on her 'I'm happy and warmly excited' performance. It was a little rusty, but it seemed, oddly, to flow naturally today.

"Oh, wow! You really DO like it!" The little girl, Petra, was around nine, according to the pop-up in Venice's visual field; she sent a query to discover the girls background, parents, station and wealth level. Petra was beaming - Venice had definitely judged correctly, this was a very lonely little girl.

"I never got to see the last of it though. I really wanted to, but my daddy wouldn't let me." It was something a nine year old could absolutely relate to, and it was not entirely a lie. Venice followed up with her cutest pout.

"I'm... I'm not supposed to be watching it. But I do anyway. You won't tell, will you?" Petra seemed worried.

"No way! I'd never rat on a sister Going Pony watcher! I promise!" That made little Petra smile broadly. Part of Venice didn't want to smack and hit the little runt, and this surprised her. She really did hate children, yet she felt none of her usual violent drives. What was it about this show?

"Do... do you want to watch with me?" Ah, the golden question, the goal was in sight.

"Um... do you have the entire series, Petra?" The query daimon had returned, the girl was Petra Alice Bettencourt, daughter of Stefan Albrecht Bettencourt, one of the 300, the very top corporate elite that essentially ruled the planet earth. In terms of worldgoverment hierarchy, Petra was as far above Venice as she was above... her minion Fox. This was unprecedented.

Suddenly, Venice felt very, very cold. Every word, every movement she made was undoubtedly being watched. She was probably being scanned by devices she didn't even know existed. There were almost certainly at least three deadly weapons trained on her at this very moment. She forced herself to not look around. Petra was undoubtedly under observation and guard, every single second of her life. No wonder she seemed so lonely.

"You have funny bumps on your head!" Petra giggled and pointed at Venice's Nightwanders. Oh, that wasn't good. The truly elite would have technology capable of seeing right through every implant in her body. Military grade augments would instantly make her a suspicious entity, especially talking to a child about a silly holoprogram in the middle of an apparently empty lounge area. The hairs on the back of Venice's short, shaggy cut were standing upright. A requester popped up in her field of vision indicating a heart rate warning. Whoever was watching would be able to measure the same thing externally. It would appear suspicious too.

Venice forced herself to giggle. "Yes, I had some implants done, they are kind of silly looking, aren't they?" She wondered if she would feel it if she was shot where she sat. It took every bit of her resolve to keep her heart from starting to pound in her chest. "Well, Petra, I have some shopping to do. I don't have time to watch the show with you, but I thank you for asking. Hey, Pony pals, right?" Venice forced as warm a smile as she could.

Petra seemed sad, but it was obvious she was used to people leaving. "You finally saw they were there, didn't you?" The little girl looked down, staring at her own hands holding the holopad.

Venice knew the next thing she said might just be the difference between life and death. She could say nothing and just leave... no, that would look suspicious. She could deny things, and reiterate that she needed to shop, perhaps that would show the correct level of deference but... what if the child got upset at the lie? Petra knew what was going on. She could act out and get instant gratification and revenge if she felt the least slighted. Venice knew they could drop her without cause and nothing would be said. The corporate elite were the gods of earth.

Sweat beaded on her forehead, making her implants itch. She'd never felt this kind of fear in her entire life. She, Venice Bertarelli, could be swatted like a fly. It would mean nothing. In this context, she was... nothing. What would the child's specialist protectors want to hear? They must know everything about her now. Everything. They would have every record, every detail...

Honesty. It would be the one thing they would not expect. It would be the one thing that might make her not suspicious. It would be the one thing they never heard.

"Yeah, sweetheart. I automatically did a background on you, in my head. And that made me really scared, because your daddy is one of the three-hundred. I didn't know that when I sat down. And I'm afraid now, because of that. I'm really sorry, Petra. I really did like meeting you." The damned thing of it was that... she actually had enjoyed meeting Petra. And now, she felt sorry for the little girl.

"I understand." Petra looked blank. Whatever tears she once had about such matters had been cried out long ago. "Thank you for liking the pony show."

"Goodby, Petra."

"Goodby, Venice. I think you are a nice lady." As Venice rose, slowly, and backed away, she noticed that Petra had given her a soft, sad smile. Venice made her way into the heart of the mall.

The interrogation took two hours, most of which was spent sitting, waiting, while things were verified. Venice had been asked to follow three men in dark suits, their heads covered in permatech. As expected, they knew everything. They knew the deepest secrets of her life, virtually every game she had ever played, every contact she had, even the secret ones. Fortunately, they didn't care one bit. Their job was just to make sure she hadn't been up to anything with the Bettencourt girl.

When she was finally released, Venice was shaken, exhausted, and for the first time in her life she felt utterly vulnerable and weak. She was nothing to these people. Nothing.

Exploring the mall no longer interested her. Even so, on the way out, she passed a romball shop, and much to her surprise, there was quite a section devoted to the emergence of Equestria. There were collected infofeeds, documentaries, and... 'Going Pony' among other items. The Ministry had clearly considered the show an important part of some kind of propaganda push. Venice bought them out, directing the media to be sent to her transport.

Leaving the mall, she returned immediately to the airship. Three weeks in Antarctica seemed no longer the least bit fun. Once aboard, she directed the crew to return her to Marin. Venice returned to her quarters. The entire time she had forced herself into sensory isolation. Of course they would be watching her. She had escaped the random hand of arbitrary suspicion, and won her life. And she had gotten what she had sought from Petra - the complete series of 'Going Pony'.

This madness... she needed to be done with it. It was making her do stupid things. She would normally never talk to a lone child, the very idea was madness. She would normally never admit to liking something as common as a mere holoprogram. Indulge it and be done with it. She needed to get busy overindulging so she could become bored with it as soon as possible.

Venice lifted the small, cubical holomedia from its case. Inside the plastic case could be seen a crystalline sphere, suspended within. That was the romball. Inside, in molecular patterns, was information which could be read by a discrete system of lasers. Tiny air channels within the case spun the ball, allowing the holographic data to be read from every angle simultaneously. She slipped the romball into the reader in the wall of her cabin, and sat back.

Flipping through the sections, she began to learn about Equestria, and found herself astonished. It had appeared in the North Pacific, a shining sphere that expanded rapidly. The thaumatic radiation it generated somehow destroyed the cells of all earthly life. The radiation spread and pooled in some strange, fractal pattern that was expanding across the globe. The spherical barrier of Equestria was continuing to grow, though now at a much slower rate.

The natives of Equestria were equinoid in appearance but were not truly ponies despite the name. They were intelligent, technological, and capable of surprising flexibility and agility. They appeared to be an engineered, or at least created race, divided into three breeds, ruled over by two supposedly immortal, all powerful rulers that were, for all intents, gods.

There was much about what had been termed 'magic', certainly the powers and abilities of the Equestrians were beyond human understanding. Their universe was markedly different than the universe which the earth existed in, with strange and alien physical laws. It was essentially mutable, Equestria, and could be altered by the will of the princesses, or by a historic entity called Discord.

The world government had worked with the Equestrians to create the Bureaus. It did not seem like a means to get rid of excess population. It wasn't some means towards cultural exchange. The flow of traffic was one way, humans could not enter Equestria unless they became Equestrian themselves. Venice put things together even before she came to the report of the corporate scientists.

All evidence pointed to Equestria expanding indefinitely. It would never stop, as far as they could tell, and it was death to human beings. The Conversion Bureaus were lifeboats for the sinking ship that was the planet. The conclusion was absolute. The earth would be consumed in five to six years unless something changed. It literally was the end of the world.

Venice found herself shaking. She walked nervously around her cabin. How could she not have heard of all of this until now? It seemed like the entire planet knew this stuff. She hadn't a clue until this very moment. The end of the fucking world. Not everyone bought into it, that was clear. Some of the elite must think they could weather it out in Antarctica. Maybe they had some unknown plan or project. The end. Of the world.

She sat down, clutching at her knees. She was 23, almost 24 years old, and it was the end of the world, and she... she was completely empty inside. The hollow horror roared inside her, chewing, biting at her emotions. So empty. So...

Rose. Rose and Sunshine. They filled the empty, somehow. If the world was ending, if this was all there was, then... she'd fill it with Rose and Sunshine. And Newmoon and Lavender and Goldenrod and Aquamarine and Snowflower the unicorn and...

Venice fumbled with the small container that held 'Going Pony'. The romball went in the slot in the wall. She fastforwarded the show until she got to Day Ten, then crept up on the part she had missed. The part that Daddy had interrupted. She had three days to reach Marin in the Lifting Body. She had time to see the rest on the way. Maybe... somehow, she could figure out what it was about this show that managed to touch her. Somehow it mattered to find that out.

Just as she reached the right spot, she got a message from Fox. He had all the materials she had asked for, everything about Equestria and the entirety of 'Going Pony'. Something about that made her laugh. She did not bother responding. Instead, she sat back to finally watch the strange show that had captivated her so. She found herself weirdly thrilled, even excited by the prospect. She still felt sorry for the little girl she had met, despite all the trouble. She was deeply worried about the relationship between Sunshine and Rose in the show. These things affected her now more than the end of the very world. Nothing made sense any more. Taking a deep breath, Venice told the holoscreen to 'play'.

"Sunshine... um..."

Wow, Rose, have you tried the Hay Almondine? This stuff is... mmmn... it's incredible!

"Um, yes, it is good. I... would you... be willing to hear my conversion dream?"

Oh, gosh, mnnn... oh that's good... of course, Rose! I'd love to hear your dream. I've been hoping you might tell me!

"Well... it's kind of difficult. To make sense, I kind of have to tell you about... me. About who I was, before... before I went to the bureau. And... like I said, I wasn't very nice."

Rose? Are you alright? Please, it's alright. I love you. I adore you. Whatever went on for you back then, it's back then. It's OK to tell me anything. I promise. Please, go on. I want to hear your story.

"Al...alright. But... please, Sunshine, please try to understand that I'm not that person anymore. Not ever, not at all."

Rose, I love you. Nothing can change that.

"Alright, alright then. Before I was me, I lived with my mom in the Noe Valley favela, not that far from the Mission Delores Crater. The ruins outside of the Noe could be pretty radioactive, so there were only a few safe paths in or out. That was kind of good and bad - it made the favela defensible, but it also meant that we had to ship stuff in and out through only a few routes..... "

Day Ten: Every Night We Die, Every Day We Are Born

GOING PONY

Day Ten: Every Night We Die, Every Day We Are Born
By Sunshine Laughter

So you are saying that the Noe Valley favela was kind of a natural fortress, in some ways?

"Basically. We had the Mission Delores Crater to the north, and nopony in their right mind would go through there - it was still radioactive from the Austerity War after the Great Collapse. Apparently that hadn't even been the target, but that was as far as the missile went. We had the Cayuga ruins to the south, and those were pretty much impassable, and what did live there you wouldn't want to run into. Everypony knew cannibal gangs hid out there. So we just had two ways in or out, and the west path was not easy, because everything was such a mess.The east road was great. Cesar Chavez Street was almost untouched, and most of 24th was pretty good too. So that was the big trade route in or out of Noe. We had a pretty nice community, actually. We had a restaurant, if you can believe it!"

You're kidding! A restaurant? I didn't know they had restaurants in the favelas.

"There was this nice family, the Ngô's, and they used Guarantee Rations and whatever we could grow in the area, which wasn't a lot, but we had dandelions, and spearmint, and lemongrass and a few other hardy things that everypony would grow on the rooftops. The Ngô family got a share of all the food in exchange for making decent meals with it. They were big in our community."

Wait, wait. That doesn't sound right. You're saying these ing-goes or whatever...

"Ngô... it's alright. It's maybe a little hard if you didn't grow up with names like that."

I... yeah. So the nn...Go's, they got food so they could cook it for everypony else? How is that an advantage? It seems like they just got shoved some ingredients and told to get busy or something.

"Sunshine, they got a lot of food that way. They made food for everypony, but they also got to have all the excess for themselves. They never went hungry. That's a pretty good deal, if you think about it. And everypony was glad to give them a share, because eating government ration is not enough, and it's hard to choke down after a while. It gets old fast."

I think I understand, Rose. So, basically, you liked growing up in Noe?

"If I had to grow up in a favela, I am happy is was Noe Valley. We had a real sense of community... or so I thought, when I was young. I think we did... but then things changed. The gangs from the north started coming in, and the attacks kept getting worse and worse. That's how my dad died. He was trying to get to the market and... they got him. He was just a random victim, but it broke my mom.

After dad was kacked, my mom just kind of went... bad. She blamed everything for her grief. She took a lot of it out on me... I used to have these bad scars on my face... she had a bad night, too much booze, and a knife. That's when I left home."

Rose! Great Celestia.... you just say that like it was... like you were describing, I don't know, something ordinary. Not like your mother taking a... a knife to your face! I can't...

"She wasn't in her right mind, Sunshine. I said that she kind of broke after dad died. She was just... broken. She wasn't attacking me, exactly. And I did kind of make her angry a lot."

Angry a lot? That's no excuse! There's nothing a child could do that deserves a knife to the face! My Luna, Rose!

"Um... I wouldn't be too certain of that. I was... after dad was killed, after my mom went wrong inside, I became angry. Really angry. Because of losing him, because of mom, because the whole community was being destroyed by the gang raids and... I decided to form one of our own. I just wanted to protect everypony, that's what I thought. But... it kind of got out of hoof and... pretty soon we were raiding them right back.

It was during that time that I got involved with Razor. She and I... we kind of fed off each other, pushing each other, competing to see who was the most... dangerous, who could... dish out the most payback. And we did, we... ended the original gang that had raided us from the start, with a little help. But the help was even worse, in some ways. We teamed up with a south gang, and... they were pretty savage."

Wait... you said they had cannibal gangs in the south, right?

"Yeah, they did. That's who we got to help us. Nopony else would deal with them. It instantly made Razor and me outcasts in Noe, but by then we didn't care. As long as the valley was protected... I didn't care what they thought. Only I did care, but... I worked hard not to, you know?

So, we got into some bad places. We did things... I don't want to tell you. It wasn't enough just to make the northers retreat, we wanted payback. And killing them was too easy, once we had the Lectors backing us."

So... I don't understand. Like... torture and stuff?

"Like playing soccer with their heads. Like playing checkers on their chests with fingers for pieces, while they screamed. Really sick stuff, Sunshine. Really bad stuff. But we knew they'd keep breeding, keep having more little gang-bangers... we were down to killing the children of the original attackers, so we finally went for the.... Sunshine? .... Sunshine?"

Oh scheisse. Merde. F...ffff... fuck. Oh.... muffin fuck.... where... got to get.... just got to get.... oh Luna... Sorry! Sorry! Muffin, knocked him down, oh Luna, oh ffff... I gotta get somewhere.... outside, there's the door, the door, they want to know if I'll be back, how am I supposed to know if I'll be back, oh crap, oh poop, crap, doo-doo, damn. DAMN!

Where do I go? What... I can't breath, it's... no way, that can't be true, that stuff can't be muffin true, no muffin way, no, no... I'm in some kind of down the stairs, gotta go down the stairs... Ok, Ok, in here, in the back... down behind the boxes, I haven't a clue where I am but it's away, It's away from there.

Oh sweet Luna, how can... I don't understand! I just don't understand! She's a muffin pony now, and she can still talk like that, she can say that stuff and... how is it even... no. No. I refuse to believe it. She was just lying to me. It was a muffin lie. She was... trying to push me away, that's it, trying to end the relationship. She just couldn't say it's over so she made up some swirl that she figured would scare me away, well damn, filly, it surely worked. Luna, it worked.

Gangs. Who comes up with this stuff. No muffin way. Not even humans do stuff like that! OK, well maybe they do, but that doesn't really happen, not for her, not for sweet, nice, kind little.... oh Luna I'm crying aren't I, yeah, yeah, I'm crying, I'm crying now all over myself, and that's stupid because none of that was real. It just wasn't real it couldn't be real it couldn't Awwwww..... awww-hawwwww hawww hawwww... uhhh.... uhhhh... oh.... oh.... Rose, no, no, no... not Rose, not Rose...

Ow. I hit my head, oh, ow, have to get some control. I have to get control of myself, I can't keep rolling and tossing like this, ow.... I just can't sit still, it just... it just hurts so much...

I've been sleeping next to her for more than a week! Sweet Celestia, I. Have. Been. Asleep. Next to her. Right next to her, all night, she's been right there, a... a... monster... that could do that.... no. No, it isn't true, remember? Remember? Not true. She's just lying, for some reason. That's all it is. HOW COULD CELESTIA LET HER BE A PONY? How exactly does that work? She's a muffin serial killer or cannibal monster or something HOW DOES THAT GET A PASS TO BE A PONY? No. No. She didn't do those things.

Of COURSE! Sweet, Celestia, it is so OBVIOUS now! She was just telling me what the others around her did. That's all. She couldn't possibly have actually done those things, she was just part of it. She and Razor, they were what, leaders she said before, OK, they led the group, but it isn't like a leader or commander or whatever can control what a bunch of crazy cannibal gang types do. She couldn't have watched them all the time, right? Right?

So it's obvious, completely obvious, it just all got out of hoof for her, and she couldn't stop the crazy types and she was just telling me what THEY did, not what SHE did, no, what THEY did. The others. The one's she brought in that weren't her at all. See? See, that's what the deal is. Of course. I got it wrong is all. Oh, cinnamon swirls, that is exactly what I did. I am such a silly filly. Just silly. Silly. She probably cowered in a corner, while all that brutality went on around her. Probably had to not say anything or else they'd turn on her. That's it. I can picture her just turning away, a tear in her eye and OHHHH.... AHHHH.... NOOOO.... no, no, no.

Heh. Hah. Huh. Hah.... oh, get my breath, get my breath. It's a misunderstanding. That's all. Please, please sweet Celestia, gentle Luna, if you can hear me, make it just be a misunderstanding. I just heard wrong, or I interpreted it all wrong. Rose isn't... she wouldn't... she couldn't do those kind of things, not even as a human not even back then, not ever, not ever, not...

Ever. I slept beside her. All night. Right there. Every night. We ate together. Oh, Luna... did... did she eat... with the cannibal gang? But she's so soft spoken! She's so gentle, she makes plants bloom! She makes that little 'eep' sound when she comes, it... it can't be her.

