Cross The Amazon

Chapters

1. Calloway Went Thataway
2. Nursery Songs
3. This Little Piggy
4. Prayers for Children
5. The Animals of Farmer Jones
6. Bedtime Stories
7. The Alphabet A - Z
8. Three Little Kittens
9. The Poky Little Puppy
10. The Golden Book of Fairy Tales
11. Mother Goose
12. Baby's Book
13. The Little Red Hen
14. Through the Picture Frame
15. The Happy Man And His Dump Truck
16. The New House In The Forest
17. The Lively Little Rabbit
18. A Day In The Jungle
19. Little Lulu and Her Magic Tricks
20. The Shy Little Kitten
21. The Night Before Christmas
22. What's Up in the Attic
23. The Very Best Home for Me

1. Calloway Went Thataway

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter One: Calloway Went Thataway

Dropspindle had to hurry because the pegabuses were eager to leave. Literally chomping at their bits, the pegasus teams responsible for evacuating the last ponies from Huancabamba were already upset. They had expected to be able to leave two days ago. It would only take a few minutes. Somehow, she had forgotten to pack her careful recreations of Peruvian weaving into her saddlebags. They must be right on the bed, right there - she had just been in such a rush when the klaxons sounded.

It was simple enough to sneak out of the supposedly locked pressure door. It wasn't really locked. More latched. Nopony would even know she had bent the rules and left. She absolutely had to have her traditional Peruvian fabric recreations. It was the entire reason she had risked visiting the human's earth at all!

Life in Huancabamba was slow and unhurried, moreso even than in Equestria, and that was saying something. It had taken forever for the Conversion Outreach Teams to locate and convince the remaining humans to convert. It had taken almost as long to find them again once they had run off to play and enjoy the magical powers of their new bodies. The Peruvian Newfoals seemed intent on restoring the dead land, and had gotten straight to work. The Newfoal government workers had no end of trouble in rounding the transformed locals up for transport to Equestria.

The poor Newfoals just didn't understand the danger. They didn't comprehend the Exponential Lands.

For the first few years, the Exponentials were not such an issue. If a pony stood and let the Barrier sweep over them, they could be certain that a few days travel would bring them to a settlement, or a village, or even the border of original Equestria. Not now. Not in Year Five. The Exponential Lands had truly lived up to their name, and even the fastest pegasus could likely end up lost forever in the ever-expanding New Equestria. That was why the pegasai pulling the pegabuses were so anxious. They wanted to see home within their lifespan.

The issue was angle. From the side, from ground level, the Barrier would deposit a pony on the leading edge of ever-expanding Equestria. But from just 45 degrees and higher up the curve, it was possible to take advantage of the bent dimensions to arrive within reasonable distance of proper Equestria. The air was terribly thin that high, more even than in Peru. It was very near the edge of space, in what humans called 'low orbit'. The pegabuses were pressurized, and the pegasai wore special suits and helmets with air hoses that led back to the buses. They had to be bolted into special harnesses next to low-pressure thrusters that supplied compressed air over their magical wings.

They were the first and last space-faring Equestrianauts. Equestria had no infinite space, no vacuum. The sky was a crystal dome, vast beyond imagination. The Equestrian stars were curious forms of living light created by the princesses. The sun and moon were disks that slid across the crystal sky. The universe of Mundis, the cosmos of the humans, was dangerous and terrifying. The earth's environment was infinite, airless and empty - the pegabuses full of ponies and the pegasai that pulled them were one tiny puncture from death at all times.

It was a nightmare universe of impossible horror. Vacuum. Solar radiation. Killing cold. And to fly too fast could mean being flung out of the earth's 'gravity well' altogether, to be lost forever in absolute nothing! Dropspindle shuddered. No scary story from her Equestrian childhood could compete with the terror of the human's cosmos. Poor, suffering creatures. Celestia was so very kind to try to save them.

The hotel was just down the street and around to the right. Dropspindle galloped down the ancient road. It was cracked and broken pavement, and very rough on her hooves. Humans didn't seem to like dirt roads, they paved everything over everywhere. Huancabamba was supposedly a very tiny, very backward human city, yet it was almost larger than Manehattan! Such huge buildings, compared to Equestrian ones.

Dropspindle opened the doors to the hotel lobby with her hornfield. They were a bit heavy, almost beyond her thaumatic lifting capacity. She had always been better at delicate and fine control than power. When the doors were wide enough, she dashed through.

The talking machine-brain-thing that somehow managed the hotel was barking. Its voice sounded like barking to Dropspindle - the humans had claimed that it sounded just like a real person, but they didn't have pony ears. Not back then, before the human government sent the Outreach Teams to rescue them. The talking machine - humans made the craziest things - didn't sound at all real to Dropspindle. Its voice halted a lot, it didn't possess a natural cadence at all, and the timbre was all grating and tinny too. It was being very talkative.

Dropspindle ignored the mechanical voice and clomped up the stairs as fast as she could. She had to stop to catch her breath between floors - there were many times in her life she had envied the tirelessness of earth ponies, this was one of those moments. Hurry. She had to hurry.

Her door was open, as she had left it. Inside her room, on the bed, was the large pile that represented the labor of the last six months of her life. It was so big - she'd been a busy pony. Using her hornfield, she began stuffing the fabric examples into her saddlebags. So many samples! She had brought skeins and skeins of Equestrian fibers to work with, and learned from every Quechua expert in the area. The colorful fabrics had fascinated her from her first glimpse of them during one of the Crown's official - and mandatory - 'Accepting Newfoals' seminars. The princesses wanted everypony to understand that the former humans had good things to offer Equestria.

The seminars had been instituted because, apparently, some ponies had actually been so frightened of the former humans that they had conspired against the princesses and deliberately abandoned thousands of Newfoals in the Exponentials without any way to get back! It was a very shocking thing to learn about. Even if the seminars weren't mandatory, everypony Dropspindle knew would have gone anyway. Nopony wanted to think that ponies could ever do such a terrible thing to any creature! Those naughty ponies must have been very, very afraid.

Which was silly. During the last six months, Dropspindle had met many, many humans before they became ponies. They were very strange looking - like really weak, shaved diamond dogs more or less - but they had been mostly polite, and many were as friendly as any pony. Some of the humans had talked about very scary and violent things involving their history, and some even seemed like they wanted those things to happen again. Somehow they felt that killing other humans would grant them freedom in some strange way. That was just spine-chillingly alien.

But the weavers and spinners she had dealt with had been nothing but wonderful!

So much fabric! It was lovely, too. The bright colors and the wonderful, alien patterns were just so exciting! No... have to hurry. Dropspindle stuffed the bright red Quechua shawl into her bulging left saddlebag. The pile on the bed was still significant. "Baguettes!" She quickly sorted through what was left, looking for particularly special pieces, and did her best to cram them into her bags any way she could. The larger pieces could never be taken.

Swearing breads under her breath, Dropspindle turned reluctantly towards the door. Hurry. The pegabus.

It was not possible to dash back down the stairs. Human stairs were very narrow and rather tall for a pony. Going up was strenuous, but easy. Going down was dangerous and steep. A goat could do it easy. Dropspindle had several goat friends that would have found human stairs a playground. For a pony, it was a bit on the scary side.

While she made her overburdened climb down, The talking machine's barking voice sounded louder. It was reporting something or another. Probably just repeating that everypony should get to the pegabuses, pronto. Yes, yes, talking box, I know, I should get to the bus, believe me, I know. Dropspindle grumbled as she passed the last floor before the lobby. Fabric could be surprisingly heavy, in bulk.

Something about... no. It couldn't be.

There was one human unaccounted for. A human! Unconverted!

Dropspindle entered the lobby at last. The machine voice sounded almost desperate, as though it somehow cared. A man, a human, had not reported in. For three months... what? He was investigating caves or mines in the hills near the town. It must be a mistake. No, apparently he was using the human's 'electrical power', and had recently 'downloaded' games from the 'hypernet' thing. The artificial voice was very insistent.

The man was a scientist. He was named Kotani. Calloway Kotani. He studied rocks or ruins or something. Calloway.

How could he not know? Equestria was coming! The Barrier was nearly here. It dominated the entire sky from horizon to horizon! It had been clearly visible for the last two months, since the pegasai cleared the smog layer...

It couldn't be seen until then. The human had been underground for three months. If he'd never come up, if he'd had all he needed down there, if...

The metal talking thing could do nothing. It couldn't move - it was very clear on that point. The human was in danger.

How could this happen? The humans had sent government representatives to save everyone! Had one man just simply been forgotten?

This had to be dealt with. Dropspindle burst through the hotel doors and ran as fast as she could through the thin air to the pegabuses. The pegasai were all sealed into their special 'space suits' and it looked like they were ready to take wing.

Dropspindle ran in front of the lead pair of the nearest bus and began to explain. There was a human lost! They had to wait! Was there any potion left? Yes, a human, an unconverted human! The Barrier was nearly here, they were all sealed in to their suits, they couldn't risk everypony else to unseal, unhook, disconnect and go searching the hills. Get in. Celestia had been very clear - not every human could be saved. Not every human wanted to be saved. Yes it was sad. Yes it was a tragedy. Get in. Get in now!

Dropspindle went to the pressure door of the bus. She opened it and stared. So many Newfoals. All going to live a happy new life. That poor man. That poor, poor man. The whole situation just chewed at one. It just burned. That poor man, nobody even knew he was there except the metal voice, and humans didn't much listen to their talking machines. Sometimes that made Dropspindle wonder why they had even built them.

She lifted her overfilled saddlebags - right at the edge of her telekinetic strength - and threw them into the bus. They flopped and lay still. She sealed the door. She ran back to the lead pegasus. He didn't like, or agree, with her statement of intent.

He would try to wait. As long as he absolutely dared, but she had better be faster than a Wonderbolt trying to break a speed record. Look at the sky! The Barrier!

And he wasn't kidding. Dropspindle couldn't help but glance at it, and half the sky was just a solid wall of shimmer and distorted Equestria, and it loomed over everything like doom itself. It looked like you could just reach out a hoof and touch it. It was the largest, most massive thing Dropspindle had ever seen, and even though it was home, at this moment it looked terrifying.

Oh, if it rolled over her right now, she would be fine. She would be in Equestria, in the exponential lands, there would be grass presumably, and water, and probably even trees and who knew what else. She would live a long, long life with a full belly.

Alone. Utterly alone. If she just started running, and never, ever stopped, she would die of old age before she even came close to anypony else. The distances in the Exponentials now were unthinkable. Incredible. Impossible. The humans described it in 'light years' whatever that meant. Light years of newly minted Equestria. Enough room for all the Newfoals, and there were billions and billions of them! Home wasn't just land, it was other ponies. A pony always needed other ponies. Alone was the worst of all possible things.

She should just get on the bus. It was the sane thing to do. The human wasn't even a pony. It should know better. It should have paid attention to its government! He should have paid attention. He had a name. Calloway. Calloway Kotani.

"CROUTONS!" Dropspindle ran for the hill the barking machine had indicated. At least it had displayed the proper location on one of the human's big magic electric paintings. She knew exactly where to go, that was something at least.

Please, please, please let the pegabus wait. This was insane. But it wasn't right to just leave this Calloway there! He must not even know! He was all alone, and the Barrier was coming, and there wasn't any potion, and even if there was, there probably wasn't enough time...

Oh, what a stupid thing to do. But by Celestia and all that was good, it just wasn't right to leave somepony to die alone when they could be saved. It wasn't right! She was not going to be like those naughty ponies that abandoned the newfoals back when. That wasn't what Equestrians were about!

Just wait, pegabus.

Dropspindle the unicorn ran with all of her might, what little she had. It would be okay. Celestia loves all her little ponies. It would be alright.

Hang on, Dr. Calloway Kotani!

The little blue-gray unicorn sped away from the broken road, and into the dry, desert hills of Huancabamba.

2. Nursery Songs

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Two: Nursery Songs

Stratigraphic Palynology is a branch of biostratigraphy - applying geological and evolutionary principles to the understanding of sedimentary sequences and the geological record. It is also a very poor alternative to three solid months of what amounted to paid vacation at the bottom of a mine.

Dr. Calloway Kotani was doing what he did best - playing SlaughterStrike 5. Three was great, four was a terrible disappointment with all the intrusive in-game ads and government propaganda - plus they nerfed sniper rifles - but 'SlaughterStrike 5' was uber. The game featured modern tracking and guided ordnance, sniping was back better than ever, and the ads were gone. The new MicroSony Mk. 6 Mindsets had neural reciprocation, which meant that - to a limited degree - the sensations of touch and smell were included. Never had napalm smelled so much like victory - or smelled at all. It was incredible.

While Dr. Kotani danced in his exceptionally comfy chair, looking about madly, holding his hands out at odd angles, a food replicator was busy manufacturing him a pastrami on rye. The printing head noisily burped out nanostructed pseudomeat paste in controlled patterns. Soon another layer of pastrami would be completed. Once the bread was printed, the completed sandwich would be selectively processed, providing for hot toasted bread, but cold pastrami slices. Calloway preferred yellow mustard to deli, a terrible flaw in his personality that he felt properly embarrassed by.

The sandwich meal pattern included a pickle, already manufactured, and a Coke in a glass bottle. The coke was being printed in Kotani's beverage printer, the bottle was almost done. Glass took longer, but Calloway preferred the verisimilitude - and everything was on the Worldgovernment credstick in any case, so it wasn't like there was any reason to not splurge.

Next to the food printers were several bins overflowing with empty bottles and plates, forks and spoons and not a few hashi. Kotani had the latter printed in neowood, the most expensive variant. Again, government credits, why not? The bins were never going to get recycled - this part of the planet would, eventually, someday, become part of that Equestria thing. Saving resources was pointless anymore.

Inside the virtual battlefield, Commander Rockbiter - Calloway thought his handle was clever and literary - scrambled over the burning ruins of a walking tank and draped himself over one of the machine's six legs. It was an excellent sniping position, the tangle of broken legs and pressure hoses created a visually complex background for him to vanish within. His virtual body was clad in skin-tight adaptive camouflage, automatically it matched the pattern of the walking tank exactly.

The enemy in the latest Slaughterstrike was an A.I. uprising. The artificial intelligences used robot bodies based on extinct animals like panthers and lions - they were fast, dangerous, and very sneaky. But the enemy side also used holographic bodies too, and countless other cutting edge tricks. Camping had gone from being something loathed to a standard and accepted practice. The player that ran about served only one use - to tell his watchful team where the monsters were.

The monsters, for their part, were controlled by other players all around what was left of the globe. Slaughterstrike 5 was an asymmetrical war - the human team camped and crept, slowly and carefully, playing a suspenseful hiding game. The robot army player enjoyed fast movement, quick strikes, strong armor, and the death of a thousand nibbling ducks. Because no player's position was ever revealed, not even when capped, the game was tense, risky, and balanced between stealth and ferocity. Calloway loved the new iteration.

Kotani - Commander Rockbiter - looked down and around at the weed-covered hills. His position was well hidden, but all it would take is one mechanical snake, or spider, or big cat to julienne his fries. Carefully he raised his intelligent sniper rifle to his eyes, and sank into the very private world of fragging-at-enormous-distance. He became the watchful eye that brought wrath from nowhere. He had become death, implacable, unseen everywhere and nowhere, the ultimate doom of all...

Startled, he dropped the rifle, the intelligent scope electronically crying 'WHYYYY?" as it fell into the weeds. He was under attack! A machine cat! A robot snake! All over, it was all over... god that felt real. There it was again! He was being poked and prodded! Oh sweet Buddha, the neural feedback was incredibly realistic and... wait a minute...

There was absolutely nothing around him. He looked up, down, all around... nothing. Just the destroyed walking tank, and the endless sea of dead weeds. A glitch? Was there an error in the Mindset? Ow! That one hurt! Right in the breadbasket. Ulp. What the friggin' hell? Something was physically in the tunnel with him! It was jabbing at his real body! AUUUGGHH!

Calloway tore the Mindset from his head. As his ears cleared the helmet-like device, he heard an overly cute, unhuman voice.

"Doctor Kotani! Calloway! You've just got to... oh! Come on! Hurry!"

Calloway stared in surprise and not a little disoriented shock. The fear that a giant mutie-rat had been trying to get through his clothing in order to dine on his liver resolved into annoyance. The voice belonged to a diminutive unicorn mare. Blue-gray with a mane of some shade of strawberry blond with orange highlights. Her magenta eyes looked impatient and worried. Calloway carefully set the Mindset down. "Excuse me?!?"

Dropspindle stomped her hoof. "Doctor Kotani? Are you doctor Calloway Kotani?" The mare's ears flicked with annoyance. "It doesn't matter who you are, you're still human... listen to me carefully: the Barrier is coming!"

Calloway slumped into his comfy chair, now doubly annoyed. His heart was still pounding. It was some pony trying to convince him to get Converted early. God how rude. He was right in the middle of his game. Never sneak up on a person in VR! It scares the shit out of... sigh. "I am certain your heart is in the right place... whoever you are... but I assure you that I fully intend to Conver..."

"NO! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!" Dropspindle's tail snapped at her hocks like a whip. "We have to run. Flee. The pegabus won't wait any longer, the Barrier is..."

"Pega...bus?" This wasn't the usual 'Go Home, Go Pony' proselytizer Calloway might run into in the market when he went for treats and supplies. How long had it been since he'd even gone up to the surface? Time was different at the bottom of a mine. Long time. Weeks. Maybe months? The pegabuses weren't supposed to come until the very last... uh oh. "What day is it?" Kotani shook his head. "Month. I mean month. What month is..."

"COME ON!"

The little unicorn mare had actually grabbed his hand and forearm in her hornfield. They weren't supposed to do that to humans. Pony telekinetics could leave thaumatic burns. Calloway's arm began to itch. "Hey!"

The field fell instantly. "Sorry! But you have to start running. Now! The pegabuses are leaving. It's the last day!"

Calloway Kotani looked around his installation in the mine tunnel. His desks, his quantum deskset, the food replicators, his Mindset, his games, the twin cases of real, actual vodka that had been a gift from an upper executive. The piles and piles that overflowed from the trash bins. In the dim lights everything appeared just like it had always been for a seeming forever of time. How long had he been drifting away down here? He'd quite forgotten everything but his enjoyment. No troubles, no demands. In a mine, time itself just vanished into the darkness.

"It's really the last day? Already?" Calloway stood up, shocked at how he could lose track of time so completely. The A.I. in the quantum set should have... oh. Yeah... he'd shut the thing up because it nagged... great Buddha of compassion... this was... he had overslept for the end of the world!

"RUN! NOW!" Dropspindle had suffered entirely enough of this filthy, rather smelly human. His clothing was stinky with old booze and artificial food competing for dominance with his own primate odors. Hygiene had not been a priority for this cave-dwelling ape.

Calloway found himself running. He still wasn't entirely sure why, or what was going on. He felt like he was awakening from a very long dream.

"W-what... what... who are you anyway?" One moment Calloway had been playing, the next there was a pony in his space and now he was running somehow.

"Dro... my name is... Dropspindle. I came... came to get you! You're still human!" It was hard to breathe, it was always hard to breath, Huancabamba was very high above sea level and somehow, in the human's world, this meant that the air would be thin. For some reason. The human's realm was insane. Who would make a universe where there ever wouldn't be enough air to breathe? Insanity! "Do... do you h-have one of those... kits?"

Kits? She must mean an emergency transport flask like the Blackmesh carried. He hadn't been given one because he wasn't actually supposed to have been in Huancabamba long enough to make such a thing necessary. He'd been abusing his contract in order to enjoy a stolen vacation. "N-no! No Kits!"

"Wouldn't... have... time anyway." Dropspindle barely avoided the broken minecart and sidestepped it only at the last moment. "N-need like... half an hour... anyway... to change. Don't have it."

Kotani ran a little faster. Not even a half an hour? What the flying hell? The Barrier couldn't possibly be that close! Could it? "Y-you're... you're not kidding... are you?"

Dropspindle couldn't even shake her head. She could only run, her lungs burning in her barrel.

The human and the pony ran up the incline of the floor of the tunnel, past blocked-off side passages, until sunlight burned their eyes. Blinking and struggling to see clearly, Calloway stumbled into daylight for the first time in at least three months. God, had it been that long? "The sky..."

"That's not sky. Now KEEP MOVING!" Dropspindle raised a foreleg and gave the human a prod on the flank. "Go!"

Kotani was running again, clumsily. Everything was much too bright, and the gray of the smog layer had been replaced with a remarkably clear sky divided in half. One portion was blue, a blue he had only seen once, during a visit to Bogota. The city had entirely gone pony, and the pegasai had cleaned the sky entirely.

The other half of the sky was not sky at all. At least not earthly sky. It was pale teal, a bluish-green realm with strange, spiraled clouds and a truly yellow sun larger than a hand held at arm's length. The alien sky shimmered and rippled as if it were under water. The Barrier. He was staring at the Great Barrier of Equestria.

And it was near. It was near in the way that hurricanes should never be, in the manner that one sees a raging volcano for the Very Last Time. It was on land, it was rushing towards him. The air felt thick, the pressure rising as the Barrier crushed against the very atmosphere of the planet itself. The hairs on his arms stood up, as if under the force of static charges. No human being should ever witness the Barrier this close. Kotani began checking his arms for black spots, for thaumatic burns.

"We don't have time for that! RUN, you foolish monkey!"

Calloway ran.

The pair made it down the hillside, and to the edge of town. They ran through the yards of abandoned shack houses. Both had to stop by the road that ran around the outskirts to catch their breath in the thin Peruvian air. Panting, they sucked at the sky like dying fish on the land. Finally, the searing within their lungs calmed. They ran again. Down the street, through an alley shortcut that Dropspindle indicated, and then down another street. They stopped again, heaving with exhaustion. Their limbs ached, their hearts felt as if they would burst. The altitude was murder. It seemed only the natives ever truly got used to it.

Around the corner by the Vergin Del Carmen. Across the broken boulevard. Down the main street, past the empty bar, around the final corner, gasping, into the huge lot where...

The pegabuses were not.

3. This Little Piggy

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Three: This Little Piggy

The little blue-gray mare struggled to balance the overlarge clothsack of imported Equestrian oats on her back. As she half-ran, half-stumbled under the tippy bulk, she used her hornfield to steady, push, and pull the mass to keep it from falling. The distance from the Outreach Depot to the jitney lot seemed ten times longer than before she had oats on her back.

Humans, like Dr. Kotani, didn't seem to comprehend the problems unicorns faced. A pegasus could extend her flight magic into any object she touched - such as a carriage, or a heavy sack - and move it easily. Earthponies were tireless, and had an utterly uncanny sense of balance. If she were an earthpony, there would be five sacks on her back and she wouldn't be worrying about balancing them. Humans just seemed to assume that all unicorns were at least as powerful as one of the Royal Unicorn Corps, or even the princesses themselves. Kotani had actually asked her to teleport them both to safety!

Yes, some unicorns could do some pretty amazing things - just as any particularly gifted pony could do amazing things. But not all unicorns were... what was the humanese word? 'Wizard'? Not all unicorns were 'wizards'. If Kotani needed some weaving done, or dye removed from fibers, Dropspindle knew some great spells for that. She even got a gold star in Vestication - if Kotani needed to get dressed instantly, she could probably pull off a basic clothing apport even on his bizarre human frame. But teleportation, especially at distance - that was Royal Corps stuff. Ordinary unicorns never mastered things like that. What a rude demand to make!

The air was so thin. Dropspindle was forced to pause by one of the human's many alcohol bars. The humans drank many horrible-smelling potions in order to derange themselves. At first, Dropspindle had assumed that the alcohol bars were the mirror of Equestian salt bars, but at the end of her first week in Huancabamba this assumption was violently proven wrong. On the weekends, the humans crowded the bars and drank copious quantities of the strange fluids. Their beverages were made by allowing sweetened fruit and grain juices to rot and go bad. The result - as one human native had put it - "Pickled their brains".

The effect was nothing like how salt affected ponies. The humans became loud and often violent. There had been a stumbling, uncoordinated quarrel between young humans that turned into a clumsy physical conflict. The humans struck each other with their forelimbs over and over until blood poured from their faces. One lost teeth from his head, another had his eyebrow torn open and had needed to have his flesh stapled back together. Human medicine was horrific - they had no elixirs to regrow teeth, and no unicorn medics to regenerate bone and flesh. They just stapled themselves together and went toothless.

It had been a rude awakening for Dropspindle. For two weeks after, she had shrunk away from humans on the street and crept in fear that at any moment the tall bipeds around her might go utterly mad.

Huh. Dropspindle had caught her breath fully. That hadn't taken long. The wind was fierce around her, but it was not nearly as thin as it had been for the last several months. She glanced at the half of the world that was a shimmering wall. The Barrier was moving faster than the air could either be transformed or get out of the way. The air was much thicker now. The air... 'pressure'... had increased. The Barrier must be very close indeed.

Her mouth fell open. Past the western edge of the town, just beyond the low hills, the ridge of mountains in Jacocha had been cut in half. The Barrier was devouring them, a wall against which the mountains were dissolving away. As she stood, the sack of oats balanced on her back tilting in the rushing wind, she could see the Barrier moving down the slope of the mountain at a steady pace. She could see the Barrier coming, moving towards Huancabamba. The thickening air roared louder in her ears.

"HURRY!" Dropspindle was almost galloping now, desperately clutching the sack with her hornfield. "KOTANI! HURRY!" She had expanded her telekinetic grasp so that it encompassed her own spine. She could feel the hollow shapes of her own vertebrae and the butter-soft cord within. It was a grotesquely wet and vaguely terrifying sensation - how did medical unicorns deal with such things? But it was also an excellent grip. By binding her hornfield to both the sack of oats and her own spine, she had effectively bolted the sack to her body. As long as her thaumatic strength held, the sack shouldn't fall off. It hurt a bit though, the weight tugging directly at the bones in her back.

