Fallout: Equestria - Sleep
Before happiness, I felt pride. It had been months since I was last on the ranch. Vaguely, I remembered something of where I had been. But it wouldn’t matter now. Celestia’s sun smiled bright, hugging me in its warmth as I stood beneath a sky like card stock, solid baby blue. Rows of trees replete with lemons fanned out in all directions, far as I could see. A faint tang of citrus lingered in the air. The crop was excellent.
I shielded my eyes and squinted into the distance. The farmhouse stood tall above the treeline, centered in a clearing of pasture. A shape appeared and admired the harvest. My mother. She turned to look at me, face impossibly detailed despite the distance. A wide smile. I hesitated. Her mouth moved.
“Bittersweet!”
Have you ever had a false awakening?
I blinked. The orchard disappeared. Waves breaking, frothing. Foam white as snow on the shoreline. My face was half buried in sand, like I had fallen asleep on the beach. Now I was waking, and it seemed that I had woken into hell. The EQS Birdtail was one of Equestria’s finest ships, the first thing you thought of when you thought about the Navy. I saw it with its hull blown in a dozen places, rust running along its side like herring jumping from a sea of dirty paint. Above it, the sky was clouded, the color of brick dust, the whole scene like apocalypse.
A dream after all. But of what? I struggled onto my hooves, limbs grinding, sand clumped in my fur. A whistling gust blew hair into my eyes. I looked across the boardwalk and saw empty storefronts, gray signs in their colorless cursive. The city beyond was dead, a still life of stalled wagons and darkened windows, every skyscraper a tombstone for a million gone.
I collapsed. Supine, the world shifted. In the peripherals of my vision I caught sight of the ship, all glory far removed. Dead in the water. But staring at that copper sky, I knew I was asleep. And because of that, I was not afraid. A life half spent in dream numbs you from the nightmares.
So why did I feel so sad?
A prodding ache. Somewhere in the world, the real world, a young colt returns home from school, his mother waiting with a smile and a question. How was your day? Somewhere else, a family sits for dinner, happy, laughing, together. For me, they were all distant visions. My dreams were sometimes that way. But I never learned to stop being disappointed.
I stretched out in the sand and started to sink. The clouds darkened, skipping shades. The sky began to bleed from a million places. Caught beneath the peppered wounds, I held my breath. The sand was swallowing me. It felt heavy on my chest. For a moment I thought the earth was falling towards the sky, and that the force of it was what had sunk me. But the thought left as the blood rain came. I couldn’t shut my eyes.
They were already closed.
“Yes, I’m sure he’ll be very happy here.”
I felt a warmth on my hide. Where am I? I sat up and wiped the haze from my eyes. A big room with a television buzzing somewhere, a murmur of voices coming from a place with a sign. Front desk. The building’s face was crystal glass, nigh invisible. Afternoon sun floated in with hardly a speck of dust in the rays. Economic. Two rows of vibrantly colored ball chairs faced each other, chic, streamlined, and modern.
“We’ve heard so much about this place. Is it true that there’s an indoor pool?”
I wasn’t in my room. The lobby was a strange place to wake, but it wasn’t the strangest place I had ever woken in. Most likely, I couldn’t sleep the night before. Restlessness made me wander. Cycles of insomnia kept me on my hooves. It was always either that or the other thing—the one that made me sleepy during the day. They alternated in random intervals..
“That and many other things, Mrs. Breadcrumb. Rest assured that young Pastry will receive the absolute best care available to him.”
The nurse smiled. Printed in bold cursive letters on her uniform was Manehattan Psychiatric. There isn’t a sanitarium in Equestria that feels like home, but if there ever was one that tried, it was this one. The older mare nodded her head in relief. She turned and left. The nurse’s horn glowed and a clipboard floated up to her eyes. I nudged her.
“What time is it?”
“Time for your pills,” she said. Evidently, she had come to get me. I saw my name on her list, the only one with a big red question mark scribbled next to it. She levitated two small capsules to me without looking my way. I grabbed them, careful not to crush them between my hooves.