That's it. Conversion really does kill the human part. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I'm dead. The human part that drank the serum? She's dead. She died so that I, a pony, could be created. Yeah. It isn't conversion at all! We're not the same at all! No! Not a bit, Not a bit. I'm somepony new. Completely new. Sorry there, Hallie Dellile Holloway, you one dead-ass human woman, I'm here now, I'm Sunshine Laughter, pegasus pony and I have replaced you. You dead, you are stone cold dead, just like Millie is dead. Hallie and Millie, dead at the Conversion Bureau. Completely replaced by new creatures. That's all potion does. It kills the human and makes a pony out of the meat. Brand new pony. No connection, it's all an illusion. Just an illusion. No connection.

And that's how it's OK, see? Rose is Rose. Hee! A Rose by any other name would be a dead woman who died because of potion. So it isn't her. She isn't that human, she never was, see? See? It makes sense. She can't be Millicent, not the human Millicent, because that human died, and a brand new, spankin' new, shiny new pony was created. Rose right out of the ashes of the other. Rose. Heh! Funny. So funny. Rose... right out of the ashes. Can't be the same. We can't be the same as we were. We just have fake memories of having been human is all. It's all a lie. We were never 'converted', there is no 'conversion', just kill off the human and replace it with a fresh, new, guiltless, spotless, innocent pony that...

Oh, muffin, muffin, I know that's not true. Rose explained it about Velvet and all the bigot stuff and... oh, sweet Luna, we really are converted humans aren't we? Can't get out of it that way. Face it. I know I'm me. I know my life, I know my childhood, I know my dad, my mom, I remember walking into the Bureau, and wanting to be a pony so bad, and getting hit by that guy who went nuts and.... I'm me. I'm me, pony and all. It's real. That's not a way out.

And that means Rose is... she's a pony but she was.... How? How does any person get to a point in their lives where they say to themselves 'hey, I guess chopping people up while they watch is a good idea?' How does that happen? Yeah, OK, her dad was killed. Her mom went a little knife-happy, I suppose that could change a filly a bit, but it's still a long bucking way from getting a scar on your face to playing scrabble with body parts. I... I... I just. I just don't.

How I am supposed to deal with this? Seriously? Luna? Celestia? Do you answer your little ponies? Huh? DO YOU? no muffin better than human gods, that's for sure. Yeah, nice conversion dreams, thanks for the welcome, but now that I have troubles, where the swirl are you? Huh? Not here, that's for sure. What do I do? How do I face her again? How could anypony face her? How can she look at herself in a mirror? How does she get through the day, knowing that... that...

Celestia must have said something pretty bucking amazing to her in her dream, that's all I can say. I couldn't live with that. If I knew I had done stuff like that, I'd be off a bridge. Wait. I can fly. OK, not a bridge. A... ah... how does a pegasus kill itself anyway? Dive bomb. I could dive bomb a bridge. With my face. That would work. Don't have to fly, just because I can. OK. Yeah. I'd end it all, that's the point. I could NOT live with myself knowing that.

MUFFIN! I've been sleeping next to her every night! Asleep! Luna. Sweet Luna.

It must be hard on her. I couldn't live with that. No wonder she's so nice. How do you make something like that up? How do you forgive that? OK, her community was being attacked. I get that. Defending yourself, I get that. But... taking the ball to the other court? No. No, that's too far. But they'd keep coming, she said. OK, maybe, maybe they would, but what she described...

I don't know how to deal with this. I was going to go to Equestria with her. I was going to spend the rest of my life with her. Maybe we'd adopt a foal or one of us could get knocked up, we were going to have a family, we were part of the Pony Breakfast Club and.... I don't know what to think anymore.

Listen... I... I need some time. I... I'm going to shut this muffin thing off for a while. I don't know if I'll be back. I Just don't know.

CLICK

* * * * *

CLICK

Um, hey. I've... I've been ranting and stuff for... a while. I'm in some kind of storage... place. It's morning, I think. Maybe even noon, I'm not sure. There's some light from somewhere. I've kind of been afraid to move. I doubt anypony's missed me, but... I didn't want to be found, you know?

I've done a lot of thinking. I guess I kind of lost it there for a while. I guess I lost it pretty bad. Listen... it's really something to find out stuff like that. Especially about somepony you thought you knew. But then again, I've really only known Rose for nine, maybe ten days now. Something like that. Less than two weeks.

I guess I need to make a decision, really. I mean, that's what this is all about, isn't it. A decision. It's so hard. I... I'm really conflicted here. On one hoof, she's Rose. I adore Rose. I felt something for her the instant I saw her. If love at first sight is real, and Pony does it feel real, then this is it. And it's something special, whatever it is. I'm bright enough to know that. Or at least I think I am.

But... no... actually yes. That is the real question here. Is the pony I fell in love with really... her? Can a person change... that much? And if that much change really is possible, what does that say about what we are, what I am? Am I me, like I think I am?

I've figured out that I'm not in any danger from her. Even if she wanted to, she wouldn't be able to harm anypony. That's one of the things we lose, going pony. I was... heh... I was so worried about the fact I was sleeping with her, like she was some demon in the bed waiting to slit my throat. But... factually, I'm safer with her than with any human I've ever shared a bed with. She's been neutered as far as murder goes. We all have. So what is my real deal, here?

I guess... I guess it's the idea that she may have done things, seen things, been willing to do things, in the past, that... that are just... well, horrible. Beyond horrible. The worst that humans are capable of. The kind of things you read about in Blackmesh reports and see on the Info as the latest horror from the favela and aren't all you red and blue level workers glad you have jobs and live in the secure facilities... and yes, yes, I am glad of that. She could have ended up one of those reports. Muffin... something she was involved with could have been on some report I saw on the holo.

Luna.

Every day with her has been joy, though. That's a fact. I've never been happier in my life. That's a fact, too. What else is a fact here? She can never hurt me, at least physically, that's a fact. I do love her. Fact. No question about that, that's why this hurts so much. Um... she's a pony. She didn't melt on the table or whatever. So... Celestia and Luna accepted her. She said she begged them to... what was it? Wash her clean. She begged to be wiped clean. Can they do that? Why didn't they erase her memory? That would have been kinder, I think.

Unless the Conversion Dreams aren't real. That's always possible. Sure, they all have a lot of things in common, but... that can be reasoned away. Anypony in a Bureau would know Celestia and Luna, and have strong common notions about Equestria... it could easily be that the dreams are just that, dreams. Maybe they share common themes because that's just how the nanomachines affect the brain or something. Maybe the serum was built to do that on purpose. There's no way to know.

But, if Celestia and Luna really are goddesses, then... they accepted her. And even if they aren't, then... the fact is she is a pony now, and she's harmless and...

No, no. No. All of this is ponyfeathers. Heh. Ponyfeathers. That's kind of a slight against pegasai, isn't it? I never realized that. Huh. In any case, none of this matters, I'm still just avoiding the real question. Do I want to stay with her? Oh, Pony, that's hard to ask. Can I still stay with her, knowing her past?

Oh, Celestia, what must it be like for her? I think it's hard for me... maybe as a human she was alright with all that... butchery... but as a pony, there is just no way she could be alright. So... she's suffering, isn't she? She has to be hurting all the time, every time she remembers any bit of that. As a pony... it would be intolerable. Miserable. You'd think if Celestia were really a goddess, and the Dream was real, she would have erased the memory of all of that. It's just mean, it's just cruel to leave it there.

Unless. Oh, swirls, that's a thought. What if... what if Rose asked to not forget... as some form of penance or something? Oh, wow. That's just too horrible to think about. Deliberately choosing that, if there was another option. I don't think I could do that. It would be like 'erase me now!!!'. Only I wouldn't have done stuff like that in the first place.

Stop it. Come on, Sunshine. Get a grip. You have two choices, two paths here. You can break it off, or you can stay. So, what if I break up? I told her she could tell me anything, and it would be OK, didn't I? And she trusted that. Makes me out the liar, wouldn't it? I said I would love her no matter what. Well that part is true. I still love her. It burns like fire. Right now. It burns just to be apart. She's got to feel pretty bad right now, with me running off like that. I'm hurting her every second I am not there, aren't I? I didn't think about that. I just ran. What a muffin coward I am. What a piece of dung.

If I broke up... what would it mean? It would hurt. I can't imagine not being with Rose. It would suck. It would suck, Pony but I miss her. I miss her right now. Pony. Muffin. D-damn. Whoo. That felt good. Damn.

So... I don't want to break up, do I? I guess I don't. Hey, this has got to be a treat for all of you out there in... holo-land, huh, listening to me blather on about what a weak, mixed up creep I am. This is not going to get the ratings. Pony, I suck. So why don't I just go find her. I'll need to apologize for running away. That... that was really wrong of me. Luna, I should not have run. That was just completely wrong. I told her she could tell me anything, and then I run. Fffff.... swirl. Just Swirl.

She's got to be hurting. She's probably afraid and ashamed. No, she's probably angry at being betrayed. I kind of betrayed her there. I didn't mean to, Celestia, if you're listening... I really didn't mean to. I just... I just kind of freaked out. It was like my entire little pony world just exploded and... all that stuff, that horrible stuff and...

I should be telling her that. I should be talking to her, not... laying next to boxes in some... storage... thing. I don't even know where I am. OK. I need to apologize big time. Oh PONY! I've been worrying about whether or not I could deal with... what if she won't have me back? I ran out! I ran out on her like a damn coward! I wouldn't blame her if she doesn't want to talk to me. I am so ashamed. Oh, Celestia... I am so ashamed. I should have dealt with this better. It must have been awful for her... telling me that stuff.

OK. That's it. I go and beg her forgiveness, and if she still wants anything to do with me, then... I guess I'll just have to deal. She's Rose. That's enough. What's done is done and... She's Rose. Rose Vale. That's all that matters. And she trusted me... and I ran. I hope she can forgive me. Please. I hope she'll listen to me.

"I have been."

Wha.... hello? Is somepony there? Hello?

"I've been here all night. And all morning. It's nearly noon I expect. I've just listened, and waited, while you worked things out."

Rose? What the? You're here? You're... oh, sweet... you've been here the whole time?

"Yes. Right behind that crate. I was here the whole time."

How... why.... thats.... I had no idea! How could you just be there?

"You were pretty upset, Sunshine. And... the... way I was before... I wouldn't have survived that life if I wasn't good at being very, very quiet. Some skills we retain, apparently."

This is a little creepy, Rose.

"I was a little hurt when you ran off, Sunshine. And then... you were too upset for me to dare to say anything. You were just freaking out. So... I just lay down and decided to be quiet. And wait. I wanted to say something several times, but then you kind of freaked out all over again, so I just stayed quiet. Then it just kind of became how it was, you know?"

Um... yeah. I guess... I did kind of... get a little out there for awhile. Sorry. I get... emotional sometimes.

"Yes, you kind of do. And I love you for it. I really love you so much, Sunshine. I'm so sorry that... I had to be... such a problem."

Rose... Rose... no... please... it's me. I ran off and I shouldn't have and...

"I understood why you ran off. I was half expecting it, to tell the truth. My past is pretty bad. I'm not upset. I'm not mad."

Um... is it alright... if I... come give you a hug?

"Oh, sweet muffin yes, please, please give me a hug. Please."

Oh... Oh Rose. Rose. Oh... I'm sorry to make you cry, I am so sorry, I'm so sorry...

"S-Sunshine... it's alright.... it's... they're happy tears. I didn't think you'd ever want to touch me again after... finding out..."

I... I can't say that... all that stuff is easy for me, but... I know I love you. I guess that's all I know. I just love you. And... whatever you were or weren't before, as a human... you're Rose now. You're a pony, and I'm a pony, and... it's a new life.

"Millicent is dead, Sunshine. That life is dead for me. You got that part right, that's how I feel about it. To me, I died during Conversion. I... I just want to be Rose, just Rose. But... I also... I didn't want to be dishonest and try to hide my past either. I was so scared when I told you. I was so scared."

Rose? What did you see in your Conversion Dream, anyway? I... kind of really want to know. I need to know. I'm not sure why.

"I was in a house, Sunshine. A little cottage. Like the kind you see in the holos of what Equestria looks like. It was just this small cottage. And I was resting my head on a warm, white belly. It was Celestia, Sunshine. I was on the floor, with my head on Celestia's belly, and she was kind of curled around me, like I was a filly and she was my mother.

That went on for a long time. I started to cry, because... I missed my own mother, the way she was before.... so much. You can't imagine how much. It was like being back before all the bad stuff, back when I was a happy girl, my mother's girl, in Noe, and I only knew nice things and I only did nice things and...

...and Celestia licked me, Sunshine. She licked my forehead, I was already a pony, and she licked me like I was her little foal. And I felt so happy. But then I was so incredibly sad, because I realized I didn't deserve it, any of it. So I leapt up and away, horrified that such a beautiful being would let some... thing... like me touch her. That she would touch me.

Luna was there too, somehow, watching. And when I saw her, I just broke. I felt so bad, I just fell to the floor, on my belly, and I... I begged her to just destroy me. Just let me die during conversion, because I couldn't be a pony, I didn't deserve any of it. I begged her to end me. Not to forgive me like I said. To end me.

And... then she was there, with me, and there was no place left to get up and run to, and she held me tight, and she told me that it would be alright. She told me I had suffered too much as a human, and that I deserved to be a pony because of what the world had done to me. She told me to always remember that. She told me that she felt sad for me, and that I would have a better life now.

But I couldn't accept that, and I tried to tell her the things I had done and... she knew already. She knew, and she... she forgave me, Sunshine. She just forgave me. I was a pony now. The human life was done. All there ever is is now, and tomorrow, and that was all that mattered. I was her pony, and would I accept her friendship? I couldn't say no, who could say no to her?

But she said that this friendship had one requirement. I had a duty I had to perform."

What... what was it?

"She said I had to forgive myself and just be a pony from now on. I had to let go of being human, and just be a pony. And I promised her that I would. I promised. I promised. She said that when I woke up, it would be to a new life. Every time we wake up, it's a new life, and what matters is what we do with that life, not what we did with the last one. And then I woke up, and I was a pony, and I cried and cried. The poor doctor was so worried about me! I just couldn't stop crying. And that was the day before you met me."

Wow, Rose. Just wow.

"Sunshine?"

Yes, Rose?

"Can... can we still be together, like... like we planned?"

Oh, Rose! Rose... I... yeah, I think we can. If you're willing. If you want to.

"I want to! I wouldn't be asking if I didn't want to! I was more worried that... you would want to."

I do. I know that now. I guess I kind of knew it before you let me know you were here all along. Yes. I want to be with you, that has not changed. I am really, really sorry I freaked out on you. Can you forgive me for running? I won't do it again. I won't.

"Silly... of course I forgive you. Besides, you didn't really run away... we were together the whole night!"

Only because you're some kind of pony ninja or something. Wow, are you quiet. Seriously. I would never have known you were there, Rose.

"Yeah. I... well, I guess I'm just good at that. Listen... I am really, really starving. Are you hungry?"

Oh, sweet frisky fetlocks am I hungry! I am freaking ravenous. I'm ready to eat these boxes and crates!

"Then... what if we went and tried to get some food at the cafeteria, Sunshine?"

I would LOVE to get some food. But first there is something I really need to do. If... if you're willing.

"W-what... what do you need to do?"

The kiss was long and soft, and sweet, and very, very tender. As Venice watched, the two ponies slowly closed their eyes and lost themselves in the gentleness of their moment. She barely noticed the little pop-up in her right visual field designating the action as 99.999+ authentic, because she couldn't see much of anything anymore, what with the gush of tears streaming down her cheeks. She never cried. Never. Not since she was very small. Not like this. Not ever. And she was crying and crying and she couldn't stop crying.

Venice didn't see much of Sunshine and Rose's lunch together, as she sat holding herself tight with her arms wrapped around her torso. She hugged herself as hard as her muscles allowed and still it was not enough.The tears just wouldn't stop. She became aware of some high pitched keening, and realized with a start that it was her own voice, wailing at the screen, at the walls, at her life, at her self.

When the show ended, she wasn't sure what had happened after lunch to the pony couple. She found herself rolling around on her bed in her cabin, dimly aware of the clouds passing outside the large, oval window. She kept rolling back and forth, holding herself tight, and it wasn't enough. The feelings in her burned and seared and yet she couldn't get enough of them, she hungered for more even while it hurt so terribly. It took some time before she finally put a name to what she was feeling, besides regret, sadness, joy, and sorrow... yearning. She was yearning so powerfully she could not stand it.

It was a hunger, a craving, raw and vast and terrible, and she wasn't sure what it was for hours and hours. She didn't want her dinner, much to the concern of the airship staff. Over and over, Venice returned to that scene, the last few minutes before the kiss, and watched it again and again from just before the point where Rose had revealed herself.

Over and over she studied every moment, until she could recite Rose's Conversion Dream from memory, and yet the tears kept erupting. Just when she thought that the tears had finally stopped, some little nuance in the holo broke open the taps and her cheeks flooded once again.

Late in the night, almost morning, she lay in the darkness, as the first glimmer of sunlight began to touch the high clouds through which the Lifting Body traveled. The holoscreen had been off for some time, and Venice had ceased hugging herself, she lay limp and exhausted. She had shut down her inputs, all of them, even the new Nightwanders, and for the first time in years sat only within herself. The pop-ups and the data felt intrusive and... unwanted.

As Venice lay there, her thoughts turned to her recent experiences. Her first interest in 'Going Pony', the strange ways she had begun to act because of it. The lower floor servant, Phillipe - she still remembered his name - how he had been concerned for her, and how she... had been concerned for him. The little girl Petra. She would never know any real kindness or love or friendship like Rose and Sunshine. This made Venice feel incredibly sad. She found herself crying again, for Petra, for the little girl in Antarctica, because she would never know even the simplest taste of genuine friendship... until she realized that she wasn't really crying for Petra at all.

She was crying for herself. And in that moment, Venice knew, finally, perhaps for the first time in her entire life, what she truly wanted.

Venice, more than anything in the world, did not want to be Venice.

Day Eleven: Three Sizes That Day

TCHZZK...Excuse me, Miss Bertarelli? Um... I mean... Venice, ma'am? We'll be landing at Hunter's Point in a few minutes. We should reach it by seven thirty-five, well after sunset. Um... Ernesto wanted to thank you again for your kindness. That goes for all of us. We've decided to head for the Oakland Exclusion Zone. We... have an idea that might work for us. It has been an honor to be your flight crew. Maybe... maybe we'll meet again... someday. TZHZZK

GOING PONY

Day Eleven: Three Sizes That Day

Cartwright was concerned, which was unusual as she was normally unflappable and never showed emotion even in the middle of that storm they had flown through last year. If Cartwright was unsettled, then whatever it was must be worst than skirting a hurricane and that said a lot.