She passed the corner that led back to the Plaza de Armas and pounded down the cracked street to the jitney lot. Where was Calloway? Where was that silly monkey... she couldn't see the human anywhere. The jitney he had chosen was ahead. She had hoped he could help her get the heavy sack into the vehicle. At the steps that led inside, Dropspindle released her field and let the sack fall. She glanced around. No Kotani.

Dropspindle whinnied and turned. She grabbed the sack with both teeth and telekinesis. She began working her way backwards up the steps into the jitney van, dragging the bulky grainsack, trying hard not to let it snag or tear.

The Verdulería Chévere de Huancabamba was very dark, now that the power for the town had suddenly shut down. The plascrete-and-glassite Peruvian equivalent of Googlezon featured a bizarre blend of ancient and new. Calloway had found it fascinating that handmade, traditional ayahuasca vessels sat side-by-side with the latest romball players and last year's MicroSony Mindset. It was a colorful store.

It was also a store that had supplies for miners and tourist elites come to sample local Shamanism. Canteens and ropes, shovels and candles and, best of all, GovRation foodpaks. Calloway made a careful path into the pitch recesses of the market where those goods were. Several times his cart slammed into an unseen display or edge of a shelf. Outside the wind howled, it was getting louder by the minute.

The silver-and-black checks gleamed in the available light. Calloway grabbed handfuls of the foodpaks from the shelves and dumped them into the cart. These were the same traveling rations Blackmesh carried when they needed to cross zones on foot. When the cart was overflowing, Calloway snatched canteens by the armful and began racing back to the front of the store. In the dim light, the cart collided several times, spilling paks, but there was no time to waste trying to gather them back. He pushed the door open and rammed the cart outside. With the cart holding the door open, Calloway turned suddenly and ran to a display that held compasses and LED flashlights. He grabbed several of each, stuffing them into his pockets. Then he ran back to the cart.

The market door was rattling from the wind, Calloway watched as a foodpak sailed away from the cart to scud and flap down the street. The Barrier was a nightmare wall now, eating the very mountains as it came. It was as high as the stars and as wide as the sky itself, it divided the world in half. Even glancing at its massiveness made him feel a sensation of vertigo mixed with a bizarre terror that the impossibly tall thing would topple over and crush him somehow.

He began pushing the rattling shop cart down the cracked street. Water. Those canteens needed to be filled. He had noted a cafe by the jitney lot, it must have a sink. The electricity was gone, but the water should still hopefully work. If it didn't, he would be in trouble soon. Calloway had to take a detour down an alley because the road was in greater disrepair - out the other side he found the next street over in better condition. He began to run, as best he could, pushing the cart ahead of him. The canteens dangled from their straps and whacked constantly into the metal cart and his legs both. After two more blocks he noted he would have bruises the next day.

If he survived to the next day.

How fast was the Barrier moving? As Calloway ran and pushed and rattled and grew more sore from the punishing canteen impacts, he tried to work it out in his head. It was Year Five, which meant that the hypersphere intersecting the earth was... somewhere around fifteen... sixteen thousand kilometers in diameter? Something like that. All of the Northamerizone was gone, the Barrier had just touched the continental Eastasiazone. That was the reason Kotani had decided to take a couple of months off on the Worldgovernment ticket. He'd made the decision just after Nippon had become Included.

He had never expected to see his grandmother's homeland, the homeland of his people. No Wandering Japanese ever did. It was a radioactive exclusion zone, the entire region. It would be 50,000 years before humans could ever live there again, at minimum. But somehow it had mattered that the land was still there. As long as Nippon existed, as long as the land was there, even if it was death, even if it was poison, then he still had a homeland and a past. When there had been nations, that would have been his. But Equestria had devoured it. Nippon was gone. The deadly mountains, the poison streams, the radioactive cities taken by what was left of wilderness... all gone. Forever.

Calloway Kotani was now truly a man without a home. Even fifty thousand years from now, the Wandering Japanese could never return. There was no land to return to. Nippon was just more Equestria now. Somewhere behind that shimmering wall, everything that Kotani's family, his ancestors had ever made, every place they had ever walked, or died, or lived, was now air and land for ponies only.

Perhaps it was a strange justice. They had killed their islands and been forced to wander the earth. Nippon had been recycled, was all. Perhaps ponies could take better care of it than Man had.

The cart nearly tipped over as Calloway passed the plaza. Fifteen or Sixteen thousand, five years - no, six years. Year Zero was when the bubble in the North Pacific first appeared. The count was from Zero. So six years, about nine thousand kilometers over all - the distance to Hawaii, which was vaguely near where Equestria first appeared. South of. About five thousand kilometers per year... but then the expansion was not constant. Sometimes it went, sometimes it paused... but overall...

As Kotani reached the edge of the jitney lot, he decided that the Barrier must be moving at about fourteen kilometers per day. More or less. It wasn't constant, but that was a decent average. He vaguely remembered seeing that mentioned in a kiosk news report before he went into deep mine seclusion. That would mean... um... just over half a Kay per hour.

Walking speed was... what... three or four Kays per hour? Even on foot staying ahead of the Barrier shouldn't be too hard. Yes, it was coming. But just in shoes a man could move eight times faster than that deadly wall! Just keep going. And in a van, it should be possible to leave the Barrier far behind. This wasn't as dangerous as that pony was making it out to be! This was eminently doable. They had cars, they had roads, and there had to be some cities down below. That meant more fuel to drive farther... heck, there would have to be an airship field out there, somewhere. The Southamerizone was huge!

Kotani didn't actually know much about it though - most of his career had been spent looking for oil and other resources in Svalbard, Longyearbyen, Franz Joseph Land, New Arctica, Hyperborea - all the iceless islands and microcontinents of the Northpolarzone. He'd also done some work in the Gamburtsevs in warming Antarctica. Peru had sounded exotic. It still had towns. It wasn't really part of the Worldfavela. The brochures he had read on the hypernet described it as a 'taste of the pre-Collapse world'.

It had not exactly lived up to the brochures, unless the pre-Collapse world was a crumbling hovel for impoverished native peoples. Still, it had several bars and a nice, deep mine - and easy Googlezon delivery by lifting body transport drones. All on the WorldGov creditstick.

It was easy to breath. That was new. The air was positively thick. The barometric pressure must have risen to sea-level values - or close to it. The Barrier was squashing the atmosphere because it could only process earth matter so fast. Calloway had watched an article about what it was like near the Barrier. The abstract had become real - the Barrier was visibly creeping down the mountain behind him.

"Where have you been?" The excitable unicorn was at the jitney. Drophandle. Spindle. Whatever.

"Look!" Calloway let go of the cart and let it bang into the jitney van. He waved his arms slowly up and down. "Canteens! There's a cafe right over there - " He pointed the direction "Help me fill these up. Maybe there will still be some picarones or something to snack on for the journey. Oh, and if there is any pie, synthetic or not, grab it. No reason this can't be fun!"

Dropspindle stared in disbelief at the human's cavalier attitude. "The Barrier is coming!" Was this monkey mentally challenged?

"You really need to calm down. I've worked it out. We can outwalk the damn thing on foot." Calloway grinned. "Or hoof. Point is, you've got me all panicked for nothing. We've got a car, it's topped up, there's extra barrels of alcohol bolted on top - you ponies underestimate the power of human technology. We've got all the time in the..."

"Have you even looked at a map of this part of your world?" Dropspindle had several canteens around her neck, and was floating two more with her hornfield.

Kotani shook his head as they walked. "No. Grab a map if they have one. You can navigate while I drive. Just get us to the freeway, and..."

Dropspindle stopped in the middle of the street, just outside the cafe. She stared at the insane monkey for a moment. "Calloway. Kotani." She worked to control her temper. It wasn't easy. "Just where do you imagine are we going?"

Kotani slumped. Yakity-yak. This mare definitely liked the dramatic talk stuff. He returned her baleful glare.

"Where we are going, where we have to go - to escape certain doom, for both of us - there are steep cliffs, torturous heights, incredibly rough terrain, endless lengthy switchbacks, maze-like canyons - and the only roads are crumbling dirt paths barely wide enough for that bulky wheeled monstrosity of yours!"

Kotani didn't know that. He had imagined a luxurious drive.

The little unicorn mare gave the shaved ape another glare. "And that is just to get off this one particular plateau."

"Oh?"

4. Prayers for Children

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Four: Prayers for Children

"SWEET CELESTIA! PROTECT US!" Dropspindle was gritting her teeth so tightly that Calloway could hear the grinding even through the pony's terrified call for intervention and the whining of the jitney's NeoSterling engine.

The medium-sized public transport van recovered as the front wheels gained traction on the rapidly dissolving crust of dirt that served as a road. For a brief moment almost a quarter of the jitney had hung over a two-hundred meter abyss, and this was not the first time such threat of catastrophe had occurred. The slow, careful - oh so careful - drive through El Distrito de San José del Alto had been beyond nerve-wracking. Dropspindle had distinct tooth marks on both of her forehooves, and Calloway had not chewed off his own fingernails only because there had been no moment when he could remove even one hand from the wheel.

"Huh! I guess ponies do have religion!" Calloway spoke, as best he could, through his own clenched teeth. The total concentration required just to avoid tumbling to their doom was enormous - and exhausting. Kotani had been told many things about native Equestrians, and among them was that they had no churches or religions. The very concept of human-styled faith was supposedly alien to them. Dropspindle's invocation did not seem to support that notion one bit.

Dropspindle removed a forehoof from her mouth. "What?" The alcohol engine of the jitney was screaming at the workload, and the sound of gravel and large rocks destroying the undercarriage was very distracting. Not as much as the ever-constant horror of the next ninety-or-greater degree narrow bend around a deadly cliff, but still fairly attention grabbing.

"Religion. Ponies have it." The front of the jitney tilted down, Calloway had misjudged the sharpness of the turn and the long untended goat-path that was somehow considered to be a road was giving way to hundreds of meters of oblivion. He slammed on the brakes, then reversed, trying to pull the van back from the brink. "WEIGHT! REAR! NOW!"

Dropspindle slid sideways out of the nearly useless-for-ponies seatbelt and dashed to the rear of the jitney. This had become a common tactic, one she was now overly familiar with. Her small weight was not great, but it had saved them several times already. She had also piled their supplies - water and food - in the middle of the van, to try to balance the load overall. The shout of 'MORE!' from Calloway caused her to half-crawl out the back of the jitney and hang with a hooked foreleg from the rail that ran around the top. In proper service, the jitney would normally carry fifty or more humans, most sitting on the top, clinging to that very bar.

The extra counterbalance worked, once again they had successfully not died.

The next section was a straightaway and wider than usual, so Dropspindle slid back through her loose shoulder-harness and sighed into her seat. The long, straight sections were a great relief. If only the entire journey could be like that. But the mountain road was very twisty and filled with curves, and the lack of maintenance had left the dirt-and-gravel path in terrible condition.

"No. We don't." Dropspindle had seen the natives go to their little church, she had been asked to attend. The humans had sat in rows and listened to another human drone on and on about bizarre and often very violent things. Skin boils and rape and things being unclean. Human hands being cut off and bears being used to murder children for insults about baldness. Yet the humans said this inspired them, and made them feel loved by some made-up human alicorn that openly stated he was jealous and wrathful.

The humans had sung praises to this creature, apparently to placate him so he wouldn't 'smite' them - deliberately and arbitrarily harm them - in horrible, awful ways. It seemed that the humans had invented a monster that they could fear, and work to calm down, in the vain hope of avoiding misery somehow. Of all the things that Dropspindle had witnessed on her visit to an alien universe, religion was possibly the most incomprehensible... and the most disturbing. For days after her visit to the human's church, she had felt nervous around the creatures. What their imaginations had conjured as their version of the princesses made her feel afraid of them. What must they be thinking to even invent such a cruel and capricious monster?

Worse, perhaps, was that she knew, beyond any doubt, that everything the humans believed in was a lie. As a unicorn, she could directly perceive magic. She could see the bright - oh, so bright now, like a third sun! - glow of Equestria in the thaumatic spectrum. Equestria was the only light in the human's dark universe. No magic existed there, no ethereal beings, no gods, no demons, no angels, no devils. Just atoms, devoid of thaumatism, empty, soulless. She felt as much pity for the naked apes as she did fear at the beings they made up to call to.

Kotani swerved to avoid a boulder. "Yes you do! You just prayed to Celestia! I heard you!" Yet another big rock. This one was harder to get around, and the jitney scraped the wall of the canyon as the engine growled to push them past the obstruction. "'Oh Celestia save us!' Or something like that!"

"It's not the same thing!" Dropspindle had a hoof in her mouth again, another sharp corner was coming up - worse, the view was terribly clear about what the result of failing the turn would mean. "Celestia is real, and sometimes she listens!"

That was new. "Sometimes she listens?" The pony's god-queen wasn't very attentive. Real god was supposed to watch every sparrow fall, or something like that, wasn't he? Omniscient. That was the word. Sees and knows all.

"Yes! But not always. That's asking too much. She has a life you know."

Calloway had heard a lot of religious nutbars in his day, but that particular excuse for a god-figure not being available when needed was a new one. "What, she has bowling night? No salvation on weekends, she hits the bars?" The idea of the princess of all the ponies throwing back boilermakers every Saturday, maybe hustling pool and cheating at darts made him laugh. "Or maybe she does yoga on Wednesdays? Sorry, you had to die because, well, macrame class?"

Dropspindle understood she was being made fun of. When she had first arrived in Huancabamba she had been unable to tell such things, and there had been some bad moments for her. Humans didn't just tease, their humor went - as one nice weaver had put things - 'for the jugular'. That was apparently a large artery in their necks, and the statement referred to the slaughter of animals, even human ones, with the use of knives. Even human sayings were based on violence and horror. "You humans call on your gods, but they never answer. They can't, they don't exist - I've looked for them, they aren't there. But you tell yourselves, when you luck out, that the event was your god helping you. Then you use that to further delude yourselves."

The turn was very sharp, and the road very narrow, and for a moment it looked like they would plunge to their doom. Calloway managed, once again, to resolve the situation - he really was a pretty good driver, she had to admit. Dropspindle pulled her two forehooves from her mouth and studied the bite marks. "But if Celestia, or Luna intervenes for us, they are there. For real. Luna rescued me when I was a foal - I nearly fell from a clockleg - and I hugged her hooves. I was pretty young, but I remember it like it was..."

"Clock...leg? What?" Calloway tried to avoid the pit in the road, but it claimed his tire. He began rocking the jitney back and forth to get the wheel out.

"Clockleg. On a clock, there are three legs? Hours, minutes, seconds, you call them? I was hanging from a leg on the clocktower and..."

The jitney was still stuck. "Clocktower! Like... really tall? Big hands and you can see one half a kilometer away?"

"Hands? Oh." Humans were always on about their hands. It was some kind of obsession. Clock... hands. Crazy. Clocklegs looked like legs! "Yes. It was very tall and I was hanging from the big leg... don't ask how. I was a foal, I thought... I don't even remember what I thought I was doing. But, Luna happened to be listening - it was night, again, don't ask - and she heard me. I guess I screamed out pretty loud thaumatically - all the unicorns for several blocks around woke up! I still feel bad about that...

"Anyway, Luna appeared, right there, in the air. She took me in her hornfield and brought me down. I ran up all crying and sorry... I must have clung to her leg too long, because she had to ask me to let go. She was real nice about it, though."

The jitney was free. Calloway made a slow, sharp turn around the pit and again was forced to scrape the wall of the rockface. The van clearly had experienced such things many, many times before - most of the paint was missing on both sides of the vehicle. "So, did she buy you ice cream afterwards and mop up your tears?"

"She came and saved me. She held me and flew me down to the ground." That was enough. Ice cream would have taken too much time - being a princess must be terribly busy work. They probably don't get much rest... oh, again. Kotani was making fun of her once more. "Maybe we ponies don't have gods or religion - but we do have princesses, and they actually show up! Sometimes." There. That should show him.

Calloway was quiet for some time. Dropspindle felt uncomfortable. Had she said too much? Had she been too rude?

"You boast that you can call upon the gods! Why, so can I, or so can any man - but will they come when you call them?"

"What?"

"Henry The Fourth. Shakespeare. Sort of. I may not have remembered it right." Calloway slowed the jitney, and carefully maneuvered a switchback that bent around upon itself. They were still a long way from properly down the mountains. He was starting to become concerned that the Barrier would easily outpace them. "Human writer. Wrote famous plays."

Dropspindle clung to her belt straps. The road was very steep now, so much so she was afraid of slamming into the dashboard. "What... what did you mean by that?" Was Calloway insulting her again, or...

"I think it would be nice to have something out there that would actually come and help in person. You go right ahead and keep praying - or whatever it is that you do - to your pony princesses. Or gods. Or whatever they are. Real is real. I don't care where help comes from, as long as I... as long as We... get helped."

So far, that inclusion of 'we' was perhaps the nicest thing Calloway had said to her. Maybe he wasn't just mean jokes and not taking anything seriously. Dropspindle didn't regret trying to save him - trying to help is never something to regret - but she had been wondering if the risk she had taken would ever be appreciated. Or that she would ever be seen as a full partner in this mutual venture of survival.

It was nearly midnight when they pulled into Jaén. The aged and crumbly map that Dropspindle had snatched from a rack in the cafe suggested the trip should have been only two and a half hours long. Things had clearly changed - that or they had indeed taken a wrong turn somewhere. The so-called road they had traveled had seemed much worse than the one suggested by the map. The bumpy, tumble-bumble, terrifying, plummety-slope part where Dropspindle had lost part of her breakfast wasn't even suggested by the map at all.

Jaén was hot. Unbelievably hot. It was 43°C at night. The capital city of the province was also brightly lit - not with electricity, but with the daylight of Equestria, shining through the Barrier wall that divided the sky in half. It was still coming, relentlessly, and it never rested, and never stopped. Well, that last was not entirely true - sometimes the expansion did pause; in the early days it regularly did - but that was years ago now. It was unlikely that respite would come from the Barrier taking a break.

Calloway slid his slimy, sweaty way out of the driver's seat. They had pulled up next to a solar-powered motel, drawn by the glow of electric light in a city otherwise nearly devoid. "They must have air conditioning. They've got to have air conditioning. Please, god, please let there be air conditioning." His words sounded dry in his throat, and exhausted, and beyond stressed.

Dropspindle half fell, half walked down the jitney steps. She found herself on her foreknees a meter and a half from the van. Her normally smooth coat was spiky and ragged with sweat. She watched a trickle of the stuff run down her right forehoof to briefly stain the ancient, scalding, concrete.

"You okay?" It was obvious she wasn't, but neither of them was thinking clearly. Calloway ran his hands under Dropspindle's barrel and lifted her up. He groaned as he did so. "Can you walk? Make it to a door? Go for 101... right there... I'll... get a key."

Dropspindle stumbled through the baking oven of a parking lot and somehow made it to the door of room 101. She stood there while the heat competed with the breeze to see whether she would live or die. The heat felt mean, like mocking humans, but the breeze was hardly any nicer what with it's rude hot breath huffing down her...

The sound of clicking and shoving shocked her from the strange and timeless place her overweary head had become lost in. The door opened and she fell onto ragged carpet that smelled like dog urine, human urine, and several kinds of smoke.

She was barely aware of being dragged into the room, the door being shut, or the rattle of a machine starting up. She felt herself being lifted and clumsily dumped on something soft. A bed. It must be a bed. Calloway collapsed face down beside her, breathing heavily. He had removed his shirt and pants, and his skin glistened with human oil.

"Oh... god. Sweet Jesus but that... that damn road down the fu...nnnn... SNERK! Sngrrrrggrrr..."

Dropspindle watched the dripping human snore for a while. The cold air from the rattling machine made her feel utterly drenched, but also significantly better. Her coat was soaked with her own sweat. She wriggled so that her hindquarters faced the breeze and lifted her tail to let the air flow under as well as over her body. She imagined herself literally steaming. The room quickly filled with the smell of sweaty pony and equally sweaty human. Somehow that was better than the smell of the room itself.

After some unknown time, Dropspindle awoke. It was still dim out, still the half-light of Equestrian day shining through the Barrier into earthly night. She had been dreaming about the little nibble-manicured park beside her home in Surcingle. She had been wandering through the lovely oak trees - that was the humanese word for them, 'oak', and had been trying to coax the attention of a little animal. A squirrel, perhaps. It was fast, and kept running away, hiding from her. Funny little thing. Little blue squirrel, always running away. Always peeking back.

Water. Oh, sweet Celestia how she needed a drink! Dropspindle carefully worked her way off the bed, trying not to disturb Kotani. He had stopped snoring, and had curled into a fetal position with his thumb to his lips. The poor human was beyond exhausted and heat stressed besides. Dropspindle made her way from the bed to the countertop beside the toilet chamber. Human structures were so strange. The device they did their business in looked as if it had been designed as the perfect pony drinking fountain. Ugh. She would never make that mistake again. Oh, how they had laughed at that when she had first come to Huancabamba.

The sink was inset into the counter. Dropspindle used her forehoof to knock the handle. Water poured from the tap. Her muzzle was instantly under the stream and she lapped at the deliciousness of it for some time. It was astonishing how good the water tasted, even with all the metallic overtones and chemical scents to it. Eventually, she felt sated.

She looked around and found cups. Remembering she had a horn - goodness, but the journey had been difficult - she took one in her hornfield and filled it. She walked to the low table by Kotani's side of the bed and put the cup down. If Calloway awakened, there would be water immediately available to him.

Dropspindle moved to the window, her coat no longer dripping, just faintly, uncomfortably damp. Her back and tail itched from it. So did her flanks. Having a sweaty coat was not fun. She reared up and placed both forehooves on the ledge for balance. With her hornfield, she took hold of the curtain and pulled it partway open.

Over the buildings, past the jitney, beyond the low hills that led to the tall mountains... the Barrier rippled. It was many kilometers away, but this fact did not seem to diminish it in any way. They had bought at least a night of rest, she felt reasonably certain. The Barrier had not yet cleared the visible ridges of the near mountain face. It was a wall of distorting light well behind the peaks. As long as that was true, they had time for rest.

She returned to the bed and half-jumped, half climbed onto it. She studied Calloway's exposed flesh, his back, his arms, his legs. No spots, no patches. The Barrier was being very well behaved. This close there was a very reasonable chance of being exposed to a zone of intense thaumatic flux. Somehow, through some providence, they had managed to exist within a cancellation shadow the entire drive. That good fortune could not last indefinitely. They would need to gain some serious distance on the Barrier if Calloway was to survive.

She turned around on the bed and searched the drawers by her side. The only thing in them was one of the human's black books of false magic and empty promises. She had been hoping for a couple of EPK flasks. The PER must not have made it all the way to Jaén. Or at least not to this motel. Supposedly, the Ponification for the Earth's Rebirth liked to secretly slip Emergency Ponification Kits into places that humans frequented, or so she had been told. They would leave pamphlets too, advertising the joys of Conversion. A weaver had told her all about it. She had heard a lot of strange things during her time with the Peruvian weaving community. If there had been even one EPK in the drawer, Calloway would have had some insurance against thaumatic flux and the Barrier, too.

Better to be a pair of lost little ponies in Equestria, than one utterly alone pony and a pile of ashes. But even together, it was still a pretty horrible fate. Alone in the Exponentials. The thought made Dropspindle shudder.

Eventually she calmed enough to lay down again. She needed sleep, they both did. Calloway was dead to the world. The poor creature must be so utterly worn out. He had fought the wheel and pedals of the jitney for hours and hours and hours. He had gotten them down, though. He had gotten them safely to Jaén.

Dropspindle tried to curl up against the hairless human, but the strong stench was too much. Humans had quite a strong, and - to be honest - unpleasant odor. They didn't smell like spices or flowers at all. She turned over, so that her nose faced away, and wriggled her body so that her back touched his. She pressed into him. Better. Much better.

Ponies never liked to sleep alone.

5. The Animals of Farmer Jones

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Five: The Animals of Farmer Jones

Calloway was uncomfortable. He tried to get back to sleep but he just couldn't. He raised a hand to rub his eye. It stung from the sweat that had gotten into it. That was when he noticed the silence.

The constant rattle of the air conditioner was gone. The only sound was the rapid breathing of the pony pressed into his back. Calloway sat up, and looked around the small motel room. Daylight streamed through the curtains. The air inside the room was warm and stale. What time was it? He checked the courtesy clock on the stand but it showed 4:15 am. The light was brighter than that. The local power must have failed at that time.

"Get up! Wake up!" Calloway shook the groggy pony the rest of the way to consciousness. She groaned as she lifted herself to a sitting position, supported by her forelegs.

"W-what... what time is it?"

Calloway was up and looking for wherever he had dropped his trousers the night before. "I don't know. Hopefully not too late. The power's off."

Dropspindle was on all fours now and clambering off of the bed. "It's hot in here." She made her way to the curtains and pulled them wide with her hornfield.

"AAAH!" Calloway blinked and turned from the glare. When he returned his eyes to the window his vision was still too blurry to make out what was beyond. Dropspindle was pressing her muzzle to the glass trying to see into the distance in the direction from where they had come.

"I don't see the Barrier, so that's a good..." The mare stopped speaking then turned from the window. "I can't see the mountains. There's no mountains!"

"MOVE!" Calloway had his pants on, he finished donning his shirt. He didn't bother to button it. He ran to the door, Dropspindle beside him. The door open, a wave of terrible heat seared them - Jaén was even worse during the day. Without constant power and air conditioning, nothing could live here now.

Direct and burning sunlight swept over them, making everything brighter still. Calloway glanced up to see the global smog layer being forced back by a massive shock wave in the upper atmosphere. It looked like a gray blanket being rolled away from his face. Chasing the blanket of smog was a shimmering wall of what looked like shining glass. Calloway stood, transfixed by the sight. The mountains were indeed gone. So were the nearby hills. The flat plateau of the city abruptly ended in a vertical and infinite mirror of the blinding daylight. The Barrier was less than a kilometer away.

"Into the car!"

Pony and human scrambled to enter the jitney. Dropspindle writhed into her seat, sliding behind the buckled belts. Calloway took the driver's seat and pressed the starter button. The NeoSterling engine rolled over, sucking alcohol. It started and whirr-rumbled to life.