“We should have a line for this. And how do you know if I’ve taken ‘em or not if you won’t watch?”
“Bittersweet, all our patients are here on their own accord. We don’t force anything on anypony. Why wouldn’t they take their pills?”
“Beats me.” I searched for a clock. “What time is it?”
“Nearly 2 o’clock.”
I swallowed my pills. “Taking these is a formality at this point. For me, I mean. They don’t work.”
The nurse shook her head. What was her name again? “It takes time. Besides, your doctor’s sure he’s seen your symptoms before. A case from a while back.” She waved a hoof in the air with ironic reverence. “Before the war started and all those bits were finally put where they were needed. Medical research. We have the means to cure you now.”
Three months and no progress said otherwise. I felt a tenseness start to build on the back of my neck. “What happened to the other pony? The one like me?”
She shrugged. “Cured. Had a dramatic wagon accident and came out with a couple of scrapes and no sleeping issues. But here at Manehattan Psychiatric, we like to approach our problems more scientifically than just knocking heads until chemicals balance.” A pony at the front desk called her name. It was Spearmint. She gave me a slight nod and turned away. “Excuse me.”
I got up and wandered. My eyelids were lazy employees wanting to close early. Just minutes before, I was asleep. Now, I was already tired. Hypersomnia, the doctor called it. Somewhere in the room, an authoritative voice spoke with few inflections, indistinct in origin. News anchor. I found the television hung on a couple of thin wires. A group of half a dozen sat watching, comfy in their ball chairs. I lingered at the edge, not wanting to bother anypony if I suddenly decided to take a nap.
“Conflicts have escalated along the western front. New technologies have increased casualties on both sides.”
War news. Always war news. I watched footage of screaming soldiers being carried away on stretchers stained dark with blood. With so many dead or dying, I wondered if they ever got a chance to wash them. The image cut to a row of uniformed workers, all unicorns. A conveyor funneled parts off a drop. Envelopes of magic whisked them into the assembly of an engine. The ponies sweat in their concentration.
“The zebra capital remains silent. The Caesar has not made a public appearance in the past two weeks. Analysts speculate that a large scale attack may be eminent.”
The voice droned to a buzz and faded out of hearing. I leaned against a column, frowning. Every time I was awake to hear about it, the war was worse than before. I felt out of touch. When those kids were slaughtered at Little Horn, I thought I had dreamt it. When Princess Celestia’s life was threatened at Shattered Hoof Ridge, I had slept through the ensuing chaos and commotion.
Despite the constant strain of tragedy, Equestria perseveres. It makes it harder not to. Blended into the city’s identity, plastered onto every wall that can bear it, are the devices of the war. Every poster runs the common thought beneath their slogans. We’re all in this together. But I know that it isn’t true.
“Volunteer centers have seen an influx in applicants since the last series of attacks on the northern outposts.”
Because I can’t help them. I can’t help anypony. My disease makes me a liability. Put me behind a counter and I’ll nap on it. Give me a sign to hold and I’ll fall over and drop it. Tell me to kick some lemon trees and I’ll... Well, I’m here aren’t I? For as long as I have to live this way, sick with sleep and trapped in my dreams, I’ll be useless, no help to anypony. My limbs numbed and I started to nod off. The voice in my head became disembodied. I was thinking about that word again. Useless.
Useless.
A burst of energy shot through me. Awareness returned. I began to move. The least I could do was try, and I wasn’t trying hard enough. I’ll only be useless if I let myself be, so I won’t. The nearest volunteering center was only a short way off. Half an hour. If they turn me away, I’ll go to the next one. If my records invalidate me, I’ll get new ones. Go to another city if I have to. It doesn’t matter. I was going to help one way or another.
“Bittersweet? Bittersweet, where are you going?”
Lab coat. The stallion tailing me was my doctor. Had he been watching me?
“Just getting some air, doc.” I shifted from hoof to hoof. He made me nervous. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“You really shouldn’t be going off on your own,” he said, frowning. “Especially in your state.”
