When Lights Die
Berry Bangle grabbed a hold of Dusty’s head and held him still. “Hold still!” she chided as she carefully placed diodes across his temple. “I don’t want to be here any longer than you do.”
Dusty sighed and let his eyes wander the bleached white room. It was one of the empty rooms that had been retrofitted for Canterlot’s Council of Magic’s many experiments. Despite needing to commandeer one of the rooms from Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, the dean wasn’t too concerned, as long as the stream of grants kept coming and the Council didn’t make a habit out of requesting rooms and resources.
Right now, Dusty Wings was strapped to a plain white swivel chair in the center of the room and hooked up to a legion of small machines. An EEG, heart monitor, and an EKG for good measure were shoved into the back of the room. Scientists struggled to maneuver around the sea of wires covering the floor. Bits of copper peeked through the green, red and yellow insulation in places where certain ponies were not careful where they stepped.
“Alright, everypony in their seats!” a pony called from behind a half dozen monitors. Dusty, buried under a mass of wires and a helmet over his head, had trouble seeing where the pony was under the gigantic mass of junk, books, and surrounded by computer monitors. “We’re ready to go in two. Berry, he’s fine. I need you to monitor brainwaves. Dusty, sit tight.”
“Yes, sir!” Dusty replied with a drama-drenched voice. “The Council has the green light to go pick my brain.”
“This is serious, Dusty. We’re about to embark on the biggest step in bridging science with dreamwalking in recorded history.”
“And here I thought this was my free chance to be your cybernetic pincushion, boss. I get it. We’ve been at this for months,” he droned. “We’re about to map out my brain after a bout of lucid dreaming. We’re about to make a landmark step in mentalism and psychology. After this, we will provide the groundwork for a new era in the study of the mind and its inner workings. I get it, so stop boring me with the mission statement.”
“Boss” grunted something unintelligible and continued work on... whatever he was doing. Scientists, Berry included, returned to their own individual workstations. The stench of sweat, body odor, and the dull smell of parchment flooded the small room. Having so many ponies in such a cramped space was undoubtedly going to incur some unusual smells. The AC was cranked to the maximum. This, in turn, caused even more fuss with a gradient temperature between blanket chill and sweltering heat. Nopony was happy, except for Dusty, who was just annoyed due to having several diodes and wires tied to his head.
Berry tossed him a helmet hardwired into at least a dozen machines. “Come on; put on the dorky helmet.” Dusty grudgingly did so and everything became tinged with red as the helmet’s visor slipped over his eyes.
Boss cleared his throat and ruffled some papers behind his makeshift workspace. Dusty caught a glimpse of a gray pony cloaked in white, but that was it. What was he doing back there behind walls of dust, wires, and steel?
“I am good to go. Sound off, everypony,” Boss called out.
“Servers are running at optimal efficiency. Cooling tower on standby for an influx of data.”
“Heart rate: normal. O2 sats, normal. Brain activity, normal for Dusty.”
“I take offense to that.”
“Can it, Dusty. Test environments rendering. We are a go.”
Dusty stared at the monitor displaying a raw stream of data. It was all scrolling too fast for him to comprehend it all.
“Very well,” Boss called out to the room. “Doctor, bring him under and everypony prepare for the experiment. Dusty, have a nice sleep. We’ll be here when you awake.”
“There better not be dicks drawn on my face when I wake up.”
The Council medic snorted as he walked forward towards the intravenous drip in Dusty’s leg. Preparing a syringe full of a clear liquid, he flipped the cap on the dispenser, injected the contents into the cap, and flipped it closed. Drowsiness hugged his mind within moments. The slow clattering of steps and the growl of the air conditioner’s taxed engine became muddled behind the cotton that seemed stuffed in his ears. His head bobbed up and down like a cat observing a particularly stubborn piece of string dancing in a slight gale. He managed to lift his head and look at his visor which was now flooded with words.
Initiating static data:
State machine cache...............OK
Render settings........................OK
Physics engine.........................OK
...
Checking I/O entries:
Simulated reality device............OK
Pulse sensor.............................OK
...