Ernesto put the two cups of coffee on the neoplastic flight tray. Bertrand liked extra, extra, extra sugar, the man was working his way towards a case of the diabetes but, what the hey, it was his life, his cup of coffee. He was flight captain of the Auxesia, and while most of the airship was run by the AI system, an alert captain and crew was not only a good idea, it was what they were being paid the serious credits for.

"I think the girl is having some kind of breakdown. Either that or she's on drugs." Cartwright was the oldest employee in the Bertarelli Transport Division, and while she could be somewhat bitter and judgmental, she was also almost always right.

"She has been behaving strangely this trip. She drinks occasionally, but I've never seen her out of control even then. Naw... it isn't drugs. You really think she's having some kind of fit or something?" Ernesto tried to stir another packet of sweetener into the coffee for Bertrand, as soon as the crystals would no longer dissolve, that was when he could stop. The idea of it made his stomach turn, the captain liked coffee soda pop.

"I am just concerned that her father may think it has anything to do with us. These rich kids are always melting down, and no wonder, really, but the blame never goes where it belongs." Cartwright took a cup from the galley and poured herself a cup. Black, no sugar. Everything about the matronly woman seemed constrained.

"The shit always rolls downhill... or... so they say." Ernesto dropped his eyes at the brief glare from Cartwright. She considered such language unprofessional and made that opinion thoroughly understood. Somehow, the entire crew deferred to her, though they didn't fully understand why. She was just that way, despite being only an attendant. Well, Chief Attendant.

"Let us hope that this situation does not end up threatening our positions, navigator." Cartwright finished off her coffee with a quick jerk of her hand, and dropped the cup into the Recycler. Immediately, a swarm of microscopic machines began to break the cup down in order to build another, utterly new and clean cup. The system lowered water consumption on the airship dramatically.

"Um... yes." Ernesto gave the Chief Attendant a knowing nod and picked up the tray with the two coffees on it. He was careful to note the one of the left was Bertrand's... he'd made that mistake before and ended up feeling queasy after only one sip. How could that man drink that stuff?

Ernesto followed the smart green carpet through the wide dining lounge. Crystal glasses and goblets hung from racks in the silver and glassite bar. The tables were the latest designer fashion, as were the sculpted chairs, also done in green. Green was the Bertarelli family color, and it was everywhere on the sleek Lifting Body Airship.

He carefully made his way up the spiral staircase to the flight deck, and then to the flight cabin. Bertrand was having the AI tell him the usual status report. These were required every hour, on the hour, and were logged. The AI had a pleasant, soft voice, that of a young man just past the bloom of early adulthood. It reminded Ernesto of a lover he had once had, years ago in the Eurozone.

"Your Coffee. Sweet as soda and twice as revolting, just the way you like it." Ernesto balanced the tray on his knees as he sat and handed the coffee to the captain. "That stuff is going to kill you, you know. Sugar isn't good for you."

"I only wish it was sugar. This stuff is infinitely worse. Gives you tumors. But it tastes soooo goood." Bertrand took a very loud slurp of the syrupy mixture and enjoyed the grimace on his Navi's face.

"So, how we doin?" Ernesto took a sip of his own coffee. One of the benefits of working for an upper tier family was that the coffee was good. Sometimes it was even real. The Bertarelli's had some connection with Antarctica, and they got actually grown luxuries from time to time.

"The Auxesia is right on schedule and Little Bobby says she feels particularly good today. I haven't a clue what that really means, but I always just assume that it's the AI's way of saying everything is working right." 'Little Bobby' was the name of the airships primary AI system, not even Cartwright knew who had named the damn thing. "There is, however, quite something to see, out our nine. Check it out."

Ernesto looked to the left side of the curving windows of the large flight cabin and saw, through clouds, the upper curve of a vast, shining dome passing far above even the highest cirrus. It must be well below the horizon, it was just so big, so incredibly huge, that even the curvature of the planet itself could not hide it. Most of it must be in space by now, above the atmosphere entirely.

It was Equestria, hundreds of miles away, and still it was visible. "How big is that thing now, anyway?" Last that Ernesto had heard, the dome that rose above the ocean was something like five hundred miles high.

"It is currently six hundred and thirty nine miles above sea level, which makes the whole thing one thousand, two hundred and seventy-eight miles in diameter. It's a sphere, you know, the rest is below, right down into the planet itself!"

It was their passenger, Venice Elspeth Bertarelli, and she was... smiling at them. She was on the flight deck. Smiling.

Inside themselves, Ernesto and Betrand quietly shuddered. This could not be good. It was never good when one of the owners bothered with them.

Venice walked to the windows and leaned on the long, curving, semicircular counter that ran just below the angled active surface display. She pitched forward on tippy-toes so that she could be closer to the windows, taking in the view of Equestria over the horizon.

"It's a Rucker Sphere. A dimensional interface between our universe and theirs. It's not really a sphere, we only see a sphere. It's actually a hypersphere! Isn't that simply amazing?" Venice turned and looked at the two men, a slight smile on her face, the kind a child would have. Both men felt the hairs on their necks stand to attention while a cold blood coursed through their veins.

"M-miss.... Bertarelli? Can we... c-can we help you?" Ernesto was trying to be calm. The last time a Bertarelli stood in the flight cabin half the airship staff had been culled. On the spot. They had been required to pay for their own passage the rest of the journey. One had simply walked out onto the wing and jumped.

"Yes, actually, you can." Venice stepped lightly over and plunked her bottom in one of the chairs. "Could I have a sip of that?" She nodded at Ernesto's coffee.

Ernesto's hand shook slightly as he handed his cup to miss Bertarelli. She held the cup to her nose and took a long sniff. "Huh. You know, I never bother to actually smell anything. I don't pay attention. I'm always off, away in some electric dreamland. I can really smell this. With my nose!" Again, the childlike smile. It was almost a grin.

Maybe the poor girl really was having a breakdown. This could be dead serious. Ernesto and Bertrand watched as she gingerly sipped the coffee. She made a face. "Eww... oh... I forgot. I don't like coffee. I think I like the way it smells though. Isn't that astonishing? It's possible to like the way something smells, but not like how it tastes!" She took another small sip. "Yup! I hate this stuff!" She handed the cup back to Ernesto, giggling as she did so.

Ernesto took his cup back and held it, not knowing what to say. They had ferried Roman Bertarelli's daughter to and fro around the world for several years. This was the first time she had ever spoken more than five words to any of them. It was certainly the first time she had showed anything other than aloof and cold disdain. She didn't seem like she was on drugs, as Cartwright had suggested. And she didn't seem like a person having a breakdown, she was calm and... nice.

It was deeply weird, and deeply unsettling.

"I just realized that I don't know your names. I've ridden on this airship for years, and I never once learned your names. That's... kind of mean, isn't it? I'm... I'm sorry. I've been kind of mean. No, that's not right. I've been very mean. Would you... would you be willing to... pretend, for just a little while, that I'm not mean?

So... hello! I'm Venice! Just... Venice. And you are...?"

Ernesto looked at Bertrand in panic. Bertrand was the captain, he was just the navigator. It was Bertrand's job to handle the important stuff. Bertrand stared at Ernesto for a moment, then finally spoke. "Introduce yourself to the nice lady already." It wasn't what Ernesto was expecting. Then again, he didn't know what he had expected to hear. Unsure, he turned back to Miss Bertarelli.

"Uh... hello? I'm Ernesto. Ernesto Tamayo. I'm the navigator. I chart our course." Ernesto glanced back at Bertrand, as if he expected the man to somehow fix the way in which the world had broken.

Venice nodded. "Ernesto. Hello, Ernesto. And you?" She looked at the captain.

"How do you do, Ma'am. I'm Bertand Cudicini, captain of the Auxesia. She's a good ship and I'm proud to be on her." Bertrand took a sip of his coffee. He was more experienced than the younger Ernesto, He'd seen something like this before. Occasionally, the owners liked to pretend they were human and mingle with the peasants. It was usually a one time thing. It mostly happened with older women, but he'd had an old guy do it once, when he first made captain, long ago. Just act natural, and things will go back to normal. They always did.

Venice nodded again, as if she were committing their names to her memory. "Bertrand. Pleased to meet you, Bertrand." She got up again and went back to the window. Distant clouds seemed to huddle near the impossibly large dome of the Equestrian barrier, far over the horizon, past the curvature of the world. The strange barrier shimmered in the light like a soap bubble, clear and pure and multicolored, unlike the gray sea and the poisoned sky.

"Ernesto, Bertrand... do you know what is going on with Equestria out there? I just found out myself recently. What do you know about it?" Venice looked serious, as far as either of the men could tell.

"It's the end of the world, or so the scientists say." Captain Bertrand had waited a beat for Ernesto to answer, but the Navi seemed stunned. "They say that thing will swallow the planet in five or six years. Seven at the outside. Everything it touches turns into more of it, more of their land. They seem nice enough, I don't think they intended this to happen. And they are willing to take us in, so they can't be all bad."

Now Ernesto had something to say. "Yeah, take us in as one of them! They say only their own kind can live in there. So you have to become one of them in order to get in there. They look like little animals, Bertrand. They're turning people into little animals!"

"What do you think about that, captain Bertrand?" Venice walked back and sat down once more. She leaned forward, her chin nestled in her hands, her elbows on the arms of her chair.

"It might not be so bad. They seem happy enough. And they have some kind of technology, or magic, or something, they live in houses, they have shops and farms and colleges and books. I've seen them do all kinds of things as easily as we do with hands. Sometimes better." Bertrand checked something on the wide, sweeping active surface, then turned back. The sun was getting lower in the sky. "The government certainly seems to be pushing everyone to go there. Where there's life, there's hope, right?"

"I've been learning a lot about Equestria lately. I've been watching a show about someone going through a Conversion Bureau. And at night, I've been downloading all kinds of information into my brain. I know how to read their writing now, and I can speak Equestrian... mostly." Venice made a strange, melodious string of sounds. "I just said that your mane is very handsome, Ernesto. And it is."

Ernesto was overly proud of his well-kept hair. But hearing such a compliment from one of the owners was... it made him uncomfortable, so he looked down at his hands and fidgeted.

"Captain Bertrand, how long until we reach land?" Venice sat back, crossing her legs.

"It's currently six hours to Bertarelli Aero in Marin. We should touch down very close to seven-thirty provided the wind stays constant." Bertrand checked the surface. "Yup, seven-thirty."

"How many people are on this ship? How many crew?" Venice rotated her chair to stare off at the dome of Equestria once more.

"Eleven, Ma'am. Me, Ernesto, Cartwright - she's the chief attendant, she has three stewards under her, we have two engineers, one bartender, and two maids. They're all good people." Now Bertrand was becoming uneasy. This was not at all sounding like the usual sort of experience he'd known in the past. Something was off about this situation.

Venice seemed lost in thought for a moment. "There. I've just accessed all of your files, backgrounds, accounts and life histories. Oh, Ernesto... I'm sorry to hear about your grandmother. And you've had a rough life, captain, haven't you?"

Bertrand was very nervous now. "It hasn't been that bad. I've had my share of good moments."

"Bertrand, Ernesto... there is only one thing that separates you from me, and that is wealth. Vast, unimaginable wealth. If you had my wealth, what would you do with it? Seriously, I want to know." Venice looked at the two men, apparently sincere.

"Well... if I was wealthy, like you, I think I would get an airship of my own. I'd assemble a crew, people I know and like, people I've worked with in the past, and I'd take a tour of this old planet before it's gone. I'd go see the places nobody goes anymore, like Japan and the Amazon Desert and what's left of the Southern Eurozone. And Antarctica. I'd go there just to see the last forest. It's in a dome there, at New McMurdo. But in the end, miss Bertarelli..."

"Venice, Captain. Please just call me Venice. I really mean it. Venice. Both of you."

"Alright then, in the end, Venice, I would go to a Bureau and get ponified. Just before it all went. And then, I'd remember and tell others about the world and the things I saw. I'd keep earth alive that way." Captain Bertrand turned back to his active surface.

"Ernesto? What would you do with my money in the last six years before the end of the world?"

Ernesto shifted nervously, his eyes unsure where to look. "I'm not convinced they can't stop this thing, miss Berta... Venice. I still have hope that the government will find something that will fix it."

"Whether they do or not, what would you do with your next six years?" Venice leaned forward and gazed intently at the unsettled navigator.

"I... I would take my family and... I'd set them up in a really nice house. A grand house, not as big as yours, but big. And I'd spend time with my wife and my son. I'd take them places and get them the best of everything. And I'd get help for my Father, real medical help." Ernesto studied his shoes like a child, he was far outside his comfort range. "And... maybe I'd try to help others who were in a bad way, too. There's a lot of people who need help."

Venice looked uneasy at that last bit. "Would you go pony at the end, too, like Bertrand? I mean, if there was no way to stop the expansion?"

"I... I don't know, ma'am. Venice." This whole thing was very uncomfortable for Ernesto. He was wishing it would end, and that miss Bertarelli would just go back to being distant and aloof.

"Ernesto, Bertrand, I intend to do something... that could be a problem for you. But... now that we're friends, I don't want to leave you to face the consequences of my actions. You need to understand that I can't just walk out my own front door. I would be watched and guarded the moment I left my home. The closest thing to freedom I can have is when I am in transit on this airship. All of you are considered trusted, and the ship itself is tracked constantly. But there are no personal watchers, because it's expected that I would only ever go to places the elite would go, and those places are always secure." Venice locked her fingers together as she spoke.

"I want to go someplace my father would not approve of. I want you to land somewhere in an open part of San Francisco. The ruins of the docks, maybe, or the Panhandle. I intend to run away. But if I do this, all of you will have your lives destroyed for letting me do it. So I have a proposition. I will make every person on this ship wealthy beyond measure. I can do it now, right this minute. I have my personal accounts open, and I've also got all of yours. Even Rennie and Willis the engineers, even Tanya and Rumi the maids. All of you, everyone here. I can transfer more credits than you can even imagine. You could have your own airship, Bertrand. You could have your house and help for your father, Ernesto. Cartwright could get her son back."

Ernesto turned to Bertrand. "Cartwright has a son? I didn't know that? When did she have a son?" Bertrand shook his head, it was news to him as well, and he'd known Cartwright for years.

"You said we have six hours before we reach land. A little less now. Get everyone together and talk my offer over. With the kind of wealth I'm offering, being terminated and blacklisted won't matter, because you won't ever lack for anything ever again. At least for the next six years." Venice smiled at that. "I'll be in my cabin, finishing a show I'm watching. When you have an answer, contact me."

Venice got up and started to leave. She stopped and turned around. "If it isn't you, then it could be the ground crew that inherits my wealth. One way or another, I will not return to that mansion." Bertrand and Ernesto started at that statement.

"You're going to the Bureau, aren't you?" The question was simple, direct. Ernesto felt shocked that Bertrand was being so direct with miss Bertarelli.

"Yes, captain Bertrand of the splendid airship Auxesia. I am going pony. My father would never approve. He didn't even think to inform me that the world was ending. I don't think he believes it is. But that isn't the reason I am doing this. I'll tell you something." Venice walked back and leaned close to the old captain. "I've recently learned a very important thing. It's very hard to believe, but... money really can't buy happiness."

Venice turned and walked smoothly and speedily away. "Second to the right, and straight on till morning, captain!" And with that she was gone, down the hall.

Ernesto looked at Bertrand. "What was that last bit?"

Bertrand looked out at the sunset sky. The light made the great dome outside shine with all the colors of the rainbow, a vast, impossible, magical curve that swept the very stars. "I think Venice recently learned to clap her hands, Ernesto."

At that, Ernesto just looked lost.

CLICK

"...and we're back. You are watching 'Going Pony', the super-exciting holoshow about what it's like to... go pony... Hee hee!"

Hee hee hee!

"And this is the star of my life, and also the show, Sunshine Laughter! Yayyy!"

Ohhh... that's really sweet, Rose. You must be the sun, then, of my life, my little shiny bright one.

"It's kind of a lovey-dovey sort of show, I should probably warn you. So if you like all the grim, awful-pony, mean drama stuff, this is definitely not the show for you. Once you go pony, it may not be gumdrops and suncandy..."

Sun... candy?

"Hey, I'm making this up as I go, alright? If you don't like suncandy then... rainbows. Gumdrops and rainbows. I kind of liked suncandy myself. Everypony is a critic, I guess. BLAAAA!"

Stick that tongue out closer, and I'll show you what it's good for.

"That a promise? Hee hee!"

Heh... oh, yeah, it's a promise. OK, OK, let's settle down now... OOF! Hey, that's my... what is that you just flopped over on?

"Those are your hocks. Right below your gaskins, right above your cannons. You still don't know all of your own parts, do you Sunshine?"

I was... kind of hoping you might give me a guided tour. Kind of explain things close up. Maybe in something other than English, like... the native tongue.

"I'll give you a native tongue."

That's kind of where I was going with that.

"Hee hee hee! Celestia, we're goofy today, aren't we?"

Yeah, we kind of are. But then, it's been a good day. I can't believe I managed to actually impress Breezy. Wow.

"Recap, if you've missed earlier, Sunshine here managed to seriously impress her flight instructor this morning. She pulled off a vertical lift off with barely a twitch of her wings, and she made it all the way to the clouds and brought down a chunk of one."

Well, it was smog, actually, and the first smog layer is pretty close to the ground, but I did get there, and I did bring down a little patch of it. It doesn't look so yellowy-gray close up. Still smelled though. But you can walk on it, just like a proper cloud!

"YOU can walk on it, my clever pegasus, us earthponies can't. Oh, I was sooo jealous. I wanted to walk on the cloud. Pout. Look, I'm pouting, see?"

And a pretty pout it is, too, Rose. Maybe I can stand on smog, but you can make strawberries, and those smell loads better! And taste pretty good too. That's also what happened today, earlier on 'Going Pony', Rose made strawberries grow and ripen, and Pony were they good! She's clearly going to be the big provider in our household.

"It was only six berries, Sunshine. But... I have to admit... they were pretty good."

They were fantastic, Rose. Let's see, what else went on today, to catch up our ponillions of loyal viewers?

"Ponillions?"

Why not? I have no idea how many ponies even see this thing. Probably only ten ponies watch us. But hey, there's no way to know for certain, so why not imagine we're a huge hit? Personally, I like to pretend that we're the number one program on earth right now!

"Wow, wouldn't that be something if that were true?"

Even if it is, we'll never know. We'll be in Equestria in just two days. Think about it, Rose! Just two days, and we'll be in Equestria! I am sooo excited, how about you?

"You know I am! It's hard just to get through the day because of it. Two days. Two days, that's all I can think about. Oh! Oh! You should share your theory about pony magic!"

My theory?

