The Equestrian Sleep Experiment

“Twilight, you do understand the circumstances of this experiment, correct?”

“Yes, Princess Luna.”

“Very well. We trust that thy experiment shall be... Successful...”

The Equestrian Sleep Experiment

Zero Day

        “Twilight, are you sure about this?” Spike piped up from his basket-cot as he and the Unicorn settled in for the night. The shuffling of her bed covers nearly spooked him.

        “Yes, Spike. I’m sure of it.” Twilight replied with a subtle scoff as she sat up in the bed. The baby dragon sat up as well, meeting her eye-to-eye. She could see the weariness in his eyes. His gut felt like it was in multiple knots.

        “I…” Spike started to speak, only to trail off and look away. His face still held the look of worry upon it. Twilight, being her curious self, wanted to hear what Spike had to say about her partaking in the testing of her own experimental mana cloud.

        “Spike, speak your mind. It’s okay.” She scooted  down to the foot of the bed, leaning her head over to listen in on his opinion.

        “I…” He broke off again, a choked sob making him bounce under his blanket. “W-What if something happens?”

        “Spike, nothing’s going to happen-”

        “You saw the reports, Twilight!” Spike’s head whipped back around, his bloodshot eyes drowning in tears of worry for his best friend. “You saw how high the toxin levels were for that ‘gas’ that you created.”

        “That’s why they’re going to be filtering oxygen into the room. And the concentration of the cloud is going to be fairly low for each of us.” Twilight was certain everything was going to be fine. Celestia had made arrangements for a free-flowing filtration system that would let airflow come through the room and constantly let in proper air for them to breathe. Transponder gems and viewing ports would be put into place to monitor all of them. Twilight was sure of this. Nothing could go wrong.

        “I just have a really bad feeling about it.” Spike shook his head, looking away from the blurred Unicorn in his vision. He couldn’t understand why, but he felt that this would be Twilight’s final destination. “Please, Twilight. Just have everyone stay home and say that you found a kink in the system.”

        “I can’t back out now, Spike. This is Princess Luna’s capabilities that we have on the line. If she can’t bring guidance into pony’s dreams, the order around here may plunge us into a state of chaos and hysteria!” No matter how much Spike pleaded with Twilight, she wasn’t going to budge. Even if she had her own doubts, it had to be done.

*   *   *   *

        “So what yer sayin is, all we have ta do is breathe in that gas and we’ll stay up fer a few days?” Applejack spoke up after the train blew its steam whistle.

        “Precisely,” Twilight simply responded, the eyes of all her friends attempting to pierce her veil of calmness. Rainbow Dash was the next one to speak.

        “So does this mean all of the Wonderbolts will be able to fly for hours on end without getting sleepy?”

        “Physical fatigue is still present, but your wingpony won’t be stopping to take a nap.” Twilight nodded with her approval. In classic fashion, the Pegasus flipped over her back in the train car.

        “Awesome!”

        Pinkie Pie, Rarity and Fluttershy all huddled together, looking at the jar of magic gas that Twilight had brought along to show everypony. Its yellowish tint brought alarm to Fluttershy and Rarity, but Pinkie thought otherwise.

        “It looks like you dyed a cloud with yellow food coloring!” She exploded, putting her muzzle merely millimeters away from its glass encasement. The way it floated around was mesmerizing, almost as if the way it floated could put anypony that looked at it to sleep. “Does it smell funny?”

        “Of course not, Pinkie,” Twilight muttered as she scooped the jar away. Better to be safer than sorry if the train hit a bump in the track and had Pinkie end up breaking the jar over her head. Twilight was so sure that the gas was harmless, she placed the jar ahead of it in the bandage-needed department.

        “Now, Twilight. Are you sure we’ll be okay after we finish the… Uh… Testing?” Rarity asked cautiously as to not bother her any further. Twilight scoffed, sitting up on one of the coach seats with the jar in between her hind legs.