Generating personal dream:
Opaque geometry.....................OK
Deffered lighting........................OK
Render texture...........................OK
...
!WARNING!
Abnormal brain wave detected in sector 0x055B3
His eyes slid shut, and he knew no more.
He felt something against his stomach. Something soft. Something crisp.
He smelt something on the wind. Something earthy. Something wet.
He heard something whisper nearby. Something blowing. Something flowing.
Dusty opened his eyes, only to wince a little as he caught the full glare of the sun reflected off a small stream. He was lying flat on his stomach at the bottom of a small river embankment. Trees, rich oak and towering elm, dominated the area where the water did not cut through the land. Grass tickled his face and fresh dew clung to his silver fur.
“Enjoy the nap, Dusty?” a female voice resounded throughout the land. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, yet he knew the voice’s source.
“Loud and clear, Berry,” he replied to the open air. He closed his eyes and inhaled. The scent of water and earth was strong... and yet not. “Still adjusting to the dream. Everything alright on your end?”
“We got a blip on the EEG, but it’s still within normal bounds. Heart’s beating strong. What about you?”
“I am currently in a forest or lightly wooded area of some kind. No, a large copse.” He lifted his hooves up and down. “Ground’s pretty solid. The smell’s a little off, though; I can only identify it as earth and water. No exact tree or type of soil, just an earthy smell.”
He looked at the stream. Despite him clearly hearing a slow bubbling of water, the surface was completely still. “I’m noticing a few things off with the dream. The water’s not moving.” Just as he spoke that, the surface became distorted and kinetic.
“That’s normal. Your brain has trouble rendering details you’re not focused on. We’re receiving data on your environment now... honestly, I expected something perverted or hypermasculine. I’m a little disappointed.”
“My brain, my rules, Bangle. This is where I used to go when I was a kid after school.” Dusty followed the water’s trail upstream. The trees soon dispersed and in the middle of a green field he saw a large schoolhouse crafted from bricked sod. “I was raised out in the country, and whenever I was angry or worried or scared, I went to that place. My own home away from home.”
He forced himself to focus on something other than the schoolhouse. The grass was a rich green, even though he knew his hometown infrequently suffered from dry spells. A dirt and gravel road led to a nearby hamlet where all of the local kids lived, including himself. He remembered kids would always kick up excess amounts of dirt and grime and pretend to be ninjas in the resulting cloud.
Dusty squinted. There were small blotches over the hill. It was where the town should be, but blinking his eyes and focusing couldn’t clear the haze.
“I’m getting a couple more rendering errors. Is everything alright?”
“Still good. We’ve yet to see any substantial deviations from projections.”
He cantered towards the school, feeling the moderately tall grass tickle his legs. Parents always commented on the fact nopony mowed the grass as often as desired. He never minded as a colt; it made for some rather fun games when the grass was tall enough to hide in.
But the school... buildings always seemed so much smaller when he grew up. When he looked at the schoolhouse memory, it was massive. It looked like it would take five minutes running at a good clip to circumnavigate the structure. Dozens of windows painted the walls, far more than such a building could have. Well, buildings often looked bigger from a children’s perspective. It was logical that a childhood memory would bloat some buildings.
“I see my school. I’m going to go in. Any objections?”
“None here.” Boss replied instead of Berry. “As long as the experiment lasts and the data is valid, continue. But I will give you a bit if you can calm your heart, Dusty.”
Dusty took a few deep breaths. He wasn’t quite sure how his mind taking a few gasps would affect his body, but it was worth a shot. He continued walking around the school towards the front door. It really was bigger than it should be and that only served to exaggerate other details. Besides the ridiculous amount of windows, cracks, moss, vines, and creepers extended over half the walls. He knew his old school was in need of repair as a kid, but this was absurd.
As he rounded the corner, the front door came in sight. Cracked concrete led to the familiar gravel road. Except for a welcome sign above the door, here was little else of notice. It filled him with childish nostalgia. Unlike many other fillies and colts when he was in school, he actually enjoyed it. That eagerness was what drove him towards getting good grades and earned him a scholarship to the Canterlot Technical College and a job with the Council of Magic, despite him being a pegasus.