I felt my pulse quickening. There was something in his face that upset me. Worry, like a mother watching her foal play in the street. Yeah, because if I went out there into the unkindly world, I’d probably fall asleep and off a bridge. I turned away and started towards the door, the sun bright in my eyes, cheeks burning. If there was anything I couldn’t stand, it was being treated like a foal. I had to leave before I lost my cool.
“Bittersweet, wait!” he yelled. I didn’t hear him following. Visitors scrambled out of my way, perhaps remembering for the first time where they were. The television watchers shifted their attention. “Let me call an attendant for you. Please, you’re putting yourself at risk!”
The doctor’s voice disappeared. I was outside and across the street. Had I been followed? I turned around and saw no one coming. The lobby had returned to a state of calm. The excitement was over. I began to feel drowsy again.
I had been in Manehattan for three months. Thinking about it, I realized that I had been interned the entire length of my stay. The last time I walked the streets was the day I had arrived. But with the constant murmur of the television, which I sometimes heard even in my sleep, I knew exactly where the volunteering centers would be. All I had to do was walk. All I had to do was stay awake long enough to get there.
But I was tired.
I walked with my side against a wall. The support helped me get along. How far had I gone? The hospital was out of sight, and to my left was the same beach that I had seen in my dream. The EQS Birdtail was docked there, whole and unharmed. I stopped and closed my eyes. Just a minute and I’ll be alright. My thoughts swam. My head felt like a sunken ship. A peaceful warmth came over me. Was it the sun again? No. Just the bliss of sleep.
I opened my eyes. Long street, strangers looking at me. Something I had to do. I walked on. If I fell asleep now, I might wake without the nerve to do what I wanted to do. My eagerness was inspired, therefore fleeting. I quickened my pace.
When I was a filly, my mother thought I was just lazy, that I slept because I was too comfortable with being still. I wasn’t like the other kids. When I was old enough to do yard work, I’d always nod off without finishing. She’d wake me, but I’d always fall asleep again. Sometimes I caught her looking at me. Emotions were grab bag random—she would be smiling one time, angry or confused the next. But as I got older, I realized that most of those looks were from my dreams. One night, when a bout of insomnia kept me from sleep, I heard her crying in her bed. And that’s when I knew that she was only ever disappointed in me.
Well, she was right to be.
A few years later I had gotten my cutiemark: a triplet of bubbly Z’s. Even destiny thought I was useless.
Well, not anymore. I could see the volunteering center up ahead. Many ponies were already there, but I saw that there were empty seats in the waiting area. I smiled. For some reason, I wasn’t afraid of being rejected anymore. Something told me that I’d be accepted easily, and that I’d be helping out before the end of the day. I felt great. I didn’t feel sleepy at all.
There was a whistling, sharp and high-pitched. Probably a broken radiator somewhere. I ignored it. The mare at the counter smiled and passed me a stack of forms to fill.
“Thank you for lending Equestria your support!”
I smiled back and wandered to an empty seat. All the standard bits of information were required. Name? Bittersweet. Occupation? Lemon harvester, more or less. I left the part that said ‘Medical History’ blank. In all likelihood, I’d end up sorting supplies or filing papers, so it probably wouldn’t matter. But either of those or worse would be good enough for me.
I flipped through the packet of forms. The stack was nearly as thick as my hoof. Legal mumbo jumbo laced with signature lines. With the plastic pen in my mouth, I became uncomfortably aware of my teeth and the weight of my jaw. I put it away. The application line was long and the paperwork monotonous. I could afford a short nap—at least until the line thinned.
With my eyes shut, I became more aware of the whistling sound, and in my head a picture began to form: a twisting contrail speeding through the sky, its source just barely out of sight. The whistling was growing louder, crescendoing to a shriek. The vision became more intense, more lucid. I grimaced and shielded my ears, feeling a slow trickle of blood running down my hooves. But I couldn’t stop the sound. It was bursting through my head.