"We almost overslept." Dropspindle couldn't process the full horror of the statement. She spoke the words flatly, almost without emotion. For her, it would have been her last night with another living being. For Calloway, it would have been his last night.

"Come on, come on..." Calloway had his foot to the pedal, the jitney went faster and faster. The roads were better here, in the former province capitol of Jaén, but they were still rugged and long unmaintained. The jitney jerked and bounded as the wheels ran over potholes and broken sections of sticky asphalt. In the terrible heat, the ancient, pre-Collapse roadbed had become soft and partially melted. The hot breeze from the open windows hardly helped either of them. Jaén was a deathtrap now in many ways - even without the Barrier, the heat would claim them in short enough time.

"We're making progress!" The place where the Barrier intersected the ground grew further and further distant. Dropspindle clung to her seatbelts while the jitney shook and bounced. She was panting now and wishing the vehicle had one of the human's cooling machines built into it.

The Great Barrier of Equestria stretched from horizon to horizon behind them, dividing the continent. Outlying shacks and buildings were taken by it, shifting and changing as they passed through. The gray-brown high desert became lush, green fields as the shimmering wall passed over it. But on the other side of the line, the green fields rushed away at impossible speed. For every meter of earthly land that the Barrier claimed, hundreds, perhaps thousands of kilometers of new Equestria exploded out the other side. It looked like a fierce river of greenery beyond the Barrier, streaming away at lightspeed into an impossible vastness.

When the Barrier absorbed a human structure, the construction was changed, transformed - and even erroneously duplicated. What had once been a solitary three-story walk-up became a long dribble of colorful, pseudo-Tudor farms and houses that vanished as they flowed away into infinity. A dead, dry tree standing lonely next to the building became a gigantic stretch of forest streaming away from the surface of the advancing wall. Whatever single thing the Barrier intelligently transformed, at the speed the Exponential Lands were being created, it printed copies thousands of times over, filling endless new regions of Equestrian spacetime.

The Barrier was smart, Calloway had heard on the hypernet. It learned, it adapted. At first, it could do little more than make sand and sky. Then it learned to transform plascrete and gravel into soil and grass, piles of cars and rusting metal into rolling green hills, and even lightpoles into trees. By Year Three, there had been reports of mutie-rats being swallowed by the Barrier and not being killed by it. The Barrier had learned to transform the genetic aberrations into perfect little bunnies and squirrels, and other cute animals. Some suggested that given enough time the Barrier might even work out how to transform humans, and thus make the Bureaus entirely unnecessary.

But there wasn't enough time. Calloway, being a palynologist and a purple-level Twoper, dealt directly with the lesser elite. He was given the best tools for his job, and the best accommodations for his comfort. His expense account was almost unlimited - if he played his cards close to the chest. He found for the elite the very last of the planet's accessible petrochemicals, and to help that happen, he was greatly indulged.

Among those indulgences was information. The planet was dying, it had been dying for a long time. With the oceans dead and the forests gone, with nearly all animals extinct and the air increasingly stale and foul, there was, at most, thirty years left. Perhaps much less. Technology would not save them, it would only prolong the suffering. The Barrier did not have time enough to learn what a 'human' was, or how to transform them into a native Equestrian. The Barrier wasn't just a thing. It was vaguely intelligent in some strange manner, but it was not truly smart. It did the best it could.

Like all of us, Calloway mused. All anyone can do. The best they can.

The massive pile of shopping carts ahead, blocking off the Carr a Jaén - who would do such a thing? In the middle of nowhere? Worse, in order to make it to the 3N, Calloway had needed to drive nearly parallel to the Barrier for some time now. This gave the wall time to catch up again. As the jitney approached the pile, Calloway considered options. He could stop, get out, and he and the pony could work to move the carts. They could also collapse in minutes from the heat - the only thing keeping him conscious at this point was evaporation from the breeze. He already felt sick to his stomach from the hell outside. Dropspindle, with all that fur, definitely wouldn't make it.

"RAMMING SPEED!" He'd always wanted to shout that while preparing to plow into something, anything. Today his wish was coming true. If he had a second wish - and he desperately did - it would be that the carts would part neatly, that nothing heavier was beyond them or buried under them, and that no part of this would end up in a tangled wreck of metal or flesh. Or both.

Dropspindle shrieked as the jitney van smashed into the rusting pile of metal shopping carts. The sound of at least one headlight shattering, the spidering crack that now ruined the windscreen, the rearview mirror on her side being broken off - all drowned out her scream. Crashing, smashing metal and tinkling sounds temporarily deafened her sensitive pony ears. But, with some grinding and pushing, the jitney forced its way through.

"Not as good as the movies, but fun nonetheless!" Calloway listened for any obvious damage to wheel or drive. They had lucked out. The jitney roared on, the breeze back again, thankfully. "Water! Grab a canteen!" God it was hot. Night was awful, day was beyond terrible. "Listen - splash some on me. You too."

The look was worried.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. But if I don't cool off, I'm gonna pass out, and that's no good. Do it. You too, I need you conscious!"

Dropspindle slipped loose and collapsed on the floor of the van. She had never felt so weak in her life. She felt her stomach heave, but there was nothing in it. She got to wobbling legs and made her way to the middle of the jitney. She could just drag one canteen back. It took supreme effort to regain her seat by the window. For a while she just sat, breathing hard, letting the burning breeze from the window rip the sweat from her coat.

She pulled the canteen up with her forehooves and stuck the cap in her mouth. She twisted her head this way and that, but the cap wouldn't come off. Her teeth kept slipping around the thing, she couldn't get a decent grip and...

"Use your horn! You're a unicorn! Do that magic shit!"

She didn't even feel embarrassed. She didn't flinch at the human's violent sounding expletives. She was too miserable to react. Weakly, she formed a grasping field around the cap and felt with it to judge which way the threads ran. Oh yeah. Righty tighty, lefty loosey. Some human had taught her that, months ago. Working on her bathtub. Oh, for a cool bath! Nice cold water, just soak in it, just...

"Water! Douse us! Get us wet! NOW!"

Dropspindle awoke with a start. "Sorry!" She had never been so hot in her life. Her muscles ached and she felt like throwing up. She felt dizzy and a little like she might pass out. Again.

Water snaked out of the canteen, covered in faint thaumatic light. This was a real and amazing magical spell she had learned as a child: how to make a mess. The water politely balled itself up, gleaming like a crystal sphere in the air.

"Okay... that's pretty neat." Calloway could not help but glance repeatedly at the little ball of water floating between himself and Dropspindle. "Now wha..."

The water ball exploded, shooting out left and right, dousing Calloway and Dropspindle both. Almost none of the water squirted on the dash or the window or anywhere else. The water felt hot at first, because the canteen itself was hot, but the burning wind of their travel quickly cooled it.

"Ohh... oh, that's a good trick! Just amazing, Droppers! And..." Calloway smeared the water around his face, dobbing some on his other cheek and on the arm by the window. "...also really refreshing. That helps. Wow it's hot. I can't even guess."

Dropspindle used her hornfield to spread the droplets through her coat. Then she lifted the canteen to her muzzle and drank some of the hot water inside. "Droppers?" She levitated the canteen over to Calloway, who stared briefly then took it from her thaumatic grasp.

"Um... yeah." The water was too warm, but it was wet, and thanks to the waterball explosion and a bit of evaporation, he felt like he could keep it down. "Nickname. Better than 'Dropsy', that's a disease. 'Droppy' just sounds stupid. So I went with 'Droppers'." Calloway took another mouthful and let it sit for awhile, then he swallowed. The flesh of his mouth felt like old leather.

Dropspindle took the canteen back with her field. She took another drink and put the cap back on. She sent her field through the entirety of the canteen, to feel the level of the water inside. Less than half full. If only they had awoken earlier so as to have time to refill the canteens. Or been less exhausted the night before. "I prefer 'Dropspindle'."

Calloway was silent for a while. "Okay. Dropspindle. But you need to know - nicknames are a sign of camaraderie to humans. It wasn't an insult. It was meant affectionately."

The unicorn clung to her shoulder strap as the jitney followed a tight left turn onto the 3N towards Bagua. "I know. Thank you for that - for the affection - and I do understand your custom. I just prefer my whole name is all." She felt bad saying anything, this was only the second time the human had appeared to warm up to her, but having her name said correctly mattered to her. She had worked very hard to get it properly translated into the most common humanese language, and it was hard enough to feel any real acknowledgement from these creatures in any case. It was a matter of respect.

"I'll try to remember, Dropspindle." Calloway glanced out at the dry bone gulch where once the Rio Amazonas had occasionally flowed. "But forgive me if I slip up in a crisis. There's one more use for a nickname - it's shorter and quicker when the feces hit the fan."

The feces had hit the fan. Dropspindle shook the last canteen with her hornfield to demonstrate precisely how totally empty it was. They were out of water. Worse, not one of the GovRation foodpaks had anything liquid in them. They were all dry replibars and nangineered wafers. Calloway hoped that the selection from the abandoned market did not accurately reflect what real Blackmesh regularly chowed down on, because the poor bastards had it hard enough as it was.

"What are we going to do?" Dropspindle lowered the canteen nearly to the floor of the jitney, then released her field. The container fell with a hollow thunk.

Calloway had taken the 5N north, following the dry Rio Amazonas. They were fast approaching a side road that would take them to Santa Maria de Nieva, another province capitol. It would likely have water. But it also represented traveling parallel to the Barrier once again, not to mention the time that would be used searching the small town. "You're certain there's nothing - nowhere else?"

Dropspindle turned from the pile of opened foodpaks and grabbed the map in her hornfield. The map floated up beside Calloway and hung there. "Look for yourself! There's nothing but tree stumps and cracked dirt forever! There's hills, we've got hills, and mountains - there are more of those, plenty of those, and dry rivers - there's a big dry river right by us but no other towns!" Her voice sounded shrill and not a little panicky. Calloway remembered a holo about Equestrians and something about how they needed more water than humans did. The little unicorn was almost certainly in a very bad way.

Calloway didn't feel very good himself, truth be told. "No choice. We're heading for Maria de Nieva because without water we can't make it. If that's all there is, then it had better be enough."

Dropspindle stumbled back to her seat and tried to climb back into it. Eventually, she just lay with the front of her body over the seat, and her hindquarters splayed out to the side. Calloway wanted to help her up, but the road was difficult and he couldn't figure out any way to get a good hold on her that would be beneficial. Grabbing her mane certainly wouldn't be nice. Instead he briefly reached over and patted her flank, then returned his hand to the wheel in time to avoid a particularly nasty pothole.

The red polka-dot of the earthly sun was setting when they pulled into Santa Maria de Nieva. They had needed to use the spare alcohol tanks, now they needed fuel as well as water. They had only made 240 kilometers. The map was old, and according to it, such a journey should have only taken three and a half hours. It had taken all day and had emptied all of their canteens. The road had been terrible, and where it was not broken and ruined, it had been missing entirely. Beyond the road was a landscape of endless treestumps or abandoned fields of cracked earth that had once been pastureland carved out of the stump forest. Occasionally they had passed broken construction vehicles, many clearly dating from before the Collapse.

Tree stumps and former hamburger factories glowed crimson in the last dregs of the dying light, as far as the eye could see. Dust devils prowled the former feedlot factory farms or skulked among the stumps. The heat had been relentless, and both pony and human collapsed when exiting the jitney. They had parked in front of what seemed to be a supermercado. The power was clearly down here as well - no lights burned anywhere. It was marginally cooler here than it had been in Jaén, thanks in part to having caught up with the global smog layer which blocked a great deal of the searing sunlight. It was almost a comfort and a relief to be able to stare at the setting crimson disk with unblinded eye - this was the sun that Calloway was used to seeing, not the harsh glare of the smogless version.

The LED torches came into their own approaching the pitch dark supermercado. Inside, Calloway and Dropspindle found several cases of packaged water. Bottle after neoplastic bottle, they guzzled and laughed and splashed each other. The dampness did not last long. When at last they felt better, they set about searching the isles for better things to eat than the opened Foodpaks back in their jitney.

The market had apparently already been raided - quite thoroughly - but some items had slipped between shelves, or had been kicked into corners during whatever frenzy had occurred here. Eventually, Calloway and Dropspindle gathered a small pile of goodies. Nanostructed packages of simulated corn, quinoa and the thing that had replaced chocolate made up their dinner. All were high-priced items for Southamerizonian Twopers. It was a feast and they gorged themselves upon it.

Then they collapsed on the supermarket tiles.

"We need to get fuel!" Dropspindle shook Calloway awake from his food induced coma. They were both desperately weary, but the memory of having to leave Jaén was still in their minds.

"Uh... oh... yeah." Calloway dragged his resisting flesh upright. "Sorry. Just so tired, you know?"

"I know. But we have to stay ahead."

Calloway lay down again on the cool feeling tiles. "Maybe we don't. Not immediately. How far are we from Jaén?"

Dropspindle worked to remember. "240... something kays. Something like that." She sat down again. It felt good.

"Well, that damn Barrier only travels at fourteen klicks, two-forty divided by fourteen... um... ten tens in a hundred... god my brain is not braining properly... two hundred is twenty tens... no... SHIT!"

"Seventeen. We have a seventeen day lead at the moment. Sixteen to be very safe." Dropspindle lay fully down, the tiles pleasant against her undercarriage.

"Seventeen. Sixteen. For safety." Calloway rolled onto his side and looked at the mare. "Better at math than I am at the moment. Man, I feel awful. Better than before, but awful."

"I have never felt worse than now in all of my life." Dropspindle lolled her head to the side and gazed back with one large, magenta eye.

"Equestria isn't like this I take it. Not any part is like this?"

Dropspindle let her eye roll and her lid close. "Not even the largest desert is even close to this. I didn't know it was possible for any place to be this hot. Your world is horrible, Calloway!"

Calloway slumped, laying his cheek down on the tiles, rolling so his belly met the floor. "Wasn't always this bad. Th' used to be a jungle. Rainforest. Birds and tall, tall trees. Water. Rivers. Lots of rivers. O' so the hist'ry holo says. Green. Nothin' but... green." He was already half asleep.

"I wish... wish I could... could have seen it... back... then." The tiles were cool and Dropspindle was already chasing something blue through the beautiful trees of magical Equestria.

6. Bedtime Stories

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Six: Bedtime Stories

The Comisaría PNP Sectorial Santa María de Nieva had the explanation for where the citizens of the town had gone - the El Gobierno-Mundial cuerpos ponification oficial had come and mass Converted every human in the entire region. De Nieva had been a Primary Conversion Center. Hundreds of thousands of people had come through this small town, been sprayed down, and then hauled away to Equestria en mass by a fleet of Equestrian airships.

Santa María de Nieva was covered in posters for the event, and the morning light revealed the evidence of those hundreds of thousands. Vehicles of every kind and type surrounded the tiny provincial capitol. Abandoned lifting-body airships had been half-landed and half-crashed into the dry bed of the Rio Amazon. Ancient autogyros perched on the tops of buildings where their owners had left them, entire jitney caravans were crushed into whatever space was available amidst the other vehicles on the ground. There was a giant pile of motorbikes and motorized bicycles that had been dumped in one place for some unknown reason. Or perhaps the reason was obvious - there were bottles of home-brew, long-kept wine and other liquors - many from before the Collapse - laying on the ground everywhere. The town was carpeted in bottles and containers.

There had apparently been a 'Going Out Of Humanity' party. Streamers and decorations covered everything that was not already encrusted in bottles, leftover rotting food, dried vomit, and clothing. Abandoned clothing was draped over everything, everywhere. Calloway and Dropspindle were forced to move cautiously around the town simply because of the mess. "It must have been one hell of a fiesta. At least they had fun before they went pony!"

Dropspindle stopped in the street, her hooves buried in empty pre-Collapse wine bottles, replicated food wrappers and assorted underwear both male and female. "You say that like becoming Equestrian is something to dread. As if it were the end of fun. Is that how you see Conversion?"

The heat was much less than it had been in Jaén, but it was still uncomfortable. It was also a remarkably moist heat - while the Rio Amazon was dry, and all the trees were gone, the ground deep below still bore significant amounts of water. The edgy weariness that both human and pony felt still plagued them.

"I don't know how I see Conversion. I've lost friends to the pony lifestyle - so to speak - and they seemed happy enough. Oh, if anything they seemed over the moon!" Calloway stepped over a pile of skirts and blouses and - intriguingly - diapers, and began walking again. "But they also just drifted away. Pony this, Equestria that - one big exclusive club, and humans need not apply. I don't know if ponies have fun because I've never been invited."

"I find that hard to believe!" Dropspindle diverted around a Pre-Collapse, self-driving Tesla Model EV and rejoined Calloway beyond the bumper. "No pony would exclude anypony just for being human..." She drifted off, remembering her experience of the alcohol bar and the religion church in Huancabamba. "Well... alright, that's not entirely true, I guess. Were you being scary?"

"Scary?" Now Calloway stopped in the street. "Scary? Me... scary? I'm the kid everyone beat up in corporate school. My big martial arts technique was the Face Block. I majored in Backing Down, Running Away and Bleeding Copiously - I am not what anyone would call imposing, much less scary." His tone was joking, but his face looked pained.

"Your friends, once they were ponified, they just turned their flanks on you? They never asked you to do anything with them again, ever? Not ever?"

Calloway looked at his feet. "Okay, yeah sometimes. A few times. To pony stuff! They were asking me to help plant gardens, like that was supposed to be fun or something. Hoofball and stuff. A few parties. And dinners. But going to dinner would just be uncomfortable! I mean if I sat in a chair, then I would be up high and away from the group, and I don't want to sit on a freaking pillow, that hurts my back - and what was I supposed to do, stick my face in the plate? Eat with my hands? And humans can't digest hay anyway!"

"So they invited you. But you didn't accept." Dropspindle sat down on a pile of Twoper jumpsuits. They were mostly red, but there were a few greens in there and even one blue level suit.

"No! I mean yes, they invited me... but of course I didn't go! They wouldn't really want me - big ugly naked ape? I'd be Frankenstein at the table. Nobody wants that." Calloway looked everywhere but at Dropspindle. "They just never got the hint. I had to shift locations, and then just as soon as I met new people, THEY'D go pony. Same bullshit all over again."

"Calloway..." Dropspindle wanted to hug the poor little human, but it was too hot and he did not seem to want to even look her in the eye. "Equestrians have fun. Lots of fun. Even working together is fun - a lot of fun, which is why they wanted to include you. But I assure you ponies play and laugh and sing and joke and..."

"Yeah... yeah... I know. I know." Calloway straightened his back and looked at the nearby bar. " Hey... let's check in there. We haven't tried that one."

Dropspindle frowned briefly. "Yeah. Okay. Maybe we'll find a case of booze hidden away?"

"That's the spirit!" Calloway grinned, finally looking at the Equestrian. "Spirit, get it?" Dropspindle didn't. "Spirits? Another name for... never mind."

They had been searching the town for three days now, desperate to find alcohol. The NeoSterling engine of their jitney burned alcohol, and having been adapted by the locals, it could burn any form of the stuff. Impurities did not ruin anything, at least if they didn't build up too greatly.

So far, the pair had found two and a half bottles of what appeared to be something home-made, then sealed in Pre-Collapse containers. Altogether less than 27 ounces of fuel, definitely not enough to get them to the next human construction on the disturbingly empty map. The former humans had been astoundingly thorough in their consumption of 'brain pickling' fluids.

On the fifth night in Santa María de Nieva, Dropspindle found herself perplexed, and a little worried. Calloway had asked for some alone time, but that he would be back at sundown. They could share dinner together, but he needed some space. Maybe she could search more of the homes on the east side of the town for anything useful. It was okay, he had said. But he had seemed odd in his manner, even strange.

The homes were not fancy, some had dirt floors. Dropspindle managed to find 1.75 liters of fuel, hidden at the bottom of a chest stored in a closet. The bottle was very old, clearly from before the time that the humans called the 'Collapse'. It was a form of jitney fuel called 'whiskey', and apparently it was 'proof' of some argument that Dropspindle couldn't understand. That brought their total fuel to eighty-six ounces. Two and a half liters was still woefully insufficient for the next stage of their journey, but it was a victory, even if small.

On a wall in what must have been a filly's room, Dropspindle found a drawing and some crude humanese writing.

Mañana los hombres del gobierno
vendrán a convertirnos en ponis.
¡Estoy tan feliz!
Quiero ser un pony mucho.

Dropspindle had been told that she would need to learn two languages in order to achieve anything in Peru. Humans had many ways of speaking, and did not share a common language. Long ago, before the Pax Equestria, the dragons and griffons and diamond dogs had spoken their own languages. The dragons still did, among themselves. The most common language of the humans was called English, and it was used for trade and commerce. It had become the default language for most of the humans. Next came Chinese and Russian, because they had the most resources and had been the last 'superpowers' just before the human's Great Collapse. After that came Spanish, because there were a lot of humans who spoke it. It was the language of humans that were treated the most badly by other humans.

Peru was in the Southamerizone, and the entire continent had apparently been used as a reserve for humans that other humans did not want to help or deal with - much like the Afrizone and the Southasiazone which the human consulate had warned Dropspindle about traveling to. Almost every human in the Southamerizone spoke English and some variation of Spanish - though many in the middle of the continent also spoke Chinese, because humans that spoke Chinese had built many things there and been important in the zone for a while.

Dropspindle had been enchanted, before she left for earth, with two languages. English had lasted the longest, but her Spanish was beginning to fade. This was because she had used it the most, and the most used spell always fades first. She struggled a bit with the note - the picture drawn on it depicted stick-figure humans and stick-figure ponies apparently dancing or standing around - but finally got the meaning of it. The human child that had written it had been happy at the thought of becoming a pony. This made Dropspindle smile.

The light was dimming and growing faintly red. It was time to start back towards the 'mansion' that Calloway had chosen for them to stay in. It was the largest house in de Nieva, and had apparently belonged to one of the last hamburger lords. Large swaths of the rain forest that had once covered the region had first been burned away to convert them to grasslands. The grasslands were used to raise cattle - but not intelligent, speaking cows. Calloway had been very quick to explain this when Dropspindle had become enraged. Unthinking cows. Like meat machines, and not at all like the bovine people she had met and known.

The humans murdered the cattle and ground up their corpses because in the Northamerizone, before the Collapse, 'hamburgers' were an inexpensive meal. 'Fast food' corporations made billions, even trillions of units of human money, and some of the poor people of the Southamerizone got to live - for a short time - almost as well as those who ate the hamburgers up north. But others paid the price of this temporary boon - the aboriginal humans who lived in the rainforest. They were just pushed off of the land, or killed, or forced into camps, or ended up wandering the concrete streets of the Spanish speaking humans.

The hamburger lords lived well by Southamerizone standards, but soon the grasslands died off and became sand and cracked earth. The rainforest was like a carpet over a desert, and when the carpet unraveled, it could never grow back. Grass lived for only a short time on the ruined soil left by the burning of the forest. Once the cattle had eaten it, it could not grow back either. So the hamburger lords sat on their fortunes until those too ran out.

The mansion of the hamburger lord had air conditioning, it was electric, and there were solar panels on the roof. Calloway had made them both work once again. The batteries for the night time no longer worked, but during the day they cooled the house greatly, and were careful about the doors, so that the relief from the heat lasted almost until morning.

As Dropspindle was leaving the house of the unknown human filly and her family, she noticed a photograph on the wall. It was of a human woman and a human man. The man was wearing something Dropspindle had seen many times when she had first entered the human's world. The man was wearing a Blackmesh uniform. More pictures confirmed that the man was almost certainly the sire of the little human filly who had drawn and written the artwork on the wall. Blackmesh. They were assigned Emerency Ponfication Kits!

Since the human government had come and saved everypony here, and for miles around, the man in the picture wouldn't have needed his kit. It might still be in this very house! Dropspindle galloped to the larger room where the man and woman must have slept. She began digging through the closet there, looking for anything that looked like it had been made for a Blackmesh Security purpose. Closets were not a priority to search - humans didn't seem to keep their alcohol fuel in them.

There was the man's uniform! The stretchy carbon-fiber material of it was supposed to become like armor when anything moving quickly impacted it. The nanowoven fabric acted like a 'non-Newtonian fluid', whatever that meant. Dropspindle had spent an hour chatting with a very nice Blackmesh guard when she had been processed for entry into earth. The suit was covered in pockets. She nibbled at one until she remembered, despite her excitement, that she was a unicorn. She immediately began running her hornfield through the pockets and all over the dark spiderweb of the uniform.

There were many devices and tiny machines. She felt them short out or become ruined by her field as it passed through their electronics. So many little machines. Finally - a bottle! A flask! Dropspindle popped open the pocket and lifted a small, rounded, spun carbon-fiber case out of it. She held the case in front of her in the dusky light from the windows. On the front, in white humanese symbols, it read:

E P K

Contains one standard dose.

For emergency use as directed.

Property of Blackmesh Security.

Dropspindle opened her thaumatic perception, and the bottle ensconced within the case glowed with arcane light. Dweomer radiated out into the dim, colorless cosmos from the flask. She turned her head after noting that the normally gray, dark-as-night earth was being softly illuminated from behind her. Equestria blazed like a spotlight held to her face. The Barrier was a wall of color and light that shone straight through brick and concrete, buildings and mountains and land. Nothing earthly could block the unutterable glory that filled half of her magical vision.

Turning back to the bottle suspended in front of her, the minute spark inside now seemed barely there at all. It had been some time since she had used her couplement's vision. She closed her inner eyes and the bottle was just a bottle once more, and the walls of the house were opaque and no longer glass. The room was getting very dark now, the sun was setting. She made her way to the open front door, the small case tucked into her scavenging bag along with the bottle of whiskey. She felt very excited - whatever else happened, Calloway would live!

And whatever else happened... she would not end up completely...

alone.

Dropspindle entered the 'hamburger king' mansion, being careful to slip through the door while it was opened as narrowly as possible. It was important to keep the cool air in and the hot air out. Calloway had rigged things so that the house became positively icy during the day, when the solar panels worked, so that the cold would last as long as possible through the hot and humid night. He had hammered covers over the largest windows to reduce the 'greenhouse effect'. The interior of the mansion was fairly dark all of the time now, but paths to important rooms were lit by small LED lamps which they had found in a hardware store in the town.

