Out of Synch
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A Second Passing

Out of Synch

Just call me Nathan, that’s pretty much all of my name you need to know. I’m just your average loser from the internet. I never really had much worth, never did a single damned thing with my life. I pretty much just sat around, leeching off my parents long past my late teens. I was trying to get a job, but it was only a token effort until recently, when I finally seemed to be about ready to turn my life around.

Figures that was the day when God decided to screw with me.

What was happening?

Why was this happening?

That voice in my head, the memories that weren’t mine, the strange (yet familiar), over-sized house that I had woken up in; none of this made any bucking sense!

At least the voice was gone for the moment; after it had made my body look in the mirror and mentioned my old nickname from CSGU, I had felt its consciousness wavering and put all my mental faculties toward making my body move once more. It was touch and go for 34 seconds, as it was a physical reaction as well as a mental, but I did find myself back in control of my own body.

Now… where was I?!

The house, this strange house full of things that I did and didn’t recognize from a life that I had never lived, was so familiarly alien that it almost drove me mad.. Some I could recognize, the sink, the oven, the cabinets; others only had names that I recognized in the same way I knew the names of the incessantly barking dogs!

“Shut up!” I bellowed, so loud my throat actually hurt from the effort; something wasn’t right. I was never that forceful or loud. I had my moments, of course, but that was usually when I was thrown off schedule and–

My schedule!

Ruined! Totally ruined and there was nothing that I could do to fix it unless I could get home. I am home; this is my home. NO! Nononono, this is some strange, disproportionate house that is nothing like mine!

That voice, I could hear it stirring, trying to take my body away from me again. I wouldn’t let it do this, not now, not when my schedule… schedule, I barely ever kept a– What the buck am I saying?!

My life is schedules! Every moment of every day, planned to meticulous detail; schedules make sense of this insane world when nothing else can! I need my schedules to get anything done. And now I was without them and… and…

And those dogs still hadn’t shut up!

“Tucker, Lily, shut up!” There, finally, they were quiet. Their names, they just came to my head again. I had never seen them before in my life, they were almost bigger than me! How could dogs that big even be trained?! Much less kept as pets. I mean, I know they’re stupid and all, but Lily should have–

Where was all this coming from?! I was the one in control, not the voice! It shouldn’t have been–

Phone! Phone was ringing now. Who could be calling now? Best to just let it ring. Whoever it was couldn’t be expecting to find a pony on the other end of the line anyway. And I had more pressing matters to deal with at this moment. For one thing, how the buck did I know what a ‘phone’ was and how it worked?!

There was a click and the machine picked up. I’d mostly tuned out at this point, but then I heard someone that I shouldn’t have recognized. “Naaaaaaate? Hellooooooooooo? Pick up!”

Mom?! What was she doing calling, and who was this mare… woman… mare… something that I thought was my mother?! She didn’t sound anything like my–

“Well, when you get this, pull the chicken out of the freezer and put it in the slow cooker with some chicken cubes and water. I’ll be home in a little bit.”

Great, that meant chicken noodle soup for dinner, dammit, I was hoping to– wait, ‘home in a little bit’?

Maybe she could tell me what’s going– what was I saying?! She wouldl freak out, and in a bad way too. I couldn’t let her see me; there was no way she’d buy that I’m her son! Son? I wasn’t a colt.

Whatever! I need to get out! I need to get out before something bad happens!

Images, what were those images? A tool? A gun; a gun pointed at my head! The being– person holding it– my dad– he didn’t look happy. He was going to pull it! Strapped to a table, more things, humans, dressed like scientists in if their lab coats and glasses; a circle with teeth, a saw, it’s cutting me, it’s cutting me! Make it stop! Make it stop!

I started back to reality, unable to believe that what I’d just seen had not only not been real, but had come from within my own mind! I had never had an imagination so vivid, nor so morbid. How could I just think up scenes of my death at the drop of a hat?! Well, the second one wasn’t death, it was vivisection. What does that word even mean?! How do I know it?!

Whatever!

Priority: I need to get out of here, before she gets to the house and sees a pony in it. Nothing good will happen if she does, and all of it centered on bodily harm to me. I had to get out of here fast!

The room I woke up in was just as familiar as it never was; I didn’t know why my first instinct was to run into my room, but I was panicked and this was just where my very confused mind had led me. There were things I wanted to get; the first thing I tried to do was grab some clothing, only to realize that one, none of those clothes looked like they would even fit a pony, and two, I don’t wear cloths!

What kind of whorse did I think I was?! Wearing clothing? In public?! This isn’t some formal setting, I’m just going outside! Why in the buck would I put on clothing?! The last thing I want is to draw attention to me!