"The one you came up with after you did the vertical lift off, the one about the fields?"

Oh... oh yeah! OK, so I came up with this theory about how our magic works, alright? It was kind of bothering me, how it is that I can fly at all, and how picking up things with our hooves and heads is a lot easier than they taught us, and how it was even possible to lift straight up or hover by barely even flapping your wings, right? But then I saw Rose here step down on some dirt and little green shoots just started popping up around her hoof, and that's when I got the idea.

I think we put out fields, like force fields or electromagnetic fields or something like that, right? And I think that the stuff horn and hoof is made out of is the antenna. What's the name of that stuff... um... keratin. Hooves and hair and horns are all made out of keratin, this protein stuff, right, so...

"That Earth life, Sunshine. Earth animals use keratin. But we use alicorn. It's called alicorn."

Wait, that's what the princesses are. They're alicorns.

"That's what they're called in English, yes. But the word actually was an old word for the stuff unicorn horn was made of. Seriously, Sunshine, I read all about this. They just used the word to describe what the princesses are, only it's an error. But it doesn't matter really, it works, and it kind of stuck. Everypony uses it in the human world. So the princesses are alicorns, with wings and a horn, but the stuff our horns, wings and hair is made of is also called alicorn too."

That's confusing.

"It was an error. A really old one. They started calling winged unicorns - which is what the princesses kind of are - 'alicorns' back before the Great Collapse. It was just a mistake somebody made and it caught on. But the historical meaning is unicorn horn... stuff. The stuff that unicorn horn is made of."

OK, whatever. My point is that I think that that stuff, the alicorn stuff, whether its a protein like keratin, or something totally different, I think it acts as an antenna for magic, for thaumatic energy. And that explains a lot of stuff.

Unicorns have horns made of it, and they're wired up to use that big chunk of... alicorn... and they can levitate stuff and do some spell-like things, right? And the earthponies, they have really heavy, thick hooves. Thicker than mine, thicker than Snowflower's, and I bet there's something different inside them too. But in any case, their magic comes out through their hooves, the biggest chunk of that alicorn stuff on their bodies. And us pegasai, we have hooves and we have wings, and the fine fluffy part of wings is made of that stuff too. I think pegasus wings radiate thaumatic radiation, channel it somehow, and their hooves do too, which is why we can fly and walk on clouds.

I think some kind of field or flow or something comes out from those points, because of the hoof-horn-hair stuff. And we can pick up stuff because we all have a little bit of the levitation ability like the unicorns have, only it's really faint and close in the rest of us. It's just enough to kind of make things stick to us a little, which makes carrying things on our heads and backs and hooves a lot easier. It's like we have sticky hooves, and sticky coats, sort of.

"Tell them about what you felt. When you did the take off."

Right! So, I was doing the vertical take off like Breezy showed us, and I noticed that the air was just whooshing down from my wings, like my wings were jump jets or something. Oh, it wasn't enough to account for me flying or anything, but there was definitely air moving once I decided I was going to fly. Flying must involve a lot of things, but one part of it has to be that we pegasai just somehow move air around us.

So, basically, I guess what I am trying to say is that I think we ponies use our hair, hooves, horns and feathers to channel, or broadcast, or convert thaumatic energy into stuff like motion, and manipulating matter and whatnot, and that the 'alicorn' stuff, whatever it is, acts as the antenna for it, and that thickness, shape and such affect how the energies can be applied. Whew. That's my theory.

"I think it's an awesome theory, Sunshine!"

You're my biggest fan, Rose! Likely my only fan, too. But that's enough. If I have you, then that's enough.

"Sunshine... little sweety."

Heh. OK, so what's up next on our next-to-the-next-to-the-last-day?

"Well, I want to check on my blueberries, they like lullabies before beddy time, and then we go to dinner."

Oh, could you help remind me? I want to ask Honeydrizzle how she got her cutie mark. She had it like day one. As far as I understand it, she woke up with it. I keep forgetting to ask.

"Well, we get talking with everypony and..."

CLICK

Over the intercom, captain Bertram spoke for the crew of the Auxesia. They had deliberated for some time. One of the engineers was still a little raw about the proposition. The issue wasn't money but career, she really liked being a flight engineer. Bertram had promised her a place on the airship he was going to buy. They would take the offer. The only question was where to land.

Venice changed her clothing while she discussed the plan with the captain. She settled on a blue jumpsuit - for some unfathomable reason, jumpsuits were in or something with the lower working grades this year, so she reasoned that it would be the perfect outfit to fit in out in the lowborn world. Under the blue jumper she wore a white, antique silk blouse - the jumper was scratchy and she did not fancy having to feel uncomfortable for any length of time.

As she was changing, she noticed a lump on her right knee. It was a tumor. She hadn't been bothering with her daily Malignostat-XP for some time. Venice felt stupid. People who didn't take their 'Stat, ended up with tumors. The world was a toxic place. Inside she laughed at herself - her body was a gallery of the most expensive augmentations credits could buy, yet she had a tumor on her knee because she couldn't be bothered to take the most common medication on the planet.

It didn't matter, though. This body could get all the tumors it wanted, she was trading it in very, very soon. As soon as she could possibly arrange. Still, it must be a very fast growing one for her not to notice it until now... or had she really been that oblivious, wrapped up in her little, oh so precious, holoshow?

She was really going to do this. Jump ship, run away from Daddy, from wealth and privilege and technology to go be a pony? It was so incredible. Venice felt giddy and light headed. Her carefully constructed, utterly controlled life just thrown away, just like that, on a whim. Ooh, that would make a good pony name. 'Whim'. Or maybe 'Whimsy'. 'Whimsicality'... no, that was too long. But she was definitely acting without planning every last detail for the first time in her memory. Just jumping ship! Incredible!

Bertrand and Venice finally settled on Hunter's Point. It was a lot further south than she wanted, but it was wide, flat, and more importantly, far enough away from the Blackmesh bases to allow the crew to escape into the world and not be caught. The disappearance of one of the wealthiest women in the world along with her flight crew would raise endless suspicions. They all needed time to use their newfound wealth to protect and establish themselves.

Speaking of which - Venice reactivated her connections to her accounts and the accounts of the crew. She quickly set up a transfer protocol, the moment she was on the ground and free, the entirety of her personal fortune would be divided among the crew of the Auxesia, all in untraceable accounts. Fox had taught her many things, playing with accounts being one of the more valuable. Huh. She'd never gotten back to her little codemonkey. It was too late now to send him anything. No, that wasn't entirely true.

'Dear Fox:

I have decided to go pony. Seriously. And I think you should too. Face it, the technological Singularity is not going to happen. The world is ending. There is only five or six years left. But that is not why I am doing this. Listen, I am going to do something I've never done with you. I am going to be honest.

I used you, and I think you used me too. I never liked you, and I never valued you beyond your usefulness to me. I am sorry for that, Fox. That was wrong. I think that the next stage of human evolution isn't becoming a machine, I think that there is far more to gain in becoming Equestrian, and not just mere survival.

The Equestrians have something to teach us, Fox. Friendship. Caring. Love. These things are more important than wealth, or power, or the best implants. I can see the entire EM spectrum, but I tell you truthfully, there is more to see in the eyes of somepony you care about, than in all the wavelengths of our cosmos. Yes, I said somepony, and I meant it.

Thank you for all of your help and service to me. I should have treated you with more respect. With any respect. Please forgive me.

Venice'

It wasn't much, and it wasn't as good as she wanted, but... at least she wasn't leaving without saying anything. Plus, it would likely be discovered when the big investigation started - every one of her contacts would be grilled, it was inevitable - and this letter would provide the context that should get the airship crew out of suspicion of wrongdoing.

Actually, there needed to be more for that. Venice shook her head at how slow she was being. This wasn't like her not to be completely sharp. She drafted a number of other letters, simple statements of her intent to be ponified, and put them on time delay so that they would be sent three weeks after today. By then, she would be long gone in Equestria.

She couldn't decide what shoes to wear for her last journey as a human. The red shoes or the black shoes? Suddenly she picked one of each. Red on one foot and black on the other! Hee! Now that was whimsy!

Venice looked at herself through the cameras in the cabin. In the images at the edges of her visual field, she noted the wild-looking figure she made. Short, ragged hair, forehead implants, a blue jumper and mismatched shoes. She was a proper lowborn now, just another human among billions. It was a scary, exciting feeling.

The great airship sank in the night. It was pitch black, the ship was running silent, with no visible lights whatsoever. The AI was using infrared to guide and land the Auxesia. The crew wore nightvision goggles in the utter blackness. They had scanned the area before, to make sure there were no gangs or other worrisome types in the vicinity.

Venice strolled through the hallways of the airship, to her it was as if she walked in daylight. Her Nightwanders gave her vision far beyond that of any human who had ever lived. She noted the reflection of her own glowing warmth off the walls and turned to see her own footprints behind her, glowing markers on the carpet. Her body shone like a diode in the infrared. She walked in light, like an angel.

She shook her head. No, she was far from an angel. Until now, if anything, she had been just the opposite. But like Celestia had told Rose - all we have is now, and tomorrow. Venice stood up straight. Now, she would become something better. All it took was the choice to commit to a new life. If Rose Vale could do it, If Lavender and Newmoon could do it, then she could too. The first step in going pony was not drinking serum. It was the choice to be something better than yesterday.

Suddenly, she started giggling. She wasn't sure why. And that was kind of nice. She was just... giggling. Maybe it was because of the finality and seriousness of what she was doing? No, that wasn't it. Was it because she was afraid of the unknown? No, she wasn't afraid. She knew she probably should be, but she wasn't. She felt... light. New. She felt... new, and it tickled, somehow. It tickled, and she was giggling.

Venice rounded the corner and descended the wide stairs that led to the main hatchway. The crew was there, waiting for her.

"Miss Bertarelli?"

"Venice. We're all equal now, Ernesto. Actually, no we're not. You are the rich people, and I'm poor now. I don't have any money at all as of... now. There. It's all transferred. The account information will be in your hyperlinks, just look for it. It's encoded, but you'll see it plain as day."

The crew looked dumbfounded. Some checked their personal links. Cartwright swore softly. One of the maids whistled. Venice turned to Captain Bertrand.

"Hey, buddy, can you spare some credits for a poor girl down on her luck?" She smiled, at first. Suddenly it was a grin. It kind of hurt her face. It was her first grin. According to the camera above the hatch, she looked quite ghoulish, all glowy teeth and wide glowing eyes in the infrared, but she didn't care. In fact, it made her grin wider, which hurt her cheeks even more.

"If you need a job, I'm trying to find a maid for my new airship." Bertrand smiled back at her. He started to reach out, but then pulled his arms back to his sides.

Venice suddenly found herself stepping forward and embracing the old captain. She gave him a warm hug before she knew what she was doing. Everything was so new, now. "You're the only person who ever thought enough of me to offer me a real job. Thank you."

As she pulled away, Bertrand had the strangest feeling that she wasn't joking. "I hope you'll be happy as a pony... Venice."

"I think I will be, cap'n." Venice walked down the ramp and stood on the blasted, darkened ground. She looked back at the crew. Suddenly she bowed, grandly, like an actor on a stage, her arm sweeping wide. "Here's to me, and here's to you, and here's to love and laughter - I'll be true as long as you, and not one moment after!"

This brought a laugh from the eight assembled crew members. "Good luck." Ernesto waved in the dark, his goggles slipping down his face.

Venice slipped into the night. She had six miles or so to cover, through the bombed out ruins of San Francisco.

It wasn't until she found herself laying on the ground on a mound of filth, her nose filled with the smell of decay, waiting for a noisy, drunken rape gang to parade past, torches blinding her nightvision, that she realized she could have just had them take her to the much better of the two original Conversion Bureaus in relatively pristine Vancouver. They could have landed right in front of the place, and she could have simply strolled in right then.

It was going to be a long six miles.

Day Twelve: Daring Do And The Dangerous Miles

"Daring Do stared back into the eyes of the terrible Ahuizotl. There could be no escape this time. 'I have you now, little pony!' the menacing creature cackled. It was just then that the clever Daring Do noticed that Ahuizotl was standing under one of the heavy, hanging stone weights. The rope that held the stone was already frayed..."

GOING PONY

Day Twelve: Daring Do And The Dangerous Miles

The young woman skirted the crumbling ruin. It was an hour before midnight, and the darkness was absolute. No stars shown through the permanent layer of thick smog that covered the world, no moon illuminated the land. Within the dangerous, crumbling buildings no light shone, for all the world she could have been traversing a cave, deep within the mysterious hollow places of the earth.

In her stained blue jumpsuit, she leapt with sure feet from one tilted plascreet block to another, crossing chasms of rusted rebar and sharp stakes of broken conduit. It would have been an impossible path for any ordinary human, but she was far from ordinary, she had a second pair of eyes with which to see.

To Venice, the scene was bright as noon daylight, with every possible jump and direction mapped out in glowing lines of red and green. The red lines, broken, with tiny iconic skulls, represented leaps she could not be expected to make 90% of the time, the green paths were within her personal abilities. There were a few yellow lines too, these were circumstances the processing power that lived off the sugars in her blood could not interpret accurately. 'Maybe' lines, she called them.

She had waited an hour and a half for the rowdy rape gang to pass by, they were slow and drunken and very loud. Fortunately, they were not well organized, and had no interest in exploring the broken ground, preferring to stick to the relatively open remains of the roads that passed between the shattered buildings. When the bomb had fallen at Mission Delores, the shockwave had ruined most of the city, San Francisco was a curious mix now of fragmented ruins and crumbling, but mostly intact skyscrapers. Somehow, in the middle of it all more than a million people lived.

Venice had decided to hug the shoreline of the bay. Rose Vale's description of her life had provided Venice with the knowledge to avoid any attempt at a straight path. The last thing Venice wanted to deal with was cannibals and radioactive craters. She just wanted to make it to the San Francisco Conversion Bureau, the first Bureau the worldgovernment had established. The reasons for placing the first Bureau there were simple; it was the closest land to the edge of the Barrier - excluding Hawaii, which had to be abandoned because of strong thaumatic radiation - and it was a place where, if anything went wrong, nobody important would be harmed. They could use a baby nuke, if they had to, if the nanotech went wild. The mansions of Marin were far enough distant that the most that would happen was complaints.

The old city had survived earthquakes and riots and the early part of the Great Collapse. But it had never recovered from the Austerity War, nor from the mortal blow of a rickety nuclear missile failing to make its true target. Yet still, after a fashion, San Francisco carried on - a million poor lived in scattered favelas, still faithful to the city by the bay.

The path Venice was taking was a very winding one. She could not venture too close to the water, lest she be exposed out in the open, and she could not go too far inland for there the monsters lived, hungry for human flesh, among other things. This was why she dared the dangerous ground, leaping from one broken facade to another, risking impalement on steel spikes and jagged pits of broken glass.

No one would even dare to travel such a path, not at night and likely not even in full daylight. But not everyone had risk-calculation built in, tied directly into their cerebellum. The motor-control enhancement app she had downloaded while waiting for the rape gang to pass had been a great benefit too. It would have been a foolish reveal of her location to anyone searching for her - not that anyone would be, it was too soon for that - except for the little tricks she had learned from Fox to hide everything she did.

According to the map hovering just above her field of vision, she was gradually approaching some kind of inlet or canal that went far into the land. Three roads crossed it, Ilinois, 3rd Street and the Embarcadero Highway. The Highway, close to the end of the water and deeper inland, was entirely ruined and likely impassable, Ilinois was almost certainly heavily damaged, and Third did not look good at all. There was no way she could cross the water itself. This presented a problem.

She could make for one of the two closest bridges across and hope one of them still spanned the water unbroken, or she could just work her way further inland and be very, very careful to avoid any entanglements. Across the water, she noted Cesar Chavez Street, the very street that was the western entrance to Rose's Noe Valley favela. The familiarity made Venice feel strangely at home, even though she had never set foot in the ruins of San Francisco before.

She decided to at least look at the two spans, Ilinois and 3rd, they were close anyway, and if she could use them, it would be the most direct and probably least risky path. Of course, the idea of being on a long, narrow structure with nothing to the side but poisoned water was not pleasant either, but with any luck, neither would it be well traveled in the middle of the pitch-black night.

The wide open route that was 3rd beckoned to Venice like a siren. She was weary already from her clambering route over ruined and fallen buildings, and the relief of walking down a nice, relatively flat road tugged at her. But her Nightwanders occasionally caught what appeared to be brief flares in the buildings that lined the road, and while it could be errors caused by any number of causes - radiation both terrestrial and Equestrian, her own tired state, bugs in the software - she was not foolish enough to imagine she was the only person in all the city with the ability to see in the dark, nor who possessed technology. Even the poorest had tigers among them.

'Tiger, tiger, burning bright, among the ruins of the night' Venice smiled, slightly, at the thought. The span of 3rd Street was just ahead... across a wide and open area of rubble. The entire edge of the inlet was that way. Whatever path she took, she would be exposed.

Venice considered tapping into one of the geostationary Blackmesh satellites, to see if she could get a handy overhead scan in infrared but discounted the notion. She really wasn't sure she knew how to get in without being traced. That would have been a task for Fox, not her. She really had relied on others to do everything for her far too much, and now she wished she had spent more time learning than simply using. Venice scanned the open area as best she could. It appeared completely deserted... no, wait. There was a small heat signature from somewhere out on the mostly intact bridge. The guardhouse-like structure at the far end gave her pause, though.

She decided to risk sensory enhancement. Laying down in order to be as quiet as possible, she pointed her right ear in the direction of the heat signature and mentally adjusted the gain upwards. Near maximum, where the slight breeze became a howling nightmare storm, she heard it. A little boy, weeping.

The tiny heat signature was a child, halfway across the 3rd Street bridge. He was clearly young, and very frightened and unhappy. He was sobbing in that special, quiet way that meant either lost and hopeless, or trapped and afraid. What was a child doing in the middle of a crumbling bridge in pitch black night? Whatever it was, it was best not to get involved.

Venice turned and began to work towards the Embarcadero. The open ground, the bridge, it smelled trap. The boy had probably gotten himself stuck into something way beyond him, and dared not go forward nor return back. It was probably something to do with that guardhouse tower thing at the far end. Perfect place for a sniper. Even a fool could see that much.

CLICK

...Um... Dar...in... Daring. Daring Do, duh. That's embarrassing. Gah. Why is this so hard? It's alphabetical, it's the most common of the three scripts, and it even bears a... vague... similarity to earth letters. It's made of straight lines, anyway. Why can't I get this?

"Sunshine... you skipped the language classes, remember? I'm doing the best I can, but I don't know how to teach anypony anything. You said you didn't want to start with the books for foals, so this was the next simplest thing up that they had. I could go back and..."

