Thought-Journal 2293 of Brawny Boulder Applejack, April 4th, 2084.
My name is Jack Smith Johnson, and I am the last of my kind.
For years, I have hidden in the shadows of society as my kind dwindled; captured by force or simply lured by the promise of hot food, warm beds, and a life free from being hunted. As far as I know, I am the only non-brony left alive. And that won’t be for much longer.
Today, I will be marched to my execution. It isn’t a literal execution, as that would violate one of the Primary Tenets of Faustianity: Thou shalt Love and Tolerate thy fellow beings. Of course, this is superseded by the first Tenet: Thou shalt Love My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and seek to emulate its teachings. As wonderful as Love and Tolerance are, it’s more important that I love their show, apparently. Only then do I get the Tolerance the bastards preach. The High Inquisitors of Faustianity shall not stop until I am one of them, and thus my life ends today. Either I shall be condemned to a lifetime of inquisition, or I shall lose my identity. I cannot fake a love of the show. They’ll know. They always know.
I am writing this in the hope that some future generation shall stumble upon it, and learn that there is a choice. You do not have to be a Faustian, no matter what they would have you believe. MLP:FIM is a show originally designed for children and to market a Faust-damned toy line, not as a guideline for human behaviour. They have suppressed this information of course. This isn’t what you’ll learn in your schools, studying the show obsessively and seeking to live your life according to its teachings. Even our names have been molded by it. We used to have a completely different naming system, as evidenced by my true name, Jack Smith Johnson, which I have chosen for myself. This name is likely to seem strange to you. Once, my given name, Brawny Boulder Applejack, would have seemed even stranger to humankind.
Nobody knows when the bronies first took over, or even how. That knowledge is lost forever. From what I’ve picked up orally over the years from the few other rebels I have met, the bronies took over somewhere between sixty and seventy years ago, shortly into the show’s lifespan. After the Pre-Twilicorn Era, but before the Prequels were first produced. They grew exponentially until they had millions of people under their banner. The histories are hazy at this point, but somehow they began gaining a lot of political power, which added legitimacy to the show, which turned into a vicious cycle. Somehow, they took over before the show had finished its twelfth season. If you have found my Thought-Journals, and wish to know more of this, see journals 1900-2000. They’re in there somewhere; I forget exactly where. I’d check it for you, but I don’t exactly have time for a lengthy perusal right now. They’ll be showing up in a few minutes.
What else should I say? What are the most important things you should know? In the event that you’re finding this, you have found the only hope for the anti-Faust movement to continue, to be reborn. Use the sewers. Sewers are old tunnels, now defunct, that were once used to carry waste products throughout cities. Nobody goes down there anymore, except for us rebels and those who seek to catch us. Many of our caches have been found and destroyed, but if you know the signs, you can find them.
I am reluctant to reveal the signs we have kept secret for so long... but if these journals get captured, it won’t matter if they know anymore. So, reader, I shall tell you the signs. When you enter the sewers, begin looking up towards the ceiling. Signs of direction to caches will be the big star from Twilight Sparkle’s cutie mark, surrounded by a circle with a diagonal line going through it. That circle will have a small line extending from it. Face in the direction of the line, and turn ninety degrees to your right. That is the direction of the cache. If the line has been turned into a T, the cache has been confirmed as removed or destroyed. When you find a symbol that tells you to go back the way you came, the cache is very near that spot. Hunt around and you’ll find a hidden door somewhere. That’s where the cache is. Find it! You’ll find shelter, emergency food, survival supplies, and weapons.
I hear voices outside. They’ve found the cache. They’re coming for me. This will be my last Thought-Journal as Jack Smith Johnson. As soon as this finishes, I’m sending it to the tablet I’ve hidden. This is the tablet you now hold in your hands, reader.
Our last hope goes with you.
-Jack Smith Johnson, Non-Brony.
End of Thought-Journal 2293 of Brawny Boulder Applejack, April 4th, 2084.