Okay, okay… no clothing, that makes sense for something that isn’t… ‘human’? Why did that word keep popping into my head? Was that what those two-legged monsters I imagined– No! Humans are not monsters! They’re not perfect, they need to work on a lot, but they’re not evil for evil’s sake! Now I was defending them against myself? What was wrong with me, my head, my head hurt so much! Why did none of this make any sense?!

Focus! Focus on the task: Get out of this house! Yes, that, that’s a good idea.

I still needed something, though… that machine there… a ‘laptop’? It was important, I didn’t know why, but it just was. Take that.

I grabbed it with my magic, then pulled a cord for it out from behind the mattress. For a moment, I found myself wondering how I knew it was there, and why I knew I would need it, but that was pushed aside given the circumstances. I made to grab something else, some sort of communications device, but I decided against it; I only ever used it to call the family anyway, and they’re the last people I want to talk to when I’m like this now and… huh? What was I thinking? Nevermind, I took the wallet though; even if the ID was worthless, there was still cash and a credit card in there. Money was always needed.

Okay... three things… I could hold them for now, but I wasn’t going to be able to carry them around with just my magic. Constantly levitating something was hard enough on its own; having your magic split three different ways while holding things was something for prodigies. I might have been ‘gifted’ by the standards of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, but I wasn’t some reality-warping unicorn who could been the laws of magic to my whims!

Wait… wait… bag, in the closet. I remembered that there was a bag in the closet I could use to carry the blasted things. I shouldn’t have remembered it, but I did; my head was starting to hurt again, but I needed to get out of the house!

Forget it, I told myself, forcing conviction into my thoughts. Forget about all these things; the priority is getting out of here before it's too late!

The bag was old and worn, and had a hole large enough to put my hoof through on one side. However, the bag itself was so large that I had little concern that such a hole would be of any issue.

The items slid inside easily, but that was only one of many problems. The bag itself was more than twice the size of any saddlebag I'd ever seen; telekinetically carrying this long term wouldn't work either, but I could manage for 54 minutes 43.22 seconds. Considering my average gallop speed, even concentrating on the spell like I was, I should be able to put some distance between myself and this house before I reached my limit.

It wasn't much of a plan, but it was something more than I had started with, and phrases like 'in a bit,' when spoken by sompony– one– else, had so varied a definition of their duration that I never trusted their use. A few friends may be able to get away with using them with me, but I'm not going to trust somepony– one that I have never met, even is she is my mother.

I shook my head again, trying to clear it and get back the focus I had entered this– my room with before it flew away entirely. What was wrong with my brain?! There were times that I had been somewhat scatterbrained, it was unavoidable really, but I had never been this maddeningly uncertain in my life! And that voice... I had never heard voices, despite some of the things that other ponies had said about me at CSGU; what was going on?!

House. Leave. NOW! I had to focus on those things, they were the only things that made sense, no matter how confusing everything else was getting.

Still holding the bag with all the important things in my telekinesis spell, I left the room.

Suddenly, I felt nervousness well up within me, and I was suddenly doubting my decision to try and leave this place behind me. It had been my home for so very long... to leave it behind, just on the spur of the moment... it just felt so... so...

What the buck am I thinking?!

This wasn't my home! It wasn't anything close to my home! I don't even think anypony could live in this house, it was just too big! The bed in this– my was nearly as tall as I was, and the dresser I'd tried to retrieve clothes from was nearly twice that; I couldn't even begin to imagine just how large some of the other things were within this house that confused me so when it should have been entirely famil–

I actually screamed and stomped in frustration then, so sick of whatever was happening. Whenever my mind wandered away from the task at hoof– hand, things started devolving into a confusing mass that pulled me in two different directions. It was actually causing me physical pain, and I was starting to doubt how long I could hold the telekinesis spell; I had never doubted my sense of time in my life! Something was wrong, something was beyond so simple a concept as 'wrong' if I was doubting my sense of time!

But I couldn't stop now!

There was somepony– one coming, and their time-frame of arrival was vague at best; they would not be happy to find a pony instead of another one of what they were– instead of a human. I needed to remove myself from this situation, while I still had the ability to do so; those facts, when I focused on them, were clear. Just focus on them and I can get out of here!

I still held the bag in my magic; I could do that for a good amount of time yet, even with the doubt that still wriggled and squirmed in my mind. The strange satchel floated along next to me as I started to gallop through the house; I knew where the front door was, but I decided to not question it and delay my departure any longer. Thankfully, it was a handle and not a knob, so I just had to move it with my hoof to open the door. Some part of my mind... I couldn't tell where... it told me to lock the door behind me, and I found my telekinesis turning a small knob on the pivot point of the handle. The lock, it was locked, I could shut the door and the dogs wouldn’t get out.

After that, I just started to run.