Smiling slightly, Dusty reached for the front door. The moment his hoof touched the cold steel, a splitting pain arched across his skull. A wave of vertigo brought him to his knees and his vision twisted and turned more than an unstable drunk’s. White noise flooded his ears and overrode the sound of words being spoken to him from afar.
“What’s happening?” he shouted to the air. He heard some reply, but it was garbled from either the noise inside his head or a faulty transmission.
“Dusty? Dusty, speak up!” As soon as the interference started, it had stopped. Berry’s voice rang from everywhere and nowhere, the residual ghost in the machine that guided his dream.
“Y-yeah?”
“What happened? Your vitals spiked and all incoming data streaming from your subconscious ceased. We had a memory access violation. What happened, Dusty?”
His vision swam uncomfortably. He got to his hooves, but that seemed much harder than it should have been. “I’m not sure. For a moment everything went... kinda funny. It kinda felt like losing consciousness, only it hurt the whole time. How’re my vitals?”
“Thready but steady. Do you want to continue? Or boot you out?”
Dusty thought for a moment. That brief sensation felt like a year’s worth of nausea compressed into a few moments, but it had vanished. “...I’ll keep going for now. Keep me posted. Let me know the moment something goes wrong.”
“There is no worker’s compensation for this,” came Boss’ dry voice.
“Well, that’s the price of volunteering for science,” he replied with a laugh.
Dusty gingerly touched the door, yet the sudden attack did not return. He pushed the door open, cringing as the hinges squeaked. Black and white tiled floors and lockers covering every inch of the hallway that wasn’t a door greeted him. Walking inside kicked up a thin layer of dust.
“We’ve gathered about eight percent map of your neural network. The synapses are a little tricky to map, but we’re making steady, if slow, progress.”
“Stupid brain.” He hit his head. “Why you no work right?” Dusty heard the sound of Berry snorting.
He entered the first classroom. It was the old physical education room. An old balance beam constructed from a pair of sawhorses and a railroad tie sat at the center of the room. Other smaller items, such as balance balls and a treadmill tucked into the corner reminded him of how much he hated gym class. Most pegasi were fairly fit, but he always preferred the less physical subjects.
The next door of choice led to an enclosed area outside. Most of the steel bars were rusted after prolonged time in the elements. Swings and a pair of teeter-totters were tucked right next to the fence. He remembered several kids always trying to jump the fence when the swings reached their peak. Nopony ever made it, but that only seemed to inspire other ponies to try it themselves. He remembered his teacher’s frustration whenever another foolish foal attempted the supposedly impossible task.
The next door was his consistent favorite: the science room. Charts of the stars, the periodic table, and the anatomy of small critters painted the walls in bright, cheery colors. Potted plants, one for each empty desk in the room, hugged the window sill for a chance of absorbing life-giving sunlight. He trotted to the back of the class. Although the covers were blurred due to poor remembrance on his part and the possible rendering error, it was where the teacher would stack any science or biology magazines she’d accumulated.
Dusty exited the room with reluctance and approached the art room. He reached for the door –
“Dusty, wait – ”
Whatever Berry was about to say was smothered by another wave of vertigo. Reality seemed to warp around him, twisting and contorting otherwise stable landmarks as if there were being pulled by invisible strings. The gaslights flickered constantly, although now the splitting pain in his head was at manageable levels.
“Th-... -hing st-... about... dream...” Dusty couldn’t discern what Berry was saying through all the interference. Her voice kept coming in intermittent bursts. Instead of being the clear, omnidirectional, omnipresent voice of god, she sounded like faulty radio speaking from the other end of a very long drainage tube.
“Berry? Berry Bangle! Boss!” he screeched. “Get me outta here! Pull the plug!”
A high keening sound caught his attention. The walls, ceiling, tables, chairs – everything – was warping and twisting in on itself. The once immaculate, if dusty, room was being stripped away and replaced by something else, some darkened landscape he would rather not wish to navigate.