The smell of something burning - wax, earthly candle wax - assaulted Dropspindle's sensitive pony nose. Combustion was different in the human's universe, and stung her nose whenever she encountered it - which was frequently. Humans liked to burn things - food, especially flesh (UGH!), old pieces of wood, dried feces, and other things. Fuel was hard to come by, and so humans used anything that they found would combust.

Dropspindle followed her nose through the long hallway to the dining room.Many candles illuminated it. There, she saw the table covered in very pretty dishes and bowls, and the bits of shiny metal that humans used to protect their hands when they ate. There was a centerpiece, an elaborate vase into which dry, long dead flowers and other brown plants had been artfully arranged. Nothing at all grew anywhere nearby, so where Calloway had found even dead plants was a curiosity.

"Hello? Calloway? I found the answ..."

Calloway appeared from the door to the kitchen. He was dressed in a strange, uniform-like costume. It was a black suit and jacket, with a white shirt underneath, and cuffs at the ends of his forelegs. Arms. Around his neck was a wrapped and knotted length of some silken fabric, bright red, with a small metal ornament tacked through it. His wild mane was neatly combed and brushed into place, and while there was not enough water to waste on bathing, he had cleaned his barely furred face. He had also shaved off the fur that had grown around his jaw and under his nostrils.

"Madame! Welcome home, mistress of the mansion!" Calloway bowed while holding a cloth over one arm.

Dropspindle stared. It was all she could do.

"Dinner is prepared, as always, but tonight we have a very special menu for your enjoyment!" The human's eyes sparkled with glee. What was the creature doing? Had he gone mad? "The finest imported Equestrian hay begins the repast, tossed with dried apple slices, also imported."

Dropspindle removed her scavenging bag and slid it with a flash of telekinesis to the corner of the room.

"Please, Madame, take your seat, and dinner will be served." Calloway pulled out what appeared to be a low, small table upon which he had arranged a large and comfortable pillow. She would be able to sit comfortably, yet reach the table surface easily. Human chairs and tables were not designed with ponies in mind. Dropspindle approached the impromptu Equestrian-styled seating arrangement and goggled at it. The entire situation was confusing, yet clearly not any form of human mockery or insult. "May I help you up, Madame?"

Dropspindle allowed Calloway to assist her onto the table, she was too stunned to do otherwise. He helped her become comfortable, smiled, poured cool water into a glass for her, and then vanished into the kitchen. "Calloway? What... Calloway?"

Busy sounds came from the other room. Dropspindle looked at the table. There were two settings, only his had the metal 'silverware'. The tablecloth smelled musty and old, but it was beautiful. It had been elaborately embroidered. Dropspindle levitated her glass and sipped water - then took several deep swallows of it. She had forgotten how thirsty she had become while searching the town. She filled her glass from the nearby pitcher and downed it again.

The embroidery was gorgeous. The tablecloth had once been white, but had yellowed somehow. Things did that in the human universe - they degraded in strange ways. They lost color, or gained other shades. They crumbled and fell apart for no reason.

This could be fixed.

Dropspindle's horn began to glow. She formed the shapes in her mind and twisted them into the pattern she had spent months learning. There was a brief flash of thaumatic light. Her tincturation spell left the tablecloth looking like freshly fallen snow. The yellow stain was gone, the original brilliance restored. Such a beautiful piece of work, such lovely detail.

Calloway ducked into the room, holding a large metal bowl that he was stirring. "You okay?" He seemed worried.

"Sorry! Just tincturating the tablecloth! See? It was originally white!"

"Tinc... um... yeah. Ahem." He straightened, the worry fading. "Very good, Madame. Please excuse the intrusion. Dinner will be served shortly. I am in the process of plating it now. Madame." Calloway half-bowed, not enough to spill the bowl, and turned neatly and left. He seemed to be playing a game, Dropspindle mused. Perhaps this was some kind of human form of recreation or something. He didn't seem like he had gone insane now, when he had entered, whatever mask he was wearing had briefly dropped. He had been genuinely concerned for her. He had seemed like himself. The 'Madame' business was some kind of playful act.

Dropspindle wanted to play along, but she didn't know the game. It didn't seem right to ask for the rules, so she resolved to simply act appreciative. Whatever the game was, it seemed to involve treating her like one of the Canterlot court or something. Hmmm... a butler! That was it! Calloway was playing being the human equivalent of a butler! Like the nobles of the court sometimes had. How interesting! Humans had professional helpers too. That was interesting to know.

Calloway swept into the dining room, a large platter in his forehoo... hands. He set the silver platter down on the long table, and began fussing with the bowls and tools on it. Using some kind of attached pair of gripping... silverware... he filled the bowl he had placed in front of her with real food. Real, actual food! Hay, as promised, tossed with dried apple bits and a sprinkling of a dressing that smelled sweet and sour both. It was astonishing. Where had it come from? It was not replicated food. It was authentic, as he had said.

Replicated food - nanostructed rations and wafers and blocks - had been a problem for Dropspindle during their journey. Replifood just didn't digest well for Equestrians, and Dropspindle had been plagued with alternating bouts of severe constipation, cramps, gas and diarrhea for the past several days. She seemed to be adapting, gradually, but it was very unpleasant, not to mention painful. Finally... real, genuine, not-manufactured food!

Calloway filled his own bowl with cooked, replicated package noodles sprinkled with the same dressing. His had no dried apple bits, it dawned on Dropspindle that there must have only been one, probably dessicated, apple. He had used it entirely for her. "Please, Madame, tell me what you think."

Dropspindle felt tears well in her eyes. She bent her head and nibbled daintily at the hay. The hay was old, and had the smell of dust and possessed a faint taste of mold. But it was real, and it had come from Equestria... like the apple. The bits had been dry for a very long time, but they crunched surprisingly well. Amazing - the crunch of the old hay matched the crunch of the long dried apple, and together, with the honey-and-lemon tasting dressing were surprisingly good. The dish wouldn't win any Canterlot Querier 'Out On The Town' food awards, but for the edge of the Amazon desert, it was an incomparably magnificent treat.

"Calloway... this is... you are... " Dropspindle found herself sobbing. Food, real food. Food that wouldn't hurt. Made carefully, served beautifully, that tablecloth, all the effort... after so many days of misery and heat and constantly searching through sweltering abandoned houses, stumbling over bottles and clothing and worrying constantly about... now, here, finally... it was cool and pleasant in the room, with real food and cold water and there was a pillow to sit on and everything was so nice and...

The tears ran down the unicorn's muzzle.

"Oh... Dropspindle... I'm sorry! Whatever I did wrong... I'm sorry, I... I tried really hard, I just..." Calloway was beside her now, on his knees, not quite sure whether to hold her or keep his distance. "I only wanted to thank you. For bothering to save me. You risked everything and.. I wanted to do something special for you that..."

Dropspindle turned and draped her forelegs over his shoulders. She pulled him closer. "You silly little monkey... I'm crying because this is so wonderful!" She bawled for a time, and was surprised, when she regained herself, to find Calloway's cheeks wet too. "It's just been so hard, and this was so... so nice... and... the tablecloth and the food and... I didn't know what you were doing, and I thought you had gone squirrelly on me or something at first and..."

"So... it's okay? I did okay?"

"Yes. This is just amazing. It's more than okay. It's..." More tears, more relief, poured from her. Luxury, and such thoughtfulness, in the middle of Earth. It had now become the new most incredible thing she had witnessed in the entire universe of the humans.

7. The Alphabet A - Z

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Seven: The Alphabet A - Z

The magnificent dinner was over. Dropspindle smiled as she licked the last of Calloway's effort at dessert, a sort of pudding like thing that tasted sweet but which she did not feel safe asking about the ingredients of. This was all his way of acknowledging the risk she had placed herself in to rescue him. He understood, now, that much was clear, and he was without question grateful.

"Calloway... you have created a moment of joy for me in this... place... and... well, um... wow!"

Kotani grinned. "That... I'm glad. I was worried that... I'm just glad it worked."

Dropspindle turned and used her horn to reach for her scavenging bag in the corner. She lifted it to her and reached inside, through the fabric. She lifted out the bottle of whiskey and placed it on the table. "I found some goodies today, out buggering human houses..."

Calloway stifled, with difficulty, a laugh. "Burgling." His eyes shone. "From 'Burglar'. The other word... it means something... else."

"Ah! Burgling, then. Oh - I hope my language enchantment isn't breaking down. Goodness, that would be a problem. Think good thoughts... Here!" The carbon-fiber case plunked itself down on the table in front of Calloway. "There is still some of your wonderful hay dish left, you made quite a lot of it. Wonderful, as you know." She smiled. She had been complimenting his efforts throughout the meal. Calloway had worked so very hard.

"I bring this fact up because I have found a way for you to properly enjoy it yourself!" Dropspindle raised the case with her hornfield and made it dance in front of Calloway's face. "Look! It's an emergency ponification kit! I found it in the house of a former Blackmesh officer, inside his webby suit! We have days here left to us - you could down this and in twenty minutes you would be safe from the Barrier! You could digest the wonderful meal that you made for me! See? E.P.K. - it has one standard dose, read the front!" Dropspindle beamed. She had saved Kotani. She had saved his very life.

Calloway waited until the package landed on the table, and the hornfield dissipated before picking it up. "EPK. Contains one standard dose. For emergency use as directed. Property of Blackmesh Security." He held the smallish, dark, rounded box and stared at it. "Yup. This is the stuff. Ponification transformation serum. Little nanobuggers in pure magic. I've heard it tastes like grape. Hoooh... boy." He turned the case over. "Warning: transformation and thaumatic hazard. Do not open without intention. Read included instructions."

Dropspindle placed her hooves on the table. "There's plenty of room right on the floor here, or we could go to one of the beds, but not the usual one because... I don't know. Maybe it's messy or something. I've never actually seen a human transformed, but I'll be there! I be right there with you, I promise, because..."

"Me as an Equestrian. Have to pick a new name, I suppose."

"Well, you could, it is my understanding most... 'Newfoals'... do. Picking a proper Equestrian name is a big first step towards fitting in and..."

"And you think, you really think, I should be a pony? You think I'll make a good pony? Do you? Do you really?"

Dropspindle stared, her mouth frozen in mid speech. Kotani had tears in his eyes. "Calloway?"

One of those tears ran down his cheek. "I knew this day would come. I knew it. No way to avoid it, end of the line, hell - end of the world." Calloway's eyes were red now, and puffy. "Time to go pony, huh? Hoooo... boy! Right here. Right here in my goddamned hand."

"Do you object to becoming Equestrian?" Dropspindle felt a touch of anger rising within her. And fear. "Are you... are you one of those... eight shell heffers? Is that the term? Heffers?"

Calloway laughed through his tears. "No. Oh... no. Not one of those. Not HLF. I don't think going pony is wrong. If anything, I think it's a blessing, to the world. To humanity. Ponies are nicer. Better. So much nicer. Jesus, just look at what you did yourself - just to save my sad little ass! My god..."

"Well, if you think that way..." Now Dropspindle was just confused. Calloway should be happy then. "...I don't understand. Open that thing and let's get you fixed up right now!"

"DO YOU THINK... do you think... I should be a... pony?"

Dropspindle had almost tumbled from her pillow at the loud outburst. "O-of course! I... you really aren't making much sense... I don't know what... " Dropspindle used her hornfield to help her scoot the low table closer to Calloway, just around the corner of the table. It took a bit of grunting, jerking her body in an ungainly way, and left marks on the floor, but she made it. "Calloway... what is it? Something must be bothering you - you've had some kind of issue with this from the first time the possibility was mentioned and... what is it? Are you worried it won't work, are you afraid of..."

"YES I'M AFRAID!" Calloway had his head down over the table, buried in the crook of his arms. "I'm so afraid. I'm afraid it won't really work! Why do I deserve to be a pony? Why do I get a pass? Why am I worth such a thing?" Calloway's head was up now, his eyes very red. "Tell me, Dropspindle - why do you think I should get to be one of you? I'm an ass. I've always been an ass. Not a pony. You should have burrofication potion for asses like me! There are people out there... people who are a lot kinder and a lot better, and what happens to them? What..."

"Calloway..."

"How am I going to fit in? Tell me that. The HLF, they say that ponfication erases you, that it changes you, but that's just bullshit - I've seen a lot of people come back as ponies and... you'd be surprised at how many of them were still jerkwads after they got hooves! The HLF is full of shit - ponification doesn't erase a goddamned thing, and that's the problem! You know what I was doing in that mine? I was in there because I was grieving for the loss of my homeland, and you know what I did to grieve? I masturbated to porn, played videogames and drank myself blind, that is how I honored the Great Island of Nippon. Hello ancestors, I spooged on a map of Japan! I'm a prize! What a pony I'm gonna make!"

Dropspindle was without words for a time. "Everypony grieves in their own way..."

Calloway burst out with a howling laugh. "Oh, fuck! Jesus fuck. You are just so nice. God you are nice. You are all so god damned nice. How the hell are you going to deal with billions of ponified humans running all over you? God, your princess must be an idiot."

"THAT'S ENOUGH!" Dropspindle had needed to keep from clocking the fragile human with her forehoof. It was fortunate she remembered in time that they were built like glass. "Listen to me, Calloway Kotani - yes, I try to be nice. I think everypony does in their own way, as best as they can. But I assure you that even born-ponies get feeling sorry for themselves, and that is what I am hearing from you right now, and I have had enough of it!"

Dropspindle put a hoof on the human's shoulder. "Nopony is perfect. There are... asses... among native Equestrians too. Ponies are ponies. And yes, at first I wondered what kind of a human you were. You seemed a little... cranky, and I was put off a bit. But... over the time we have been together, you've tried so hard - just this dinner tonight, goodness! All along the trip you've tried to be nice in little ways... it's just that things have been difficult. Things have been..."

"You don't know me! You don't. You can't, we've only been around each other for less than a week. For all you know, I kill people for fun on the weekends. It isn't even Saturday yet!"

"Do you... kill people... on weekends?"

"NO! Of course not! Jesus Christ on a cracker!" Calloway shook his head. "But you don't know that! I could be a monster, or a... a... I don't know!"

Dropspindle tilted her head and tried to look the human in the eyes. "You're right. I don't know you. Much about you. I know a little. I know you try really hard, but that sometimes you prefer to run away. I know you make jokes to hide your pain. And now I know you think that the fact you feel fear and pain somehow means you aren't a good person. I don't think that's true."

"When my friends went pony, I abandoned them." Calloway stared at his hands on the tablecloth.

"Because you were afraid you would somehow offend them. That's it, isn't it?"

Calloway nodded.

"Your world... and humans... are a little... troubling. This is a harsh universe, and I have been told that you had to be tough and harsh to survive in it. But ponies are stronger than you think. Look at me - I came to your world, I lived by myself in Peru for months... and the only company I have had is humans. Am I broken? Am I ruined? Am I not a good pony anymore?"

"No! Of course not! Hell, you've put up with me, that says a lot right there."

Dropspindle sat back on her pillow and shifted to be more comfortable. "Then either ponies are too tough for humans in their midst to hurt them, or you are good enough person to be a pony. Or both." Dropspindle leaned in once more. "Besides, if I like you as a human, you'll only be better as a pony. So use that kit, okay?"

"Do... do you actually like me? As a person?" The look on Calloway's face was quizzical, a mixture of emotions and questions without answer.

"You're alright, I guess. You throw a decent dinner party." Dropspindle gave a partial grin. "You invite the best guests, in any case."

Calloway stared, surprised, even shocked. Then he laughed out loud. "I guess I did, didn't I?" He reached for the EPK kit. "Well... then, lets see what it takes to trade in my hands for hooves." He wiped his cheeks and eyes, and turned his attention to the EPK case.

"Can I ask a question?" Dropspindle's ears half lowered.

"Yes, of course."

"Why... why do you... you humans... go on so much about having hooves instead of those claws of yours? Hands, hands for hooves, 'oh no I have to give up my hands' - you really don't need them. I mean, they seem pretty fragile, they look like naked spiders, and you can't walk on them. Why is it such a big deal?"

Calloway flipped the case around until he figured out how to open it. Inside, he found a printed slip of replipaper and a carefully protected three ounce / 88 ml flask set in form-fitting high-impact foam. "It's pretty simple, really. Hands are our primary tool. We do everything you do with all of your abilities with our hands. And we need them, because we don't have magic, and we don't always cooperate well either. So we have to make things - tools, machines, weapons, and all of these things are complicated and hard to make." He unfolded the little replipaper slip and studied it for a moment.

He looked up. "I know - think of it this way. Hands are humans unicorn horns. And all humans have to be unicorns, because we all - all of us - have to be the ones who deal with all the fiddly stuff - the gears in clocks and metalwork and tiny, detailed little things. And we have to do this all the time, because we can't control Nature. We have to fight Nature, because otherwise it just kills us. Every human is a unicorn. We aren't super strong, and we can't fly or walk on clouds. We just do all the complicated crap, because we have to, because everything is out to hurt us, and our magic is making material things. With our hands. So... it is really scary for us, because it's hard to even imagine a life where that isn't still true."

Dropspindle nodded. "That... that really makes sense. Thank you! That has been bothering me since the first day I heard one of you go on and on about how terrible having hooves would be."

"I felt pretty clever there, honestly." Calloway pried the bottle from the foam and set it on the table. "It's such a basic thing, I bet most people don't even think about it. They just feel what they feel." He studied the slip again. "Huh. Changing species is a lot simpler than I ever imagined. Just get naked or make sure your clothes don't bind in any way, toss the contents back in one go, and twenty minutes later, you're done. I've had more trouble trying to get a bandage on a cut." Calloway lifted the bottle and jiggled it in his hand, feeling the small weight of it. Taking in the profound power of such a tiny thing. The power to transform one creature into an entirely other creature, in less than half an hour.

Calloway jiggled the bottle several times. Then he shook it. "Hold on..."

Dropspindle tilted her head. "What? What is it?"

Calloway carefully opened the small flask. "Something isn't..." He carefully held the cap in one hand, while slowly and carefully tilting the flask with the other.

"Wait! Isn't that dangerous? Be careful!" Dropspindle had heard only a few things about transformation serum, but among them was how strong the thaumatic flux it contained was to humans, and another was how any contact with the fluid would begin the conversion process... and how a full dose was required to avoid horrific outcomes.

The little bottle didn't pour. Nothing came out. Calloway tilted the flask more, then still more. A thick, gray, syrupy goo slowly oozed out and blobbed at the cap. The grayish slime sparkled slightly, and had streaks of translucent purple, but was mostly opaque. It was very, very thick.

"'Serum should be a clear, purple liquid filled with small, sparkling specks. If serum appears thick or colorless discard immediately. Warning! Do not attempt conversion if serum has spoiled.'" Calloway carefully replaced the cap, then set the bottle back into the foam case. "Shit." He lifted the flask and turned it over, pointing to a translucent section set into it. "See? There's even a little window to check it. I didn't even notice..." He closed the case and hung his head. "I didn't know the stuff could go bad. Of course it can. This is earth. Entropy. Things turn to shit here. Soup goes bad. Food goes stale. I guess, outside of Equestria... magic fades. Duh, huh?"

A single tear hit the tablecloth below his head, leaving a tiny little circle.

Calloway felt forelegs around his chest. Dropspindle pressed her head to his back. "We'll find another. We'll find more. Or we'll find a way. We will, Calloway. We will."

The man patted one of her forelegs, wrapped around him. "Yeah." He sniffed. "Or a boat."

"A boat? On the desert?"

"Across the desert. Eventually, there's another ocean. The Atlantic. Then the Afrizone."

"A boat then." The forelegs hugged Calloway tight.

8. Three Little Kittens

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Eight: Three Little Kittens

Calloway took a bite of his latest creation, 'MeatlessLoaf ala Nanotech' and grimaced. Since the Marvelous Dinner, as Dropspindle called it, he had struggled to provide them with at least acceptable meals. For the special dinner, he had been beyond fortunate to find a shriveled-up genuine Equestrian apple and a bale of imported hay in the back of a market storeroom. There were no more such treats to be found. They had both been forced back to scrounging for whatever they could find, as well as using up the opened foodpaks from the jitney.

More and more, Santa Maria de Nieva was feeling like a trap. They had found no more alcohol to fuel the jitney, and were stuck at one and three-quarters liters. The amount was frustratingly almost close to enough to make it the forty kilometers to the only next thing there was - something called 'Estación 5' - under ideal conditions, but the situation was anything but. The road would be bad, or missing entirely, they would likely have to make detours around blockages, and there was no telling what else might be an issue. In such a situation it would be a desperation move to choose to drive as far as possible, then to set out on foot and hoof after abandoning their transportation.

They had been living in the hamburger king's mansion now for fourteen days of the seventeen - sixteen to be safe - allotted them. The Barrier was coming, it never rested, it seldom paused, and it sometimes raced forward. The smog layer still hid the cosmic monstrosity - only Dropspindle could see it, and only when she chose to by changing something inside her unicorn head.

Their searches of the provincial capitol had become more and more frantic. The goal was as much to find potion as it was to find alcohol for fuel, or food to eat, or more sources of water to drink and stockpile. Dropspindle had thought she had found survival itself the night of the Marvelous Dinner. Calloway often found himself drifting back to her excited moment of revealing the kit. He had been ready, and willing, to go pony. It was incredibly frustrating that now he had made such a breakthrough, the option had vanished.

Calloway was on the roof of the mansion, trying to see why one of the solar panel arrays had failed. The panels were quite modern, and used special metamaterials in their construction that made them very efficient. The hamburger king had clearly made some money off of turning the Amazon to dust. It was hot, as it always was, and Calloway stood to wipe sweat away from his eyes. In the distance, beyond the empty houses and stores, and all the abandoned vehicles that...

Calloway slapped his forehead. "I am a god-damned idiot."

He kicked the solar cell. He picked up one of the concrete blocks that held the array down during times of heavy winds and held it over his head. He threw it with all of his might. It did not go far, his might was less than impressive. "Fuck! Fuckety-damn-damn-stupid, moron, idiot, dumb, dumb..."

He slumped to the roof and began to laugh. All the cars. All the fucking god damn cars. All around. And every damn last one of them used a NeoSterling because there was almost no accessible petroleum left on the earth. That was his job as a stratigraphic palynologist, after all. Find the very last oil, for the elite. Because nobody else could have any anymore.

And NeoSterling engines burned alcohol. He and Dropspindle had been trying to collect bottles of booze for fourteen god damned days, and all around them there was an ocean of the stuff. In every lousy tank of every damn car. Right in front of them, and it never crossed his mind once.

He threw a wrench across the roof.

Down the stairs and out the main door, across the grounds, a can and a length of tubing in hand, Calloway walked at a determined pace despite the heat. He picked a truck at random and opened the cap and bent down to sniff. Alcohol. He jammed the tube into the hole and arranged the fuel carrier. A little careless sucking on the hose and his face stung and burned and smelled, but the can was filling up. He would need to find more cans. He wiped his face on his sleeve and spat and coughed repeatedly onto the ground. His eyes stung from the fumes, so he turned to face the breeze to lessen the burn.

The breeze was odd. It was stronger than any they had experienced other than as a result of the effect of the Barrier. They had three days at least until they had to worry about that, and if absolutely necessary, they could potentially out-walk it if they absolutely had to. It wouldn't be easy in this heat, but it wouldn't be impossible. Instinctively, he checked the smog layer - seeing it rolled back had impressed him deeply. The smog layer was there, intact, but it was roiling, and being affected.

He scanned the horizon, back where they had come from. No sign of the Barrier. The air smelled of dust, somehow. Of baked dust. Calloway looked slowly all around. Toward the east, away from the direction of the Barrier, there was what looked like a darkness. That... didn't make any sense. Calloway climbed into the back of the truck and stood up, trying to see over the mass of vehicles. The darkness stretched from horizon to horizon - well, as far as the global smog would allow. What the hell was it? It was like a wall, like the Barrier, only all rough and dark and bumpy - it had texture to it. Whatever it was it was massive. And it was moving. It was moving towards Santa Maria de Nieva.

"Oh Jesus. It's a dust storm." Calloway felt his heart begin to pound. He'd heard about this phenomena on the hypernet. He'd read an article about it once. When the southamerizone became a desert, it helped to alter the way the winds worked, and combined with other factors, led to some truly horrendous dust storms. More than the dust bowl days of the Pre-Collapse Northamerizone. Worse than anything seen before. Dust storms that could sandblast buildings and choke the life out of men. Dust cataclysms that buried entire towns. Storms that could last weeks.

And this might be exactly that. "Shit!" Calloway scrambled from the truck bed and down to the dirt. He raced around the truck and checked the fuel can. The flow had stopped, but the can was mostly filled. The twenty liter Jerry can was more than half full. He estimated from the slosh at least ten, possibly fifteen liters. Hopefully fifteen. "DROPSPINDLE!!!"

There was no answer. "DROPSPINDLE!!!" He began lugging the can towards their new jitney. They had picked out a vehicle that seemed to have less wear than the one they had driven down from the plateau. The new jitney wasn't trapped behind any cars, and it had a domed hatch on top - for a passenger transport, for what amounted to a poverty bus, it was quite fancy. The paint wasn't scraped off the sides, and the wheels seemed relatively new. New-ish. They weren't perilously bald. "DROPPERS! HEYYYY!"

Calloway began filling the tank of the jitney. Over the past many days Dropspindle and he had packed the vehicle with as much food and water as they could scavenge. It was not exactly a horde, but they had most of an entire case of packaged water, and probably half a case of prepackaged food selections. Mostly GovRations and Blackmesh Foodpaks, but there were a few treats. Dropspindle had found an entire box of Nanobars, and those hadn't been made for years. Old candy was the best candy - especially when it literally could not spoil. There were collectors among the elite that would pay a small fortune for an unopened, mint-condition box of Nanobars. The very first nanostructured candy bar. Quite a find for a history buff. In Antarctica, they would be a treasure and a showpiece.