        “For the last time, we’re all going to be fine!” Twilight shot back soon after. She couldn’t help but remember Spike’s teary-eyed face as she let go of his claw to get on the train to Canterlot. His words of worry ran through her mind once more as the other Mane Six started to converse with one another about the possibilities that came with not having to sleep anymore.

”I just have a really bad feeling about it.”

        “I do too, Spike,” Twilight murmured to herself, her ears flopping down to the sides of her head as they entered the tunnel leading towards Canterlot. “Please let us both be wrong…”

Zero Day + 1

        Twilight was pleased with the accommodations that Princess Celestia had set up for the experiment.

The room was a bit dark for her taste, but a candlelight spell could easily fix it so that she could read the number of books that’d been placed within the confines. Beds were arranged about so that everypony could sleep comfortably if needed. There was running water and two toilets that were separated and hidden by sections of wall, just in case two ponies had to use the bathroom at once. There was dried hay and some dehydrated fruit slices in a cabinet on the far side of the room, enough to last all six of the ponies well over the two-week period that the test was planned for.

A bright pink light flickered in the top of one of the room’s corners, denoting the transponder gem’s working status.

“Alright, ladies. The room is being sealed for the two-week period. Luna’s speed to you all.” A male voice echoed over the magic intercom. Most of the ponies were excited to be partaking in the experiment that might change Equestria forever. Applejack had talked about how the gas might help her work overnight during the applebuck season, while Rarity told of how she would no longer have to rush on dress orders since she could stay up all night making them. Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie talked about how they could care for their little ones, animals and foals respectively. Twilight was more worried about taking mental notes on how the gas affected patterns and thought-process. And somehow, Rainbow just felt the need to retort to the voice in the gem.

“I’m just as fast as her, you know,” she said with a hmph, strutting around the room to loosen her legs. The faint call of laughter could be heard from the other end of the mana-line. Silence followed, and then they were alone.

“So now what?” Pinkie asked, bouncing up and down on her cot like an adorable filly would. Twilight put her hoof to her chin, eyeing the bookstand.

“We could always read some Daring Do,” she chuckled. Her horn lit up in her signature purple aura, another cloud of magic particles appearing over one of the green-covered books on the shelf. All of the other ponies rolled their eyes sarcastically, each of them trotting over to the bookshelf and grabbing their own books to read for the time being.

Rarity grabbed a small paperback book entitled On the River Muzzle, which looked to be a mystery and horror book set in the lands of Prance.

Rainbow Dash picked up a copy of Your Wings and You: Tips to Flawless Flight Form, which was obviously going to be used for her study of flying for long periods of time.

Pinkie, surprisingly, grabbed a cookbook that highlighted the practices of baking, chilling and laying fondant over specialty cakes.

Fluttershy and Applejack both picked up books about plants and hydroponic sciences accordingly.

Each of them retreated to their own cots without saying a word.

Twilight hung on the fact of their silence for a moment, but she eagerly dismissed it as them wanting to further their knowledge in their respective fields. Lying back onto the mattress, she held the book over her head and began to read the introduction page A.K. Yearling put at the start of all her books.

I would like to take this moment to thank my family for molding me into the pony that I am now…

Soon, Twilight was reading through the first act of the story. Her eyes fluttering as she struggled to keep awake. She noted that the gas may be inert and have to put into a higher concentration. But, that could always wait until the next check-up on the gem transponder.

Zero Day + 3

        Twilight had spoke with the scientists working the gas pump to increase the concentration of the stimulant agent by point zero five percent, allowing for a safe addition to the gas without causing toxic harm to anypony. She’d felt no changes on herself, but her fellow friends would say otherwise.

        Rainbow Dash complimented her work, saying that she no longer had to rest and could trot around the room for hours if she please.

        Rarity was glad to say that she finished the entire mystery and horror series that she’d been reading since a couple of days ago.

        Applejack now had a beginner’s grasp on using hydroponics to grow some of the other crops that the Apple Family used for meals and other food preparations.

        Pinkie Pie knew every recipe by heart, from three-tier wedding cakes to the extravagant three-dimensional cakes that were usually entered in the pastry contests all across Equestria.

