Butterfly

She’s beautiful. Her name is Mariposa and she’s beautiful.

I watch her on my Personal Terminal as I ride the train to work. She’s not just a singer, a dancer, Earth’s first breakout pony pop idol. She’s a goddess. She’s funny and kind. Her fur is coppery orange and seems to gleam against her flowing black mane. Her eyes sparkle, her voice like a bell. And her wings. Her wings are the same orange as her coat, but tipped with black and speckled white, like monarch butterfly wings. Her wings look perfect on her, not because she’s a pegasus, but because she’s an angel.

Mariposa is a strange name for a pony, but I think it suits her perfectly. She burst onto the Net four years ago, just about the time I came here, and in that time she’s never made a public appearance. All of her concerts are Net-exclusive. They say only a handful of people have ever seen her in person. That she’s terrified of Earth cities, of crowds of humans. Some say she actually broadcasts from back in Equestria and she’s never even been through the gate. That that’s why no one’s seen her. Some people even say she’s not real; just a CG character cooked up by the corporations to sell music files.

I know they’re wrong. She’s real. One day we’ll meet. I’ll help her overcome her fears, show her that some humans don’t have to be scary. We’ll fall in love, and have our happily ever after.

People think it’s weird that I love Mari. They say I’m obsessed, call me a bestialist. Why can’t a human love a pony? Come on, it’s been thirty years since humans opened the gate and bridged the worlds. Ponies aren’t new and strange anymore. They’re just like humans. So why can’t we be together?

Maybe it’s because I was born and raised in Equestria- one of the first humans so- that I prefer ponies to humans. Maybe that’s why I’m more open-minded than the rest of these apes. Doesn’t matter. All I know is that while I may not have a cutiemark, I know my destiny. Her name is Mari.

The train pulls into the last station next to the oxygen-scrubber plant at the edge of town as the sun slips below the horizon. Oxygen scrubbers…That was one thing about this world that took me a long time to get used to when I first came over. Simultaneously the most and least noticeable thing was the complete lack of magic anywhere. That constant background hum; like a warm hug all the time; isn’t something you even notice until it’s gone. But after that, this is the biggest thing: Earth is so crowded and so dirty. They even have to clean their air so they can breath it. I adjust my particle mask at that thought.

The train’s doors open and I regretfully close out my Personal Terminal. I hate that I have to keep missing the live feeds of Mariposa’s concerts. At least I won’t have to for much longer. I slog down from the station to an available cab, instruct the AI where to go, and climb in. As I speed away from the city, into the remote countryside where only the rich can afford to segregate themselves, I remove my mask and breathe in the air. It still stinks to my nose.

The one thing I can’t argue with is all of the technology. Back home, you might occasionally see a human with some sort of prosthetic implant around Canterlot, near the gate, or a high society pony touting a Personal Terminal like a trophy. But here, it’s everywhere. Everything is electric and automated with an AI built right in. It’s all very convenient. All the humans have a PT. Some even have them built right into their eyes. I don’t know how I feel about people altering themselves so much. Where I come from, if it can’t be changed back with the flick of a horn, you shouldn’t be changing it. Replacing damaged legs with machines? Ugh, why can’t people stick with more natural things like transforming themselves into griffons? Makes me wonder why exactly I’m in the line of work I’m in. I guess I was just expecting things to turn out differently.

I’m a personal care nurse for homebound patients. Back home, it’s mostly medicine, potions, spells, and tender loving care. That’s what I expected when I started down this path at Canterlot Medical College. But then they recommended me for a cultural exchange program with an Earth school. I get the feeling they weren’t comfortable having a meat eater poking around sick and injured ponies. But when you’re a medical student in central Equestria, the CMC is the be-all-end-all. They’re all-powerful and what they say goes. And my Celestia, the reception when I crossed through the gate to Earth. They were clearly expecting a pony and they got some human. To say it was uncomfortable is an understatement.

But now here I am on Earth, practicing human medicine and human technology. Here, and especially for this patient, there’s very little of what I was used to. No spells, no potions, not even really much TLC. On this job, for this patient, I’m more technician than medical nurse.

His name is Carlos Pillar. Five years ago, he was in a horrible crash. I’m told that on Earth, even twenty years ago, he wouldn’t have survived the night, let alone the five years it’s been since then. If you can call this surviving. In Equestria, if they got the healing spells into him fast enough he could have been fixed up good as new instead of… this.

He lives way outside the city, in a big, empty mansion paid for by the settlement from the airline. He doesn’t even have any furniture. But then again, I’ve only ever seen two other people coming or going. One is his day nurse and the other is his financial manager. I couldn’t believe my luck the first time I saw her. Pillar’s financial manager is also Mariposa’s agent. One of the few people who actually knows her. I’m always bursting to ask questions about her, but I know the woman will never answer them.

I arrive at the house just as the day nurse is leaving. The house’s AI recognizes my face and lets me in. I make my way to Pillar’s room. His bed is more MRI than mattress. He lays, paralyzed, in the metal and plastic cocoon, tubes and wires snaking their way from the machines that keep him alive, around his stumps, into his body. Nanomachines in his blood are the only thing preventing a lethal infection. The synthetic grafts that substitute for his skin look like smooth, shiny plastic. He can’t talk. He can’t even breathe on his own. A respirator does it for him. He’s barely even a person anymore. He’s more machine than anything. I can’t help but be disgusted.

Since he can’t talk, or really, even move, he can only communicate with the world through text on a monitor. Not that he does. He’s rarely ever “here”. He spends most of his time interfacing online. And when he’s “here”, he just doesn’t talk to me. Pretty much the only time he does is if a new or unusual cocktail of drugs make him loopy. When that happens, he starts spouting walls of random text. Gibberish about fire “burning away his shell” and “setting him free". Just crazy nonsense.

I’ve got nothing but pity for him.

When I approach him, I see he’s interfacing, as usual. What else can the poor bastard do? I’m told accessing the Net through a neural implant is mostly the same as doing it through a PT, except you don’t have to use your fingers. But interfacing is the next step. In the last few years, just a little bit before I came here, they created these new neural implants that can let anyone interface their consciousness directly into the Net for “a full sensory experience”. They’re mostly for fully immersive VR games. “BE your avatar! Become anything!” the ads proclaim. Of course, only the rich can afford them yet, so who knows.

Since Pillar’s busy interfacing, I check Mariposa’s concert on my PT. Celestia damn it, it’s just ended. He’s made me miss it again. It’s not like I won’t rewatch the recording a dozen times later, but still. It’s different when it’s a live feed. When I watch her sing and dance and flit about like a butterfly on those orange and black wings as she’s doing it, it makes me feel like I’m right there next to her.

I hear a beep indicating Pillar’s done interfacing and disconnected. Okay, time to get to work and start tending to my patient. As I lean over him to check a tube running from a port on his back, our eyes meet briefly. I could swear I can see a sort of lightness, some happiness in his eyes. I can’t imagine why. I try not to let my own eyes show my irritation that he made me miss my Mari again.

Oh well. Luckily, it won’t have to be for much longer. I’ve been approved for reassignment to another patient soon. One on the day shift. Soon, I won’t have to waste my evenings with Carlos Pillar. I’ll be able to spend them with my Mari. My beautiful butterfly.