In the Southamerizone, they were edible.

The dark and rumpled wall was closer now, and the breeze had become a wind. It looked like a wall of brownish tan clouds now. It was terrifying; clouds should not be that color, and they should not be vertical, and they definitely should not look like a nightmare version of the Equestrian Barrier.

"DROPSPINDLE!" The new jitney had water. It had food. It definitely had enough fuel to make it to Estación 5, whatever that was. But where in hell was Dropspindle! Calloway began to run, the wind thankfully cooling things greatly, back to the hamburger mansion. It was one place she would have reason to go. Maybe she had noticed the change in the sky, maybe the wind had made her look. Going to the mansion was sensible. If she understood there was danger, then she would go there, surely.

As he made the path to the front door, he wished that he had time to siphon a few more vehicles. He could fill the tank entirely, he could have spare fuel... but they needed to get going. The farther down the road they were when the storm hit, the farther from the Barrier - and of the two, the Barrier was the greater threat. Driving straight at an oncoming sandstorm was madness, of course, but being trapped in a house while the Barrier rolled over and past was certain death. Madness sounded better.

Weeks. A sandstorm that could last weeks. It was... Calloway was in the mansion, screaming, yelling, banging pots together from the kitchen. Dropspindle was not in the mansion. Dammit!

With every second, that terrible storm was drawing nearer. Santa Maria de Nieva was not that large of a town - it was tiny, it would be little more than a minor subsection of a favela, it wasn't even the size of the arcology in Vostok. Where was that damn mare? At the open door, his hair ruffled by the increasing wind, Calloway tried to reason out things. If Dropspindle wasn't in the mansion, she didn't know what was going on. That meant she couldn't see the sky or hear or feel the wind. That meant indoors.

Calloway looked around. Hundreds of houses and buildings. Well, maybe a hundred and change. Too many to run door to door. She must be scavenging, still trying to find fuel and supplies, still trying to help as best she could. She could be anywhere out there. Down in a basement, deep in a house or a shop, searching a store room. She didn't have implants, so she didn't have a phone - of course not, idiot, she's a pony. Crap. How did people in ancient days alert anyone? They must have had some means to...

Sirens! Noise! They still used those things even in an age of softech and permatech and messages in your ear or your brain or on your arm. He just had to make enough noise! Calloway looked around as he ran past the front gate of the mansion. Cars, again the vehicles were the answer, just sitting there, too easy to ignore. He ran to the nearest, a non-self-driving Chang'an Land Wind VX and pressed his fist to the horn. He pumped the horn repeatedly. No sign of the unicorn. More, he needed more noise.

Below his feet, amidst the bottles and clothing and shoes and debris left behind by the big party before the citizens went pony and got airlifted out, Calloway noticed a cinderblock. He noticed it by accident with his foot. After swearing for a while, he snatched the block up, hefted it to the steering wheel, and tried several times to set it so that the weight sat on the artistically curving bar that activated the horn. The horn blared constantly now, using up whatever was left in the battery.

Calloway moved on to another car and found it locked. That made him laugh. The last day of being a human, and someone had locked the car they would never need again because they were abandoning it forever. God. He moved on to another car. This one, a self-driver built before AvtoVAZ was absorbed into the Worldcorporation, was unlocked and still had a charge. He pounded on the horn, until he noticed an emergency situation button. Old-time mid-Collapse Russian cars didn't just flash their lights when in trouble, they honked, beeped, and wailed. An emergency was an emergency! One press and a second vehicle joined the Cacophonic Catastrophic Symphony Of Santa Maria de Nieva.

A third vehicle played horn with nothing more than a swift kick to the door, caving it in. The tiny, blinking light was even more hilarious than the locked car - this A.I. driven IDAD (Intelligent Designs Auto Division) sedan was not only locked but set to call the police and more if it was so much as bumped. Bourgeois bastards! Calloway was beyond irony in the moment - he had once wanted this very car. The world was noise now, three horns blazing constantly with a fourth - just beside the IDAD - the subject of his pounding hand.

For what felt like Much Too Long, Calloway stood trying very hard not to look at the onrushing sand storm, while he pounded on the steering column of some unknown vehicle. His ears hurt, and for this he was glad, because hopefully there was no place in all of Santa Maria de Nieva that the noise could not be heard. Finally, far across the massive crowd of vehicles Calloway spotted strawberry blond hair whipping in the wind. In the middle of the bouncing mass of hair was a single, small, blue-gray cone. A horn. "DROOOOPPPPSPIIINDLE!!!"

Calloway darted from the horn he had been hammering and wove his way through the metal symphony, waving an arm. He nearly fell twice, he managed to bruise himself slamming into cars, but Dropspindle finally had seen him and was making her way through the mess on the ground to meet him.

"What? What's all the noise? What's going on?"

Calloway grabbed her mane at the withers, unconsciously trying to keep a literal hold on her. He pointed at the wall of brown and tan cloud, while Dropspindle turned to stare at it. "SAND STORM!"

"I don't understand... is that something bad?"

Calloway's mouth played fish out of water for a few moments. "YES! SUPER BAD! GET TO THE JITNEY!". He somehow managed to keep from adding 'YOU IDIOT!'. The pair moved as quickly as bottles and cars and piles of clothing permitted - though to be fair, some of the clothing was now leaving the scene on its own. The wind had grown even more powerful. The wall of dark cloud towered over them, and it was still miles away.

The howling diminished once they were inside the new jitney, with the doors closed. Calloway buckled in, then unbuckled, leaned over, and fastened Dropspindle in. He sat upright again and clicked his own belts into place. Pieces of paper and other flotsam flew by, carried by the steadily increasing wind. For a brief moment Calloway lost all sense of the terrible predicament - there, tumbling through the air across his vision, he watched a pair of linked, knitted, warm woolen mittens flying by, like some bright pink bird. The surreal moment passed. He pressed the starter button, and happily, the jitney hummed to life. It was a much newer model and in much better condition than the old jitney.

"What is your plan? What do we do? What is that big thing in the sky?" Dropspindle had picked up on Calloway's fear - she may not know what was going on entirely, but she was very empathic.

"That's the sandstorm. A gigantic one! It could last days or even weeks. We need to get some distance from the Barrier - anything will help, because we definitely can't sit this thing out for weeks." He made it past the houses, down an alley and onto the road that led to the 5N.

"It's... it's coming toward us!" The wall of cloud - of dust and sand - was directly ahead of them, far down the amazonian 'highway'. The highway was little more than Macadam, much of which had not seen anything like a cementing agent for many decades. The tiny stones and bits of ground rubble spanged and clattered against the undercarriage. "If it's so dangerous, is it a good idea to just drive into it?" She blinked, innocently. It would have been cute any other time.

"Not in the least. We are doing a very stupid thing." Calloway put more pressure on the pedal, the jitney sped up, fighting the wind. "In fact, this is a completely insane thing to be doing. But it's either this, or Equestria in a couple of days, and I don't think I'm welcome there yet."

Dropspindle's eyes went wide, and her pupils became small at the thought. One permanently lonely pony and a pile of ashes. But ahead was something dark and terrible and unbelievably vast, and it seemed just as terrifying.

The jitney rattled down the long, straight roadway of the 5N. Somewhere ahead of them, was the mysterious Estación 5. Behind them was the Great Barrier of Equestria, just three days away from catching up - perhaps less. But ahead was a churning blender of sand, dust, and small stones, a continent-spanning mega-sandstorm, born of desolation and heat and the broken remnants of the dying earth's atmospheric thermodynamics. The monster ahead howled rage as wind, and writhed and contorted behind its ever approaching line.

The jitney began swaying. "Calloway!"

"It's just the wind. It's impatient." Calloway's expression was grim. "It wants to kill us."

9. The Poky Little Puppy

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Nine: The Poky Little Puppy

"Make certain all the windows are rolled up!"

The view ahead was dirt, rocks, the pebbley Macadam road, dessicated tree stumps and a gargantuan wall made of clouds of soil and sand blowing on terrible winds. The new jitney whined and bumped and rattled as Calloway put the pedal to the metal. What was ahead was awful, what was behind was deadly - they had to make as much distance as they could before something terrible happened, like the jitney choking and failing altogether.

And Calloway was expecting just that. "Is every window closed? Even that dome thing on top?"

Dropspindle stumbled to the middle of the vehicle from where she had been checking the windows in the back. The 'dome thing', a transparent neoplastic bubble more for show than utility was locked shut. "Everything's closed!"

"I hope so, because we are minutes from entering. Get to your seat and hold on. We'll lose a lot of visibility and I may have to slow down fast, okay?"

Dropspindle made her way to the front of the jitney and slid into the already-connected seat belts. They just hadn't been designed for a pony, not even one trying painfully to sit upright like a human. She entangled her forehooves around her shoulder-strap as best as she could. "I'm set."

The brown wall no longer looked solid, but was clearly made of dust and air now. Oddly, it was less frightening close up than it had been from kilometers away. It just seemed like a wall of tan-colored fog now.

"Hang on tight, and be brave." Calloway gripped the steering wheel tighter and began to slow down in preparation. It would not be safe at all to be going flat out once they entered. By the time he had dropped to 40 kph, the dark cloud enveloped them.

The world instantly vanished. The jitney began to shudder and rattle.

"Shit!" Calloway began carefully braking, slowing the jitney down more and more. 30, 20, 10 - he still couldn't see the road. The jitney came to a stop.

"We stopped! Is something wrong?" Dropspindle couldn't quite see over the dash unless she stretched.

"Yeah. I can't see the road. I can't see anything at all!"

The jitney rocked to and fro, as if giant hands were trying to flip it over. The wind screamed and howled like a cruel and ravenous beast. They could hear grit sandblasting every surface around them. The transparent bubble on the top produced a hollow scraping sound that never abated.

"God damn... I literally cannot see anything, not even out the side. Nothing. It's just... gone." From inside, the storm was more red than brown. Outside every window of the shaking vehicle was a solid, dark, reddish-brown nothing rushing past very, very fast. Calloway tried turning on the headlights. Short beams ended in ocher oblivion. If anything, it reduced visibility even more. He switched the lights off.

"How far did we get?" Dropspindle squinted as she looked out her side window. A river of dust, of dirt and particles ran by, but of the ground, of the world, nothing at all could be seen. There was only the dust storm. It was as if they were suspended in the middle of an infinity of dirty clouds.

Calloway checked the dash. "Twenty... eight kilometers. I think. About ten shy of the goal. We gained another day and a half, so... four and a half days until the Barrier hits us? If we could make it to the station - that's what 'estación' means, right?"

Dropspindle nodded. Her Spanish was still mostly intact, but she could feel it draining away.

"If we could make the station - whatever it is - then we'd gain another half a day. Give us five solid days from Zero Point."

Dropspindle blinked. "'Zero Point', the moment before Equestria Includes the last of the earth?"

"It's Zero Point for us, so... it's Zero Point."

"What do we do now then?" Dropspindle stared at the howling rush of sand and dirt and little bits of stuff that went by too quickly to identify.

Calloway drummed his fingers on the wheel. "We need to see the road. If I run us off, we could end up in the ditch, or broken down on some stump or rock or something. I've got an idea... but it's not going to be fun. I don't see an alternative." He unbuckled and twisted in his seat. He lifted up a leg, reached down, and began taking his shoe off. Then he pulled his sock off. "Do we have any cable, or straps, or... a length of string , I don't know, ribbon? Do we have anything to tie anything with?"

Dropspindle slipped through her belt and made her way into the jitney. "I don't think so, but..." She dug around in the supplies they had stored. "Wait! There's a sort of plasticky-strappy thing around the case of water. Would that do?"

Calloway was up and back with her. "Yeah... maybe. And the transparent wrap around the whole thing... yeah, yes, this'll work I think." He took out the nice pocket knife he had scavenged from the hamburger mansion in Santa Maria de Nieva and began cutting the neoplastic binding strap and the transparent protective sheeting too.

"What are you making?" Dropspindle watched curiously as Calloway laid his sock down and made tiny slits in the fabric.

"Actually - your specialty is fabric and stuff, right?"

"Yes! I have twin degrees in Textile Arts and Fiber Studies! That's why I was permitted to..."

"Can you attach this length of strap to the sides of this sock? Like making a little sack? Do it so the ends can be adjusted - tied, whatever. Make it so that it's a bag with adjustable straps!" Calloway turned to the transparent sheet.

"I... I think I can do that. I don't know this... plastic substance, but the sock seems to be woven of fibers and..."

"Just do it! Quickly!" The jitney was juddering and the hum of the engine sounded different somehow.

Dropspindle levitated the sock and the lengths of binding strap and began work. Her horn glowed brightly in the dim light as she used a variant of Ausokinesis to interweave the straps with the sock fabric, and to fix the slits that Calloway had cut during his misguided efforts. Dropspindle strongly disliked fabrics being mistreated.

Calloway finished carefully slicing out two long, wide strips of the flexible transparent case wrapping. "This'll work. It's gonna work." He pocketed the knife. "Okay, back to the seats... if you're done. Are you done?"

"Just... a moment... please." The glow surrounding the sock and straps flashed and flickered. The fibers of the sock seemed to grow through the plastic of the straps. "There. I left the ends as they were, they can be tied together, but I don't understand what this is..."

"Seats!" Calloway was already halfway to the wheel. Dropspindle followed. She slid into her belts, the sock levitating to her side.

"Okay. Put the sock over your mouth and nose. Here, turn, and I'll tie it on your head. Like a mask."

"I beg your pardon!" The sock had been on Calloway's foot all day. It has been on his foot the day before. And the day before that. It may have been the same sock he was wearing when she had found him in Huancabamba. It most likely was the same sock. And it had been very, very hot since the beginning and of all the places that humans stank, feet were without question one of the worst. "I am not putting THAT over my muzzle! You have got to be..."

"DO IT! Its to filter the dust! We're going to have to open the door, your door, and you're going to have to lean out into that shit!"

"What?" Things seemed to be going from stinky to worse.

"I can't see the road. It's gone. But we have to drive anyway. This stuff is thick, but it can't be completely opaque - I need you to lean out and see the edge of the road. You can tell me to steer left or right, keep us on it. Keep us from running off it. But we need to protect your lungs - you don't want to be breathing that crap out there - and your eyes! That's what these are for!" He held up the transparent strips of wrapper. "Bandanna goggles! Sort of!"

"You don't understand - my nose, pony noses, are very, very sensitive, and you, well, you... well..."

"I stink like hell! I'm very aware of that fact, thank you. Now put the damn sock on!" Calloway had picked up the sock-and-straps from where Dropspindle had let it fall. He thrust the mass towards her.

"You REALLY don't understand!" Dropspindle was shouting now, and she was nearly in a panic. This monkey had no concept of the Equestrian sense of smell. For all intents, humans had no capacity for scents at all. They were smell-blind, the entire species. She had been informed that their ability to sense odors was at least twenty-thousand times less than that of an Equestrian. Calloway had not even the slightest concept of what he was asking her to endure.

"Fine." Calloway sat back in his seat and folded his arms. "You have until the engine chokes and dies to change your mind. After that, it won't matter anymore. It's been nice knowing you, if you can stay alive for four more days, say hello to Equestria for me." The man's face became granite, he stared straight ahead. As if to push the point, the engine briefly sputtered.

Dropspindle stomped a hoof on the seat. She looked out at the russet maelstrom. She stomped again. "Help me put that pionono thing on!"

Calloway fitted the sock over the mare's muzzle and tied it around the back of her head. Dropspindle gagged several times and struggled not to throw up inside the little sack.

Next, the strip of transparent covering was wrapped around her eyes and head, the ends tied like a bandana over the ties for the sock. The neoplastic felt constricting to Dropspindle and irritated her lashes. The sock was beyond horrific, it was a face full of humageddon. It was a scentastrophe, an odorpocalypse of vomirific proportions. It was pretty bad, and never in her entire life had her nose been so savagely abused. "I'm reaaaaa....ULP!" She just barely kept her stomach contents. "Reeeaaaad.....ulgh.."

"Brave heart, Tegan." Calloway reached past her and put his hand on the door handle.

"Mfwhat?"

"Really old show I liked. Pre-Collapse. Never mind." He opened the the passenger side door. "Lean out, tell me if you can see the road."

A bandanna went around his own face as he lifted himself back into driving position. The jitney began to cloud with dust. Dirt began to cover every surface surprisingly rapidly. Calloway wrapped the remaining strip of transparent neoplastic around his own eyes and tied it behind his head. His face looked squished and packaged, like vat-grown meat in a Twoper market. "Can you see the road?"

"Mffbarely! Mfgotta lean down more!" Dropspindle was half hanging from her shoulder belt and half supported with a leg on a ledge within the door. "Pffokay! I can make out the edge of the mffroad!"

Calloway pressed the pedal down slightly. The jitney began to move forward very, very slowly, about a single kilometer an hour. He was literally driving blind, he could see nothing at all beyond the windows.

"MFFLEFT!" Dropspindle shouted out, her head held low, the raging dirt blowing through her mane, caking her formerly shiny coat. "MFLEFT! YOU'RE GOING MFFOFF THE ROAD!"

Calloway adjusted the wheel.

"PFFRIGHT! RIGHT! I'M LOSING THE MFFEDGE!"

The wheel turned again, very slightly.

""FFOKAY! GOOD, good... good, now pffleft! LEFT! GO LEFT!"

After some long time of this, both human and pony became more confident, and Calloway was able to bring the speed almost up to three Kays per hour. Occasionally Dropspindle would lose sight of the edge, and they would drop to a single kilometer an hour while they worked to try to find it again. Several times Calloway had to open his own door a crack to make sure they weren't near the opposite side of the road.

Twice, they had to stop entirely because the storm of dirt became so thick and fierce that even leaning low was insufficient to perceive the road. Eventually the air became amazingly calm - and opaque - and Dropspindle hopped out of the jitney entirely, and walked beside the vehicle pressing into the doorframe while Calloway kept the velocity well below crawling speed. The lights actually helped then, illuminating the ground just enough for Dropspindle to see it in the murk. The world was a silent tomb of dim, fuscous chocolate.

For hours this went on, until finally, after choking and gasping for slow, difficult, mile after mile the engine simply died.

Dropspindle climbed back into the jitney, and pulled the door shut with her hornfield. Everything was brown. The dashboard was layered with silt, the floor of the car was solid dirt. Calloway looked like a sculpture in dust. She tried to shake the soil from her coat, but it was caked in and heavy on her back. Even despite the sock over her nose - which had stopped smelling of anything hours ago - her nostrils and mouth was caked in incredibly finely powdered mud. Her throat was sore from coughing. She felt sure that without the sock, she would be dead by now.

"Wah we do?" Dropspindle gummed clay and dirt. It was difficult to form words.

Calloway sat, head low. "Intake's fucked." He coughed for a while.

"Wah now?" The dirt was between her teeth, it was in her throat.

"I go unfuckit." Calloway unbuckled and clambered out of his seat as he opened the door. He coughed for a long time outside, and blew brown snot from his nose onto the ground. The air was utterly still and thick, like fog, only the color of soil. He slowly made his way around the jitney like a blind man learning what an elephant was.

Dropspindle waited. Occasionally, her sensitive pony ears made out a sound to reassure her that Calloway was still alive, and still near. A great fear for both of them was stepping more than a meter from the jitney and becoming lost forever in the empty horror. They had made a rule to never stop directly touching the van. Sound was damped down even centimeters from the vehicle. More than a meter, and there would literally be no way to detect where it was, not by sight, and not by sound. Maybe the horn would penetrate the gloom. Maybe. It was not an experiment either wanted to have to try to confirm.

Eventually, after an eternity of straining her dirt-packed ears, Calloway came back inside. He tried to shut the door several times, but the dust blocked the mechanism. In the end, he just left the door hang slightly open. "Cross your... whatevers." He pressed the starter button. The engine clunked and a whining noise dimly sounded. He pressed the button again, and pumped the pedal slightly. Again the engine made strange noises but failed to start. "Dammit." His voice was weak.

"FffI have... an pftidea." Dropspindle spat mud into the end of her sock. "Fie have an idea."

"What?" Calloway was beyond dejected.

"Take me to the... whatever it is. I can send my hornpffield - hornfield. I can send my hornfield into it and find where it's clogged. I can unclog it."

"You... you can do that?"

Dropspindle nodded, dirt falling from her head as she did so. "Yeff. Pfft. Pft. Yes. Ptui. Yes I can. I'm sure I can."

Calloway nodded. The worst thing that trying would do would be to waste time, and they were doing that anyway.

Once again, they were moving. Dropspindle called out 'left' and 'right' between coughing, and tilting her stiff, caked muzzle-sock to let the spit-mud dribble out. Calloway inched the jitney forward, keeping an eye on both the fuel and electrical power. Both were running out. The endless sepia realm never changed, no wind moved, no sound could be heard besides the jitney and each other. It was like they were in some limbo of filth, some elemental plane of dirt, where all that existed was themselves, the macadam road, and thick dust suspended in the air. They often felt hypnotized by it, as they crept their snail's pace.

Several times, Calloway had pondered whether they had died and gone to some strange hell. He felt certain that if it were true, he would not be the least bit surprised. The jitney poked along, mushing through the thick dirt that gradually had covered the macadam. The only way Dropspindle could tell the edge of the road any longer was that there was a ridge, a slight line, where the dust followed the contours of the road. The road was slightly thicker than the ground, and so the dust was slightly raised. It was just enough, in the headlight beam, to tell where the macadam, below, ended. It was difficult, though, so they were forced to travel even more slowly than before.

"Wait!"

"What?" Calloway stepped on the brake.

"I think... I think the road splits off, I can't tell exactly." She hacked and coughed for a while and spat while she tilted her sock out of the way.

"The map, what does the map say?"

Dropspindle did her best to scrape out her sock with her hornfield. "I haven't a clue! Pfft... ptui - I don't even know how far we've traveled. How far?"

Calloway checked the dash. "This should be it. Close enough, anyway. We've come ten Kays." He looked again. "Jesus, we've come ten kays. We actually made ten kilometers doing this. God damn."

"I can't see anything. The road... the dust... I think it splits, but I'm not sure. What do you want to do?"

"God... ahhh... can you tell if one way is wider, or bigger or thicker... more traveled, anything like that?"

Dropspindle looked at the rolls in the dust illuminated by the headlights. It was very dark now. It was almost certainly night, the dim red glow had entirely vanished over the hours, leaving them in utter darkness and flecks of dust in the headlights. It was like snow at midnight, save for the stifling heat. "Maybe... maybe keep going straight for awhile. Maybe."

Calloway thought for a moment. A side road could lead anywhere. Off into the endless desert of the former jungle, away from any hope of buildings, supplies or survival. A wrong choice here could mean life or death. It was such a strange thing. Keep going straight, or follow what seemed to be a possible turn off. The turn off might lead directly to the station, or it might lead them away. There was no way to make a rational decision. "Any Equestrian magic for something like this?"

"I thought we were past that."

"I'm desperate."

Dropspindle stared at the foreknee-high dust her legs were sunk into. "No. I mean, yes, sure! I just don't know it. There's all kinds of fancy location magic. I never had any reason to learn any."

"Worth a try."

"So... what do we do?"

Calloway rested his head on the dirty wheel. Dirt and dust fell from the top of his head, from where it was caked in his hair. "We go straight."

"Why? Any reason?"

Calloway turned his tan, solidly dusted face to the mare. "You suggested it first. You said maybe. Go straight maybe." He grinned under his bandanna, Dropspindle could see the edges of his face shed dust as the corners turned up. "Unicorns are magic. I've always believed that, even as a child, even before you came. Your maybe is better than my 'I don't know'."

"Thank you... I guess?"

10. The Golden Book of Fairy Tales

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Ten: The Golden Book of Fairy Tales

"They told them fairy tales, made empty promises, and they just took what they wanted. People let them, because the bucks came in - money, back then, like your 'Bits' - and even with all the problems, that seemed better than nothing. They could buy sneakers and toilets and televisions and fancy cars. Eventually, the jungle was a desert, and everything ended."

Calloway crammed more of the recently replicated lasagna into his face. "And, of course, nobody could say anything, because if they did, if they were too loud about complaining..." He spooned another mouthful, chewed and swallowed "...then they were just 'disappeared' in the middle of the night. Same thing all over the poorer part of the world. The rich countries bought out or 'replaced' the governments, and brought them to heel. The Northamerizone was the worst offender in that regard. Really bloodthirsty about it... at least beyond their own borders."

Dropspindle forced another mouthful of the rather amorphous and ill-defined Vegetarian Entree down. The food printer made better stuff than they could scavenge, but it still wasn't close to real food. She knew that every bite she took - and she had to eat - would result in suffering later. She had alternated between terrible constipation and raging diarrhea throughout their journey. It was not something either of them liked to talk or think about. They just grimly dealt with it. But it was always in the background. And on the seats, and the floorboards, and recently, mixed with the dust. "Disappeared?" It sounded like magic.

"Killed. Taken out in the middle of the night, shot and buried in pits. Millions of people. Pretty common in the Pre-Collapse days. Kept the... um... 'Nikes', I think they were called, kept the Nikes flowing. Kept the oil flowing. Kept all the resources flowing into the wealthy nations. Pretty effective way to shut up complainers." Calloway was enjoying the lasagna. It tasted cheesy and meaty and filled with tomatoey goodness to his human palate. Dropspindle claimed it smelled like plastic and chemicals.

"How... how can you just talk about it like that?" Dropspindle's replicated vegetable mush was supposed to be 'garden fresh and delicious, a true natural bounty of flavor', which was why she had chosen it. The food printer had worked for almost two hours making all the little broccoli and carrots and celery and countless other vegetables, yet in the end they were just mushy, gritty manufactured gunk. At least her mess smelled better than Calloway's layered awfulness. And... it was an actual, hot meal rather than a wafer or a bar dug out of a neoplastic bag.