        Fluttershy was exceptionally calm and open about the things she read in her book, which was quite a surprise with everyone. Usually they all had to fish the information from her, but it came out like a river going into the Prancific Ocean.

        Twilight found the fact quite startling, but she dismissed it as her finally bonding closer to their friends.

        That is, until she heard Fluttershy talking about the time she raped Angel bunny’s face.

        “I just… wedged him between my hind legs and rubbed him in until he started biting.” Twilight bit her lower lip. She… She did ‘that’ to little Angel? “Sometimes I would leave him in just so he could draw blood. It tickled after a while, and I even have scars to prove it.”

        Twilight turned on her side in the cot as the other four sat in awe. Fluttershy did indeed show her plush insides, revealing the nibble marks of the mentioned bunny.

        “How could… ‘This’ be… Happening?” Twilight whispered to herself as she reached for the nearest book and covered her head with it. She suddenly felt cold, as if an arctic chill had entered the room. Her eyes began to flutter with Applejack opening up about seeing her parents fall from a rope bridge and turn into a red paste upon impact in the canyon below. “T-There’s no way… This has to be a d-dream…” She sputtered out like a dying mana-powered jilope.

Zero Day + 5

        Twilight dared not move from her cot.

She held her eyes closed shut. Her ears were pressed to her forehead with her hooves. The book still covered her head, shielding her from the madness that ensued around her.

On each cot, her friends stared at the darkness. Each of them whispered something to it, as if telling a secret to a foalhood friend. Their eyes were glazed, clouded by a broken cog deep in their minds. Twilight couldn’t put her hoof on it, but something was off. This terrified her, but she hoped that it was only a slight side-effect to the mana gas. There was no way her friends would be acting like this normally. Hopefully it would all change after the one week mark, or she hoped, would end.

Zero Day + 9

        Fluttershy wouldn’t stop screaming.

        For three hours, Twilight and the rest of her friends endured the Pegasus’ lung power as she galloped wildly around the chamber screaming her head off. Twilight had dared not get up to get food. But neither had Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Applejack and Rarity. The thing that baffled Twilight most was how calm the other four were to the incessant screaming. She turned over once to look at the others. Their eyes held a sort of whiteness to them, although barely noticeable in the low-light situation. But they didn’t move from where they stared, straight ahead.

        Fluttershy’s screaming turned into squeaks and wheezing as she collapsed on the floor, her vocal cords physically torn by the impulse for her to fill the room with an ear-piercing pitch. But for Pinkie Pie to do it too all of a sudden? Twilight couldn’t do anything but turn her back to them, fear and horror gripping her senses.

        Applejack and Rarity both moved soon after Pinkie had started screaming, leaving only Rainbow Dash to continue to whisper to the darkness. The two grabbed a couple of books from the bookshelf and brought them to the three viewing ports that were used to monitor the activity up close. It was no surprise that everypony stopped coming in after the whispering had begun. And then the two did something uncothe to both their natures.

        They let themselves shit on the floor.

        Applejack tore a page from one of the books soon after, scooping up a little of her own feces and smearing it on the page. The same page was slapped onto the viewing port, fully letting the visceral liquid of her own poop bleed into the white page. Twilight could smell it, even in the farthest corner from them. It reeked of bile and stench, and it nearly made her vomit what little food she had left in her system.

        Rarity repeated the same process Applejack had used, not even using her magic to keep her hooves clean of the refute filth. Soon, they’d put two layers of poop-mache papers onto the two ports, leaving the last one to hover over Rainbow Dash’s whispering lips.

*   *   *   *

        On the other end of the transponder, the sound of Pinkie’s screaming soon ceased to exist. This baffled the staff monitoring the Thaum waves and the sounds coming from within the confines.

        One of the researchers that Twilight had appointed for the project noticed no significant difference in the Thaum waves of each subject. However, he did notice that towards the farthest corner of the room, the Thaum count was holding to a normal diffusion rate compared to the other parts of the room. Except for that corner, everywhere else was experiencing a slightly higher diffusion rate. It was no cause for alarm however.