I opened my eyes and found myself back at the boardwalk by the beach. The sound, the sound was still there. Where was it coming from? Somepony was standing in front of me, looking over her shoulder at something in the distance. The ponies around me were statues, all turned towards the sky. I looked up and saw a gray blur barreling towards the earth, its shape reflected on ten-thousand panels of laminated glass. There was a flash of light. I couldn’t see.
Was I dreaming again?
The atmosphere collapsed around me and my hooves left the pavement. I spiraled through air that felt like hot breath. Where were my eyes? I struggled to get up, but an explosion screamed into my ears and left me sprawled. The white blindness started to fade. Color trickled back into focus. I couldn’t recognize myself at first. When did I dye my coat red? Through the smoke alarm that was ringing in my head, I heard ponies screaming.
The horizon filled with dust and smoke. A black cloud ruptured by fiery contours rose high above the city. Half the skyline was gone, replaced by the charred iron skeletons of its skyscrapers and an eerie unfamiliar emptiness where city blocks once were. Balefire leapt up walls, eating away at metal and concrete, green flames dancing like spirits from the thousand darkened eyes of shattered windows. I turned away. Small waves rippled across the ocean in chaotic movements, breaking against one another. The EQS Birdtail had been blown back across the harbor, toppled onto its side and beached. That was the sign. The details had shifted, but I knew it was fundamentally the same. Recurring nightmare. I really was asleep.
I got up, ignoring the shards of glass buried into my side. My wounds weren’t nearly as bad as I had thought. The bleeds were already clotting, but the currents of air rushing from the inner city lifted salty spray from the ocean into my lacerations. I staggered away from the burning mist. Everyone else was moving too, some running, others dragging their broken bodies down the street, leaving trails of blood in the ash that had begun to settle. Even the dazed and shocked were walking, eyes glazed over with an empty look, instinctively distancing themselves from the fireball of the impact zone.
“Bittersweet!”
A pair of hooves grabbed me.
“Here, lean against me. Keep your weight off that leg.”
I lost balance for a moment, but the pony kept me from falling. She was the same one from before, the one in front of me who was looking over her shoulder. I realized who she was. Spearmint, the nurse from the hospital. I had seen her recently. It made sense that she would be in my dream. There were small cuts and scrapes all over her, but considering the conditions of the others she got away relatively unscathed.
“How are you feeling? Can you speak?”
“I’m fine.” My reply came out choked, like there was too much dust in my throat to get the words out. I tried to stand without her, but I couldn’t.
“Not with that wound you aren’t.” If there was ever a face that a pony in the medical profession shouldn’t show a patient, she was showing it to me now. Wide-eyed and with a certain scared pity. “Your leg’s almost off.”
I looked down and noticed for the first time the diagonal gash in my right leg. It split flesh, bit deep into bone, yet I couldn’t feel it. Dreamworld anesthetics. My heart slammed against my chest like it was in a hurry. My body was stuck in the slow lane.
“What happened back there?” I asked. Looking past the buildings that had escaped the carnage, I saw that the entire center of the city had been leveled. Buildings that had once towered dozens of stories burnt like firewood, their weakening structures bending onto themselves and collapsing to the ground. They were wilting flowers burned black, monoliths crumbling in a storm of ghostly green flame.
“What happened? The fucking zebras happened, that’s what!” A flash of anger and then nothing. She shook her head. “We have to get inside, into a fallout shelter. That thing they dropped on us, I think it’s radioactive. We’re dying even if we don’t know it.”
“We could be dead already.”
She raised a brow. I just smiled. We walked on, passing frantic huddled groups and lost souls wandering with no direction. The dead were slumped against lamp posts and subway entrances. In their last moments, they had crawled there to die, probably muttering a curse or two before succumbing to their wounds. Spearmint pulled a suit off one of the bodies. She tore the fabric into sheets with her teeth and tied them over my leg. It quickly darkened with blood.