* * *
Ignoring the loud, deep thump of the door beginning to crack off its foundations, I swiftly sent the last journal and dropped the tablet. Grabbing a hammer, I smashed the device to pieces, shattering the core components again and again, ensuring nothing could ever be recovered from the device.
I placed the hammer down and put my hands in the air as the soldiers entered, moving quickly through the dust of their forced entrance, eyes down the barrels of their stun-guns as they scanned the room. Within seconds, four stun-guns were pointed at me. One of the soldiers spoke into an earpiece. “Room is secured, repeat, room is secured, over.”
A woman entered, wearing the white and dark blue colors of the Inquisition. It probably had some cutesy pony name, but the rebels called it the Inquisition, and it was a far more accurate name than any the government propaganda machine would have come up with. The woman spoke. “Brawny Boulder Applejack, I hereby place you under arrest under charges of theft, assault of official personnel, sedition, and anti-bronyism. Do you plead guilty to these charges?”
There was no point denying them. “Yes,” I said.
“Thank you, Mr. Boulder. Place him under arrest,” the woman said.
I offered my hands willingly to the cuffs. There was always the chance they might get lax in their security if I cooperated enough... but considering how few rebels were left, and how long I’d evaded their clutches, I wasn’t holding my breath. I was cuffed and searched, as more soldiers investigated the cache around me. They quickly found the destroyed tablet, and one of the guards got in my face. “Tell us what was on this. Now.” he said.
The woman held up a hand. “It doesn’t matter, Sergeant. He’ll tell us of his own free will within a few days.” she said, smiling.
“Like hell, bitch.” I said.
The soldier moved violently, but another hand gesture from the woman stopped him. Her smile never wavered, and I felt real fear at that. The woman looked like she had four aces in her hand. Unshakable confidence. Whatever methods they had to bronify me, they had to be damn good.
The search concluded, and they marched me out of the sewers and into the mid-morning sun. I screwed up my eyes as the light entered them. I hadn’t been outside in days, running from cache to cache as the soldiers closed in. And for what? The rebellion was, at last, dead. Crushed under the foot of the Faustians. Nearly a decade of running and hiding personally, decades of slowly dwindling numbers before me...and it all ended here.
I was placed on a special vehicle, in a cage with some sort of shock-absorbing apparatus attached to it, open to the public. They began driving into the heart of Boston, and the crowd began calling out to me. I tensed, ready for the worst.
“Welcome to the fold!”
“We love you!”
“You’ll be among friends soon!”
“Good to see you back, friend!”
“Welcome back to harmony!”
My first reaction was incredulity, but then the fear redoubled. Why were all these people acting as if my breaking was a foregone conclusion? Had...had all the others given in? Did nobody manage to hold on? What the hell did these people have in store for me? I sat down in the cage, suddenly scared. For the first time in years, I was truly scared for my fate. The possibility occurred to me that this was more government propaganda, that the citizens only thought that all the other rebels broke. But the confident expression of the Inquisitor made me think otherwise.
The messages of Love and Tolerance grew more and more frequent as we grew near the giant building at the heart of Boston that served as the government’s local base of operations. It grew a little better as the crowds thickened even further, as I started being unable to make out individual messages, and it became background noise with the occasional word thrown in.
I didn’t know how long the ride lasted. Hours, certainly. Finally, we arrived at a garage and drove down into an underground parking area. The voices grew muted, and died as we ventured further in. There were more guards and inquisitors waiting for us as we parked. Half a dozen guards and three inquisitors were there, including one with Celestia’s cutie mark emblazoned on one shoulder, and Luna’s on the other. One of the High Inquisitors. Again, the fear rose to the surface, and I fought to keep it from my expression and movements. I would not let them know I was afraid.
The High Inquisitor met my eyes, and smiled a knowing smile. I couldn’t keep her gaze for long, and dropped my eyes. She knew. Underneath my false bravado, she knew. She was probably extensively trained in body language to begin with. One didn’t attain a rank like hers without being uncommonly perceptive. They walked me through several halls, all of which looked the same. All of them had the same clean white walls, the same fluorescent lighting that was a little too bright for the environment, and the same cheap-yet-functional doors clearly designed with as much love and attention as a block of steel. Posters of the third Lady Faust and popular ponies from the show were hung up in exact distances from each other, adorning the halls as the only form of decoration. Finally, we entered some sort of lounge or entryway. It had several chairs, a coffee table, a TV (showing nothing but My Little Pony, no doubt), several lamps, and a vase of flowers in the centre of the table.