        The only thing the researchers had to worry about now was whether to let the sudden stop of the screaming slide or to actually go check on it. After one of the scientists had proposed the question, Rainbow Dash’s voice stopped broadcasting from the room. Silence soon followed, and the researchers were convinced.

Zero Day + 12

        Heavy breathing was all Twilight heard in the chamber now. It was music to her ears than what she’d heard two days earlier

*   *   *   *

        Rarity was holding a ball of magic over Pinkie’s mouth as Applejack took a chunk of the pink pony’s haunch with her teeth and stuffed it into the drain in the middle of the room. The sound that it’d made upon ripping away sounded like velcro being pulled apart. Slowly. Methodically.

        Pinkie’s blood dyed Applejack’s nose a new shade of dark orange. The excess dripped off her chin in faucet drops as she blocked the drain with each piece of rump meat. But Pinkie, surprisingly, wasn’t screaming anymore. Rather, she breathed what little oxygen she had in the ball of magic and then all of the carbon dioxide within it as well. Then, she committed the unthinkable.

        Pinkie held her hoof out to Applejack, who soon took hold of it and began to pull at it as her friend pulled back, stretching her foreleg like a rubberband. The flesh AJ had a hold of in her teeth began to bleed in trickles, giving her teeth a new pink color. It took two more minutes of pulling, and two broken bones in Pinkie’s foreleg due to the amount of force her muscles exerted, before Applejack flung her head back from the recoil. Her friend’s hoof laid out in blood-dripping strands, which now allowed her hoof bone to be exposed.

        Pinkie repeated the process on the other hoof, only doing it herself this time. The blood splattered all over her face and eyes, but this didn’t keep her from clawing into her stomach region until she’d created an opening for her organs to be seen. The look on her face showed relaxation, despite the painful spectacle she’d performed on herself. Applejack was still pulling pieces from both her haunches, and now her stomach as Pinkie reached into the opening and began to string out her own intestinal cords onto the floor around her.

        The blood that Pinkie had been bleeding for the last five minutes now began to pool around the drain. More began to accumulate as she pulled back on a flap of skin, a teary-eyed smile on her face. The piece began to rip away from her ribcage, revealing her spotted lungs and beating heart. It must’ve felt good because she didn’t scream, but rather felt relief as she sighed silently.

        As she settled into removing each of her organs with care, the other four convened in the middle of the room and laid on their backs, repeating what Pinkie had done to her hooves. The smell of blood threw Twilight over the edge, making her vomit against the wall until she’d passed out from the sheer exhaustion of contracting her stomach muscles.

*   *   *   *

        She could no longer speak, the fear of being targeted by Applejack and Rarity keeping her from doing so. All she could do was wait. Wait until the fourteenth day.

Zero Day + 13

        Silence. It’d been silent for four days since they’d heard Pinkie stop screaming her lungs out. The decision had been made for the chamber to be opened by Princess Celestia herself. Despite the researchers’ desire for the experiment to last the full fourteen days, she presided over the operation as the researcher manning the transponder spoke into it for the first time in days.

        “We are opening the chamber now. Once you step out and decontaminate yourselves, you’ll be free to go home.”

        “But we don’t want to go home,” responded five eerie voices. The response from them creeped out the staff, but they knew something was wrong if they weren’t wanting to leave. Immediately, debate broke out between the Princess and the research staff.

        “We’re not leaving them in the chamber,” Princess Celestia spoke calmly to the second-in-command Twilight had appointed for the research. His mood was on the complete opposite side of the spectrum.

        “But Your Highness! There could be something going on in there that’ll cause harm to somepony. Please, do not make us open it until we have a grasp of what is going on here!”

        The researcher was not going to have it his way.

*   *   *   *

        The chamber was opened, along with a group of ponies in hazmat suits lead by the brother to Twilight Sparkle. When they first stepped into the chamber, nearly every single pony of the retrieval team turned tail and bolted in the opposite direct. Shining Armor couldn’t believe what he was seeing before his eyes.

        Applejack.