“Berry!”
Screaming did nothing, but coincided with the end of the degradation. Reality stopped warping and Dusty stood up to examine his new surroundings with apprehension and interest. The formerly bright, if peeling, white wallpaper was replaced with a dry and cracked brown substitute, white wallpaper that had been aged a good decade in the open elements. Most of the lights had stopped working and what desks weren’t covered in a thick layer of dust were broken or destroyed with age. The potted plants stood under the now dark windowsill, barren of life
“...What happened...? Berry!? Can you hear me?” No answer.
Dusty backed out into the darkened hallway, ears flat against his head from nerves. The open hallway fared little better than the classroom. Wallpaper curled off the walls in great strips as if the walls themselves were unzipped, spilling the rotted wood and contaminated insulation underneath. The occasional light flickered like dying embers.
Fascination spoiled his momentary apprehension. As much as he wanted to be removed from the dilapidated school, he could not suppress his rising curiosity. As much as he hated seeing his old school in such a sorry state, the phenomenon was fascinating, and the desire to be pulled from the experiment receded enough for his desire to explore to surface.
“It’s not like standing around here will do any good. A little exploring, and then it is back to the chair.”
Even if he could not speak to Berry or Boss, there was a decent chance that they might be able to detect him if he returned to the testing chair. It was worth a shot, anyway.
Just as he finished the thought, the familiar distorting haze sent his head spinning once more, only this time he managed to keep his bearing. The pain in his head was still there, but that’s not what caught his eye. Several lights down the hall from which he came were flickering wildly before shutting off. To his horror, he saw that the darkness was encroaching on him, and fast.
Dusty turned and ran. Something bulged from the darkness, but he dared not discover what it was. Down the apparently endless corridor he ran. His hooves, free of horseshoes, clattered softly across the rotted wood. A noise – a loud, metallic grinding – replaced the stabbing pain.
“What the hell is that?” he said to nopony in particular.
Dusty turned a corner and picked the first room he could find. Quietly opening the door, He shut it with a soft click and held his back against the wood. The lights flickered slightly, but the horrid grinding still bounced back and forth in his ears.
He froze. It was hard to hear, but there was something shuffling down the hallway. Dusty’s heart shot into his throat. This was his dream. Nothing else should be here. There weren’t even animals in the forest when he first woke up in the formerly fantastic dreamscape. He dared not scramble to move a desk or cabinet to block the door; That would create too much noise and alert whatever entity stalking the hallways to his location. Just his back against the door would have to do.
Thankfully the creature either did not know he was behind the door or did not care. Dusty’s ears strained to listen for any noise, and only collected the sound of steps going further down the hall. Strange enough, the flickering lights and strange sound vanished as the creature moved further and further away.
He sighed in relief, but waited a few more moments. He wanted to be careful, to be extra sure that the creature was not attempting some sort of feint. He winced as the door squeaked a little. Dusty panned left and right, Nothing was there other than dust and decay. “What the hell was that?” he repeated. That seemed to be the question of the hour since communication with HQ seemed to have stopped working altogether.
Deciding that any direction not in the creature’s path was a good place to go, he turned back the way he had come and walked as lightly as he could. He could feel his heart beating in his throat and the tightness of his muscles after the surge of adrenaline after being pursued. The cocktail hadn’t started fraying his nerves, but it was well on its way to doing so. He continued as such, trotting down the hall with ears straining for any signs of the creature or the grinding sound that seemed to herald its presence.
“-s... me?”
He jumped in fright, a soft moan of panic coming from his lips before he could stop it. “Berry?”
“-usty?” It was really difficult to catch anything she was saying. Ever since the dream morphed into this twisted otherworld, the lines of communication that the Council of Magic had established seemed tenuous at best. “Can yo-....me?”
“Yes, I can hear you!” He hissed as loud as he dared.
“Something’s wrong. We-... you out. Can’t pull the p-... Go t-... the transfer chair.”