So this is what the end would be like. Sudden, unforgiving. It made me even gladder that I had volunteered. In truth, my efforts wouldn’t make a difference. The zebras won’t decide not to drop their bombs because of me, or if it happened the other way, we wouldn’t decide not to drop ours. But at least I’ll know, when everything is over, that I was right there with the rest of them in the end.
Spearmint settled me down against the side of a broadcast desk. There were large fallout shelters every couple of blocks, but most were still in the process of being stocked and furnished. So instead of trapping ourselves in a resourceless hole that was likely full of hundreds of others, many probably wounded and sick, we walked until we found ourselves at the broadcasting center. There was a dead pony at the entrance laying flat on his face, body bruised and trampled. The news anchor from earlier. The hallways were empty and littered with loose papers, probably all dropped in the rush to safety. It was dark—the power had stopped working. Spearmint said that in a place so large, there was bound to be a medical kit somewhere. She walked around the studio, looking through drawers and cabinets.
“Why did you come after me?” I smiled to myself. Why was I trying to make sense of a dream? Perhaps something in my subconscious wanted to believe that I was cared about. Even then, it was ridiculous to ask. My mind would feed her lines.
“When you weren’t back in an hour your doctor got nervous. His concern is genuine, you know. He sent a couple of us out to find you.” She shrugged. “I just happened to be the one who did.”
“But you could have left me. After the bomb fell, you could have ran away.” I rested my head against the table. The studio was dark save for the dim gray light filtering in through the windowed backdrop. It was like a rainy day, but I knew that beyond the dark was a clear blue sky. An image of my mother flickered in my head. “But you looked for me instead.”
Spearmint walked up to me, dragging a case of something along with her. It had a symbol on it, a trio of butterflies superimposed upon a cross. Ministry of Peace. A medical kit. Her horn glowed and my bloodied wrappings lifted away. I winced and squeezed my eyes shut as she began to clean the cut with an antiseptic pad. After applying an antibiotic cream, she wrapped the wound in a thick layer of gauze.
“There. You should be alright for now.” She sat down next to me and sighed, relieved to finally have a moment of rest. “Why did you leave earlier today, Bittersweet?”
I thought for a moment. “I wanted to help.” It was all that I could manage to think of.
She nodded slowly. “Me too. That’s why I became a nurse. We’d be better off if we all thought that way. Lend a helping hoof every once in a while, you know? Be a little kinder, not just for ourselves but for everyone’s sake.” Her voice was almost a whisper. She got up and began to wander.
Thump.
What was that?
It sounded like a door closing. Somepony was coming down the hall. A face appeared at the doorway, peeking cautiously into the room. It was rugged, wide-eyed. The pony looked like a startled rabbit. Another survivor, but I recognized his look. Unstable. Just like some of the ponies back at the hospital. Spearmint looked like she saw this too.
“What do you need?” she asked, trying not to startle him.
He walked in and out of the shadows. There were massive blistering patches of flesh on his side. Burn damage. He twitched a little, and his eyes darted around the room like he was tracking a fly that kept on disappearing. Then he saw the medical kit, and his eyes became still.
“That.” He pointed at it. “Give it to me.”
“I can treat your burns for you,” she offered, not moving. The stranger wouldn’t be able to reach around to treat his own wounds, and he didn’t look like the sort who would know how to do it anyway.
He shook his head, but I wasn’t sure if he really heard her or not. All he knew was that box wasn’t in his hooves yet. The dullness in his eyes told all. He had degraded. The trauma was too great for him, and now he thought on an ancient wavelength. Somewhere in his head, the Ministry of Peace symbol was associated with the reduction of pain. It could have been anything, a band-aid on a scrape or pain killers after an accident. Somewhere in his primitive mind gears meshed into function, and a cohesive thought was formed. His nostrils flared and his back arched. He was hurting, and he needed the box with the butterflies on it.
“Give it to me!”