“You’ll stay here, tonight.” the woman said. “Tomorrow...well, I’ll let you use your imagination.”
She walked out before I could think of a snappy response. After a minute, I sat down in one of the chairs, and just drifted in my own thoughts for a few minutes, eyes unfocused. What was going to happen to me? Could they really make me abandon what I believed in? Could they actually force me to become a brony? All the evidence seemed to suggest they could.
“My name is John Smith Jackson.” I spoke firmly to myself. “I am twenty-nine years old. I am not a brony. I hate My Little Pony. It’s a stupid show, designed for children. It is not suitable for a world religion. I will not become a brony. I will not enjoy My Little Pony. It’s a stupid show, designed for children...”
After a minute or two of this, I stood up and tried the door. Naturally, it was locked. More than likely, it was reinforced, even though it didn’t look like it. Even if I did break out somehow, there were probably guards outside, and I’d still be in the middle of a hostile building in the middle of an equally hostile city. There was no way out.
I checked the rest of the suite. The kitchen was no help. Bathroom was the same. Bedroom: window. Ha! I looked down. At least six stories up. But maybe I could make some sort of ladder...perhaps out of the bed sheets? I stared at the window and thought.
Contemplating my options, I heard a noise. “Don’t even bother.” a man’s voice spoke.
“Who is that? Where are you?” I said, glancing around.
“There’s an intercom. I wouldn’t bother trying to break that window. It’s bulletproof glass. You could hit it with a sledgehammer and it wouldn’t break.” the man said.
“Fuck you!” I said. I walked over to the lamp. Metal. I took it out of its power socket and grabbed it awkwardly. I slammed the metal end against the window as hard as I could. Nothing. I did more damage to my own arms than I did the window.
“Told you.” The voice said.
“Fuck you!” I said again. I ripped off the lampshade and got a better grip. I started hammering at the window again and again, screaming in anger and fear. Finally I stopped, gasping for breath, arms aching. The window was untouched. I threw the lamp at the wall.
“FUCK!” I shouted. I stamped my foot onto the floor, and started to think. How did Intercom Guy know what I was thinking? I was looking at the window, so he must have been able to see me.
Looking around the room, I saw a red dot high up in one of the corners. I stuck my middle finger up at it, and went to check the rest of the suite. There were cameras everywhere. Even the bathroom. Maybe I could steam up the bathroom and...and do what? The door was locked, and probably harder to break through than the glass, and there was no chance of breaking through that either.
I was trapped. There was no escape. None at all.
* * *
They came for me the next day, after breakfast. They fed me. Quite well, even. It didn’t make me feel any better. Knowing you’re about to have forced brainwashing thrust upon you tends to kill the appetite a bit. I ate anyway. Old habit, picked up by soldiers and rebels alike. You don’t turn down food when it’s there, or you’ll regret it when it’s not. They blindfolded me, and walked me through so many corridors that the building couldn’t possibly contain them all. I’m sure we crossed the same corridors three or four times. Finally, they brought me into a room, or what I thought was a room from the acoustic change. They sat me down in a chair, and strapped me in. Removing my blindfold, I turned out to be right about the room.
The part of the room I could see contained nothing but a chair, three High Inquisitors, and a huge armada of flat-screen TVs which I was now facing. There had to be at least fifty. Why they needed so many TV’s, I didn’t know. I had a feeling it was about to be made clear.
“So what now?” I sneered, voice sounding fake even to my own ears. “Going to make me watch My Little Pony until I crack and fall to my knees, pleading forgiveness for ever d-denying such a beautiful, magical show? Is that it? Do you think your precious show is that good?”