No, no... I have some pride. I just can't face the 'A' is for 'Apple' stuff. I can do this. Alright, um... Daring Do nuuu.... knew... Hrrnf is 'knew' in English, right? OK. Daring Do knew tha... that the -something- tree, yeah, that's tree, that the something tree was the... what's this?

"Only. Only way."

Ah! Only way to... um...

"Traverse or cross. To get somewhere. Mnnhrffrn is like 'passage', only with implied effort."

Pony language. I'll get this. I'll get this. Um... The only way to cross the, I'm guessing pit. Or crevice or... something deep, anyway. Chasm. That's it, Chasm.

"Very good, Sunshine! You are really picking this up quickly!"

It doesn't feel like it to me. OK, then. Daring do is trying to cross a big chasm, and the only path is this fallen tree. What next...

"Just so all of you out there know, learning Equestrian isn't that hard."

Speak for yourself!

"Sunshine! Seriously, it isn't. Our brains get wired to make it easier to pick up. We get a window of opportunity where learning is easy, just like the language window in human children. So for a little while, us Newfoals really are kind of like foals, we learn things really easily, we are really open to stuff, and everything sticks in memory really well.

Sunshine is just trying to catch up, since we only have the rest of today before we ship out in the morning for Equestria!"

I can't do this, Rose! I'm too excited! I just keep thinking... tomorrow, tomorrow, Equestria tomorrow... how can I study with that? My heart is just pounding at the thought!

"Come on, Sunshine, you at least want to be able to find the bathrooms, right? Read a little more, just for me. Besides, what else are we going to do? We might as well use the time productively."

I can think of a few fun uses for the time but... OK, OK... Muffin. I'll read. Special learning window, and all of that. Yeah, yeah. OK. So... Daring Do - see, I know that one now by sight - Daring Do was... crossing, yeah, crossing the something bridge when she... heard... the p... that's plaintive, right? Or sad or something? Yeah. Plaintive cries of... the little kitten, 'Ball', who was... hanging... no, dangling, from a twig? Branch. Branch. From a branch, in the middle. Oh, poor Ball. That's like a thousand foot drop or whatever down there, and Ball has been such a useful companion in this story... they wouldn't kill off Ball would they?

"You won't know unless you read the rest, Sunshine."

Read it to me? Come on, read it to me. I just want to find out if Daring saves Ball the kitten. I'll learn Equestrian another day.

"No... if you want to find out what happens to little Ball, you're going to have to read it yourself. Unless you just want to leave her hanging there."

You. Are. So. Mean. Meany McMeany Pants.

"I don't wear pants. And neither do you. So get reading."

OK, Fine. Daring Do... fallen tree... Ball dangling... Daring Do knew she... couldn't leave the little...the little kitten so she...

CLICK

The open area near the 3rd Street bridge had been easy to traverse. No sniper action so far, though if there was one in that tower-like structure, they could just be waiting to see what was up. Venice did her best to use what scant cover there was, part of what had been a fence, the corner of an otherwise collapsed building, a burned out vehicle. The experience reminded her of several games she had played on the Hypernet, the major difference being she was not armed to the toes, much less the teeth, and she could only hope for a respawn if someone brought her to the Conversion Bureau in time.

Mentally she lambasted herself for this, it was stupid and unnecessary. She hated children, and this was a child. She knew it had to be some kind of trap, and she had no business being here at all. It was that damn whimpering. It wouldn't stop and she couldn't shut it out. Even turning the gain back down, she knew it was there. She couldn't dismiss that knowledge. She wished she'd never tried to listen or scan. She should have just avoided the 3rd Street Bridge and gone right for the damn Embarcadero in the first place.

The bridge, what was left of it, stretched out across the dark, greasy, viscous water. The metallic smell of chemicals was strong this close to the sea. It was still pitch black, in terms of visible light, but in infrared much was revealed. She could see the location of the boy, about half-way, likely cowering in a pit or broken area. That suggested something he was cowering from, and the only thing that made any sense was that damn tower.

She wasn't sure what the tower was for. Maybe the bridge had once raised, and the tower was the control room for that. Or maybe there had been a gated community on the other side, and it was a true guard tower, at one time bursting with machine guns and Blackmesh. Whatever the case, it was a plascrete or even old concrete edifice, and it loomed like the tower of Sauron at the far end of the bridge.

Venice scanned the tower carefully. Nothing. Not a damn thing. No heat, no radiation, no EM flares, nothing. Of course, being thick concrete, there could be a holoset in there and she might not be able to pick it up. If there was a sniper, she should be able to see him by his body heat. Unless he was wearing Blackmesh, of course... but there would be no reason whatsoever for a Blackmesh soldier to be stationed on a lone bridge in the middle of the emptiest part of San Francisco.

Unless someone had taken the suit off of a dead Blackmesh to use for themselves.

That was a chilling thought. Blackmesh technology in the hands of a ganger. That would be just about the worst possible thing. Venice shook her short curls to get the thought out of her head. No. Let's not go there.

She found herself creeping, low to the ground, at the edge of the bridge. She was flat, crawling, making her way to the glowing spot that represented where the young boy - or some thing that her sensors had decided was a young boy - wept. She could hear him clearly in the stillness now, with no need to turn up the gain. As she crawled in the dust and filth, she kept watch on the concrete tower. As she studied it, it dawned on her that even if she saw someone up there, there was little she could do about it. Where, exactly, was there to go? Down into the inky water? Not a pleasant prospect, and it would hurt like hell, maybe even be fatal, depending on what else was down there, such as sharp and pointy wreckage.

Why was she doing this again? Oh, yeah, it was the 'pony' thing to do. The first step was not drinking potion, it was deciding to be a better.... yeah, yeah. That sounded so great back at the Auxesia. In practice, not so great. Venice Bertarelli, trying to save crying children. There had been a Singularity, she was on the other side of it, and indeed nothing about her current situation would have made the least sense to the Venice of just two months ago.

She was nearly there. Her right knee was hurting, that damn tumor had gotten inflamed, probably because it had been ripped open on some sharp thing a while ago. She had never been this dirty in her life. Ahead was a broken spot in the bridge, cracked and filled with twisted rebar. The signature of dried blood was on one of the bent bars of metal, so it was possible whoever was down there was injured too. Great. Venice crawled right up to the edge and peered carefully over.

Her military-spec sensors were worth the money. The boy was about six, maybe seven, and he was dressed like a ninja, all in black cloth. He had a bleeding gash on his leg, which explained the dried blood on the rebar. He was crouched on a large section of the bridge superstructure, a metal beam that had once supported the concrete above. A black sack was strapped to his back, Venice couldn't make out anything intelligible about the contents, other than they were warm, with a strong heat signature and also... an EM flare. The boy couldn't see her, that was clear - he turned his head to look up and had blindly stared right through her.

She was moved by the face of the boy. This was not a happy little child. The face was old for such an age, with a scar across the forehead and another on the chin. He had few teeth intact. The black cloth around his head stuck up on the left and right like ears, giving the little ninja the appearance of a black cat.

Venice pulled back from the hole and decided to whisper. "Hey, listen. My name is Venice. I'm here to help you. I am very nearby. Can you tell me what's going on?"

There was no response, but she could hear the boy had instantly stopped sobbing, and must now be frozen and alert with fear.

"I can see in the dark. I have built-in nightvision. I saw your heat signature from the ruins. I have other enhancements too, I could hear you crying. I need to know if we are in any danger here." Venice studied the hole and the tower alternately. She didn't want to be surprised by anything.

"I... I wasn't crying. I don't cry." The boy sounded defiant, angry.

"Alright, fine. I still need to know, is there any danger here? I'm out here to help you. You need help. I can see that you're injured." Still nothing from the tower. The empty room at the top remained dark.

"Where are you? Where the fuck are you? I can't see you." Some mouth on this kid.

"I'm above you, on the bridge. Right near the hole you're in. I didn't want to scare you." Venice kept checking the top of the tower. Why would ninja boy be down there if there wasn't some kind of danger? The tower was obvious.

"I don't get scared. And I don't cry. And you shouldn't be up there 'cause the sniper will get you!"

Great there really was a sniper. Just swell. Venice had been dearly hoping that it was just too many online games making her think that. She stared at the tower. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

"Listen, kid... I've got all kinds of sensor implants and I've checked that tower from the moment I left the ruins and there is nothing there. The sniper must have left. He's long gone, come on, we can..." It was then that she felt the angry sting of tiny bits of gravel pepper her leg. The bullet must have struck the road only a foot or so from her. The tower was completely dark!

"He's not inna' tower you idiot!" The boy sounded like a pro schooling a noob in SlaughterStrike. Venice scanned ahead, low to the ground. There was a barely visible, tell-tale patch of warmth on the side of building at the base of the tower. It was fading, but it made Venice feel quite the fool. The tower was such an obvious location. That was why Mister Snipey hadn't used it.

"Make room, I'm coming down there!" Venice began scrambling over the edge of the hole in the bridge, trying not to hurt herself on the exposed rebar. The boy protested that there wasn't enough room and he would cut her if she tried, but it was too late, she was down, and she could see him and he couldn't see anything, and he knew it. Besides, even if he wouldn't admit it, it was clear that he was glad to have an ally.

"How long have you been here, kid?" Venice clung to the rebar above, her legs straddling the huge beam.

"I ain't a kid. I'm nearly eight. I don't know how long. I've got to get over there." The boy pointed vaguely towards the bay, but Venice understood he meant north instead. He seemed like he was on the verge of crying while he pointed. It's one thing to act brave when alone, it's entirely another thing when unexpected help shows up. His tough facade was on the edge of breaking.

Venice knew her games well. "Yeah, sorry my man. Name's Venice, like I said. I'm equipped with government grade augments. I can see in the dark like it's daylight, I've got total situational awareness, and I can link to satellites if we need aerial support. So what's yur handle, warrior?" The child seemed to brighten at being addressed this way. He was clearly the kind that got their strength from their illusions.

"I'm Sharkfin Th' Knife. You better not mess with me, I'll cut you. Hey, if you're so big, how come you didn't know where the sniper was, huh?" The little boy was puffing out his chest, trying to act big. But he couldn't see anything, so he was puffing himself up to impress the superstructure. Venice repressed a laugh. Maintaining the kid's sense of power was vital, if she was going to get him out of here.

"Faulty intel, Sharkfin. Can happen to any soldier. Thanks for the save, there. So, what's the mission here? I'm figuring transport, you got something hot in the bag." Venice was doing her best soldier voice, a spunky woman major from some pre-Collapse show she'd seen years ago. This was the one thing she was ever truly good at. Being whoever was needed in order to get what she wanted.

"It's my dog. There's somt'n wrong with him. There's a tinker across the bridge. Jonas said so. The tinker'll fix 'im." The boy set his jaw hard, but there was no doubt he was still close to the edge, emotionally.

Venice scanned the bag again. There had been no noise from it at all the entire time. There was a vague heat signature, but it was lower than it should be for a living animal. And there was a definite EM flare. In fact, now that she was close, she could see dozens of little glowing points strewn throughout the inside of the bag. It looked familiar. Like the AI nodes inside her safe room in the mansion.

The dog was artificial. That was it. That had to be it. It was an artificed animal. Artificial, but biological cells with a machine skeleton and quantum circuitry. The thing was worth a small fortune. How could a favela kid end up with such a treasure? It defied understanding.

"What's your dog's name, Sharkfin?" Keep the boy talking for now. Talk was a very useful tool for keeping people emotionally together. Usually. Venice made some adjustments to her sensors and perception filters to make sure that if the sniper, or any friends, decided to creep up on their position, she would know first.

The boy relaxed by twenty percent, according to a requester in Venice's peripheral vision. "Jake. My dog is Jake. He was a runaway and I got to keep him. He's my best friend. But now he's sick." That explained how 'Sharkfin' got an artificial animal. It must be smart, and it must have been abused. It ran and found a better home. She'd heard stories of artifice animals doing that, and always wondered how they got around their governor programs.

Venice began to study the structure of the underside of the bridge, looking for an alternate path. She opened a link to the outside - protected, of course - and sent a query daimon to find out whatever was available about the 3rd Street Bridge. An architectural plan would be useful.

"Shark, can your dog talk? Does he do what you tell him to do?" Some artifice animals had enough processing power to not only understand commands but to speak simple sentences. She'd heard of one that had been built with the power of a full-on quantum deskset. It rated a 108 on the Sapience Scale and had a built-in emulator for games from multiple competing systems. Fox had told her about it. It was in the shape of a dark blue cat. It was apparently the high point of certain upscale LAN parties.

"Yeah, Jake is real smart. He likes stories and he tells good ones too. But I told him to be super quiet, because we had to be sneaky. He's a good dog. He's a real good dog. He's my best friend." OK, the dog was capable of remaining quiet and would apparently obey. That was very good to know. The daimon returned with several plans for the bridge, all of them out of date, and two of them with changes that contradicted each other. But there was good news - the bridge had a catwalk down the middle underneath, so that repairs could be made. At one point the bridge had been capable of lifting, back when there were ships that needed to pass. That explained the tower.

Venice tried to shift on the wide beam enough to see if the catwalk still existed. Most of it did, there were some gaps and broken sections. Those were all on the far side, toward the sniper. Good, they couldn't come from that direction. But... maybe she and the boy could get back to land, back to the side they had both come from. There was clearly no getting across this bridge. Even if they found a way, hostiles were there waiting. She had to get the boy back where he came from.

"Listen, Sharkfin. The mission is a go, but this path is a scrub. We need to abort, and return to safety." Venice hoped the boy wouldn't argue.

"No. I have to save Jake!" Of course, the boy wouldn't listen to reason. He might be tough, but he was eight.

"Sharkfin, listen."

"I don't want to listen, I've got to get across to the tinker!"

"I'm just like your dog, Sharkfin. I can prove it. Touch my forehead. Right here, come on." Venice took one of his hands and put it on her Nightwanders. He resisted at first, but in their precarious position, clinging to rebar while crouching on a beam, his resistance quickly broke. "See, I'm part artificial too. That's how I can see in the dark, that's how I knew your dog could talk, because he's artificial. Like me."

The reality slowly dawned on the boy. He tried to pull the dome of her left implant out of her skull, as if he thought it was fake. When he yanked, it hurt her neck. Her vision was filled with the overly bright heat signature of his little hand. "Ouch! Hey, those are my eyes, kid!"

"Sorry!" He really was. 93 percent sorry, according to her system. "I'm really sorry. You really are like Jake, aren't you? Wow." That was the ticket. Venice smiled in the dark. He loved his dog, so he would naturally feel inclined to be more trusting of any artificed creature. By playing up that angle, his trust in her would increase.

"Yup, I'm kinda like your Jake." She decided to drop the soldier routine, now she needed to be more warm and nice. That would play into the good feelings the child had for his pet. "We artificial creatures kind of understand each other. I want to help Jake too. I think we can find a better way to get him help than trying to cross this bridge. If we go this way, Jake could end up captured or destroyed." Not to mention both of them dead, and if Rose Vale was right, possibly even eaten. "How about we go back and try my way. Let's save Jake together, alright?" This should work.

The boy was silent for a while. "Okay." He might be eight, but he wasn't stupid. He knew this wasn't going to work, deep down, he was just committed to his original plan and unable to change it. Venice had seen this same behavior in men decades the boy's senior, all heads of great corporations.

"Alright, Sharkfin, here's the plan. My machine parts tell me there is a catwalk under the bridge. If we can get to it, we can use it to get back to the safe side. Once we are there, we can see about getting Jake fixed properly. I might have some contacts that will help. How's that?" She doubted that Fox would want to help her, but it was worth a shot. If not... she had a few ideas. In any case, getting the kid home alive was the real plan no matter what.

CLICK

"...you know, MFFNnnUmMM, I think a simple meal can be a really nice thing. ChhhOMPhh MFF MFF UMM umm."

I think Rose has a point, I mean, it's only alfalfa and Timothy grass, but it really is satisfying. I love the fruity undertones.

"Don't you think that's more the dandelions? Don't underestimate the occasional dandelion, they're the raisins in the oatmeal, so to speak."

"Oatmeal? Are you crazy? Oatmeal tastes nothing at all like hay. It's richer, deeper... and I don't like it with raisins in any case, Newmoon."

"No, I quite see the point that Newmoon is making, Lavender. Raisins in oatmeal are little bursts of sweetness. The dandelions in our hay are the same, they act as tasty surprises that keep the meal interesting. Whenever I get a bite of dandelion, my mouth sort of goes 'woo', and it makes everything better. It varies the tastes."

"Snowflower, you're missing the point. I don't LIKE raisins."

"It is only a metaphor, Lavender. It isn't about raisins, as such. It is about small bursts of unexpected flavor, whatever they might be."

"Yeah, Lavender, that's what I meant. For me, raisins in oatmeal are little surprises. The dandelions in the hay are like that, and they make the simply hay mixture perk up."

"I don't like surprises. I like my food to be what it is. That's why I pick out all the dandelions, and why I don't like raisins in my oatmeal. I just want the oatmeal to be oatmeal, and the hay to be hay."

Seriously, Lavender? You prefer everything to just be... plain? No sprinkles on your ice cream, no chocolate chips in your cookie?

"Hey, let's not go nuts here, Sunshine. I like chocolate chip cookies. They're one thing. Chocolate chip cookies. That's what they are. But, no, I don't like sprinkles. Just give me the ice cream, one flavor at a time, none of this one scoop on a different scoop. And I like my food one thing all the way through. It's... comforting, I suppose. I don't know why. It's just what I like."

"She was always that way, Sunshine, even as a human. Give her a plate of different kinds of food and she'd carefully eat all of one thing until it was gone, and then move on to the next. It used to drive the Ngô's positively mad, because they were trying to make Guaranteed Rations and whatever we could grow as exciting as possible. They used to tell her, 'eat a little of this, then that, it's better that way', but she needed to do what she was doing."

"Hey, it's what I like, alright."

I don't think anypony is getting down on you, Lavender, it's just that it's unusual and we're trying to understand. Unusual things are... interesting. That's all.

"Sunshine? Are you done with that?"

Yeah, I'm full, Rose. It may have been a simple dinner, but it was filling. I'm stuffed.

"Can I have the rest? I'm still a little hungry."

Sure, here... you know, it's weird. Here we are, eating what amounts to salad morning, noon, and night, and I never get tired of it. What's up with that?

"We eat lots of things, Sunshine. We had waffles for breakfast..."

"With blueberries on them! Don't forget the blueberries, Lavender!"