Calloway finished chewing. "Aw, that stuff doesn't happen anymore. No rich countries - no countries at all! Just Production Zones. A single world government, and everywhere is equally poor now... well, except for Antarctica... and the other places the elites have walled off. But there's no politics, we're just one big world now. Corporate Earth. The Worldcorporation. Everybody fed, everybody watered, guaranteed! No armies, no wars - a few riots now and then... humans are just cantankerous, that's just a fact - but hey, no Death Squads either. It's the Golden Age of Man, Dropspindle!"

"It's the end of your world! At least without Equestria and ponification." Dropspindle sipped some repli-cola. It was almost palatable.

"We saved the best for last!" Calloway grinned wickedly, sardonically, and laughed because Dropspindle clearly didn't understand dark humor.

Calloway and Dropspindle had followed the road that she had thought 'maybe' about. The going was slow, and several times Dropspindle had been unsure about where the road was at all. They had resorted to stopping entirely, while Dropspindle dug at the dust until she could get some sense of what was underneath it. Gradually, they had made progress, still surrounded by darkness, dust that looked like piles of snow, and countless specks in the beams of the headlights. The road curved and bent, and split again - but this time the edge of a sign had been visible at the turn off.

E s t a c i ó n 5

La instalación de procesamiento de crudo
pesado petroquímico Gobierno Mundial .

ADVERTENCIA : ¡ Autorizado Personel Sólo !
Esta instalación está protegido por las
Fuerzas de Seguridad Blackmesh.

"Calloway! It's an... an petroquímico... it's a... the-stuff-you-do station!"

"An old petrochemical plant! This is something I know. There's nothing left down here, but stations like this have quarters for visiting elite. I've stayed in places like this, at the pole! Jackpot, Dropspindle! Jackpot!"

Dropspindle's ears hovered between upright and low. Dust flaked from them as they quivered. "Is that good? Are... Jack's Pots... a good thing?"

Calloway laughed, then choked on dust, then coughed for a long time. "Yes. The best. A 'Jackpot' is a win. We just won the lottery." Apparently there weren't lotteries in Equestria. "It's a good thing. A very good thing!"

It took them some time to find the main offices. They had to ram open several chain-link gates and they got lost for a while amidst gigantic, rusting tanks. But they had hope, and their excitement carried their weary bones. Eventually, they found an entrance to the facility proper, and dragged themselves into a large, dark building. Dirt and dust sheeted from them onto the clean tiled floors as they made their way down industrial corridors. They removed their improvised 'goggles' and 'masks'. Dropspindle ripped the sock from her muzzle - and only pleading from Calloway prevented her from telekinetically deconstructing the soiled and putrid fabric that made it up down to its constituent molecules.

Calloway stripped down to his underwear. What he left behind was half clothing and half dirt, heaped in a pile in the hallway. His garments partially stood upright without him inside them. Even without his clothes, the dust was melded with his skin - rubbing his hand across his chest just produced new sheets of dirt. He made an effort to scrape some of the soil from Dropspindle's coat, but that only left him dirtier and she no cleaner. He gave up, and motioned for her to follow him. They walked down stairs into the recesses of the underground of the building. Somehow, Calloway restored power to sections of the building. Before the storm, a vast field of solar panels had stocked up still functioning storage batteries that helped power the old, abandoned petroleum plant. They had lights and air conditioning.

And working showers.

The water was stale, it had been stored for a very long time, forgotten, sealed away. It smelled strongly of iron and algae, but it worked efficiently with soap, and it graced them with some semblance of feeling clean. They showered together, in a large communal arrangement of nozzles and tiles, and both broke down weeping while the warm water ran over them. They coughed and sputtered, choked and vomited mud. They helped scrub each other, then scrubbed again. And yet again. It was as if the dust had become part of them - it seemed impossible to get rid of it entirely. But they persevered, and in the end, they laughed with relief.

"How much time now?" Calloway had come to rely on Dropspindle's ability with numbers.

"Five days. Five days until the Barrier now. Oh, sweet Luna... a bed. A soft bed. And I am CLEAN!" Dropspindle lay on her back, her legs splayed out haphazardly, wherever they flopped when she had impacted the covers. "And fed. Clean and fed and in a bed." That made her giggle. The giggle was a nervous one, and lasted too long. They were both beyond exhausted.

"Oh, Jesus Fuck... I am tired. That was just awful. Just hideous. God..." Calloway lay with one leg off the edge of the bed. He felt too weary to drag his own limb all the way on. "Shit".

"What?"

"I'm so tired, I can't relax. I thought I would just fall asleep, out like a light but..."

"My mind just keeps going on, about nothing. I feel... like something in me is still out there, pushing through the dust..."

"Please! Don't even say dust! Or dirt. Or anything like that. I can still smell it. It's way up inside my nose." Calloway honked into a hand towel he had kept from the shower, before their date with the food printer. The white towel was half brown from his coughs and sneezes into it.

"I can't smell anything anymore. I'm a little scared, actually. I don't think Equestrians are meant for this sort of thing!" Dropspindle laughed at her words - an odd laugh, Calloway felt. Strange and bitter and very human sounding. "At least I can't smell your feet anymore!"

Calloway gave a weary chuckle. "Yeah. Sorry about that. But... we made it. It worked."

"Yes. It worked." Dropspindle blew her own nostrils into a towel of her own for some time. The towel was as stained as Calloway's, perhaps more so. "Tell me about what you do. The thing that this place is for."

"What?"

"Tell me about your cutie mark. About your purpose."

Calloway snorted more mucus-y mud out into his towel, then wiped his nose. "Humans don't have marks. And it's not my purpose in life. It's just something I do because I get paid really, really well. I don't even like it. It was really boring to study."

"You... you do something you don't like to do?"

"Yeah! Humans have to do that a lot. Probably most Twopers have jobs they hate. Better than being one of the poor." Calloway finally dragged his leg onboard the bed.

Dropspindle was quiet for some time. "So what do... you do?"

"I'm kind of like a detective." Calloway rolled to face the pony beside him. Neither felt like enduring separate beds. Dropspindle never liked to sleep alone, and Calloway had started to feel the same. The sheer emptiness tasked him. "My clues are tiny specks in rock, and the crime is petroleum and history."

"A detective?" Equestria didn't have crime.

"A... a person who... solves mysteries and stalks people to find out who's cheating on who." The look on Dropspindle's face was precious. "Never mind. How about... a person who finds things? Yeah... a detective finds things that need to be found. That someone is willing to pay to have found. I find petrochemicals for the elite, and they pay me very, very well. There isn't much left anymore."

Dropspindle considered. "So, how do you find these... petrochemicals?"

Calloway scratched his head. God that felt good. His scalp itched, despite washing out all the dirt. "I look for fossils, really tiny ones, trapped in sedimentary rock. Ancient spores, pollen, chitin, diatoms - anything organic. It's all microscopic, it's not like dinosaur fossils or anything. Basically I hunt down signs of ancient forests and seas. Find the right places, and there's probably oil down there. That's the glorious career that is 'Stratigraphic Palynology'. Look for microscopic crap in rocks to tell rich people where to drill. It's a boatload of fun, let me tell you."

"In Equestria, nopony does things they hate to do. You get a cutie mark only when you've discovered the thing you love the most, the thing that defines who you are. See?" She rolled so that Calloway could see her mark. "Mine is a dropspindle - that's my name now, too. I don't just study weaving and fabric design and cloth and fibers because it gains me anything - it is my true fascination! I love how it is even possible to take wool or cotton or silk or coir or hemp or even just any kind of hair and turn it into threads and strings and yarns and... it's a true magic, a wonderment right there! And you can take that and weave it, or knit, or crochet, or do needlepoint or... you can do all sorts of amazing, incredible things and make the most wonderful bolts of gorgeous cloth! And there's the entire art of dyeing, and cloth finishing for effects and... it's just so beautiful! Oh, Calloway, you just can't imagine how incredible it is to start with a pile of raw fibers and end up with a bolt of something so lovely it can make a pony cry with delight!"

"Wow." Calloway rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. "The way you go on about... you really do love it, don't you? Cloth and stuff. I've never had that much excitement about anything I've had to do. Ever." He coughed into his towel for a while. "All ponies... are all ponies like you? Excited, happy about what they do? Don't you have any ponies stuck in dead end jobs they hate?"

"Why... why would any pony do that? I'm still not clear on why you humans do things you don't love."

Calloway sighed, and ended up coughing more for it. "B-because... because here, on earth, there's never enough to go around. Because here, the elites own everything, and if you want any of what they have taken for themselves, you find a way to do something they want. Not what you want. What they want. You do what the boss tells you. That's earth. That's humanity in a nutshell. Bosses and workers. Kings and serfs. Always been that way. Always."

"Haven't humans ever tried anything else?"

"Yeah. Lots of times. It never works. It always goes back to owners and wage-slaves. Or worse. Every single time. I guess we're just built that way."

Dropspindle coughed out some mud into her towel and lay back. "We'll find you some potion. Then you won't be built that way any more."

Calloway laughed. "When I'm a pony, I won't have to do work I hate anymore? Is that it? Am I gonna get one of those marks on my ass? I wonder what it will look like? A VR headset? It'll probably be my own ass. I'll have my own ass printed on my ass. My purpose in life."

"Stop that!" Dropspindle was finally feeling tired enough to sleep. "You be good to yourself. No more self pity, remember?" She yawned. "Once you're a pony, you'll understand. Life is fun! You act like life is a burden to you. It's supposed to be a joy, Calloway."

"Life is often a burden here. Really! It is. There's joy sometimes. But a lot of life here is not fun. I'm sorry, but..." Calloway yawned too. "...that's just how it is. Here. On earth. Believe me, I want fun. If being a pony is fun, I'm there."

"It is. It's fun." Dropspindle was beginning to lose it. "Unless you're here. Dust isn't fun."

Calloway rolled onto his side, Dropspindle pressed into him as usual. "No. Dust isn't fun. Not fun at all."

Calloway stared out at the reddish-brown nothing beyond the window. In two days, Equestria would come, the Barrier would roll right over, and that would be the end for both of them. At least they could face it in comfort and style - showers, food printers instead of rations, filtered air. The corner of the large observation window was piled high with fine, powdery soil. The dust coated everything outside. It was beginning to thin, enough to barely make out the large, empty, rusting petrol tanks through the brown 'fog'. In a week or two, the air might be clear again.

According to the map, the 5N just... ended, about forty-nine kilometers from Station 5. After that, there was... nothing. Nothing but desert and tree stumps. Desert for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kilometers. There were small villages, supposedly, if they followed the dry bed of the Rio Amazon. None of them seemed likely to have technology. The situation seemed utterly hopeless. They were out of fuel and running out of time. For three days they had searched the facility - what parts were accessible without having to go outside into that horrific ghastliness - and what they had found was a very large, very empty, very abandoned former petrochemical plant.

Calloway had found communication equipment, even a WorldGov Kiosk link. but with the power down for the continent, the cable was out. Radio wasn't a thing anymore - everything was the hypernet, and that required robust data transfer, and that meant laser cables and repeater stations. Radio. Waves through space. Microwaves and beams and... which did exist, just not here. Not at Estación 5. Somewhere out there must be an uplink center that could reach satellites in high orbit. High above Equestria's curvature. Those still remained. But who would ever imagine a day when the cable that ran from the repeater to the uplink center would end up without power forever? Nobody prepared for that. No power forever was unthinkable.

Calloway climbed the stairs back down from the observation tower. The stairs were metal and clunked as he descended. No more jitney. Dust for weeks. They could just start walking, but why? They couldn't carry enough food or water, and going back out into that? No. Pointless.

Here, when the Barrier hit, Estación 5 would probably be transformed into a palace. It was such a large facility. That was what Dropspindle thought. A palace. White marble and golden spires, drapes and stairways and lovely fountains, and a huge garden all around. She would be alone, but at least she would have a beautiful place to live in. That was something. He could leave her in a palace, at least.

And perhaps she could bury his ashes in the garden. Maybe a flower would grow.

11. Mother Goose

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Eleven: Mother Goose

Dropspindle had figured out a way to deal with human technology. They had to wait, Calloway said, because the dust was dangerous, and other reasons that he didn't go into - but that was all right, she trusted him. Calloway would get them to safety. He was a good human, and he would make a better pony.

The romball player made movies appear on one of the walls of the room. The wall was a holoscreen that, when things were running, looked like a window into another time and place. Human movies were very amazing. They were in color, for one thing, and for another they were 'three-dee', they had depth, just like life.

Dropspindle split her hornfield between two neoplastic 'forks'; the strange little scoops-with-tongs that humans used to shovel food into their flat faces. Because they couldn't just muzzle down and chow, they had to use their hands to balance small bits of food on the forks - and frankly, it was amazing that they didn't just get their dinner all over themselves.

She held the forks by their long parts, avoiding getting anywhere near the 'tines', the little poky bits at the end that capped the scoopy part. This let her hold electronic things without her thaumatic field burning them out. The romballs were almost safe - they were basically a small crystalline sphere held in a neoplastic cubical box. The cube that held the romball was only about a half-a-hoof wide at most. The transparent crystal sphere had 'data' stored inside it in three dimensions. Little bubbles and lack-of-bubbles that somehow translated into pictures and sound. Because the information was stored throughout the little sphere, the ball spun inside the box. The box had tiny air channels that the romball reader puffed into, and that spun the crystal sphere so that lasers could read it from all directions at once.

Dropspindle lifted the romball cartridge up with the two forks. She did this, because although the cartridge was just plastic, ball and box, it had an electronic 'chip' under the title that described it that permitted the ball to be read. It existed to prevent people from sharing. It struck Dropspindle as both hilarious and sad that even within a universe of scarcity and constant want, humans went out of their way to make things that could be shared, unsharable. Calloway had just said that 'Money was god' and walked out of the room.

The romball cartridge was for a human entertainment called 'Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls'. It was a 'cartoon'. Dropspindle liked cartoons, because they were not usually violent and filled with horrible things. Some woman named 'Faust' had created the long-running cartoon. According to the hypernet feed (Dropspindle levitated four pens and used them like human fingers to work the keyboard to avoid frying it), she had been offered a chance to do a cartoon about ponies, but had turned it down. That was what had interested Dropspindle - ponies. But Faust had found a way to do her Galaxy Girls show instead, and had. But a woman who would have done a cartoon about ponies - that was interesting!

The romball cartridge - originally a blank; Dropspindle had 'downloaded' the series onto it through the human keyboard machine thing - was taken into the romball player. The little translucent cube with the crystal sphere vanished into the machine. Dropspindle put down her forks and lifted a pen in her field. Now she could press the player buttons with the pen and not destroy any electronics and thus watch the show.

Watching cartoons was a way to pass the time. It was difficult, waiting. Waiting for the dust to thin or settle or go away. Waiting for Calloway to say 'Let's go!' with whatever plan he was coming up with to save them both. But he would. She had learned to trust him.

"Calloway!"

Kotani had entered the room. He had his hands in the pockets of the clean red-level jumpsuit he had been wearing. Normally, he said, he wore purple-level suits. That was the highest level. Red was the bottom. Red jumpsuits were for all the workers who did things humans looked down on. But there had been many such jumpsuits in the plant, and they were all clean, so Calloway had worn them even though they were not his rank.

"Yeah. Hi." He seemed down. He had seemed down for several days now.

"Calloway - would you like to watch this show with me? It's a cartoon about... girls... in something called a 'galaxy'. I have no idea what it is about but it looks cute and it's from a woman who almost did..."

"No. It's fine. You watch your show." He really was down. Maybe he would cheer up if he heard about the lightning.

"I saw lightning! No pegasai, though. How does that even work? How can you have lightning without pegasai to jump on the clouds?"

"Wait... lightning? No. You can't have."

"I did! Outside, earlier. In the sky. The dust is a lot less now... does that mean it's finally time to go? Equestria will be here in only a day and..."

"What the..." Calloway hadn't gone to the observation tower, he hadn't done much of anything but wander the lower levels. "Show me!"

"Okay... just give me a moment to take the romball out and..."

"No! Now!" He seemed excited. Or... scared.

"Alright. Okay."

Dropspindle took Calloway to the stairs that led up to the observation tower. It was the best view. From the windows up there, it would have been possible to see the entire petroleum plant, every bit of it, save for the shrouding dust. They tromped up the metal staircase, entered the observation deck, and moved to one of the huge windows.

"Look... out that way. Over the big cylinder tank thing. Just watch."

Calloway seemed startled by how clear the view had become. The breeze that had started was pushing the dust away. Dropspindle had figured that this was what Calloway was waiting around for.

"What... I can see the entire plant!"

"Yes - the dust has really cleared up because of the wind. Oh! See?" Dropspindle pointed a hoof in the direction of the flash. The bolts were visible through the remaining dust. They were dimmed but clearly lightning.

"Oh fucking shit."

"Calloway?"

"It's a storm! Oh Jesus... how in..." He seemed actually frightened. "Of course... it's damp. This hasn't been a dry heat, it's been moist, the ground must have water deep down, that's why... the dampness is the water evaporating through the soil... and that means... with the dust..."

"What is it Calloway?" Dropspindle found earth weather utterly incomprehensible. It was like how the Everfree was described. Things just happened without any pony to make them happen. It was very creepy.

"Desert storms! Deluges!" Calloway stared, wild-eyed, as if somehow his words answered anything. "Rain!"

"How wonderful!" Dropspindle smiled. "It's so very dry and hot here. The flowers will love it... if there were any flowers."

"Not wonderful. Horrible! Flash floods, Dropspindle! Water like you can't believe. Water enough to tear through parts of this plant. Wash away the lines that supply our power - hell, wash away that field of solar panels too! You have no idea - this is a disaster!" Calloway was frightened.

"Maybe we could move the clouds away?"

Calloway stared. After a moment his face softened. "I wish, Dropspindle. I wish."

The deluge was in progress. The scale of it had surprised even Calloway. Outside the tower windows, the world was a single, vast, raging river. The two had watched their jitney swept up and away, then smashed through the walls of the shower and crew quarters. Then the walls themselves had crumbled as the unbelievable flood ate away at them with incomprehensible force.

"I'm sorry. I'm... just so sorry. I didn't even think..." Calloway was not himself anymore. He just kept apologizing for things he had no control over.

"Calloway... huh."

"Huh what?"

"What's that?"

What's what?"

"That round thing - that, there." Dropspindle pointed. "The thing that looks like an egg. No... it's long. Like a... long, pale maple bar. Or a smooth, polished baguette. See?"

It was a whitish, very rounded shape. Longer than wide, roughly rectangular, and huge. Moving with the current, it looked like a well-used soap bar in a bathtub. It was as large as several buildings. It moved slowly, partly trapped by the gigantic petrol tanks. It had a diagonal stripe running across it, and numbers and letters printed upon it. There was a small hatch on top, and small windows in the front.

"It's a lifting-body. An airship. It looks like a private executive runabout." Calloway watched the hard-bodied techno-blimp become stuck between three large holding tanks and a tangle of pipelines. "Lifting-bodies use heated hydrogen - they used to use helium until that ran out entirely - in special chambers for lift. Hot hydrogen has incredible lifting power. It's safe, too, thanks to tank walls made of the same stuff Blackmesh suits are..."

"Calloway?"

"This Celestia of yours? You say she answers prayers?"

"For me it was Luna, actually..."

"Praise Luna, then." Calloway blinked and shook his head. "It's still there. It's still stuck, right there."

"The lifting... body?"

Calloway grinned. "That is our ticket out of here! Or it could be! I was sure it was game over, see you in hell time, but... this... petrol executives always have fancy rides, it's a pride thing with them! The dust is gone, the rain... it must have washed out of some hanger beyond where we could see, and somehow it washed that thing right here, right to us! Hell, I'm actually starting to believe in these crazy princesses of yours!"

"You... thought..." Dropspindle's ears dropped. "That's why you've been moping, why you keep telling me to watch shows on the..."

"Come on! We have a chance now! We have to get to that ship!"

Getting to the airship was less than easy. They made their way around the upper levels of the plant, but there was no direct way to get to the cluster of tanks and pipes where the lifting-body was temporarily trapped. They had not stopped to gather anything at all - there was no telling how long the ship would remain, before it was swept away in the torrential current. As they ran and galloped down the hallways, the rain pounded on the ceilings and shook the walls.

Finally, they came to a set of double doors. The doors led outside to a metal platform, which in turn led to several catwalks. The catwalks ran from storage tank to storage tank, high above the maelstrom below.

"Dropspindle, be careful. Stay close, we have to stay close together at all times. It's going to be slippery - especially on those hooves of yours - and damn... I wish I had some rope or something to tie us together. Listen, just bite into my jumpsuit to hang on, use your horn, whatever. If we slip off and fall, we die, do you understand?"

"I'm frightened."

"You should be. So am I. I'm fucking terrified. But that airship is our only hope. Or..." Calloway looked at the ceiling. "Or we could just wait here. Go watch your cartoon, the rec room will probably survive... and wait for Equestria. Those are our choices."

"Let's go!" Dropspindle began to open one of the double doors. The wind rattled the door and tore it from her telekinetic grasp. The doors both opened wide and smashed into the walls, gouging out pits where the handles impacted.

"Holy..." Calloway grabbed at Dropspindle's mane and dug his fingers through it. He closed his fist in a death-grip around thick, luxurious hair. "SLOW AND CAREFUL!" He had to yell against the fierce yowling of the wind and the rushing firehose of rain.

"SWEET LUNA, PROTECTOR OF FOALS!" The wind and rain had instantly soaked Dropspindle the moment she had set hoof upon the metal platform outside. The rain pushed her down, threatening to buckle her legs. "I... I CAN'T... I NEVER KNEW ANYTHING COULD BE LIKE..."

"COME ON!" Calloway moved slowly down the catwalk, one hand on the rail, the other still vice-clamped on Dropspindle's mane. If it hurt her, he couldn't tell, and ultimately didn't care - there was no way he was going to let her be washed away.

Gradually, under the constant bombardment of heavy rain gushing not only from the sky but from the tops of the storage tanks, platforms, and every other surface that it could splash and run off off, the pair made progress. The catwalks were narrow, the rails rusted and in some sections entirely missing. Whether the rails had broken away or been taken for the metal in them was unknown, and irrelevant. But where the rails were gone, Calloway swore like a sailor from the days when the seas still lived.

They crossed from one immense storage tank to another, threading their way to where the airship bumped against the trio of structures that held it. Calloway never once let go his fierce grip on Dropspindle's mane, and she did her best not to complain despite the pain. "JUST ANOTHER WALKWAY. THAT TANK THERE - THAT'S CLOSEST. WE'LL TRY THERE!"

"HOW DO WE GET INSIDE?" It was a legitimate question. Any doorways into the lifting-body were below the curve of the large solid shell that held the hydrogen sacs.

"HATCH! ON TOP!" Calloway couldn't point, all they could see from their angle was the front of the ship nuzzled into the trio of crude oil storage tanks.

The rain felt like it was getting worse. It poured, rather than fell, from the sky, and both human and pony found it difficult to breath from the constant force of water running down their faces. It was like being trapped under a faucet, hammered down by the weight of the water.

Slowly, carefully, hand on rail, or edge of platform when there was no rail, the two crawled the remaining distance to the large cylinder that stood over the nook where the airship was trapped. Below them, through grating and steel there was only swiftly moving water. For all the world, they were upon an oil rig in the middle of the ocean. Nowhere could land be spotted.

The dust was entirely gone, but the view was just as limited - this time by the daunting gray of a flood from the sky pressing hard upon them. They were forced to take quick glimpses before their eyes were overrun by rain - Dropspindle, with her large eyes, was nearly blind and had to trust to Calloway's tugging grip and the sensations of her body as she crawled.

They dragged themselves across the catwalk that ran over the top of a huge storage tank. Rain ran from the surface below in all directions, forming dozens of impressive waterfalls all around the perimeter of it. At the center of the container, the walkway angled off to another part of the complex. The airship was below them, below the rim of the tank they were on. Calloway looked at the river cascading over the edge of the storage tank and realized they could not even reach the edge to look down without being swept over.

"WE HAVE TO KEEP GOING!"

"WHY? THE SHIP IS RIGHT THERE! I KNOW IT IS!"

"TOO DANGEROUS. WE'LL GET SWEPT OVER!"

"BUT THAT LEADS AWAY!" Dropspindle could only lay on the metal mesh of the catwalk and gasp. The rain was relentless. Her back felt numb and itched from the constant, bruising impact of it.

Calloway's hand ached to the bone from clutching Dropspindle's mane. His muscles were starting to cramp. He tried to release his grip, to rub his hand, but it was difficult commanding his own limb to release. Gradually, he managed to get his claw to open, and pulled his hand to himself and began massaging it as he lay on the causeway. "NO CHOICE." His hand throbbed and spasmed. "MAYBE... " His words were lost by a deafening explosion of thunder that shook the very structure they clung to.

"WHAT?"

Calloway roughly clutched Dropspindle's mane again. "GO. NOW!"

"Okay... OKAY!"

The two began crawling away from the center, away from the direction of the ship below. At the edge of the tank, Calloway softly muttered a thank you to the pony princesses. There was a set of metal stairs that ran down, along the outside of the cylindrical storage tank. He had no way to know if they went all the way to the water below, or just to some inspection platform. But down was down, and it was even in the proper direction.

Going down the metal stairs was a hazard. Waterfalls from the top of the tank added to the already torrential rain. The stairs were narrow and steep, and the rail was loose and wobbly. Calloway clung to the steps while half-dragging Dropspindle down with him. She could not open her large eyes for the constant stream of liquid.

He could see the lifting-body airship now. On the wide, orange, diagonal stripe were painted large letters and numbers: OB-12565. As they crept down the spiraling steps, he could see more of the side of the huge craft. The name of the lighter-than-air ship was the 'Mamá Gansa'. The white curving surface gleamed like a gigantic egg. He could make out the seams of the hard shell that made the craft aerodynamic and capable of surprising speed. It was a gift from the gods, like something out of a fairytale. He had given up, but perhaps, somehow, the pony gods provided.