Again with the pocket-aces smiles. This wasn’t good. “Not too far off the mark.” the female Inquisitor said. She was a different one to yesterday. This one looked even more formidable. I noticed my hands trembling, and told them to cut it out before anybody saw.
“Play the Pre-Twilicorn Era.” one of the men said. The third Inquisitor headed to obey, beginning to press things on something behind me.
“So, that’s your strategy? Just going to subject me to twenty-something hours of My Little Pony?” I said.
“Oh no.” The man who gave the orders said. “It’ll be much quicker than that. Attach the headphones.”
The man stepped up behind me, and placed a large set of headphones over my ears. They covered my ears entirely, rendering my own breath loud in my ears, and other sounds weirdly muted and deep. Several rubber suction cups were attached to my skull, and I realised they were electrodes. What the fuck was happening?
“Play it.” the head inquisitor said. In an instant, every television came to life, and it began to play. Every episode. At once. The sounds were instantly drilling into my ears, an unceasing cacophony from which there was no escape. Closing my eyes only made it worse, and I looked down at my own legs. Noises, constant high-pitched voices and music, rising in intensity along with a constant, unidentifiable sound of sheer NOISE. I felt physically ill in the first twenty seconds. I tried instinctively to bring my hands up to my ears, but my arms were chained down and it wouldn’t have helped anyway. Looking at the screens, my brain attempted to make some sense of it. I’d see Discord laughing, and hear laughter, but I knew it was only an illusion; there was no way I could hear it louder than thirty high-pitched ponies talking at once.
It took less than ten minutes for the screams to start. “MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!” I shouted. I yelled. I threatened. I pleaded. I begged. Nothing swayed them. I couldn’t get used to it. It should have been getting easier, but it just got worse and worse. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t do anything except wish for it to end. I couldn’t remember where I was, why I was here, my own name. My entire existence was consumed with what felt like a thousand pony noises all bearing down on me at once. My eyes locked with a screen at random, and in desperation, I tried locking out everything but that. I imagined what the ponies were saying, what they were doing, trying to remember the plot in my head. The maelstrom of sound grew dimmer as I focused all my will upon the task.
So slowly that I wondered if I was hallucinating, the screen I was watching began to increase in size as my attention fixed itself upon it. The noise of the episode became clearer, or was it just my imagination? I could hear it now above the chaos, as Fluttershy refused to leave her cottage while two of the others, Rarity and Pinkie Pie negotiated with her, telling her it wasn’t her fault, that she’d gotten some bad advice from Iron Will, whoever he was...
At last, the videos ended with a thunderous rendition of the end song. My ears rung. I felt drained, as if I’d just ran a marathon or been in combat. My head sank forwards as I tried to collect myself.
“Again.” I heard. It began again, and my eyes again locked themselves on the screen of a different episode, as I focused my entire being on excluding every sound except for those.
* * *
“It’s working. I can’t believe the subject’s mind is co-operating so quickly.” the female Inquisitor said.
“What did you expect? Human psychology is all the same.” the head Inquisitor said. “Overwhelm them with sensation, and the brain will do anything to escape, believe anything to escape. After a couple of days of this, his brain will be so convinced that ponies are the answer to his pain that it’ll rationalise a million reasons why he loves the show.”
“How long will it take?” the female spoke.
“I don’t know. I always leave it on for three days to be safe. It could take two and a half days, or we could let him out right now. I choose not to take the chance. Especially since there’s an excellent chance we’ll never need this room again. This is possibly the last non-brony in the United States, certainly the last non-brony in Maresachusetts. I prefer to ensure there is no possibility of relapse.” the head Inquisitor said.
“It’s truly an ingenious design.” the female said. “I take it that whichever episode the subject looks at starts taking up more of the screen?”
“More of the screen and more of the sound, for a while.” the head said. “Then we start doing it to the episodes we choose, when the subject has gotten used to the pattern. There’s nothing more I’m needed here for. Sir, madam, I leave the subject in your hands. If any problem arises, contact me, day or night.”
The head inquisitor left the room, smiling as he did so. Nopony ever lasted three days in the machine.
* * *
Thought-Journal 0001 of Brawny Boulder Applejack, April 9th, 2084.