“What?” he asked. Not wanting to be seen out in the open corridor, Dusty slunk into the old gymnasium and closed the door.
Berry spoke surely and slowly, her voice cutting through the static and interference. “Get. To. The. Damn. Chair.”
“Okay...” he said to assure himself. “The transfer chair. Get to the transfer chair.”
His ear folded over his head. “Which is outside...” he groaned. He still needed to navigate out of the school. Turning his head to the wall, all of the windows were boarded up with thick if slightly rotted planks of wood. If he were an earth pony, he might have a chance of bucking them out of place, but he would have no such luck. Even if he were, he was a scholar and used to a more sedentary lifestyle. There wasn’t near enough muscle on his body, let alone his hind legs, to remove boards like that.
“And Berry, there’s something else in here. I don’t know what it is.”
Something popped and hissed on the other end, but not even the faintest semblance of dialogue could be distinguished from his end. “Berry?” Some garbled noise fluttered past his ears. “Shit.”
Dusty collected his thoughts. Communication with Berry and Boss seemed to be cut off, or tenuous; it didn’t seem likely he could rely on them for much. The transfer chair was in the middle of the copse outside. He couldn’t get out through the window, so that left the door he came in. Finally, there was a monster stalking the halls.
“Just great,” he sighed, and froze. The few lights that worked in the gymnasium flickered off and on. The metallic grinding sound grated against his ears and increased in volume with every passing second. Dusty quietly braced himself against the door, wincing as a floorboard squeaked.
He heard the familiar dull thumping of something walking down the hallway from the same direction from which it had come before. So, it was patrolling, not just walking. Interesting... Scientific thoughts would have to come later, however.
‘Please don’t come in, please don’t come in, please don’t come in...’ he silently begged.
The creature passed right by his hiding spot. Perhaps it wasn’t interested in him as his kneejerk instinct suggested. It certainly was a possibility, but it happened to be one he neither wished to chance nor desired to learn the outcome of by any means. The quicker he got out of the cursed school, the better.
Dusty waited a full minute after the sounds of grinding and the stabbing pain in his head died down before checking to see if the cost was clear. It was gone. As irritating as it was, the splitting pain in his head seemed to be a good early warning system for the creature’s presence. It was as good enough as any, even if it had the chance to momentarily disable him.
He slowly made progress down the darkened hallway. Some lights flashed menacingly, hiding many facets of the school behind layers of shadows. Some doors were hidden from him in shadows where he dared not tread, while others he could see perfectly fine, but had their innards covered completely behind waves of darkness.
Something caught his eye and he paused. It was the art room. Several pictures, blackened and cracked with age, hung on the wall. Listening for the creature, Dusty carefully opened the door and entered.
What he had seen only confirmed what little suspicion he had. The walls were indeed covered by several drawings and paintings by colts and fillies of various ages, but most were drawn by those surely under the age of pubescence. Corny, cartoonish drawings of ponies and their own individual families plastered the walls in droves, but that was not what caught his eyes in the first place. Several pictures were host to a crudely-drawn creature definitely not a pony. It was tall, black, and rail thin, often painted with red dots for eyes that gave him the impression of burning coals. Some children had drawn the creature standing over their bed, or drawn with their families as they all looked on sadly.
“The hell are you?” he once again asked the empty air, ignoring the throbbing in his head. “I don’t remember any of this...” Nothing answered and Dusty turned around. He screamed.
A large, black shape was staring at him from the window in the door. Without the creature moving its long, gangly limbs, the door squeaked open. It’s skin was blackened and matted with grime and scabs. As it entered, the lights flickered and the pain began once more. In his moment of exploration, he had shoved aside one of the warning signs the creature often produced.
It lurched toward him, every motion jerky and painful. Dusty panicked, turned, and bucked a desk at the creature. It stumbled slightly, but rose and continued its pursuit. Its hairless, desiccated body was hunched over. Dusty was about four feet tall if he stretched. The ceiling was six. This creature at full height was an easy seven.