A pony at full gallop could cover some surprising distance in a short amount of time, even more when they were running with fear in their step. I was afraid now, terrified, simply because of what my own mind had suddenly conjured as the most likely outcome if this person– my mother found me in that house.

I don't know where I was going, or what part of me had decided to head off in that direction, but I didn't pause to think about it; the only thing I could keep my mind focused on was getting as far from this strange unfamiliarly familiar house as equinely possible. It was 43 minutes and 27 seconds before I finally had the presence of mind to slow my steps and take a bit of a rest; I never stopped moving, but I wasn't going at full gallop any longer. I had passed some of those... those things– humans in my run, but I hadn't stopped to pay any attention to them. The images of those ones in lab coats still burned in my mind, I didn't know if I could trust any of them not to cut me open.

I needed a plan; I needed to know what I was going to do now that I was a good distance away from the house. My lack of a schedule was already coming back to bite me in the plot, and I needed to sit down and actually think of something to do, needed a plan, a place to think that was safe and away from prying eyes. I needed... I needed...

I needed to hear a bucking clock!

I'm not proud to admit this particular aspect of myself, even less so due to the jeers that many ponies have given me over the years regarding it, but the sound of a ticking clock, or the movements of a massive, gear driven clock tower had always been soothing to me. It's so massive a part of my life andI've become so used to it that I literally can not fathom living without it; now that my mind was semi-coherent, however, I started to hear the oppressive lack of ticking, tocking, or any variation thereof, and it was bordering on maddening!

There's a big clock in town... it was that voice again, the one that was doing nothing to help my fragile grip on sanity for the moment. Still... the possibility of finding a clock, however odd the source of the information may have been, was too great for me to just pass by after everything I had dealt with since awakening.

Against all measure of common sense (which, admittedly, I have been accused of lacking at times), I found myself following the directions of a voice that I wasn't even sure was real. Thanks to some measure of luck on my part, I had already been galloping in the proper direction in my panic, so I had already traveled a good measure of the distance I needed to by the time it had spoken up. However, now that I was thinking about my travels, I was moving much slower, and not just because of my tiredness.

Strange machines were passing by occasionally; they reminded me of carriages, except there was nopony and nothing pulling them. Somehow, I recognized them, even though I knew I shouldn't. The word 'car' kept springing into my head, and I couldn't tell if it was the voice that had sent me in this direction, or something else that made just as little sense. Either way, I found myself doing my best to stay out of sight whenever one of them passed my by, which severely hampered my progress. I was sure several spotted me, especially considering my coat and mane's contrast to the colors of the road and the plant life in this place, but – praise Celestia – none of them stopped.

A few slowed down, like they were about to, but I found my fear of what could happen an excellent motivator to my tired hooves. I always managed to gallop away before any of them could actually stop, and they didn't seem to deem me important enough to continue chasing afterward.

It was 2 hours 32 minutes and 46 seconds before I neared the town the voice was telling me about, and I found myself moving even slower and more carefully once I had. Not only were the 'cars' more numerous, I was passing by several homes, and I couldn't avoid standing out, being a pony and all. Here, the humans were more reserved and cautious, though. None of them tried to approach me, but many of them stopped what they were doing to look at me.

I've never been good at reading faces, so telling what they were thinking while observing me was lost on my mind. All that mattered to me, for the moment, was that none of them were trying to cut me open while I was still alive. Still, the town was small, and the clock wasn't in the center of it like I had been afraid it would be, so I was able to reach it after only 38 minutes and 41 seconds.

However, it seemed that nothing was going to be easy on this day.

There was a door into the clock tower, as should be expected, but it was locked when I tried to turn the knob with my magic. For .65 seconds, I considered bucking it open, but that notion was my frustration overruling conscious thought; the door opened outwards, and was made of metal, I couldn't buck it down unless I was an incredibly gifted applebucker, which I wasn't.

More in frustration than actually expecting that it would work, I attempted to use an unlocking spell on the door. I almost neighed out in shock when I heard the click of the lock coming undone. To prevent thieves, locks have high level enchanting on them; they lock onto the first magic that's used to unlock them and won't respond to another, unless another – equally unique – spell is used to allow them access; you'd have to be a very powerful unicorn to override the spell and open it anyway. To have this open so easily, it was like it lacked the protection spell entirely.

Of course, that voice again, magic doesn't exist.

But I had just used it, I had been using it since I'd taken control of my body back! Magic had to exist, since I was using it.

The pain in my head came back, two sets of memories, both of which I knew to be true, conflicted with each other violently. One was the memory of a world where technology ruled, where everything I considered magic outside of telekinesis could be replicated – even improved – via technology. The other was the land of Equestria, where magic wasn't just simple tricks and lights, it was a part of the world so interwoven with it that telling where one ended and the other began was often difficult, if not impossible. Both had their good and bad points, but I couldn't focus on either one of them; I was too busy trying to sort through them while in agony.