My name is Brawny Boulder Applejack, and today I was reborn.
For years, I had rejected the beauty of My Little Pony and Faustianity. And for what? Some belief that people should be allowed to choose. But why should we allow people to choose choices that simply make them unhappy? My Little Pony is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. My joy at finally embracing the show is unlike anything I have ever felt before.
I awoke this morning, head pounding, starving, mouth dry, feeling as though I’d slept for a week. I recovered swiftly though, with a huge breakfast and two bottles of Rainbow Dash sports drink to replenish the electrolytes. Then they brought my family in.
There were tears in all of our eyes as I hugged the people I loved most, the ones I hadn’t seen in years, Daisy Blossom, Cloud Blossom, and Steel Boulder. “It’s so wonderful to have you back, son.” Cloud said, holding me so tight it hurt. I didn’t even mind as I hugged back just as tightly.
We spent hours talking, catching up, just basking in each other’s company again. My life finally felt complete. Eventually, they had to leave as I had an appointment with my new therapist, Whisper Song. We spoke about how I felt about my new life, and Whisper Song was very pleased. I did raise my concerns, of where I was going to live, that I no longer knew what to do with my life, but Whisper Song assured me I wouldn’t have to worry about that for some time. She asked me who my favourite pony was, and after some thought, I told her it was Twilight Sparkle, because she had gone her entire life without knowing true friendship until she found how wonderful it truly was, just like I had with the show. Whisper Song gave me a hug after that answer, and she was quite happy. She told me Twilight was a wonderful choice.
After my appointment with Whisper Song, I was taken to see Regal Summer, who introduced himself by his full name of Regal Summer Fluttershy. Regal Summer talked with me about how the government would provide for me for a while, while I completed my own re-education. There were, he told me, one thousand nine hundred and eleven episodes of My Little Pony for me to watch. Not all of them were out yet, he said, but by the time I got to them, they would be. That’s going to be something for me to do over the next year, which works out to be about five and a half episodes a day, or a little less than two hours. Considering how much I’m looking forward to it, I don’t think it’s going to take me the full year! So many episodes to watch; I feel giddy with excitement just thinking about it.
After that, I asked him how I could go about joining the Twilight Sparkle Society. He told me that I shouldn’t join a Society yet. I had to watch all the episodes first. How else could I truly know who my favourite pony was? This made sense, and I was happy with that.
Before I got to see where I was going to live, I still had one more thing to do. I met with a higher-end official, Dusk Shimmer. I was asked several questions about my past activities. Dusk told me that no matter how treasonous, I would be forgiven. The most important thing was to bring anypony else back into the fold. It hurt to think back on those times, but I happily cooperated. I would hate for somepony else to fall prey to it. I told them I was the last non-brony that I knew of. I told them what I’d really done with the destroyed tablet, and where I’d hidden the tablet with all my Thought-Journals on them. I told them it contained treasonous content, but Dusk just smiled and said that was fine, and that they would be destroyed. What a relief!
I was shown to my new home. It’s very nice; a quiet place on the outskirts of Boston, only a short drive from my parents’ house. I’ll be allowed to live on my own, but I’ll need to meet with Whisper Song and a government officer a couple of times a week. I don’t mind this, either.
After I got settled in, I watched some of the episodes, properly this time. They were so much better now than in my youth, now that I was actually paying attention to them and relishing every moment. I’m only ten episodes in and I can already tell why you never ask a person what their favourite episode is. It’s impossible to pick just one. I’m already tossing up between three, and I’m not even through the first season yet. Twilight is still my favourite pony, though I like Applejack as well. Like father, like son, I suppose.
So I watched a few episodes, ate dinner, watched a couple more, then sat down to write this journal. I almost don’t want to sleep, but the episodes will be there in the morning, and not like I can get through them all in one sitting anyway.
All in all, my life finally feels complete.
I love My Little Pony.
Faust Be With Us,
Brawny Boulder Applejack.
End of Thought-Journal 0001 of Brawny Boulder Applejack, April 9th, 2084.