Dusty scampered around a row of desks. For a creature as big and tall as it was, it was pretty quick. It zipped toward him, weaving through desks and obstructions with ease. Dusty ran parallel to the wall – away from the creature – and headed straight towards the door. His head was throbbing with the creature’s proximity. It was a fascinating ability to be sure, perhaps a method of disabling prey, but he didn’t want to spend more time than necessary when he was running for his life.
The lights overhead were flickering as he ran; the creature was following him. He heard the grinding and the shuffling he had grown accustomed to. Whatever it was, it was in hot pursuit. Fighting a wave of vertigo summoned by its mere presence, Dusty quickly came upon the school doors.
The locked school doors bound by several lengths of chains.
“Oh, come on!” he yelled, his hooves banging uselessly on the doors. He turned his head. The lights flickered one by one as the creature approached. Its face was still masked by shadows.
Dusty bolted left down another hallway. What he wanted to do was get in the air, but there was neither doors nor windows to fly out of, or someplace with the vertical space to fly over the creature. It still loomed over him. Its hunched back gave it the appearance of some ancient, unmentionable beast that had crawled out of some dark hole in rocks.
“-other... chair.”
There was Berry’s voice again. “Berry! What!?”
“Transfer chair... moved... Ins-... the school.”
“I’ll kiss you when I’m out of here, Berry!”
Despite his jubilation at the news, he still needed to get there. He was quickly running out of stamina and the monster was beginning to gain on him. His mind betrayed his focus for a moment and thought about the facility. What was with those children and the beast? Why had his dream suddenly been hijacked? It didn’t make any sense!
Dusty skidded to a halt and crashed into a locked door as he reached the end of the hallway. He lost a few precious seconds as he rose to his hooves and scampered down the adjacent corridor. The monster couldn’t be more than ten meters behind him. Eleven tops.
“The chair!” he exclaimed at the top of his lungs. At the end of the hallway where a classroom should be, an immaculate white chair, the same he had sat down in upon starting the experiment, was nestled firmly in the floor. Never had something been so beautiful to him. The lights flickered on and off above the transfer chair, but unlike the corruption that the monster induced, this seemed to be a naturally damaged light
He made it to the end of the hall with a little time to spare. Slamming the door shut, he rose onto his hind legs and pushed a rusted steel filing cabinet in front of the door. Maybe, just maybe, it would buy him enough time.
He sat in the chair and jammed the helmet onto his head.
Initiating the transfer: 18%
The lights flickered on and off, even more so than they usually did.
Initiating the transfer: 35%
The metallic grinding noise returned. Dusty pressed the helmet against his ears as hard as he possibly could. It was the most soul-splitting racket he could think of. Tears sprung to his eyes as it grated and reverberated against his skull.
Initiating the transfer: 46%
To his horror, the paint on the door began peeling away. The wood underneath quickly flushed with fungus and wood rot, eating away at the very structure of the door. The cabinet was heavy but not very sturdy with all the rust painting its sides. Rust blossomed across the cabinet itself and something inside it collapsed.
“Go away! Go away! Leave me alone!
Initiating the transfer: 67%
The cabinet collapsed completely on itself. The wreck of his barricade made a scream jump to his throat, but his eye was on his helmet’s screen.
“Come on! Come on!”
Initiating the transfer: 87%
Almost there, but the wood had finished rotting as well and collapsed on the floor in a heap. There stood the creature in all of its forbodding glory. Its skin indeed looked rotten and matted, and that only seemed to make its ability to move all the more impossible.
Initiating the transfer: 100%
“Yes! Yes! Get me out of here!” He was in a windowless, doorless room. The only way to escape was right in front of him, and that was blocked off by a massive creature. It reached a scabbed, dying hand toward him.
Dusty laughed in triumph; he was getting out after all. Then his eyes widened in horror as another phrase flashed across his helmet’s visor.
Step 1 of 64: Complete
Proceeding to: Step 2
Dreams are truths we reject. Nightmares are truths we believe.
~Quote dated twenty years before the rise of Nightmare Moon
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Story Commentary: LINK
Edited by: Reader Review, Genesis1212, Softy8088