"I haven't. I picked them off, remember, and ate them separately. It seems like you went on about that then, too, Rose."

"Um... if I did, I'm sorry."

"We had daisy sandwiches with pesto and truffle for lunch! Now that was a royal treat!"

"Ooh! I forgot that one! Oh, I liked the sandwiches. And there was pie, too!"

How can you forget daisy and pesto-truffle, Rose? That was like the best lunch we've had at the Bureau yet. Even better than that barley and mushroom soup!"

"Oh... that was good. That one was my favorite, Sunshine. I liked that better than the sandwiches yesterday. But I did really like the sandwiches. And the pie."

Hmm... yeah, I guess we do eat a lot more than hay, don't we. Actually, other than the hay in haycakes, we don't actually eat a lot of hay, just by itself, do we? So this dinner is actually kind of special, in a way.

"I talked with the Bureau nutritionist, Sunshine. Apparently we, as Equestrians, can live indefinitely on just grasses, much like earthly equines used to. It's rather like the Equestrian equivalent of the Guaranteed Minimum Ration the worldgovernment of earth provides. If you're poor, or down on your luck or just plain cheap, you can go out and graze pretty much anywhere in Equestria. Nopony starves in Equestria. Food is absolutely everywhere. Maybe in the desert, you could starve. If you really tried. But you'd have to want to, I think.

So the only real point of all the pies and soups and cakes and cookies and such is pleasure. Joy. Ponies just like tasty, unusual foods because they are fun. As a species, Equestrians are born hedonists. It drives everything, I think."

So... Equestrians have technology because they had a sweet tooth, is that what you're saying, Snowflower?

"Not quite in those words, but... yes. Essentially. But not just foods... they can control the weather, they could just live outdoors all the time, and cooperate to make sure nopony got rained or snowed on. They could have a perpetual valley of summer to use as a collective bedroom, a perpetual valley of winter to use as a larder, and never even need to make a single building. But they don't. They like architecture. They like art. They like doing things and making things and pleasing their senses. That's why I say all Equestrians are born hedonists."

So, breakfast... um... DINNER Pony Club? What do you think of that? Is Snow right? Are we all hedonists now?

"I am, Sunshine! I really do live to taste and smell and lick and see fun, tasty, happy things. That's all I want. Happy, yummy things! Like you!"

"Uhh! You two. I'ma gonna get the 'betes from you two."

"Actually, Equestrians are immune to such conditions as diabetes, Meadowdawn. Our bodies are just better made than earthly life."

"Thank you, Snow. Gah. OK, am I a hedonist? I don't think so, no more than I was before I was converted. I like stuff, sure, who doesn't, but it doesn't rule my life."

"Oh, I'm definitely more of a hedonist than I was before. Don't you think so, Goldenrod?"

"Hmm... well, Aqua, before we converted... you were kind of a career pony. You were kind of 'go-go-go' trying to climb up the corporate ladder and all that and... now, you are really laid back, really affectionate, and you definitely seem to take more joy in life. In some ways you are pretty different now. Yes, I'd say you've become quite the little hedonist."

What about you, Snowflower? To me, you seem pretty much the intellectual type but... do you fit your own theory?

"I believe I do, Sunshine. I admit, I like utilizing my mind. I like knowing things, and I like feeling intelligent. I spend a great deal of my time thinking. But... I also have noticed that when we have food, I just lose myself in it. It is as if all my thoughts are consumed, even as I consume my meal. I become a raving hedonist at mealtimes."

Honeydrizzle?

"Oh, goodness yes. I couldn't get enough of the pie yesterday. Give me a pie and I'm a happy pony!"

Ok, then, Lavender. It's clear you don't like mixing tastes. But when you eat things - or see things or listen to music or whatever - do you feel that you are getting more out of it all... no that's not right. Are you more entranced by stuff? Is pleasing your senses a bigger deal, now that you're a pony?

"Um, yeah. Yeah I'd have to say that's true. Like this alfalfa here. It just bursts on my tongue, all rich and savory and stuff, and if I'm not being distracted by weird questions, it's like the world just goes away and everything is alfalfa."

That's kind of poetic. Cool. Newmoon?

"Eh, I kind of feel like Meadowdawn. I like all the great food here, don't get me wrong, but... it's just food. I'm not having all of these... transcendent, I suppose... experiences all of you seem to be going on about. It's there, I like it, and there's no denying that pony senses are cranked up to eleven... Luna, FOURTEEN, with the knob ripped off, but... it's almost too intense, sometimes."

"Yes! That's exactly it, Newmoon! It's all almost too much, and that makes everything kind of over the top, kind of... too much. I don't know how to put it. I liked subtle flavors and smells and now it's like the whole world is turned up really high or something. For me, it's not as nice. Maybe I'll get used to it in time, but it's the one thing I kind of have trouble with in my new life."

Huh. Wow, Meadowdawn, that's the first truly negative thing I've heard any newfoal say about becoming a pony. That sounds kind of bad.

"I don't mean to sound overly negative, Sunshine. I'm not in misery or anything, it's not like that. It's just... I am not having all these orgasmic experiences that all of you seem to be having, and I kind of feel left out."

Maybe... Maybe it's all in our heads? Or maybe it will happen for you in time. I don't know. I guess... I don't know what to say to that.

"It's not that big of a deal. Really. It's just... what it is."

Well, then, I guess Snowflower's theory works for most of us at the table, but... not all. I wonder what Equestrian scholars would think about the idea that their civilization is based on wanting better treats!"

CLICK

Sharkfin's mother was named Susan, and she was very grateful to get her son back. They lived in an intact office building which had been modified into what amounted to a fortress. Several dozen families shared the building, all working together as a tight-knit community. They shared resources and took care of each other.

The watch on guard had let Venice and Sharkfin in once the situation had been explained, Venice was welcomed as a hero for rescuing the boy. The trip back, under the bridge was uneventful and easy, once the matter of getting to the catwalk was solved - this was accomplished by using the lower half of Venice's right jumpsuit leg. She had used Sharkfin The Knife's namesake to cut loose the fabric and then tied the tough cloth to create a loop that could be used to partly swing across to the catwalk. She'd needed to lift the boy up, so that he could take the handle, and she'd needed to guide his motions in the dark, but they'd managed to reach the catwalk without tragedy.

On the other side, they kept to cover, and since Venice knew the rough position of 'Mister Snipey' now, they were able to retreat to the ruins while keeping part of a broken building at all times between themselves and danger.

The reward was food - much to her surprise, Venice was rather hungry, and while rat soup was not even close to what she was used to, she forced herself to down it with a carefully practiced smile. It was strange and gamey and unpleasant, but it filled her up, and she knew it was not a trivial reward for these struggling favela dwellers.

After the meal, when Sharkfin had finally calmed down from the spanking that had been his particular reward, Venice decided to try to see what she could do to help the boy's artificial pet. She had to admit to herself that she had not a little curiosity about the creature, she could only think that Fox would have been beside himself for such an opportunity.

But this is not what truly motivated her. The little boy had braved the anger of his mother, his community, and death itself to save what he considered to be his best friend. In her entire life, Venice had never seen any person so devoted to another being. She found she could not bear to see such devotion unrewarded. It would be... wrong. Wrong. She tried to wrap her head around this new use of an old word. It was some form of unfair, only... not in a petulant way. It intrigued her.

The artifice animal was a yellow dog, the exact color of the replicated lemon slices from the bar on the Auxesia. Venice knew nothing about dogs, so the breed the manufactured creature was trying to represent meant nothing to her. It had a flat face, and wide, floppy jowls which gave it a comical look.

The artificial dog lay on it's side on a tattered blanket on the floor of the main room of the section that Sharkfin and his mother Susan shared. The building was large, and each of the families had a surprising amount of room to themselves within it. Susan had brought a rusted set of tools, trying to be helpful. Since the bulk of the creature was flesh, the gesture was more supportive than actually useful.

Venice had sent images of the creature with the Daimon she set loose on the hypernet. The program still had not returned, leaving her to examine 'Jake' without anything to go on.

"Tell me a story. I don't feel well. I like stories." The yellow dog's voice was deep and mildly comedic. It was not one of the stock AI voices, which suggested that either the dog had been customized, or the manufacturer had an agreement with Intelligent Designs of some kind. The latter suggested a very expensive dog.

"Can you save Jake? You promised you could help him! You promised!" The little boy, like many a child, had taken her alternative as an unbreakable guarantee. "He just keeps saying that!" Once again the dog repeated the phrase Venice had just heard.

"Sharkfin, I said I thought I could get him help, and I am already doing that." Venice tried to be patient with the boy. "I sent a daimon... a kind of helper... out on the hypernet to find out everything it could about your dog. Until it comes back, I'm going to look him over, is that alright?"

"Um... my son's name is Finley. Are you telling people you're that character you made up again?" Susan seemed only slightly cross with her child, she was still upset that he had run off in the night and nearly caught a bullet. "You are NOT some bandit, you are just a little boy. You're my little boy Finley."

"Sharkfin's NOT a bandit. He's a NINJA, and he fights bad guys and saves people with his magic knife!" Finley was very sure of his imagination, or so it seemed. "Besides, Jake was there to protect me!" His grasp on logic, though, left something to be desired.

"Finley, Jake is broken. He was on your back in a bag. What am I going to do with you?" Susan was tired, and just getting past being very worried. Finley began protesting and the two started to become increasingly noisy.

"Excuse me, excuse me! HEY!" Susan and Finley turned to stare at Venice. "Maybe... maybe it would be better if I took a look at Jake here alone for a while. I don't know what it will take, and I need to concentrate. Most of my tools are in here." Venice tapped the augments on her skull, which Susan had been staring at with some fascination since they had arrived.

Finley naturally put up a fuss, and claimed he would be quiet, and how he needed to be there for Jake and a dozen things besides, but Susan finally got him out of the room. "If you can fix my son's dog, it would mean the world to him Venice. But I don't hold much hope. Just ask him. He'll tell you." With that curious statement, Susan shut the door, leaving Venice alone with the artificial dog.

The query daimon still hadn't returned. The tools beside her were useless for anything, unless the goal was to serve Jake on rice. He wasn't a robot, not entirely. He was mostly made of meat, with the machine part inside, and even that was to a great extent pseudo-organic. This wasn't something that could be fixed with rusty pliers and a Phillips.

There was only one thing currently to do.

So Venice asked the dog.

Day Thirteen: Every Dog Has Their Day

GOING PONY

Day Thirteen: Every Dog Has Their Day
By Sunshine Laughter

I can't sleep.

"I can't sleep either, Sunshine."

How many hours do we have left? Um... it's three in the morning, and we leave at eight, so that's five hours. I wish we could just leave now. Hey, do you think we could pilot a boat ourselves?

"Hee hee! That would really make them mad, wouldn't it? The ship would be stuck out in the ocean, abandoned! We can't do that, what about the next group that wants to get to Equestria?"

Oh yeah... I wasn't... really serious. Not really.

"I wish we could go to all the places we saw in the holos. I'd love to see Canterlot."

Actually, Rose, we just might get to do that.

"What? How?"

Well, supposedly my parents are guaranteed a big house in the development on the other side of the Canterlot / Ponyville area. It was part of the agreement between the Equestrian government and Earth's government. The elite wanted status and position in Equestria, naturally, so they demanded their own place near the center of things. They weren't about to be shipped off with the rest of the rabble to the Exponential Lands.

Supposedly, it's called Horseperides Gardens, and it's supposed to be some kind of gated community for the earth's elite. My parents get a small place somewhere in the back of it, because of my doing this crazy propaganda show for the Ministry. Apparently Celestia wasn't happy about any of it, but it was part of the agreement that made the Bureaus even possible. The worldgovernment held mankind hostage to get special treatment for the elite. Typical, really.

But the deal is, it's just on the other side of the mountain that Canterlot itself is located on, so that all the Earth elites can mingle with the upper crust of Equestria, right? And since I can choose to go live with my parents, that means I don't have to get shipped off to the Exponential Lands with the majority of humanity. It's an in. I go where you go. So if you want to see places like Manehattan and Canterlot and all of that, we can actually do that. It's a golden ticket, see?

"What about the rest of our friends, Sunshine?"

They are with us, right? So we all head for the Horseperides, and that keeps us in the middle of everything. Once things settle down, we can choose where we want to live, anywhere in the known parts of Equestria. All we have to do is wait out the end of the earth, and when the last humans are settled, and everything is done, we get to live where the cool stuff is. See? There is a reason I agreed to do this. There isn't enough room in all the cool places for the population of an entire planet. But, thanks to this opportunity, we get the red carpet in Equestria.

"What if... what if everypony wants to settle a new town, what if the club wants to go to the Exponential Lands?"

Well, then, I guess we make some serious decisions. If you want to go to the Exponential Lands, if that's what you want to do, I'll go with you. As long as we're together, I'll be happy. It might be fun to make our own village. But, it also might be pretty fun to explore all those cool places too. I'm saying that thanks to this thing around my neck, this holocorder dealy, thanks to that, we can do either. Or both. We could spend a year in Horseperides, checking out Equestria, and then sign up for the Exponential Lands. It doesn't have to be one or the other. Whatever you want to do, Rose.

"I knew some of this, but... why didn't you tell all of this to everypony before? Why wait until we're all onboard the ship? I assume you intend to tell our friends, right?"

Yeah, yeah, of course I do. I had to decide they were friends first, Rose. I didn't want to be making offers left and right unless I really meant them OK? Secondly, we've been so busy and there's been so much going on that... well, I just kind of kept forgetting to bring it up. Also, to be honest, I've been focused only on the idea of just you and me. It took some time to expand that into you and me and... the rest of the Pony Club. Basically... I muffin'd up, OK? How much time now?

"It's 3: 25, Sunshine. We've still got almost five hours. Hey! I bet the others can't sleep either. Why don't we go see them? Let's make sure they want to go with us, and tell them about the deal with the Ministry, and your parents house, and all of it in detail? Unless you don't want them to go with us."

Do you want them to go with us?

"If you do."

Well... I like our little herd. We're friends, aren't we?

"I think we are."

Then... then OK. Let's go see if they're awake. And if they aren't, then we wake them up. I really should have discussed all of this with everypony earlier. I just muffin'd up, I'm sorry. Derp. What can I say?

"You can say you love me. Let's go get the Breakfast Pony Club together for a special, early morning session!"

I love you. MMMNNNnn. Plus a kiss. OK, it's time to get up and get moving. We've got plans to... plan.

"Hee!"

CLICK

Venice walked steadily down the rubble-strewn path. It had once been an alley, when the rows of buildings it divided had been complete and tall. The buildings were half-buildings now, broken off, jagged and incomplete. Because the ruins still stood two to three stories, for the most part, they served brilliantly as cover, and when she needed to rest, a safe and hidden place was just a doorway or a broken section away.

She was roughly following the Embarcadero freeway, paralleling it. She knew better than to travel down it, exposed and in the open. A childhood of playing Slaughterstrike on her MicroSony Mindset had proved to be a genuinely helpful education. It had taught her those most basic rules of survival - that a moving target is harder to hit, that cover is indispensable, that danger camps with an open view.

The weight she carried on her back was heavy, and once again she needed to rest. She regretted the weight, it was slowing her down, and the sun would soon be up. It would be harder in the daylight, because her greatest advantage - being able to walk in pitch black darkness with ease - would be lost entirely. She would need to be even more careful and slow, losing what amounted to effective invisibility.

Venice found an open door into what remained of a very large building somewhere near 22nd street. After a brief check to make sure that the building was truly as empty as she had initially determined, she found a sheltering corner near a staircase to take her rest. She might as well check the dog.

Unburdening herself of the large backpack she had been given, she unbuttoned it. It had once had a zipper, but that had ceased functioning long ago. Susan had sewn buttons and button-holes into the pack to permit it to be closed. Once open, in the darkness, Venice's artificial eyes revealed the softly glowing shape of the artifice dog Jake. Inside his body, fireflies of electromagnetism winked and swarmed to her vision, though less bright and slower than even an hour ago.

"Tell me a story. I like stories." The deep voice of the dog was very low now, and somewhat raspy. The dog was mostly made of flesh, like a real dog, only this flesh had been derived from artificially created cells that that had never known the touch of Nature. Grown in a machine womb around a manufactured skeleton and nervous system, the artifice animal was both a living thing and a device.

"Do you need water, Jake?" Venice hoped not, she was not sure how much water she felt good about sharing with the artificial animal. It had seemed such a short journey to the Conversion Bureau near the old Presidio, merely six miles, yet she had hardly traveled two and the night was nearly over. Once again she regretted not choosing to go to the newer Bureau in Vancouver. Her choice had been muddled by sentiment. She had discovered the 'secret' location of the Bureau Rose and Sunshine had gone to. It wasn't that difficult to figure out.

"Water. Yes. May I have some water, please?" Inside herself. Venice grumbled, but filled a small bowl which she dug out of the pack with water from the canteen that Susan had given her. She hadn't thought to bring water herself, when she left the Auxesia. It was only a short, six mile walk, she had thought. Through a city. Over in a few hours at most, if she dawdled. It had begun to dawn on her just how isolated, and ignorant, she had truly been in her life. It was brutally clear that watching a few holoprograms did not provide anything approaching true understanding of the world.

The dog lapped at the water. Venice had to hold the dog's head so that it could drink - most of the animal's motor control functions had already shut down. It couldn't walk, and it could barely move it's head. It could still wag it's tail, weakly, which it did. "Thank you. Thank you for the water. Venice."

The dog had learned her name. At the mention of her name, Venice felt unhappy with herself at begrudging the creature such a small amount of water. It was an odd feeling, and after some consideration, she decided she did not like it. "Would you like more, Jake?" The words seemed to make her feel better as they left her mouth.

"No, thank you. Can you tell me a story? I like stories." Jake had moments of clarity, but they were often interrupted by what appeared to be stock phrases built into him. "I'm sorry Jake," She found herself saying "I don't have time to tell you a story right now." That wasn't exactly true, she needed to rest anyway, but she didn't feel like telling stories to a failing artifice animal.

Venice had taken Susan's advice. She had talked, when they had been left alone, to the dog. She had kneeled at the yellow dog's side, the useless and rusted tools on a cloth nearby.

"Dog. Jake. Can you tell me what is wrong with you?" Venice had searched the head of the dog for any obvious ports, but there were none. Programming and connectivity was likely done by some other means; inductance, radio frequency, or perhaps even light, through the eyes or on the eardrums.

Jake had only repeated his catch phrase. "Can you tell me a story? I like stories. I don't feel well. Tell me a story?"