The metal stairs were curving away, around the storage tank, from the airship now. Calloway stopped. They were about two meters, he reckoned, above the upper surface of the Mamá Gansa. The top of the ship was very gently domed, with only the edges curving abruptly down. It was almost flat. Flat-ish. The ship was being moved by the river around it, and sometimes it swung so that it impacted the storage tank they clung to. If they jumped, he reasoned, they could land on the top of the airship. Make it to the hatch in the middle, at the highest point. That would go straight down, between the sealed gas compartments, to the interior. It was an access hatch. There were handles, he could just make them out, around it, with some leading down the curve of the craft, as well.

There is no way they could continue down and hope to swim to a door or hatch below the contours he could see... the current was far too strong. Anything that could move a ship of this size would wash a person - human or pony - away like nothing at all.

Calloway huddled down close to Dropspindle's face. He put his head over hers, to shield her from the downpour. His mouth was almost in her right ear. "We're going to have to jump. It's the only way. I can't think of anything else. I wish the rail wasn't there, but..."

"I can fix that."

"Huh? How?"

"I may not be an earthpony, but I can still kick away that flimsy metal rail."

"You sure? We can't afford having you crack a hoof or whatever!"

Dropspindle thought for a moment. "I'm certain."

Calloway and Dropspindle shifted and pressed themselves against the wall of the tank. Dropspindle placed her hind hooves on the rail, while Calloway held on to her. She lay on her back, one foreleg around Calloway. She kicked.

The metal rail bent.

She kicked again. The rail bent more.

She couldn't get an angle to kick anymore. The rail was sideways, now, sticking out away from the steps, laterally. It was like a ledge, only with no surface, just a bar suspended by struts. "SORRY! ALL I CAN DO!"

"Dammit." She couldn't hear him, which was good. She'd tried. She was clearly much stronger than he was. He couldn't have done that - that railing was steel. That said, the sideways, bent railing was a worse hazard for jumping than when it had been upright. And this was the one point that hung over the high-tech blimp when it deigned to swing in the current to their position.

There was nothing for it. That airship would not be trapped forever. It was a miracle (thank you Celestia, or whoever) that it hadn't swung entirely around and floated on its way. It certainly made motions as if that was what it intended to do.

"WE'RE GONNA JUMP. TO THE SHIP. I CAN'T HOLD YOU DURING. BUT AFTER, WHEN WE HIT, WE GRAB ONTO EACH OTHER! GOT IT?"

Dropspindle nodded.

"WHEN IT SWINGS NEAR!" Calloway could barely accept the fact that the storm was actually increasing. It seemed impossible for it to rain any harder, yet it clearly was. "Holy shit... desert storms... are bad."

The tanks and the ship went white as lightning temporarily blinded Calloway and Dropspindle. Within a second, thunder rocked the metal their backs were pressed into. The current was picking up in the water below. The airship began to swing towards them. "GET READY! STAND UP!"

It was hard to fight the wind and the rain, but both man and pony rose to their feet and hooves. Calloway had gone barefoot, for extra traction. Pony hooves were hard and smooth, and there was nothing available for that. Equestrian hiking boots were... in Equestria.

"OKAY... ALMOST... ALMOST... COME ON, COME ON... NOW!!!"

Calloway stepped forward from the metal stairs, and put one foot on the sideways rail for additional distance. Then he leaped away from the tower of the storage tank out onto the top of the Mamá Gansa. He hit, hard. The shell of the craft was indeed solid and not at all soft. The shock of the impact had cost him his wind. He sputtered and gasped, choking to get his diaphragm functioning again. At last he could suck back a gurgling, water laden lungful of air.

He spun around, flat to the curving surface, ready to catch Dropspindle, to grab any part of her. He'd heard her heavy thunk just after he had realized he couldn't breath. He swung around again, He looked in all directions. Hooves! God damned hooves! They had no grip on smooth, polished surfaces. Soft, bare, human hands and feet could gecko just enough but... Dropspindle wasn't still on the stairs. She wasn't on the curve of the airship. "DROPSPINDLE!!!"

He cried out again and again, listening each time. Against all reason, he stood up on the slick, curving surface, to try to see beyond its contours. Before he slipped and fell, he thought he glimpsed her carried by the current, as she passed between two of the large tanks that imprisoned the airship. He scrambled and used his flat hands and feet to control his motion as he was swept across the top of the airship. He slapped at the hard shell, trying to gain any traction at all, carried by the sleeting river of rain. Just before he flowed right over the edge, he managed to grab one of the handles that led to the access hatch.

12. Baby's Book

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Twelve: Baby's Book

Dropspindle hit the hard, slick top of the human airship. Instinctively she attempted to land on her hooves, instantly they slipped out from under her and splayed wide to the cardinal directions as her undercarriage slammed onto the smooth white surface. Her head followed, whipping down on her long neck, to impact as well. For too long she was stunned, breathless, unable to cope with the pain and shock of her hard landing. Then she noticed she was moving.

She was moving very fast, carried by a sheeting river of rainwater, sliding away from where Calloway lay gasping, facing away from her. Dropspindle made motions to try to move against the flow, but her hooves constantly slid away - there was literally no way for her to gain any traction at all. The airship might as well have been made of glass, covered in oil. Nothing she did made the slightest change to her trajectory.

She became desperate as the edge of the craft drew near - she tried to stand, she flailed at the slick, hard surface with rapid hooves, she even attempted to swim while laying flat, the water running under and over her, pushing her relentlessly. As she was swept from the ship, she made a last moment effort to catch herself on a narrow hand hold. A line of them ran up the side of the curve, all the way to the hatch on top. Her forehoof clanged off the narrow grip. It was a hand hold. For hands. Not nearly wide or round enough for hooves.

The edge of the white-and-orange lifting body receded. She watched the waterfalls from the curves of the craft, her own legs and hooves in her vision, as she fell backward, as she followed the rain down. Then everything was dirty water and bubbles and struggling to reach air.

Her head finally above the tumultuous rushing flow, she spat and gasped while treading water. Ponies, as a rule, were decent swimmers. She was not the best, she seldom had the opportunity. But four strong legs and a Celestia-given instinct helped - she fought the current, trying to make it back to the airship, but it was no use. The current was too strong. The airship was shrinking to her view. Dropspindle moved her legs faster, trying to gallop in water, trying as hard as she could to return to the blimp, to Calloway, to safety and not being alone. Her legs began to ache and give out. Her lungs burned as if they were on fire. Finally, her legs and body just... gave out.

She found herself under the water, the surface above her, her limbs agony. Breathing was no longer an option. It was at this point, at this moment, drifting down, pushed by the impossibly strong current, that Dropspindle felt an alien emotion overtake her. In her entire life, she had never truly felt fear. She had been uncomfortable, she had known anxiety, she had worried and fussed and thought she had felt afraid - but she was wrong. For nothing in her Equestrian life, or her brief time with the weaving community of another cosmos, had ever truly presented her with the very real probability of her own death.

She was going down, her legs were cramping, and she could not breathe. She knew she was going to die. She had never felt such a thing before, and it was incredibly powerful. It was overwhelming, and her mind seemed to start to crack, like glass, like ice, to fragment under the strain. It was hopeless. There was only fear... and then the calmness of doom, accepted.

She began hallucinating she was back in the preparatory class she had been required to take before being allowed to leave Equestria. The elderly unicorn - one of the lesser ranks of the Royal Unicorn Corps - was lecturing her group about what they would encounter in the strange and dangerous alien universe of Mundus.

"I want to express to you something of the concept of what the humans call 'blind panic'." The ancient unicorn caused his chalk to scribble, 'Blind Panic' was written both in humanese and in Earthpony Equestrian upon the large blackboard. He glanced at it, and the chalk also added the term in the remaining two forms of writing, Pegasus Script and Unicorn Glyphs. "Blind Panic does not mean actually being cloaked within some field of magical darkness, rather it refers to a personal inability to perceive relevant or meaningful choices due to the circumstance of temporary possession by an extreme and utterly confounding emotional state. Specifically, the emotive state is fear."

"Shyeah, right, oldstallion." The cyan mare with the colorful mane was some celebrity that had been sent back for 'reeducation'. Apparently there had been an incident on the human's world, some things had been accidentally damaged or destroyed, and several important humans had become very upset. "Fear is for losers. No way this pegasus is going to get addled in the brain pan by anything that place has to offer! I've been there! It's foal's play!"

The master unicorn glared at the mare. "Was not becoming 'addled' the very reason you were returned to my class... for what is now the THIRD time?"

"Well... uhh... that was because their air doesn't make any sense! It isn't the same up high as it is down low! It wasn't my fault!"

"The princesses seem to think otherwise. Sit down, close your muzzle and open your ears. You just might learn something."

The grumbling made several other ponies laugh.

"Now the human's world - indeed the entire universe in which it rests - is a place vastly more dangerous and filled with threat than our own. Put quite simply, merely entering their realm is an act of placing your body and soul in jeopardy. Peril occurs suddenly, often with little to no warning, and in every respect is equivalent to finding oneself suddenly transported to the very center of the Everfree, and possibly worse."

The elderly mage looked over his glasses at the students to make sure they were properly unsettled - save for one, they were.

"When catastrophe should strike - and for many of you it very well may - it will come as a shock for which you are, I assure you, entirely unprepared. You may have imagined that you have experienced the sensation of fear - perhaps when faced with public speaking, or meeting a dragon... if any of you have had that singular experience, you may think yourself courageous for your conduct; YOU HAVE DONE NOTHING."

He let that sink in. There were a few gasps and one dismissive mutter.

"You may find yourself so traumatized by fear, by stark raving terror so great, so terrible, that it dwarfs your very imagination and understanding - in short, you may find yourself so overwhelmed by the certainty of your own inescapable destruction that you lose all sense of proper conduct and all awareness of agency! You may find yourself folding up within yourself, unable to think, unable to act, unable to perform that which you need to do merely to remain breathing for another moment!"

That made more than a few eyes wide, and ears low. The Royal Unicorn smiled at the reaction. That was better. Except for her, of course. She would be back. He sighed.

"Now. Should you ever find yourself in such a plight, I want you to remember one thing - ONE THING! - and that is this: panic will kill you. If you allow such terror to consume you, if you fail to push it down, to take charge of yourself, if you fail to take rational action despite - DESPITE - your fear, you will DIE." Again he let this set in, and the students were shocked at such harsh statements. "You must, you must, you absolutely must... take refuge within your intellect, and make decisions utterly devoid of sentiment or emotion! You must take action, the action MUST be deliberate - not desperate, not thrashing about, not running away, but conscious, considered and clear. You must take action, and that action cannot be other than rational. There is no place in the human's world for running amuck."

A delicate earthpony, scheduled to be sent to one of the Conversion Bureaus as a Newfoal instructor, raised a hoof. "H-how... how do we... how do we manage to be so calm if fear is so terrible there?"

The grand old unicorn put a hoof to his long, gray beard and narrowed his eyes. "According to the humans - and they should know, because they live there - the only answer is that... 'you just do it.' Yes. It seems unhelpful, it seems a stark and empty answer, devoid of genuine help or any concern for the pony asking the question. And that is precisely the point, I believe. The universe of the humans is heartless. It is without any concern for any creature within it. Once you set hoof on human soil, you will be - for the first time in your existence - truly and utterly alone and on your own. There is no herd there. The princesses cannot hear you, you are beyond magic, beyond friendship, and often beyond any hope of rescue. As difficult and harsh as this sounds: you must fight, with all of your will and intelligence, to save yourself, because nopony else will."

The class sat in stunned silence. An uncaring universe where fear alone could render a pony senseless. Where nopony would come, where it was even possible to be so lost and abandoned that not even the princesses could save you.

"You're full of it, old pony!"

Dropspindle forced herself beyond all emotion. Something inside her, something new, took hold. It was like anger, only cold and fierce and calculating. If she was doomed, if she was going to die, then she would be... damned... that was the human word... damned... if her body was found and it looked at all like she had just given up.

Besides, she had a few words to say to mister 'Go watch a cartoon, it'll be okay' Kotani! That anger somehow combined with the other anger about drowning on some stupid world with stupid nature and stupid heat and stupid everything trying to kill you... as Dropspindle struggled, fought with all of her might in a way she never had before, it struck her - this must be how humans felt. This must be what it was like for the strange, gawky creatures. Anger on anger, fighting just to stay alive, moment to moment.

And for the first time in her long Equestrian life, Dropspindle fought the very cosmos for her life.

When she broke the surface, and gained breath, she whipped her head around on her long neck and assessed her situation. She was caught in a river as wide as the world, and she was already well past the petroleum plant. The landscape of rushing rain was washing her in a direction she could not determine, save it must be downhill. Assuming that earth water at this scale even worked the same way, of course.

With her fear dominated by anger and determination, Dropspindle found she could make choices. It was almost as if her mind was floating on top of her terror, just as she was remaining - mostly - head above the water. She used her four legs smartly, to keep herself at the surface, without exhausting her energy. That old unicorn was right. Panic killed here, in the human's universe. Panic was a luxury that this world did not allow. Here, anger was magic, not friendship. She felt like a newborn foal, learning a new - and utterly mad - way of life.

In an insane world, sometimes the only rational response is insanity.

Dropspindle discovered a building - some structure left behind when the humans went pony - and made an attempt to swim toward it. It was made of brick and steel, and she had no idea what it was for, but it was her hope to find a way to use it to get above the water. It rushed past her, just beyond her effort to reach it. There was nothing to hook onto in any case, just flat, smooth walls. The building receded as she paddled to stay afloat.

Where was she going? And more importantly, what direction? A horrible thought threatened to wash away her clarity with new horror. She calmed herself forcefully and opened the eyes of her thaumatic couplement. She looked in the direction of her travel. It was dark, and colorless. She turned her head and looked back, away from the direction the water was taking her. A gargantuan circle divided reality in half. The circle was the spherical intersection of Equestria into this universe of course, and it was bright, as if a colorful sun were chasing her.

Good. She closed her thaumatic eyes and regained normal vision. She was being pushed away from Equestria. That was the greatest fortune. It had frightened her that she would simply be carried straight through the Barrier, perhaps into some incomprehensibly vast ocean in the Exponential Lands. She would drown in her own realm, lost in a sea impossible to even imagine. She shook her head, spraying water from her ears. No! Think angry! D-damn that... yes! Damn that Kotani! Doing nothing, acting like he had a plan, hiding the truth from her, and she had trusted him! Damn! Damn! Fooey poo-poo ca-ca! Mean bad human words! Get angry!

The harsh and violent vocabulary helped. That's why they did it! Oh, but falling into a flash flood had become an amazing lesson in humanity! Dropspindle swam with the water, conserving her strength. There might be another building. There might be a tree - no, there were no trees left. But there might be...

A construction crane! The thing was huge - and tilted, likely the big machine that the humans had built to carry it had been pushed over by the sheer force of the water. It was possible now to see farther than before - the rain seemed to be easing up - and Dropspindle felt certain she had time to swim so that she would intersect the crane, rather than pass it by like the building before. She began swimming in earnest, using up some of her precious and limited strength, to paddle to her right, to try to get in line with the distant spire.

A car rushed past her. The water ran faster the more she moved to the right, and there were objects carried along in the current. It was difficult to swim and keep track of what was around her at the same time. But she would have to. Being hit by a vehicle or other object in the flow would almost certainly be terrible - if not fatal.

As Dropspindle struggled, fighting the current, battling the very world itself, avoiding tumbling vehicles pushed along by the irresistible force of the flood, she suddenly felt strangely, bizarrely calm. Never in her life had she felt... so alive. Everything was new, everything was alien and strange and dangerous - it should be horrible. But in some bizarre, insane way, it was enthralling! She could not help but wonder if she had lost her mind, if she had somehow been driven insane by the human world.

It had happened before, to ponies who dared to visit this universe.

But this wasn't like those unfortunates. This wasn't at all like the warning she had been given to dissuade her from going. It felt almost good. She was triumphing against a cosmos determined to murder her, and somehow... that felt good. It felt great! She was winning! The tilted metal crane was straight ahead of her! She could do this, she would do this - because she had mastered this horrible, nightmare universe of suffering and death. She, little Dropspindle from Surcingle, Equestria, had discovered the angry secret of survival in the humanic realms. Pride swelled within her. Pride and... a feeling, of... of... conquest! Of overcoming! Of domination of an alien nightmare!

The crane was coming up fast. Metal struts arranged in a strange triangular pattern, forming a long beam that jutted from the water. She could easily catch onto it with her legs and hooves. She could climb it, get herself out of the water entirely. She could rest, and maybe... definitely! Definitely Calloway would find her and save her and everything would all work out perfectly! She could do this, because she had learned how to think like humans, she was sure of it, and humans lived in this awful place! She could too!

The metal crane seemed to rush at her. It was as if it were moving and she were somehow still. She readied herself, determined to grab onto the crane no matter what. Her strength was almost gone - she was beyond any exhaustion she had ever felt. This was it. This was life and death, all focused into one single grab. She no longer felt angry. She felt transcendent.

Her legs went through the wide spaces between the metal slats, as she intended. The impact with the crane was immense - she felt a strange cracking sensation in her barrel. She pulled herself out of the water, dragging her body up the angled ladder that the crane provided. Halfway up, she realized she couldn't breathe. She struggled to gasp for air, but it was as if her lungs wouldn't inflate. She fell across the metal slats, halfway up the crane, draped like a rag doll. Again, she tried to gain some air, any air, but her chest was numb and would not move.

Dropspindle had never felt so incredibly angry, ever, at the darkness, when it came.

13. The Little Red Hen

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Thirteen: The Little Red Hen

Dropspindle gazed sideways through half-lidded eyes at a deep blue sky. Below the intense, dark cerulean was a brightness, fuzzy and indistinct. Gradually, it began to become evident to her sleepy mind that there was no wind, and that her view was shielded by some wide, curving, transparent material.

She tried to roll to see more of where she was, and that was when the pain hit. Her barrel pulsed now with a sharp ache that cut and sawed through her previous dreamy calm. One of her ribs hurt terribly, and instinctively she enshrouded the area in her telekinetic field. She ran the blob of thaumatic force up and down, over her own chest, searching. Gingerly, delicately, she felt out a region on the left side where her flesh was swollen and angry. Her barrel was wrapped in gauze of some kind. Bandaged, she had been bandaged up. Daring the icky feeling of reaching inside herself, she sent her hornfield deeper, until she could make out her own ribs.

Dropspindle felt carefully, slowly along the ribs within her thaumatic grasp, and found that one of them, the third down on the left, had a crack in it. The crack was fine, thin, and the rib had not actually broken through - but it was very painful. The memory flooded back - the impact with the beams of the crane, the numbness, at first, as she climbed above the water. Then pain and darkness. Pain, more pain than she had ever felt, or that she had ever even considered to be possible. Pain greater than her very imagination.

Carefully - very, very carefully - she turned her head to look around. She was in a small chamber, with a curving wall. The wall was mostly window, a huge, rounded window. She was in a bed. The walls of the chamber were white, with orange details. Everything - the open doorway, the drawers and cabinets in the walls - was rounded, with no sharp corners. The rounded doorframe was wide, metallic, and had large bolts all the way around it.

Dropspindle turned her head again upon the pillow, her throbbing pain forgotten in an instant at the view, now clearly seen. Outside the great oval of glass-like substance was... the world. The human's world, curving below her, so very far below. The sky was deep, almost dark azure, and the global smog layer was beneath, a yellowish-gray and sunlight-bright arc of puffy, dirty cloud. It stretched forever, as far as she could see. There was a thrum, her ears informed her, from all around. It came even from the substance of the bed. Engines. Human machine sounds, resonating through everything... even her own body.

White and orange. Curved. She could only be on the Mamá Gansa, the airship that she and Calloway had tried so hard to jump to. Somehow, she had fainted from pain and lack of air on that crane, and then awakened flying high over the Southamerizone in the Mamá Gansa. Calloway must have made it. Somehow he had found her. Somehow, he had pulled her from the tilted construction crane and put her in bed.

And bandaged up her rib, too.

Dropspindle wanted to get up to thank him, to see him again, but it still hurt too much to try to turn over, much less clamber out of the bed. She sighed and relaxed. He would come and check on her sooner or later. Probably flying the ship right now. She turned her head and watched the smog layer drift by, below. Above, in the deep blue, were streaks of cirrus and cirrostratic clouds. They were so high that they hardly seemed to move at all. The human world had such a tall sky. They said it had no ceiling at all. That the stars did not live on the dome of the sky, that there was no dome. It just went on and on.

Dark sky that went on forever. The emptiness of it, the lonely infinity it represented made her shudder with a quiet horror. She suddenly felt terribly homesick. It was comforting to know the sky was bounded, that the stars lived on its surface, that everything was cozy and cared for by the loving, immortal princesses.

There were no princesses here.

"I'm alright! Quit fussing!"

Calloway was ineffectually trying to help Dropspindle to the impromptu picnic he had arranged on the flight deck of the Mamá Gansa. The dining cabin on the airship was built only for humans, and it was small, like all the compartments. The chairs were high and narrow, and not built at all for quadrupeds with injured ribs. Calloway had taken to serving meals on the flight deck, on a bed cover, picnic style. Dropspindle could fold her legs and lay down comfortably, and Calloway sat tailor-fashion across from her.

The meal tonight was prepackaged nanostructed and reconstituted macaroni-and-cheese-like-mealproduct. The tiny galley of the airship was well stocked, as befitted an executive runabout. Sadly, most of the space was filled with expensive Pre-Collapse liquors. Whoever had owned the Mamá Gansa had enjoyed using his enormous wealth to impress alcoholic elites, apparently. Calloway had described it as 'social climbing'. Dropspindle had quietly chuckled at that. It seemed such a primate way of putting things - monkeys liked to climb trees. Society was a tree to them, even still.

The mac-and-cheese mealproduct tasted like chemicals and sadness but it was filling. Calloway would help her in the restroom later - necessity had made them overly intimate in certain ways. It would be beyond wonderful to get back to Equestria and real food once again.

Dropspindle had heard about Newfoals living in gargantuan human cities on earth, building gardens on every balcony and roof. Supposedly the 'sky-scrapers' looked like greenery-covered mountains. Even still living on earth, they worked together to make good, real food to eat. How could these humans think food was chemicals that came out of boxes? This universe was such a strange place, these creatures so very bizarre.

"Yes, it was quite a problem getting this thing started up. I almost gave up, until I found that journal!" Dropspindle had asked Calloway about how he had gotten the Mamá Gansa to fly.

"Getting the power on fully wasn't an issue. MarIA was. The ship's A.I. wouldn't do more than turn on the lights and tell me where the toilets were unless I provided the proper passwords. That's plural. There were several, all obscure as hell, and without that journal... well, you wouldn't be here... and really... neither would I."

"Wait..." Dropspindle swallowed her mouthful of mac. "How could you read the journal? You don't know Spanish!"

"Mnn...yes." Calloway swallowed. "That's true. It was mostly gobbledegook for me, but on the back page there was a list of things..." He took another bite, and a swallow of bubbly club soda with artificial lime. "...words, numbers. Some were in English, which I thought was pretty weird. Lists, passwords. What else could they be. See?" Calloway reached behind him, half stood, to grab something from the console. He flipped through the journal after sitting down again, then laid it flat on the deck.

"The guy must have been an old movie buff. Maybe all they got down here was old Pre-Collapse movies, I don't know. But check this out - " Calloway pointed to the handwritten passwords. "'Reindeer Flotilla'. That was the first password I had to enter. It's from an old movie about cyberspace."

"Siber... what?"

"Um... inside a computer. Sort of. And this one, oh this is a gem - " Calloway moved his finger to the next line of handwritten humanese symbols. "Five eight one, Tee-Ess-Dee-Arr, X, Dolphin and Over! Nobody but a true, well, geek, like me, would ever get that reference! I feel like I almost know this guy. Damn. A Godzilla reference for a password. He may have been a rainforest raping burger-lord, but he liked 'Tron' and 'Godzilla'. I guess there is good in everyone, if you only look hard enough."

Dropspindle sipped her bowl of soda-with-sort-of-lime. "Maybe the burger-lord couldn't help... destroying... the forest. You seem so harsh toward our host."

Calloway half smiled and half looked confused. "The guy who... our 'host' as you put it... he's one of the reasons your princesses insist on ponification before letting us into ponyland! He wanted money, he wanted a mansion and a fancy car and a super fancy airship, and he clearly didn't care one whit about all the millions starving in poverty around him! He took the forest - that all the people depended on - burned it down, put cattle on it, slaughtered the cattle, and left a desert for everyone else to suck on. This is the sort of bastard that owned this ship we are on. Imagine him, unponified, in your candy universe? How long until it was a desert too, if he couldn't have a palace or whatever?"

"I was taught that humans couldn't help themselves. 'Humans are the suffering victims of a harsh and cruel cosmos'. We are taught to forgive humans for the things they do, because it isn't their fault. They weren't created, like we were. Humans just sort of 'happened', like monsters from the Everfree. You don't have princesses to make you correctly. So you can't be blamed for the things you do to survive." Dropspindle took another nibble of fake mac-and-cheese.

"SURVIVE!" Calloway put down his glass. "The guy had a mansion while everyone else lived in dirt-floor shacks! You were there, you saw! We scavenged through where everyone else lived. Only airship-boy here had marble floors and air conditioning. He didn't share, he didn't help anyone but himself. He just took the forest as his own, and probably grinned at how little he could pay people to burn down the only valuable thing they had for his benefit! We know he threw big parties for his rich friends, do you think he invited common folk to any of them? How can you defend this man?"

Calloway seemed upset. Surprisingly so. Dropspindle stared at him.

Of course. Calloway was the darling of the human elite. He found them their 'petrochemical' stuff. They let him have anything he wanted for that. Calloway was feeling guilt. Or shame. Something like that. He had lived well, like the elite did, while most humans had nothing. Dropspindle thought carefully.

"Humans are the product of their universe, they cannot help what they are. That is what my excursion instructor taught me. He said that you live in a monstrous universe, and so you had to be monsters to survive - but that we shouldn't focus on that. We should focus on how, despite that, you made music, and art, and had friendships and tried - despite everything - to be more than what the universe made you to be. He said that if it got to be too much, or if we felt disgust at you, we should remember that deep down you already had the makings of being ponies inside you... and that once you were converted, the worthwhile bits would finally have their chance."