At some point, I must have opened the door with my magic, because I suddenly found myself falling to the floor inside the clock tower.

The movement of the gears, coupled with the ticking that I so missed, finally managed to chase away the dizzying and conflicting images. It was 3 minutes and 54 seconds before I finally made the effort to start thinking again, just listening to the lovely sounds of the clock that now surrounded me.

My first act was to close the door, locking it once I had, to ensure my privacy. Then, once that was done, I found my way into a sitting position; I needed to think, and this was just the place to do that.

The first priority: I was stuck in a strange place, without any other ponies around that I could see. I needed to find another pony, or at least something that would point me in the proper direction to do so.

The computer.

It was that voice again, mentioning the machine I had taken from the house. Though the rational part of my mind was screaming at me for listening to a voice in my head, I found myself removing the device from the bag and flipping it open.

Following steps that I did my hardest no to question how I knew, I soon found it on and myself staring at the screen. Now... what was I supposed to do?

Internet, Google, search it.

And, now, I took yet another step toward legal madness.

“You want me to search the entire internet for something that matches my situation?” Forgetting about how I even knew what this 'internet' was, I had started to answer a voice in my head aloud; of all the signs of insanity I'd demonstrated since waking up, this was easily the greatest of the lot.

Just get on the goddamned internet!

I actually flinched there, almost physically hearing it that time. It put me so far off balance that I was already opening the browser (moving the mouse with my hoof and telekinetically pushing down each key as I needed them) before I could even start to question it.

The search bar was built in, so all I had to do was type there, but that still left me with two questions in mind: One, what was I supposed to search? Two, how the buck did I know what I was doing?!

Thinking about the second one, however, was already giving me more of those pains that had forced me the floor 7 minutes 21 seconds ago, so I couldn't focus on it, no matter what I tried. The first question, however, was answered for me.

Just type in 'Pony', 'Transformed' and put 'site:facebook.com' at the end. Social media's about the only chance right now.

Again, I forced myself not to think about all the information that I knew, but shouldn't; I just typed in what I was told. Still, even if I wasn't going to question it, I did have the access to it, and my hopes weren't exactly high; the early results didn't exactly do much to alleviate my doubts, either, just a bunch of fetish groups that I really didn't want to read right now.

With a grunt, my horn flashed and the laptop was slammed shut.

What the hell do you think you're doing?! I flinched again, but remained in control this time. Are you trying to break the thing? It's the only hope I have!

“I don't care!” I was arguing with it again, acknowledging it as a presence. I really didn't want to think what that meant for my mind. “I don't want to look at porn – and worse – of ponies that I know! And you think I'm enjoying this?! I just want to go home and build more clocks!”

My head was starting to hurt again, worse than the last time.

And what about me? Huh? Am I just going to go away, stop existing, just fucking die, all so you can go back to your damned clocks?!

“Shut up!” I was pacing, shaking my head as much as I could. The pain was multiplying, I could barely keep track of the seconds. “You're just a voice in my head; you're not real!”

Pain, so much pain!

I'm more real than you! You're just a cartoon horse from a damned television show!

It hurt, it hurt so much. The edges blurring, losing focus. Had it been a second? A minute? An hour? I couldn't tell.. why couldn't I tell?!

“I'm not a cartoon! I'm real, I'm flesh and blood, I had a life, I have a life back home, waiting for me!”

Why was I on the floor? When had I fallen? Wetness... blood? From my head?

I have a life here! I was making it work! I was finally going to stop being a leech and actually do something with my worthless self! What right do you have to take it away from me?! Pain, so much pain. I don't want your life!

“And I don't want yours!” Shut up! Why wouldn't it shut up? The pain surged whenever it spoke. It had to go away, then the pain would finally stop, I could finally think again. “Just leave me alone!”

Give! A spasm went through my body... no, that was the voice, trying to move it. Me! More movements I didn't do, move movements he did do. Back! A hoof moved, like it was trying to push me up, but wasn't the one who wanted up. My! Another hoof moved, ready to push up. Body!

“No!”

The pain was so intense, so blindingly searing, that I feared for my sight. But it slowly faded, and I saw the inside of the clock tower once again. I was still on the floor, the voice was silent again, the pain was subsiding.

“I want my life back... I want it back.”

I don't know which of us said that, whether it was myself, reaffirming my determination to get back home, or the voice, giving one final plea before it shrank back into the depths of my mind. Truthfully, I couldn't have cared in that moment.

All I knew was that it was true, and that was the last thought I could form before I finally passed out.