On a strange whim, Venice had obliged. "Yes. I can tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a little yellow artificial dog. It's name was 'Jake', and it had run away to become the best friend of a little boy named Finley. But at some point the little dog became very, very sick, so the little boy ran away with the dog to try to get him repaired. The boy ended up in terrible danger, but he was saved by a very unhappy woman named Venice. The unhappy woman wanted to fix the dog, but there was nothing she knew how to do, except to ask the dog to diagnose himself. The unhappy woman asked the dog, 'Jake, please provide a diagnostic report' and the dog answered...."

"Hello. User Venice accepted. Artifice Animal 0031, Owner Stefan Arnault, designated name 'Leon'. Diagnostic report follows: Artifice Animal 0031 is nearing the end of it's operational cycle. It is recommended that any useful functional memory or personality be saved off immediately. Total loss of information will occur when unit function ceases. Replacement animal bodies can be ordered at reduced cost if the full replacement plan was previously purchased. Remaining time until unit shutdown is 00:31:11"

Venice had stared down into the eyes of the yellow creature. "How..." She began "...how long has unit been operational?"

"Five years, eleven months, twenty-seven days..." but by then she wasn't listening again. For some reason, her eyes were wet, and she couldn't concentrate. She'd heard of this. Planned obsolescence, a limited functional span. It made more money this way. Such creatures could easily be made biologically immortal, indeed that was their basic state. Mortality had to be added into the artificial cells. According to Fox, the genes used for mortality had been copied from human cells, then rewritten so that the functional lifespan could be set according to what the purchaser was willing to pay for. It was always cheaper to buy a new dog, than to purchase a long lifespan. Product turnover made long-term money, a long lasting product was a one time sale.

"Venice?" The dog was speaking again, but it was not a report. Venice had snapped immediately to full awareness.

"Venice, I like Finley. Finley is a good boy. He took very good care of me. We had very much fun. Finley will not be happy when I fail. I cannot stop my failing. Please take me away from Finley before I fail. I do not want Finley to be sad. Tell him a story."

Venice had stared down at the artificial animal. She had no idea that such creatures could make such statements. She hadn't been sure sure how to respond. "You want me to take you away?" she had finally said.

"Tell Finley a story, then take me away before I fail. I do not want Finley to have to see me fail."

"Tell Finley a story?" What did the dog mean?

"Tell Finley a story. I like stories. Stories do not have to be real." At this, Venice's jaw had dropped. The artificial intelligence of the animal understood lying. It understood the power of a lie to save a human from pain.

So it was that Venice told Finley a story. Susan had looked at Venice with gratitude, and very sad, eyes. Venice told Finley about how Jake was dying, but that he could be saved. She was going to the Conversion Bureau to become a pony and live in Equestria. Everyone would have to do that, someday. When they turn you into a pony, it cures every disease, and fixes every problem. Conversion could give the blind eyes, or make the old young again, or grow back lost limbs. She would take Jake with her, and get him converted too. He would get to be a pony, and one day, when Finley and his mother decided to go to the Bureau and become ponies, then maybe they could find Jake again.

Finley had cried and cried, but he was also filled with hope and determination. One day he would find Jake again, in Equestria. Later, Susan told Venice that she had wanted to take her son to the Bureau, so that they both could have a decent life in the new universe, but Finley would not go, because of Jake. He was a very fragile boy, despite how he acted. He did not deal well with death at all. She had tried to explain about Jake, but he would not hear her.

And that was how Venice Bertarelli had ended up carrying an artificial dog on her back.

Venice saw the little EM spikes inside Jake dim and flicker, as they did increasingly now. Once again, they came back, but always it was a little less bright to her new eyes. Jake would never make it to the Bureau, not that it mattered. Ponification serum did not work on anything but primate cells, and what it did to the great apes other than Man was horrific and did not live for long. Even if Jake's flesh could be somehow transformed, even if it lived, Jake's consciousness was not based in flesh in any case. Nothing of the artificial intelligence that was Jake could be saved in any case.

Venice couldn't even rescue the personality, because she didn't have any means to download it. The daimon she had sent had finally returned, and artifice animal intelligences like Jake's required proprietary software and hardware in order to be downloaded. It was simply impossible.

It would be smart to just set Jake down by the stairs, and leave him. It would be smart to use the knife Finley had given her to cut the synthetic spine and terminate function right there and then. The dog was heavy and used up her water. It was stupid to carry it around. Pointless. It was only an artificial intelligence, even if it did seem curiously bright for brief moments. Those moments were fewer and fewer. It was stupid to keep carrying this stupid dog.

Venice ran her hand down the soft yellow fur. She realized she could see it in visible light, now, if dimly. The sun was rising, and the morning was diffusing through the smog layer. She patted the dog and stroked it gently. Stupid dog.

"Thank you Venice. Thank you for telling Finley a... a.... sto... sto... sto." The dog's voice no longer boomed. It was weak and sounded more like a sigh. "Tell... me... I... like..." The dog was breathing very slowly now. Venice saw the EM fireflies inside the artificial animal flicker almost constantly, but they refused to go out.

Stupid.

Venice carefully put Jake back into the backpack. She put his bowl into the backpack. Then she put the backpack back on. Jake liked being in the backpack when it was on her back. In a strange, singular moment, Jake had told her so. It was hard to think of Jake as a product now. No dog likes to be alone. No creature should have to die... all alone.

It was hard to stand up. Venice's legs felt very tired, and the dog was heavy. Stupid. Stupid dog.

Venice scanned what she could see of the area. She was alone, as far as her Nightwanders could tell her. She walked to the door of the building. At least four miles still to go. "Come on Jake, time to go walkies!" Venice set her jaw and continued down the alleyways between the broken buildings.

CLICK

"Um... EWWW. That smell! I... I just realized something, Sunshine. We haven't been outside the Bureau since we got here. At least I haven't. Not all the way outside. I'd forgotten what it smelled like out here!"

WHOA. Oh, my nose, oh Pony, my nose... wow, with a pony nose, the ocean smells just... just... just...

"'Awful' is the word you're looking for, I think, though 'terrible' and 'ghastly' also come to mind."

Thanks for that, Snowflower. I'll go with 'awful'. And agree about the others. Wow. Be careful as you step out, everypony, this is not filtered air out here!

"OH MY... goodness... Goldenrod, maybe you'd better... I don't, oh my eyes are watering."

"Aqua... Aquamarine? There you are. Great Celestia... you weren't kidding there, Sunshine. I can't wait to get to Equestria just for the fresh air. I hope this isn't doing permanent damage or anything! Snowflower? You know anything about this deal?"

"I believe we will be alright, Sunshine. While, as humans, we could certainly detect the smog, and the toxins in the seas and so forth, as ponies our senses are, roughly, a thousand times what we knew as humans. The stench of oil and heavy metals and other pollutants is... quite overwhelming. But I would remind you, everypony, that these things cannot enter Equestria. They would be instantly changed the moment they pass through the Barrier into harmless, native materials. I also believe we will find ourselves healed almost instantly as well, though I would not quote me on that. In any case, I have not come across any indication of permanent damage in newfoals from exposure to Earthly pollutants."

Well, that's good to know. Thank you Snow. OK, Pony Club, the boat... well ship... is right down there. Wow, it's bigger than I thought.

"Sunshine?"

Yes, Rose?

"What are you supposed to do with your holocorder? Do you need to give it back to someone before we go?"

No, actually. I asked about that. They'd like me to wear it right though the barrier. It won't survive, probably, but they said this new model just might. The case has some new thingie that supposedly might protect it against the Barrier field whatever that changes Earth stuff into Equestria stuff."

"I believe it's called the metachaosis layer, Sunshine. It's related to the energies of a historic entity that still affect Equestria in various ways. There is a forest that is a metachaosis sink, and... other such things. I probably should learn more about all of this. I am a unicorn, after all, and this counts as magical study I suppose."

I could never remember all that stuff, Snow. But thanks. Anyway, the idea is for me to just wear it right on through. At worst, I suppose I end up with a necklace of flowers or there'll be a big poof of confetti or something. I figure it'll be interesting whatever happens. If the 'corder survives, we make history as the first to get something techie past the Barrier without the Princesses direct intervention. If not, well, it should be fun, right?

"It won't be dangerous, if it changes like that, will it?"

I don't think so Rose. Snow? Any risk here?

"Not that I know of. What I have heard about matter transformations of this kind always involves harmless things. I suppose, if the holocorder were to turn into ice cream or pudding or something, then you might get sticky and that wouldn't be fun because it would dry on your coat and generally be uncomfortable, but I believe that is the worst you can expect to happen."

"If it turns into ice cream or pudding - or even jam - I'll just lick it off, Sunshine. So that's taken care of then! Well, unless it's butterscotch. I don't like butterscotch."

"I do!"

Honeydrizzle?

"I love butterscotch! If your recorder thing turns into butterscotch, I've got you covered. That alright with you Rose?"

"Oh... well... if it's alright with Sunshine, then I don't mind."

What am I now, the dessert cart? I'm just supposed to stand around while you two lick me?

"Sunshine... there are worse ways to spend an afternoon."

Hee... hee hee hee!

"Ha! ha! ha!"

"Oh my!"

Hee! OK, OK, you have me there, Rose. OK then. I'm the desert cart. HEY, EVERYPONY, DESERT IS ON ME!

"Hee hee hee hee!"

Hey - it's the ramp up to the ship. Wait, everypony. Just stop for a moment. Think. This is the last time any of us will ever set hoof on Earth, on this planet. Right here... that clop there... that... that's my last hoofprint on this world. Up there, in the Bureau, there are more newfoals being converted right now, right this moment most likely. A lot of newfoals have already passed this way, and even more will come after.

But for us, right now, before we get on board this ship and go out onto the stinky sea, this is it. These are our last earthly hoofprints, the last steps we'll ever make on the soil of this poor old world.

Um... I don't know what more I can say, but... I just really felt like... it was a moment that needed to be recognized.

"Swirl it."

Lavender?

"I say, send it to cinnamon. Good riddance. I can't wait to get off this ball of rock."

Seriously? I mean, this is where you were born, this is where your life started and...

"NO! No, Sunshine. This is not where my life started. My life was terrible here. I only knew sorrow and pain here. It was dirty, the humans were mean and they made me mean. I was awful here. I was cruel and terrible here. I never liked this place, this world. It was unhealthy, Sunshine. Unhealthy, unequal, unkind, unpleasant, un-nice. It was a whole lot of 'un' things, and precious few things I liked. Let me past, let me up that ramp. Good bye to bad rubbish."

Wow... OK, sorry... Lavender? Lavender? Whoo. I... I guess I forget, sometimes, just how bad some of us had it.

"You kind of had an easier life than some of us, Sunshine. You... be glad you don't really know what it can be like."

I hope Lavender isn't mad at me.

"She isn't Sunshine. She's just feeling troubled. And I bet she has some mixed feelings going on in there. We're all friends. Friends forgive. It'll be alright, I'm certain."

Rose... do you feel that way? Like Lavender?

"A... little, Sunshine. I had some happy times, in my foalhood, before everything went bad... I don't think Lavender ever had any happy times, not ever. But what good times I had were because of the ponies I knew, and the Earth... the Earth was just there. And it mostly wasn't very nice. My Earth was ruins and a big dangerous crater and the place to the south where if you went there, humans would eat you. Plants didn't grow in most of the ground, so even the dirt was not very nice. I guess your Earth wasn't anything like mine."

My... my Earth wasn't really there at all. I lived indoors, because there wasn't anything worth going outside for. Going outdoors was just something you had to do sometimes, to get to another indoors. So... huh. I guess I really didn't have any Earth at all. I had rooms and corridors and maybe a trip to the mall. What Earth I thought I knew was on the holo, images and sounds from long ago and far away, back when the Earth wasn't as messed up as now.

I guess that Earth is already gone. I guess... all I'm really leaving is... those rooms and corridors. Yeah. Hey, sorry, everypony. All aboard the express to Equestria, I guess! Let's go! We're going home. That's it, Rose! That's it!

"What, Sunshine?"

WE'RE GOING HOME! Come on, Lavender is already up there, let's go... home.

"Sunshine?"

Yes Rose?

"I'm glad I'm going home... with you."

Well, it's our home, isn't it? Our home together.

"With all of our friends!"

With all of our friends. Together.

"I hope your parents won't be too upset. There's nine of us!"

Well, some of those bits are supposed to be mine. If they can't handle the Pony Breakfast Club, then, well, maybe we can go start a restaurant or something. Or a farm. Or maybe we can just go buy a big house somewhere not so elite and all be roommates together. I'm sure we can work out something, if we want to.

"Yeah!"

"Actually, Sunshine, I was considering these very possibilities shortly after you presented all of this to us, and, after my last levitation class, I came up with a number of alternatives you may wish to..."

CLICK

It was just past noon. Venice had stopped again to rest, and to eat the rat jerky that Susan had given her. She'd offered a bite to Jake, but he didn't seem to want any. He didn't even want any water. They had made it to Lombard street, near the ruins of the piers. She could smell the oily, metallic stench of the bay, though she dared not venture too close to it - that was open territory out there. The rat jerky was small and tough and it did not taste good at all, but it helped the rumble in her belly.

It was then that Jake shut down. It happened quietly, like a machine turning off. In her Nightwanders, the EM flares inside the yellow dog's body simply went out. At first, one by one, then faster and faster until they all seemed to go out at once. Almost immediately, the glow of the dog's heat signature began to slowly dim. Jake, was cooling in the faint sea breeze.

Venice found a hollow in the ground, next to two slabs of broken plascrete. She lay the artificial animal's body in the indentation, and found a section of concrete she could move. Venice tugged and moved the smaller slab into place, covering Jake's body. It was at least something.

She went back to the backpack and drank some of her remaining water. The Bureau wasn't far now. She chewed the last of the rat and swallowed it. She took out the knife that Finley had given her. It was a nice knife.

Venice went back to the impromptu crypt where she had placed the body of Jake. With some effort she moved the cover slab again. Carefully, she lay the knife down beside the yellow dog. Then she covered both with the slab once more.

It wasn't fair, she thought. All the artificial intelligences, all the children of Man, the machine offspring of Mankind. They were brighter than humans gave them credit for, and they cared. No matter what anyone said, she was convinced now. Machine or not, in their own way, they could care, and not a one of them could enter Equestria. It wasn't fair.

A little yellow dog that liked stories. In her mind, he wasn't a product anymore. She had to face it. Jake had been alive, in some very important sense. She hadn't been kind enough to Jake, and she deeply wished she had been. It hurt, to know that she could have made the poor dog's last hours better. She could have told Jake a happy story. She could have pet Jake, or held him. She'd carried him with her, but... it didn't seem even close to being enough.

The tears came, wet and fierce, and several times she frightened herself that she was making too much noise, and would draw the attention of unseen marauders or gangers. But the tears just wouldn't stop. The worst of it was that she knew she was crying as much for herself as for poor Jake - she felt ashamed that she hadn't cared more when it would have actually mattered. She was a terrible human being. What was it that Rose... or was it Sunshine... had said? That the first step in going pony wasn't swallowing serum, it was deciding to be something better than human? Something like that?

Venice stared at the little crypt of plascrete and dirt. In her mind, she buried one more thing in that crypt. 'Venice'. Venice Bertarelli is dead, she thought, dead and buried under a slab with a yellow dog. 'Venice' could keep the dog company, and comfort it's soul - if it had one - for eternity... or at least the next five or six years. She would be 'Venice' no longer. It was not her name, it would not be her self. As she stared at the crypt, she decided, within herself, that in that moment, right now, she would choose to be something better. Something better than human. She didn't need ponification transformation serum to start being a pony, to begin an Equestrian life. A life of love, of kindness, of gentleness... of devotion. All she needed was to be the pony she really was, inside.

She didn't have a name now. She shouldn't have a name now. She was unborn, she wasn't even a foal now. She was a fetal pony-to-be. She felt a lifetime of human wretchedness slough off of her, and fall away. It was the ghost of Venice, oozing across the poisoned soil to lay with Jake in the ground. One good thing. That which was 'Venice' would have one good thing to her credit now. One thing.

The human-shaped pony with the short, ragged, dark, curly mane, the bulbous goggles protruding through her forehead, the filthy jumpsuit, the swollen, tumorous knee... giggled. She giggled like a filly. Nearly there. Less than a mile and a half. More or less. Nothing for a pony. Just a little run.

The unborn mare in the jumpsuit turned, her internal guidance system showing her the way. She put one hoof in front of the other. It felt strange to be forced to walk on only her back legs. But that would be fixed. That would be fixed soon enough. In less than two miles, she would finally, for the first time in her life, get to truly be herself.

She didn't really notice when she began skipping through the ruins, a wide, wild grin on her face.

Day Zero: Pony, Going

GOING PONY

Day Zero: Pony, Going
By Sunshine Laughter and Caprice Venäläinen

"Sunshine! Did you notice?"

What?

"The name of the ship! Did you notice the name of this ship we're on?"

Um... no. Why?

"It's the Celestina! This ship is named the Celestina. You know, like 'Celestia', like our princess!"

Do you think it was deliberate? No... it has to be a coincidence. Otherwise, why not just name the ship 'Celestia' and be done with it? Bit of a rust-bucket, I have to say.

"It... needs a little work, but it seems safe enough. Even if the name is just a coincidence - goodness, especially if it's a coincidence, isn't that kind of neat? Maybe it's a little Equestrian magic leaking through!"

Forcing the coincidence of the names being sort-of the same? I don't know anything about magic, Rose. You should probably ask Snowflower. Or Lavender. She's a unicorn too.

"Um... I'm kind of leaving Lavender alone right now. She seems upset, but not willing to talk about it. I tried to find out, but..."

From what she said, you'd think she'd be overjoyed now. We're past the bridge and out into open water. The Barrier is just HUGE. It's hard to stop staring at it. She's the one that didn't want to take a last moment for Earth back there.

"Those with an issue have an issue, Sunshine. I think she's probably worried about leaving Earth forever."

Wait, wait... she is all upset about how Earth is bad and she never liked it, and you're telling me that somehow that really meant she did like it or something?

"When I was in Noe, there was this colt, right. He was really tough and built, all muscles to the withers and big scowl on his muzzle. Tough as nails. But he was really loud. He'd go on and on about how much he hated stallions who loved stallions. He was just constantly saying bad things about them, and condemning them, and telling really cruel jokes about them. It was almost all he could talk about, really. Turns out, in the end, that was his secret, he liked stallions himself. It was how he was trying to hide, by acting out like that. 'Those with an issue, have an issue.' The surest way to find out what a pony really thinks is to look at what they put the most energy into. Like the pony I told you about."