        Fluttershy.

        Rarity.

        Rainbow Dash.

        Pinkie Pie’s dead carcass.

        The skin covering their stomachs were ripped wide open, allowing them to remove their organs and lay them on the floor in a precarious, matching pattern around them. Kidneys, livers, pancreases and intestines were splayed about them. Upon a closer, and highly cautious examination, it was seen that they digestive tracts were still at work. To his surprise, their organs had gained a transparent property. This allowed him to see long bits of food being digested by them, but it looked as if they haven’t eaten a nutritious meal in months.

        Shining Armor had no choice but to brave the hellish room and check the food cabinet. The room was layered with four inches of red water, the result of the drain being stuffed and the water faucet left running for what looked to be the last two days. If he hadn’t been wearing that suit, he guessed he would’ve probably died of some bacterial disease within days, if not hours, of initial contact.

        At this new angle in the room, and the slight sloshing sound of his hooves, Shining could see the wounds upon them. They looked as if they’d been picked apart by some kind of tool. The silence was already spooky enough. To think that they’d done this to themselves was not worth having to remember such a scene for the rest of his life.

        When he opened the food cabinet, his jaw nearly dropped to the floor. The first five days of food rations had been eaten for sure, but after the five day mark, all of the food was still left. Even Twilight’s rations were still there. Twilight.

In the dim light, Shining lit his horn and casted a Thaum scan spell that reverberated all along the chamber. She was here. He could feel her mana still in the room. He looked to his left and found her lying on the cot that was straight across from the only port that wasn’t covered with feces-smeared pages.

        Shining cursed under his breath, angry that none of the scientists were brave enough to come inspect the last viewing port. He wasn’t going to waste any more time though. “Twiley!”

        “S-Shining Armor?” She said weakly, looking over her side and nearly freezing in place. The hazmat suit had scared her senseless and left her in a state of paranoia and fear. Shining still approached and nuzzled her neck.

        “Twiley, it’s me. I’m gonna get you outta here, okay?” He assured her calmly. There was no way he going to leave his little sister in this filth and horror.

        “I want to go home!” Twilight bursted out into tears, turning around and clinging onto her brother in any form or manner she could. She was hurting. She was sick. She need to be away from here. Shining didn’t care how much strain she put on his neck, he was going to bring her home.

        “We’re going home. Mom and Dad are waiting outside.” He said as encouragement to her, beginning to slosh back through the water towards the door. Twilight looked at the five bodies strewn about the drain.

        “Wha… What are you?” She asked, not expecting an immediate answer from the thrashed and bloodied remains of Rarity.

        “We are you, darling. We are the madness that lurks within all of you, begging to be free at every moment in your deepest animal mind. We are what you sedate into silence and paralysis when you go to the nocturnal haven we cannot tread. We. Are your worst. Nightmare.”

        Right afterwards, the order had been given to put down the test subjects. Two Guards in hazmat suits came into the room and began their work, shoving their pinprick-sharpened spears into the decayed eye sockets of each pony. Both sockets were pierced and then swirled about to fully destroy the brain within the skull cavity, rendering the ponies dead and passed on.

        As Twilight buried her head into her brother’s neck, she could hear Rarity in a raspy tone, “More… More. More!” She was soon silenced there after, the lipless smile she had baring her teeth to those that looked on from the entrance into the doorway.

Twilight’s ears flopped to the sides of her head, blocking out Rainbow Dash’s last words of “So.. Nearly.. Free…”

V-Day

        Princess Luna agreed to never frequent the subject of sleepless stimulant. The experiment was a complete failure. Princess Celestia had all the documents burned and sprinkled about in the Royal Gardens, serving as charcoal fertilizer for the plants. Everyone on the staff forgot about the event and moved on to other scientific avenues.

        But for Twilight, the experiment had worked in the end. Scarred by the events in that thirty by thirty meter room, she would never be able to fully reintegrate back into society. Thus she moved back to Canterlot under the watchful eyes of the Princesses and her family, back to the bed where she would lay awake for the next sixty years of her life.