He was onto Spearmint in a flash. Sometime during the charge he pulled out a hidden knife. Spearmint screamed. The savage plunged it into her neck. I felt myself move without thinking. I swung the medical kit against the broadcast desk and it exploded into a mess of containers and gauze. There was a pair of scissors somewhere in there, and I rushed the stallion with it. It stabbed through his exposed wounds easily. He shrieked and and fell over. He didn’t move. Spearmint stared up at the ceiling with the knife still in her throat, blood sputtering.
Two dead bodies. Two pools of blood mixing into one.
I backed away. Why am I still asleep? I’ve never had to kill anypony in my dreams before. Acids crawled up from my stomach. I vomited and fell back against the window. What the fuck? I felt sick. The pain in my leg pulsed and flared. Why did it feel so real?
No.
I shook my head frantically. No. The volunteer center—I fell asleep while signing forms. This was a dream. There was a wetness in my eyes. I curled up and closed them. Wake up. Wake up.
Wake up.
Mulling over the details, falling into the sky. Sand, heavy on my chest. Sleep paralysis, the doctor said. The EQS Birdtail. Recurring nightmare. I didn’t feel tired the entire trip from the boardwalk to here. Where was my hypersomnia? Had it cycled through? No. My head was hazy, floating in a bubble of hypnagogic visions. Near sleep. No insomnia. Just darkness.
I opened my eyes.
Where am I? There was a window. Ash fluttered onto the panes. The sky looked something like a hazy morning. Am I awake? The iron scent of blood. Two bodies. I started to cry.
Numbness. I spun left and right in the news anchor’s chair. The only sounds came from my hind hooves knocking against the insides of the desk. Behind me, the city coughed its death throes, but I did not look. I stared blankly into the studio and a dozen black televisions stared back with nothing left to show. There would be no more broadcasts.
I knew what had happened to me. At some point, while walking to the volunteer center, I had fallen asleep, dreamt that I was still awake, and then heard the sound of death whistling through the sky at the end of it.
I was too late. Equestria was dead, and I hadn’t been there with everyone else to face its death. But I didn’t care anymore. I knew the truth now, and it was that I had been selfish all along.
Be a little kinder, not just for ourselves but for everyone’s sake.
I wanted to help. I wanted to be a part of things, to be useful for once. But in the end it would only be for myself. I looked down at Spearmint’s lifeless form. It should have been me. She cared. She could have made a difference in this new world of pain and death. Outside, thousands were dying, thousands already dead. And that was just in Manehattan. I shuddered to think of what might be happening in rest of Equestria. I should have been good for their sake. But it was too late.
I was awake, but I hadn’t dreamt the night before. It was the first time that I hadn’t in as long as I could remember. I’d been sitting in the anchor’s chair for an hour, but I wasn’t tired at all. The day before, I didn’t have any trouble falling asleep. I remembered what Spearmint had told me about the other patient. The one like me who had been in a wagon accident. Details floated into my mind from some dark void of aggregated memory. It wasn’t the first time I had heard the story. My doctor had told me about it too, but he mentioned that the stallion’s wife and kids were in there with him. They didn’t make it out. He wasn’t cured because he hit his head. The trauma had somehow rid him of his disease.
Just as it has rid me of mine.
Have you ever had a false awakening?
It’s when you wake up into another dream. Sometimes, you don’t even know it. Before the bombs fell, I had been stuck in sleep for half my life, soul crippled by a misguided want for inclusion. The end of the world did not kill me as it did so many others. Instead, it brought my salvation and took me from my dreams, freed me from a life bent between two realities. But I was not saved. I was not truly awake. For in leaving one dream, I had woken into the next. And looking into the dark, blood on my hooves, a city with its millions all burning in the cataclysm behind me, I knew that I had woken into hell.
Author's Note
This is the edited text, revised on 2/2/14. I think it's important to include the original, considering the contest purpose of this story. The changes are perhaps marginally, and mostly at the start of the story (I've always had trouble with beginnings), but they make me feel a bit better about the whole thing overall.
http://pastebin.com/wA7L8C8F
Thanks for reading.