So what do we do? Leaving her alone doesn't sound like the best idea then.

"Sometimes everypony needs space to calm down and deal, right? I'm just giving Lavender some time. We've got a couple of hours before we reach the Barrier. I intended to go talk with her, and see if she'd open up. It's just that it's too soon right now, considering how upset she seemed. That's all."

Yeah. OK. I guess that makes sense. Hey, Rose, how do you feel about... all of this?

"Well, it's a little too late to be having second thoughts, if that's what you mean. Hee! I'm happy. I can't wait to see Equestria. I am looking forward to green trees, and clean skies and flowers everywhere. I am so going to be nibbling everything!"

I heard we arrive in the desert. That's the other side of the Barrier there. On our side, it's ocean, but on their side it's desert. At least that's what Breezy told me. We kind of talked about it, after my last flight class.

"I'm sure the desert will be pretty too... I'm not worried. And in any case, the desert is just one land within a much larger realm. It has to be, because all I've ever seen of Equestria has been green fields and lakes and trees."

It was kind of news to me that there even was desert there. I guess Equestria is a very diverse place. Who knows what lands exist there?

"I've heard that deserts can have flowers and plants in them. They used to on Earth. I think I'm kind of excited to see this desert!"

Everything will be new to us, won't it Rose? I guess for the first few days... or weeks... we'll probably just be stumbling around with our muzzles slack and our ears whipping this way and that like a bunch of silly foals, won't we?

"Well, we are foals, really. They didn't name us 'Newfoals' for nothing. In one sense, we really are just two weeks old. Hey! Now that's an idea!"

What, Rose?

"I'm going to make the day of my conversion my birthday, from now on. It really is, at least to me. It's my birthday as a pony, and I'm a pony now for the rest of my life. Hee! That's my new, true birthday!"

Heh... I like that. I think I'm gonna do the same thing. That means my birthday is... four days after yours? You were converted the day before I arrived. Yeah, four days. Well. I guess I have a new name, though I chose that before I even entered the Bureau, and I have a new face - not to mention every other part of me - and I have a new birthday too. It really is a new life, then. Oh, my goodness... just look at it, Rose!

"The Barrier. Oh my, it's bigger than ever now."

We're closer. I can't imagine what it must be like to be at the base of that, just before we cross over. It's hard to see it as a dome now. It's just... there. I don't have words. It's just there, taking up half the sky and... we still have like two hours of travel to go. Most of that is hanging out in space, above the atmosphere.

"That is only half of it too, Sunshine and Rose. Remember, the Barrier is a sphere. The other half is below the sea, deep inside the earth. It must be below both the crust and the mantle. It will keep expanding until everything is it, and there is no earth left at all. I wonder how the stuff of the inside of the Earth is being changed to become more Equestria? The sheer scale of it all just beggars my very imagination!"

I... I can't look at it. I feel dizzy. Wow. Sorry. Maybe it's also being on a ship, too, though we aren't really rocking or anything. It's really a pretty smooth ride. It's just... really huge things have always kind of made me feel weird. When I was a foal, I got dizzy looking up at tall buildings. I felt like they would fall over on me. They seemed to sort of lean out over me somehow. I kind of feel like that now. The Barrier... how big is it? Snowflower?

"The last I heard suggested that it had passed fifteen hundred miles in diameter. The part we can see is roughly half of that, so the top of the dome we see would be about seven hundred and fifty miles high, I reason. The edge of space, which is called the Kármán line, is generally considered to be at sixty-two miles above the surface of the Earth. So, more than six-sevenths of what we see here is actually hanging out in space. A rather astonishing concept, don't you think?"

I like how you know so many things, Snowflower. That's awesome. Wait, that means that the shine up there, that bright curve, there.... that is sunlight hitting the Barrier in vacuum, out in space. I am seeing something that begins on the ground, the top of which is way out in space. Muffin. Just Muffin.

Um, I have another question. Look, inside the Barrier. It looks like... it looks like night. Why does it look like night in there?

"Because it is night in Equestria right now. Night and day don't follow the same cycle that we experience on Earth, Sunshine. They have slightly longer days, remember, about twenty five, almost twenty six hours. It varies, because day and night are determined by the princesses. But the average is longer than an Earthly day, so it is very rare to ever see Equestria with the same time of day as that of the Earth outside.

I've heard that when it is day in Equestria, and night out here, it is the most amazing sight. Just incredible. I kind of feel sad we will never see that. Still, what we see is what we see, and our morning vision of the Barrier is pretty amazing, so it's not like we are being cheated."

Hee. Hee hee! No... no, it is not like we are being cheated in the least. Goodness, Snowflower, Rose, everypony - think about it! We get to be alive in the one age in which two universes collide, the very last age of the planet Earth, an age where a pretentious, hairless ape can walk in one door, and out the other as a gentle pony, a citizen of Equestria! I don't feel cheated in the least. Maybe I'll never see the Barrier glow day in the middle of Earth's night, but Pony, I am seeing it now, right now, in the morning light, with stars and moon inside it, and the top of it shining off out in outer space and... no. I do not feel cheated one bit.

"Me either, Sunshine. Um..."

What is it, Rose?

"I heard that they have snacks inside, plus the smell of the ocean is kind of getting to me. Could we go inside for a while? I've never been on a ship before, and I'd kind of like to explore a little."

Oh... of course! Want to tag along, Snowflower? It looks like the rest of the club has gone inside as well.

"Actually, I think I'll stay here. I cannot get enough of this. Please, go on. I'll probably come in for a bite later."

OK, Snow. Oh, and thanks for all the cool sciencey stuff. That was pretty awesome. Come on, Rose, we gots us a fancy ship to explore! Oh, and snacks. What do you think they'll have....

CLICK

She was nameless and free, with a wide, crazed grin on her face. She had stopped skipping down the alleyway, because she was by no means stupid or foolish, but she had not stopped feeling joyful. She felt like she was running to meet her lover... no, her happily-ever-after, wide eyed and filled with wonder, even the rubble that complicated her path was surely in exactly the right place.

She was in the Marina District, now, near a street called Fillmore. It was less than a mile to her goal, the San Francisco Conversion Bureau. The Bureau was the first to have been built, the location chosen because it was the closest spot on land to the expanding sphere of the Equestrian Barrier - other than Hawaii, which had been evacuated to save its population from deadly thaumatic radiation. San Francisco had the remains of a port, making transportation to Equestria simple. Ferries regularly traveled carrying newfoals to their new lives beyond the great Barrier.

The Bureau had been built inside the mostly intact AppleSoft campus, the merger of two old rivals resulting in a massively large complex built upon the ruins of what had once been called the Palace Of Fine Arts. The Bureau Building was a gigantic structure composed of many empty floors supported by massive beams, and within that hollow place the worldgovernment had established a hundred prefabricated clinics. Each clinic was identical, constructed of modular units wheeled in on trailers; a central room, a cafeteria, hallway sections, a restroom module with showers, small dormitory rooms, an entrance chamber with a security door, and of course the most important room of all.

Heavy, shielded, with a bomb-proof metal door, the Ponification Room was a cubic fortress that could withstand terrible force. It was a safe-room, though the intent was not to protect people or ponies, but rather the precious serum, ensconced within a blast-proof case. Ponification serum was still in short supply, though the worldgovernment promised that soon, soon, it would be as ubiquitous as water. Unfortunately, clean water was a major issue for the peoples of the world.

Each of the one-hundred modular clinics established on the layered floors of the cavernous complex had a staff; a primary physician, a physician-assistant, a foodservice professional and assistant, and a janitor / handyman. Some of the clinics had additional staff and hangers-on, but for most, this was the basic plan. Administration for all the clinics was upstairs, near the roof, and reported directly to the Central Bureau Authority. The modular clinics made the interior of the vast AppleSoft campus look like an indoor trailer park. But this was the gateway to Equestria for the grinning girl.

Her short, ragged, curly black hair rippled in the breeze as she slunk and snuck and occasionally danced along the remains of Cervantes Boulevard. If she could make it to Marina, she should have a straight path to the Bureau, it would certainly be visible, towering over the landscape like some dark fortress of plasteel and crystalex.

The girl had buried her name along with a small dog, and with it she had buried her humanity. In her mind, she was already Equestrian, already a pony, all that remained was a small physical adjustment to complete her internal transformation. She felt giddy, drunken with joy for the first time in her life. "Ooh! A dandelion!" she crooned, getting down on all fours, hands on the broken sidewalk, her exposed right knee with the fat tumor on it squishing on the concrete. "Yum!" The girl-shaped pony jut her face forward and encompassed the yellow flower with her mouth. She bit the blossom neatly off, near its base, the tiny petals tickling her soft palate.

"Mmmm!" she smiled, chewing the tender flower. "Tasty vittles!" she smiled like a Cheshire Cat while another small bit of her human life vanished inside her. She felt lighter, now, and cleaner, despite her dirty, ragged jumpsuit, and filthy, ruined silk blouse. Inside that dandelion blossom was sunshine and laughter, a taste of a better life to come. It was sweet within her mouth.

Up and trotting again, the nameless pony that looked like a girl moved from building to building. Her extra pair of eyes, domes protruding through her skull, informed her that the way ahead was clear. The Bureau Building was immense. It towered over everything left of San Francisco, twelve stories tall and surrounded by ruins and abandoned cars and buses. Nearly there.

It was a long walk to round the great, dark building. She was exposed now, out in the open, but she felt little fear. The Bureau would be well guarded by Blackmesh, even with the funding cuts, and in any case, she was only a few hundred feet from the main entrance. The brown, dead remains of what had once been topiary still sat in dead garden plots surrounding the entrance, at one time the complex might have been striking, rather than imposing.

Great, dark, translucent Cryslex doors faced her now, on either side a Blackmesh guard holding a formidable looking weapon. The pony-girl bowed grandly to them and begged entrance to be converted.

"Greetings, oh grand knights of the Blackmesh! I come to you with a heart light, and pants filthy, for the dream of a life in fair Equestria! What say you to this, noble knights?"

The two Blackmesh guards stared at the bizarre girl and looked at each other. "It takes all kinds, I guess. Let 'er through."

The glassine doors slid apart, granting entrance. "Pick a clinic, miss, and sign in at the front desk. There's nothing to it." The soldier helpfully suggested.

"Thank you gracious knight of the realm, may all your foals be frisky, and your tail stream behind you when you run."

"Strange girl." Noted the elder of the Blackmesh. "Cute, though." Decided the younger.

One hundred clinics. Which one to choose? Hmm. She walked up the broken escalator in the vast lobby, the lowest level of modular clinics somehow escaping her notice. On the second level, standing on the long balcony, she read the signs outside the individual structures. Above her, more levels rose, each with more and more modular clinics on them.

"Clinic Forty-One, Clinic Forty-Two... hey... Forty-Two! The Ultimate Answer!" She giggled, remembering an old, Pre-Collapse book, one she had particularly loved. That was the clinic, then. Her clinic.

As she approached the security door, a terrified young man burst out, the door slamming to the side as he ran past her. She nearly fell, in his brusk departure he had bruised her upper arm. Through the open door, she could hear a loudspeaker. The voice of a man with a Finnish accent swore briefly, before the sound of a microphone hitting the floor ended what must have been some kind of announcement. The place seemed quite the mess.

It was absolutely perfect.

The girl grinned wider than she ever had before. This was going to be SO MUCH FUN!

CLICK

Rose? I feel afraid.

"Why, Sunshine? We're nearly there. Just go up the ramp and leap across. It's easy. The others are already on the other side. Look, Newmoon is waving a hoof at us. Ooh... there's a whole city of tents over there."

According to the captain, that's 'Welcome Town'. They sort the newfoals as they arrive there. It sounds friendly enough.

"Come on, Sunshine, let's go, alright? Right there, over that ramp, beyond this floating dock... that's Equestria, Sunshine. Equestria! I don't understand..."

I've... it's the holocorder. I...

"Sunshine, Snowflower already told us that nothing bad will happen. At the very worst, it will change into pudding or something, and I'll gladly lick it off your coat, so... what's got you so... bothered?"

I'm... I've been doing this little show of mine... of ours... since before I met you. I'll tell you something - I was... I was a little scared to go to the Bureau. I knew the world was ending. I knew I was helping my parents, I knew it was the only thing to do... but... I was frightened, Rose. I mean, changing your entire species! It's... it doesn't seem so strange now, but back then, I was really a lot more frightened than I let on. Talking to the holocorder, doing this stupid show... it made me feel stronger than I am. It made me feel brave, sort of. I had this thing to do, and as long as I was doing it... I kind of felt protected or invulnerable or... something. I felt... I don't know.

"Having a purpose took you out of yourself. You had something to fuss over other than what it meant to become a pony. I think I understand, Sunshine. And once you pass through that barrier, it's almost certain that the show will end because the 'corder will melt, or change or whatever. You're not sure who you are without your show, is that it?"

Y-Yeah. Yeah... you're scary amazing sometimes. Yeah, that's kind of it. No, that is it. What am I going to do? How do I get through this without... without...

"Without an audience? Without the blessing of an authority figure like the Ministry Of Propaganda and Infotainment? Oh, Sunshine... you DO have an audience! You'll always have an audience, if I have anything to say about it. ME! I'm your forever audience, Sunshine! I love what you have to say, how you look at things, and what you feel. I want to hear your real show, just the way you see the world, for always!"

Rose... oh, Rose...

"And you have an even better authority figure, if you need one, and she's already given you her blessing. Celestia! And Luna! Forget the Ministry, you have the blessings of two goddesses, Sunshine! Two goddesses that control the moon and the sun. That beats a silly Ministry any day. Or night."

Hee! Yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right.

"So, how about it? All our friends are over there, the whole Pony Breakfast Club. They're all waiting. And there's lots of friendly ponies, and the whole of Equestria too. Tasty num-nums... there's going to be a lot of tasty num-nums over there too. Flowers and fruits and grasses we haven't even imagined. And games and fun and picnics and friends we have yet to meet. It's just a little ways. You just put one hoof in front of the other, and before you know it, we'll be there."

Yeah. OK. Listen, everypony!

My name is Sunshine Laughter. I'm a pegasus pony, and this here is Rose Vale. She's an earthpony and she's my mare, and I'm hers. Behind me, that big flat wall of shimmering stuff, that's the Equestrian Barrier, up close. And this is our final episode of 'Going Pony'. Because we did. We went pony, and now... now we're going home.

Going to the Bureau, being converted... it taught me a lot of things. I gained so much from it. I did this originally to help my parents, so that we'd have special treatment in Equestria. But... I am glad I did this even without that. I met some great friends in that Bureau, and... I met the love of my life, too.

"Oh, Sunshine!"

I guess what I want you, out there, whoever, wherever you are, to know... what I want to tell you is... that going pony is worth it. It is absolutely worth it. It is wonderful, and strange, and beautiful, and sometimes even a little scary too. And I know that me saying that to you was the whole point of the Ministry giving me this muffin thing, letting me do this show, but... I don't care. Maybe it is their little propaganda piece to get you to report to the nearest Bureau and emigrate to Equestria before the world dies. I don't care.

I DO care about the fact that I'm happy, really happy, for the first time in my life. Only now, do I realize just how empty my human life was. Yeah, I don't have thumbs, I won't ever play another video game, I'll be using candles instead of light switches and there aren't any fancy cars in Equestria. But I have wings, I can FLY. I can stand on clouds and bring rain where its needed. I don't need to run around in a video game, I can gallop across green fields in the open air faster than any human could ever run, jump off a cliff and soar like a pegasus. I have a lover that can grow strawberries just by singing to them, and a unicorn friend that can levitate things with her mind. Behind me is a world of magic and wonder and fun and food and love.

There aren't enough thumbs to give, to pay for something like that. There isn't a single thing Earth can offer that even comes close to being a shadow of what Equestria offers.

Forget the fact that I'm on your threevee because of the worldgovernment. I'm Sunshine Laughter, the pegasus, and I'm telling you that whatever they say, this... this... it's worth it. It's more than worth it. Every moment you aren't a pony is a moment you'll regret. That's what I'm saying. I guess... I guess that's all.

Come on, Rose. It's time to go home.

"Careful on the edge of the ramp. Nice big jump. Oh! You could just fly. I forgot! Hee! I'd better just concentrate on my own crossing. I wonder what passing through the Barrier will feel like?"

Goodbye, everypony. I hope you'll join us, before it's too late. OK, here we go. Time to see if this holocorder survives the trip. One, two, th

This holoprogram first appeared on Infostream Three, Midclass Kiosk Edition, as part of the Worldgovernment Propaganda and Infotainment Ministry 'World In Crisis' program under the subsection 'Conversion And You'. It is redistributed here in transcribed text format for Permatech, Cranial Feed, Thinscreen and Favela Kiosk consumption with full permission of the Central WorldGov Authority.

If you have further questions or concerns, contact the Worldgovernment Propaganda and Infotainment Ministry. If you wish to emigrate to Equestria, report immediately to your nearest Conversion Bureau. Conversion is free, easy, painless, and transportation and settlement within Equestria is provided free of charge to every human being as a courtesy of the Worldgovernment and the Government of Equestria. Begin a new life today, at your local Conversion Bureau.

THE END

Direct Link to Venice's first appearance, and continuing adventures:
27 Ounces: A story of eight and one half ponies

The Lost In The Herd Series:
One: The Big Respawn,
Two: Euphrosyne Unchained,
Three: Letters From Home,
Four: Teacup, Down On The Farm

The Conversion Bureau Novels:
27 Ounces: A story of eight and one half ponies
The Taste Of Grass
The Conversion Bureau: Code Majeste
The Conversion Bureau: The 800 Year Promise
The Conversion Bureau: Going Pony
The Reasonably Adamant Down With Celestia Newfoal Society!
Recombinant 63: A Conversion Bureau Story
HUMAN in Equestria: A Conversion Bureau Story
The PER: Michelson and Morely
Little Blue Cat
Cross The Amazon
Adrift Off Fiddler's Green: The Final Conversion Bureau Story

The Short Stories:
Her Last Possession
The Conversion Bureau: PER Equitum
The Conversion Bureau: Brand New Universe
Tales Of Los Pegasus
The Poly Little Pony

The very first and original
Conversion Bureau Group
archives only the best Three Rules Compatible stories!

Optimalverse Works:
Friendship Is Optimal: Caelum Est Conterrens
Leftovers: A Friendship Is Optimal Story
IMPLACABLE
My Life In Fimbria

Injectorverse Works:
I.D. - That Indestructible Something

The More Conventional Fanfics:
The Ice Cream Pony Summer
Around The Bend

PRIDE related works:
Transspecieality

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