Welcome to Chop Suey

Often, I have found myself looking up at the night sky. I like staring at the lights. I am not staring at the stars. There are lights in the night sky that are not stars. I do not know why they exist, but they whisper my name, and I know them. They keep trying to sell me Sham Wow.

Welcome to Chop Suey!

I walk into work at eight thirty sharp every weekday, and I leave at seven thirty sharp every evening. These are hours which I have no memory of spending. They stick with me as hazy after images glimpsed through some daguerreotype veil filled with longing, existential pondering, and a deep profound terror of what lurks in the freezer. Every day I go to work, and every day I get paid. Some days, I receive money, some days I receive bullion of a rare mineral. Some days it's gold, some days, it's silver, then there are the days I receive envelopes. Some of the envelopes drip with what I believe is blood from a creature I cannot fathom, other days it is the skin of some small rodent, thrashing and flailing even though there is no bone or sinew attached.

I have received fewer and fewer of these envelopes. I think I have been given a raise! I'm not entirely sure what to spend it on, since I only appeared in town a few days ago with absolutely no memory of where I was, who I was, or how I'd even gotten to the point I had previously been at!

Then again, none of us really know how we get to the points we are at currently. This specific moment, this moment when I am talking to you and calling your ticket  for the pound of Black Forest Fairy Meat you just ordered. Did you voluntarily come into this store and order this meat? Did you wander in here, bored and looking for something new? Was this on your list of things to do?

Time is not good to me. Whenever my shift is ends, I leave, and I see... hmm... I see faces age. Not in that slow, inevitable way that faces age. It's funny. I can be gone for an hour or two, and a filly I saw with her mother turns into an old grey mare. I look above me, and the moon rises and the sun rises and the moon rises and the sun rises and the moon rises and the sun rises, and it repeats. It repeats endlessly.

It's so lonely being stuck here. I have no one to talk to besides my Land Lord, and he is... not exactly a... existing entity of talkative nature. Still, I can't complain. I have a job, I have a home, and I have a roommate! I do not believe he can see me. I think I am a ghost to him, whenever I walk in, he is usually reading a book or doing work. He often glances at the door with a look of confusion when I come in. I do not think he understands my existence.

I don't understand my existence either.

I go to work in the morning, I leave at night. Or, at least, my perception of night. I did a few calculations a while back, using the position of the stars to chart a timeline. It appears that one workday for me is a six month cycle for the world I currently reside in.

Time is non-linear. Some days, time flows in reverse. Great cascades of blurry shapes move in reverse. I see things unmade. Sometimes, I wake up in a completely alien time, where everything is light and light and light and light and light and light.

I live in the mirrors. It's lonely here. All I see is shadows, shadows of ponies, and shadows of other things, things that scurry away anytime I turn to them. Things that are too long to fit in the cupboards they live in, things too large to live inside the husks of ponies I see. I see stars sometimes. Some days, I wake up on an astral plane gazing into the future. Into things my mind can't possibly comprehend, yet I am shown anyways. I do not know why. Sometimes, I take the orders of the unknowable when I am in the astral plane. They really seem to enjoy the Noble Blood Meats. I should talk to my boss about that. They could be potentially lucrative customers! Sometimes they pay in precious minerals not found on the planet. Sometimes, they pay in visions.

They usually just try to pay in coupons though. Expired coupons.

Things have been getting harder to manage ever since Celestia passed that Anti-Meat & Meat Byproducts act. It's not that patrons don't come by, they come by often. I have never seen a law so universally reviled in Equestria. Then again, there was that one time Celestia tried to pass an anti-immigrant law.

Like I said, time flows in reverse some days.

~~~

Bees. That's all I can really think about anymore. Bees, bees bees and bees on top of bees. Buzzing piles, hordes of delicious bees. What do bees think about? Do they think about you or me? What if we are the bees? What if we are bees? I really wouldn't be that far off. We all work tirelessly towards a goal we'll never reach for reasons we don't know. We're born to work, but with no purpose to our work.

What I' m trying to say is, my name is Joe.

What does time feel like to you? Can you feel your skin stretch and grow sallow? Can you feel the liver spots develop on your face and neck? Can you feel your posture deteriorating? Do you feel sad when an old friend of yours dies, and you sigh because you know that you aren't far behind them? The day and night cycles endlessly repeating. Can you feel those too?

What I'm trying to say is, I work at Chop Suey. You won't ever see me because I work at the back. You also won't see me because I don't technically exist in your dimension. In my dimension, you are all faceless, pale, blobby abominations! Abominations who deserve a preferred customer bonus if you ask me.

How is it possible that this universe can exist? Something cannot be created from nothing. The beginning and the now do no mesh. There is an explanation, but we will never know it. Are we meant to know it? Will your great great great great great great granddaughter find this secret one day? I hope so.

What I'm trying to say is, there's a special on Metal Meats going on from now until a metronome somewhere in the vastness of space and time stops ticking. Stop by anytime!

~~~

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Hey! Uh... is this thing on? ....Yuppers! Blinking light and everything! Wait, the blinking light is supposed to be a good thing right? H-hold on, I need to go check actually.

...the blinking light indicates that the camcorder is recording. Yup! I got it!

...Okay, so I'm reasonably sure this thing is on. To start off, my name's Dooley. Yes, Dooley the Gryphon. Supposedly, I'm named after a famous inventor, but that's a story for a different time. I'm just recording this so if the neighbors hear screaming and or find my room decorated by my insides... well, at least you have this.

Oh, and tell my family I loved them.

Right then! So there's this thing going around, right? Celestia's Anti-Meat & Meat Byproducts Act. It's just be easier calling it the AMMBA. The details aren't really clear, but I heard it floating round the grapevine that she wandered in on a couple Skin-walkers posing as Gryphon Ambassadors actually EATING the gryphon ambassadors. Apparently that's how it happened. Now? No one's allowed to eat meat in Equestria. Yeah, that's not going down well with the locals up here in Canterlot, I'll tell you that.

Nobles are a freaky bunch.

So that got me thinking. There's a sizable meat industry in Equestria, and far as I can tell, it's not going anywhere. Most of these places are run by either these really tough minotaurs or gryphons. Creatures we can trust to NOT eat their stock. Sorry, I just bring that up because I'm remembering this really funny from a few months back. There was this one chop-shop; Rogers! I'm not saying that as an exclamatory statement. It had an exclamation point stapled at the end.

It's a long story.

Anyways, the owners were a pair of-

...hold on a minute. W...what's that noise? It sounds like a cat being torn in half, but sped up. Celestia's sake that hurts! I uh- aaaAAAAAAAAAAHHHH! C-can anyone else see this?! There's a hole in my room! What are those?! Are those arms?! What are those things?! What are those thi-

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