"So... pity. They taught you to pity us, so you would not hate us." Calloway sighed, and spooned another sporkful of mac into his face. "I guess it makes sense. You come here, you have to deal with a lot, and us on top of it." He sipped his beverage. "I guess pity is better than hate. I don't have much pity left, myself. Sorry." Calloway rubbed his lower back. Sitting on the deck like that hurt him. "I just... that forest? The one that isn't there, down below us? It was once the greatest, most magnificent forest on the entire planet. 'The lungs of the earth' they used to call it. The loss of it is one of the reasons earth is dead meat. That and the oceans. I... I can't forgive that."

"Then think of Equestria. At least we came, right? And there are endless forests and oceans in Equestria!"

Calloway looked out the windows. They curved in a semi-circle all around the flight deck. "Yeah. You came. Equestria showed up in the nick of time." He turned back to his food. "If you hadn't, we'd just all be dead. And stupid dead, too. Stupid greedy dead. Too stupid to live."

Dropspindle lifted her muzzle from her plate. "No. Not stupid, or... any other bad thing. We are the product of Celestia and Luna, you are the product of your... random and uncaring universe. You expect too much of humans, Calloway. They can't help it. They just can't help themselves. If they could, they would, right?"

Calloway gave her a soft smile, as if to agree. But her words sounded too much like a mantra, like some propaganda created to make ponies able to tolerate humans at all. Ponies were clearly suckers for propaganda; it obviously wasn't a normal part of their lives. They hadn't learned to be suspicious and untrusting of every official statement.

It was a funny sort of propaganda, though. Instead of trying to get people to see another nation as an inhuman enemy, ponies used propaganda to convince themselves to forgive and accept others. If it was propaganda, it was the strangest he had ever come across.

Calloway pressed the active surface display again. The holo-icon changed from a three dimensional, floating image of a map to an image of a magnifying glass. That wasn't helpful in the least. He still couldn't get the navigational view back. The only thing that showed on the holotank were the same floating words that had been there for the last many hours.

Rutina de autodiagnóstico de interfaz de sistemas de navegación activa.
Por favor, especifica subrotina que deseas analizar.

"You're sure that you can't remember any Spanish at all?" Magic had turned from wonder to annoying. Dropspindle had awoken completely incapable of understanding even the simplest Spanish word. At the moment Calloway knew the most Spanish of the two of them, and he only knew three words. 'Si' for 'yes', 'Que' for 'what' (he wasn't entirely sure about that one, actually), and something like 'Banyo' which probably meant restroom. Maybe. And he knew the names of some Mexican dishes. 'Taco'. 'Enchilada'. 'Salsa'. Or was that last one a form of music? He couldn't remember.

"I've told you several times!" Dropspindle had her hooves on the edge of the holotable that filled the hind area of the flight deck. They ate their meals in the flat space between the holotable and the flight chairs that faced the airship controls. "I don't understand why you keep asking!"

Calloway thought for a moment. "I... you know, that's a very good question. Huh. I guess... I think humans just don't trust each other very much, deep down, so... we are always expecting that someone else is lying to us when we hear bad news. Something like that. Basically, I'm desperate, and I want you to be lying, because then maybe there'd be hope you'd suddenly pop up and say 'I'm kidding! Here's the answer!"

Dropspindle considered this. She stared at the floating, incomprehensible words. She turned her bright, magenta eyes to Calloway. "I'm kidding! Here's the answer!"

Calloway glared. Then he half smiled. "Cute. You're becoming more human every day." He tried pressing the other symbols - something that looked like a wrapped present, a little cube with an upside down question mark in it, and what appeared to be a bunch of the extinct fruit called bananas. Nothing about the display changed. "'Navegacion' - that sounds like navigation to me, so I'm sure we've got the right section still. I shouldn't have tried to scroll and zoom the map... I did something wrong and now... I don't have a clue. 'Activa' - that either means the thing is turned on, or it's an advertisement for some kind of snake oil - Jesus! Why isn't there a nice clear 'English' option on this thing?"

"Are we lost? Do you need this machine to fly this ship?"

"Well, yes and no." Kotani ran his hand through his raven hair. "I can fly the airship manually - it's actually pretty simple. It's as easy as flying something in SlaughterStrike. There's even vehicles in the game that fly just like this, so that part isn't a problem - heck, I got this thing to hover right beside that crane - there's a simple icon for hold position and everything. MarIA just takes over. Good A.I. on this barge, even if I can't speak its language. The problem is knowing just where to fly the ship."

"Wait... I thought that was the easy part. Just go East until you reach the ocean. Across the ocean, if necessary to... that other continent."

"Eeeeyeah. About that. You see..." Calloway brushed nonexistent dust from the holotable. "This thing here... it tells you which way to go, and what's down below, and out the window, well... look for yourself."

Beyond the windows was an endless surface of smog.

"Then away from Equestria! You have to be able to see Equestria up this high, just steer in the opposite direction! Or I can..." Dropspindle opened her thaumatic eyes and looked around. The bright, sky-filling luminance of Equestria was behind them. Good. "You are already moving in the right direction. I just checked."

"No, that's easy... thank you though, for double checking, never hurts to do that - the problem, as usual, is stuff."

"Stuff?"

"Material. It's a material world. Of scarcity. And we're getting low on hydrogen. Not fuel for once - we have enough high grade nano-adjusted petroleum in this baby to let us fly around the entire planet. What's left of the planet. We're spoiled for fuel. But hydrogen..."

"I thought that was... sealed... or something?"

"Yes. Very well. And safe. Even if a sac had direct contact with oxygen and a spark and blew up, the explosion would be contained. Nanomesh, just like the troopers, only better. But hydrogen is a funny thing. It always gets out. It's very small, and... it always finds a way. Sneaky little bastard of an atom. This airship has been sitting unattended, no maintenance for months. Months and months. In terrible heat and... I don't think mister Burger Lord understood the value of maintenance in the first place. So, there's leaks. Really slow, super slow... but because we've been using this contraption... and pushing it hard in some ways... the leaks have gotten worse."

"We're going to fall, aren't we?" Dropspindle had been getting used to a sort of earthly rhythm to events. On earth, anytime things went well at all, inevitably everything would go bad again, and usually in the worst possible way. Having the ship fall from the sky was the obvious next thing to happen.

"No, there is zero chance of that." Calloway moved to the primary pilot seat, Dropspindle followed. He sat down and indicated the holodisplay there. He was careful not to touch any unknown icons. "See? We have enough gas to last for quite a while. Weeks, maybe. I wish I could read this." He studied the floating words and symbols for a moment. "And there has to be all kinds of warnings and alarms and such should buoyancy ever become a problem. We'll have plenty of time to land safely. That's not even a concern."

Dropspindle was relieved, but baffled. "Then what actually IS the problem?"

"Weeks of flight are not enough to get us across the continent, much less the ocean to the Afrizone. This is a blimp, and while it's fast for a blimp, it's still pretty slow as an aircraft overall. I don't have the skill or knowledge to try to get us into an... airstream or whatever it's called up at high altitudes. If a ship like this could even do that. I don't know enough to use the full capacities of the ship right now at this altitude. I'm sorry. I can land, I can take off, I can point us in a direction and fly, and I can hover. I'm good at those things... but that's about it."

"So we're safe."

"For now, yes."

"It's just that we can't depend on this ship to get us all the rest of the way to safety."

"Pretty much. Sorry. I'm doing my best."

Dropspindle put a hoof on Calloway's shoulder. "Then... that's great! Calloway... you saved me, you saved you, we're okay, we're moving away from the Barrier, and we can travel for weeks before we are forced down. That's not bad! That's pretty good, if you think about it! You've done great!" Dropspindle looked out the wide front windows. "And I have an idea about navigation, too."

"What?" Calloway checked the altimeter. 300 meters. It was actually above the suggested zone of 200 meters, but he had wanted to clear the smog layer entirely.

"Just navigate by sight. Why can't we drop down, below the clouds, and watch the land? We don't have my paper map anymore, and the fancy holo thing isn't working, but land is land. We can follow that dry river, the big one, and look out the windows for... buildings. Villages. Another big bunch of tanks and stuff. Maybe we can find a... an airship re... um... gassing... place? Or maybe another jitney to drive instead of flying! I assume that's the issue, right? Finding stuff, since we need stuff!"

Calloway grinned. "Yeah, that's pretty much the plan I had, my backup plan. But I really wanted to get the holomap back. If that wasn't... not working... and if you still knew Spanish, we could have told MarIA to take us to the farthest large city or settlement to the East. The A.I. would have just... made it work out. With no mistakes."

Dropspindle pressed close, and let Calloway scratch her mane. She had to adjust her stance, because her rib still hurt, but Calloway needed her. "You'll do okay. You've done really well already. Well...except for one thing."

"What?" Calloway felt a rush of fear. He really didn't want to disappoint this mare for some reason. It really mattered to him, and the strength of that feeling surprised him.

Dropspindle turned her face to Calloway and glared at him with her large magenta eyes. "Don't you EVER lie to me again, Calloway Kotani! You treated me like a foal back at that petroleum plant, and you made me think we would be alright only you had given up and I don't know what the pretzel was going through that monkey skull of yours but it was wrong, understand? I mean it - don't ever, EVER treat me like that again!"

The little unicorn was faintly shaking with anger. Kotani raised his hand from her mane. That was new. She looked like she was ready to cave in his 'monkey skull' with a swing of a hoof, and considering her apparent strength, likely take his head right off entirely.

"I am very, very sorry. That was wrong. I... I thought I was sparing you from horror. I thought that it would be less terrible if you didn't have to face waiting for me to fry. And there was nothing else I could do for you. Just... not fill our last days together with worry and fear. I screwed up, and I'm sorry. I won't do it - or anything like it - ever again."

Those red eyes. The scary, creepy anger faded. "Okay, then."

Supposedly, Equestrians were incapable of murder or unprovoked violence. They couldn't even think that way. Supposedly.

Calloway turned back to the controls. 'Supposedly' had just seemed kilometers away from the look in those angry alien eyes.

14. Through the Picture Frame

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Fourteen: Through the Picture Frame

"Calloway!" The music was a little loud. Kotani was listening to the Mamá Gansa's onboard music collection while he flew the airship. Currently filling the flight deck was some form of human entertainment called 'country music'. Waylan and Yauling and the Country Barn Cats were twanging out a fast-paced song unlike anything Dropspindle had heard in Equestria. Calloway had seemed excited by the available collection, which possessed 'obscure greats like the French Canadian singer LaBinda Gairboge!'. Kotani played some of the recorded songs much too loudly, and once he had tried to make the Mamá Gansa 'dance' in the sky with heedless manipulations of the controls - until Dropspindle had made it very clear that was not appropriate AT ALL.

"CALLOWAY!"

"What? Sorry... let me turn this down..." He adjusted the player and Waylan and Yauling began to whisper about how they had lost their favorite truck to the girlfriend that had somehow stomped their hearts flat.

"Thank you." Dropspindle took a moment to regain her composure. "There are messages down there."

"What?"

"Writing. Made of dead tree trunks and rocks and things. Down there. I can't quite read it, but there are messages. Some are fairly long."

"Hang on..." Calloway slowed the Mamá Gansa and caused her to hover. The onboard A.I. 'MarIA' held the ship with laser guided precision in locked position. "Does this help?"

"It helps, but can we go lower? It's very tiny from up here."

Calloway lowered the ship. Slowly it reduced in altitude until the letters below became easy to read. They had lost the dry Rio Amazon entirely, and had ended up crossing a vast and hilly zone composed of sand, gray patches of sun-baked tree stumps, scattered dead branches, and the occasional stone step-pyramid. Calloway had said that most of the pyramids had not been discovered until the forests were all removed. The structures were the remains of ancient civilizations that had lived and died ages in the past. The jungle had swallowed them up. Only total deforestation had made them visible to the modern age. "That low enough?"

"Yes! Come see!"

Calloway left the pilot chair and moved to the rail where it was possible to look nearly straight down from the curving gallery windows. He studied the patches of letters. They were indeed made of arrangements of dried out tree trunks, stones, and branches. It was clear they had been designed to be seen from very high altitudes overhead. The letters were large, each many meters high. They had been there for a very long time.

The words were in English. Crude English, misspelled English, but English... and not Spanish.

"Oh. Of course."

Dropspindle's ears twitched. "Of course?"

Calloway slid his hands along the rail, then returned them, as if cleaning the metal bar. "Natives. Forest aborigines. The tribes were studied for a while, before the Collapse. The scientists and explorers brought portable computers with them. They showed the tribal people this 'magic' from the Industrial World, and as part of that... they showed them Googlezon maps. I think it was just Google, back then. Satellite maps, taken from orbit." Calloway read out loud one of the dried-out tree-trunk messages below.

HELP ϨTOP CUT
ϨAVE AMAZOИA

"They made hundreds - maybe thousands - of these. Kinda like the Nasca Lines, only... not. They didn't speak English themselves. They just knew the people who did could see them from above the sky, like gods. They probably begged the scientists to show them what symbols to write. These are prayers. Prayers to the magical Northamerizoners who lived in the sky and looked down at them from the clouds. Begging the rich white men to somehow stop the bulldozers the rich brown men were using to take the forest away. The tribals still lived in the forest, like Man did hundreds of thousands of years ago, you see. Off the land. To them, that forest was the world, the universe, and the brown men were taking it away. But the white men with the magic boxes could see it all from the sky. Surely they were powerful enough to save everything."

"And did they?" Dropspindle looked beyond the letters, to the desert that stretched in every direction. "Sorry. Obviously not. It's just... it's such a sad thing to hear. Why? Why didn't you humans save them?"

Calloway turned from the rail. "No Worldgovernment back then. Separate nations, separate flags, and all of them only concerned with their own benefit. Standing armies. If the prayers had been answered, it would have taken open warfare to stop the destruction of the forests. Remember our 'host?' He wasn't alone. Everybody wanted to be wealthy - or at least not in poverty - and everybody wanted the forests cut down and the land stripmined because that is where the money came from."

"Not everypony! The aborigines didn't want the trees cut down!"

Calloway sat in the pilot's chair and began to make the Mamá Gansa rise again. "Here's the deal... uh... you, in Equestria, you come in all colors of the rainbow. And three breeds too, all different as can be. And that's okay with you - you are all one people, one species, one... race, despite all of that. Humans aren't like that. Slightly different eyes, darker or lighter skin, curly or straight hair - these are things that divide humans. They are reasons to hate, to kill or be killed. Neither the white people nor the brown people thought the other, darker brown people - the aborigines - were people at all. So they didn't count. Besides, they were primitive, and should stop living like cave men and get proper jobs in the factories. Like real humans. That was the belief back then. The 'abos' didn't have any rights, because they lived like animals, and because they looked different. And... because they didn't salute the right flags. But mostly because there was money to be made."

Dropspindle stared at Calloway. "But... I can barely even tell you creatures apart!"

Calloway Kotani laughed, long and hard and loud. Then he laughed more softly, bitterly. "Yeah. Oh... yeah."

Far, far below, a ruined, ancient stone temple passed silent and unnoticed beneath the soaring lifting-body airship. It would never be noticed again, even until the very end of the world.

"There's a river!" Dropspindle was suddenly quite excited. Both she and Calloway had been sitting in silence for some time, watching the ambient glow of the setting sun fade from the now crimson smog layer just above them. Calloway was slumped in his seat, long since weary of playing music. He aimlessly ran his hand through the holodisplay, idly causing the floating images to wiggle and reform.

"No rivers left. Mirage." Calloway seemed almost upset to be be awakened from his revere of boredom.

"It's shiny, and wet-looking, and it reflects the light... honestly, I see a river! Come see!"

Calloway looked up. There was literally nothing better to do. "Okay, what the hell." He made a great effort of escaping the simple confines of the pilot's chair and an even greater effort of forcing himself to a standing position.

"Hurry up! You'll miss it!"

Calloway ambled over. Riding inside the belly of a lifting-body airship was easily the most dull travel experience of his life. It felt like nothing. There was no sensation of movement, the entire craft seemed to remain perfectly still while the world moved around it. There was no sensation at all. Dropspindle claimed she heard and felt a hum or something, but... to human senses, he might as well have been standing on the upper floor of a very tall building. "Yeah, okay, let's see this..."

A line of shining brightness gleamed far down from starboard. It was intensely bright, a laser red line that was somehow reflecting direct - and not diffuse - sunlight. "Um..." Calloway followed the line of brightness. There shouldn't be sunlight. There shouldn't be a river. It did look like a river. A very straight river... maybe a canal? "Something's... " He ran back to his chair.

"Something's what?" Dropspindle followed, and clambered into the co-pilot's seat. She had adjusted it so that it conformed, just a little, to her pony body. It wasn't completely comfortable, but it was more padded than most human chairs, and it could recline somewhat.

"I don't know what that is. But you found something, alright. It's a lot more interesting than endless sand and hopeless prayers, and... I think we should check it out." Calloway turned the Mamá Gansa to starboard and began a wide, slow, curving descent. "Damn, that's bright, where is the sunlight coming fr..."

Out the side windows, as they continued to bank, they now could see behind them, toward the direction they had been moving away from. Sunlight shone brightly, streaming from behind a vast wall that stretched from horizon to horizon many kilometers away. The ceiling of the smog layer ended just shy of the immense transparent wall. It was being rolled up ahead of its advance. "That's not our sun setting. It's coincidence... Equestria's sun is setting at the very same time as our sun... only we can't see our sun, because Equestria is filling the view West. Damn... that's an alien sunset perfectly in time with sunset here, and... anyway!" Calloway returned to piloting the blimp.

The bright line reflecting the light of the setting sun in Equestria began to become two lines as they drew nearer.

"Rails! I know what that is!" Calloway lowered the airship even more. "That's the Trans-Southamerizone Railway or whatever it was called. The Chinese built it... back when there was a China... or maybe it was just one guy, some super rich elite... whatever. That thing is a 5300-kilometer long river all right - a river of steel! Or... some other metal. I'm no expert. But I read about it once, and it goes all the way across the entire continent! Think about that, Dropspindle! And not the thinnest part, either - fifty-three hundred kilometers of rail! High speed rail, too." Calloway paused. "Oh, that's a thought, isn't it? High speed rail to the coast. If only. If only."

"It's hard for me sometimes... to grasp the scale of the things you humans do. A single railroad longer than the entire width of the original Equestria before the Exponentials. Everything is so big here. It's terrifying, sometimes." Dropspindle followed the parallel rails as far into the distance as she could. They just met and vanished as one infinitesimal line.

"In our universe, it's go big, or go home baby! Or just go home and go big. A lot. Considering foodpaks and all." Calloway grinned while Dropspindle stuck her tongue out at him. "So, what say we follow this? We can't get lost with this thing... well, not that we could, considering what's behind us. Jesus... just look at that. Even so damn far away... if anything it seems even bigger this far away. Can't even see more than just a thin line of it, where it intersects the ground, but... that Barrier. My god Equestria is huge now. My fucking god."

Calloway had the Mamá Gansa on hover now. He spent a few minutes just staring at the distant line where the smog layer ended and the Barrier let the light of an alien sunset illuminate the human world. It ran from horizon to horizon. To Calloway, it almost felt like he was peeking from under a smoggy blanket at the sunset through the windows.

"Keep your eyes open for... buildings, train cars, anything of interest. It wouldn't hurt to find supplies or some tasty noms."

Dropspindle, who had little love for prepackaged human foods, glared at him.

"Well, for me, anyway." Calloway adjusted their heading. "I know it's hard on you. We'll get through this. You'll get real food again, one day. One day soon." Dropspindle almost seemed to sulk in the co-pilot's chair. "Really soon."

The curved, flattened, oblate ovoid of the Mamá Gansa glided like a powered cloud ten meters above the gleaming rails. Each rail served a maglev train, one for going east, the other for going west. From the height of the Gansa, though, the two metal lines reminded Calloway of double train tracks from ancient cowboy movies, crossing the pre-Collapse West of the Northamerizone.

The diffuse illumination from the global smog layer was very dim now, the Equestrian sunset likely at the very edge of twilight as they spotted buildings in the distance. There was a collection of structures up ahead - perhaps a town, perhaps merely a depot to collect the rewards of copper - and other - mining. The Southamerizone had once been an astonishingly abundant region for the acquisition of resources. But that was now in the past. There were still resources, of course, it was simply that all that was economical to take or scoop or drill or carve from the land was now gone. What was left was vast, but cost more to take than the value gained. Diminishing returns was the death knell of all exploitation.

"That's the first... anything... we've seen in some time. I'd like to check it out. Equestria is a long ways behind us, we have time... whad'yah say?"

Dropspindle pressed her muzzle to the glassite, her hooves over the railing. "I think it's a town. It reminds me of Appleoosa, or maybe Saddlemento. It seems nice! It will feel good to get our hooves on the ground for a while."

"Feet, in my case, but I share the sentiment." Calloway moved his hands over the active surface display and the view out the window began to rotate as the Mamá Gansa circled the region, forward windows locked on the center of the cluster of now dark structures. "Oh... this should help!"

Light beams appeared from various points on the airship, and formed bright cones in the deepening dark. Calloway focused the front beams on the buildings. "Running lights and searching spotlights! Just figured out the icons. I don't know Spanish, but I know a well-designed icon when I see it!" He grinned in the now red glow of the flight deck. MarIA had automatically adjusted the interior illumination to match the nighttime situation.

The spotlights revealed not a town but an abandoned ore processing and transport station. The maglev system ran through two barn-like covered buildings, with clear and wide access areas for large vehicles to enter and leave. Ore chutes and several large piles of slag were visible. Buildings that looked like barracks or some similar structures gave the station its townish appearance. There was also, of course, a bar with a fairly elaborate sign. 'El Chupacabra' it read, with an image of a monstrous creature tossing back a cold one. It was a rough, frontier depot that had once served the mining community.

"This doesn't look like a nice little village anymore." Dropspindle sighed at the run-down, weathered buildings.

"Eh... in its day, it was probably the joy of the region. Hard working miners, bringing loads to the train, spending the entire trip thinking about the cool of the night and that very bar. A night on, well, not on the town, but the closest thing to one they had. Probably a hard life, and this would have been the highlight of their week, or maybe even their month." Calloway finally found what he was looking for - a wide, flat area large enough to accommodate the Mamá Gansa. The area in front of the vehicle entrance to the covered maglev station had served as a waiting zone for large trucks carrying ore. Empty now, it was a vast lot with nothing to cause trouble for the airship.

"We're going to land?"

Calloway looked surprised. "Um... yeah. That's why we're here. I admit it doesn't look like much, but there might be something useful down there. No hydrogen, obviously, but... snacks, food, maybe another paper map? A map would be pretty nice, wouldn't it?"

"Of course. It's just..." Dropspindle stared at the dark shadows left by the spotlights.

"Just what?" Calloway began the descent, the Mamá Gansa felt still as a rock while the world moved politely and slowly up to meet it.

"Well, it just looks so... lonely, I guess. And sad. And somehow... angry, too." Dropspindle tapped the deck with her hoof. "I just get a strange... I don't remember the word. Feeling, anyway. A strange feeling about this place."

"Looks alright to me. It's rustic, I'll grant you that. Real 'hard men in a hard land' kind of look to it, but... it's abandoned. The biggest threat for us is going to be scorpions, if they even still exist. I think they have scorpions in deserts."

The Mamá Gansa was only two meters from the macadam. Calloway was taking it slow, to be safe. He hadn't been very cautious when he had rescued Dropspindle from the crane - the airship now had a large, ugly scrape along one side that he had pointedly not mentioned. "Hey - go grab the torches from that cabinet. And see if you can find any bags or satchels to use for scavenging. Let's use the cool of the evening to our advantage. Better than tromping around in the heat tomorrow."

Dropspindle turned toward the door that opened into the central corridor that ran down the middle of the Gansa. The storage compartments were near the main hatchway.

It was then that the incredibly ancient, antique, barely functional FIM-43C Redeye missile hit the port side of the Mamá Gansa, easily removing an entire heated hydrogen sac, most of the dorsal plating, and the rear port engine. The sound of the explosion was deafening, and the entire frame of the craft jerked and shuddered - throwing Calloway from his seat, and Dropspindle off her hooves. The incredible strength of the remaining nanocarbon mesh gas chambers was such that they were not perforated.

As the airship listed and sank much more rapidly to the ground. The remains of the Gansa bounced slightly, before coming to a burning, slow-motion crash landing. The slow impact still managed to shatter two of the front windows. Through them, outside, over the din of internal alarms and MarIA intoning something severe in Spanish, the shouts of many loud, angry men severely berating one one of their own could be heard.

15. The Happy Man And His Dump Truck

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Fifteen: The Happy Man And His Dump Truck

"Come on!" Calloway said the words quietly, but there was no doubt about how much insistence there was behind them. The loud, arguing men were being cruel to the side hatch of the Mamá Gansa. From the sounds, it appeared they considered crowbars to be the most elegant method of entry into a high technology airship. Crowbars and cinderblocks. Huns at the gates of Rome.

Dropspindle followed Kotani down the sloping deck. The Gansa was tilted slightly, and still on fire. The fire was dying, because there was little left to burn. Likely, the edges of the nanocarbon hydrogen sac had been superheated and within the ruin of the dorsal surface acting as a wick. Or perhaps the insulation of cables was smouldering. There was deliberately as little as possible that was flammable to the Gansa. The hydrogen had already exploded into the night, raining hot water down in the process. That had caused the impatient men some consternation as they were scalded at the hatch.

The pair crawled through the broken, half crushed windows. The Gansa had drifted down, but the slow impact had the weight of the craft behind it - the delicate flight deck viewports had been bent and crumpled somewhat before the craft found equilibrium. "Careful - glass." Both human and pony balanced swiftness with caution - neither wanted to be caught, or sliced open.

Outside the heavily damaged airship, Calloway led Dropspindle into the shadows cast by the remaining combustion on the dorsal surface. At least twenty, possibly thirty men were prying open the hatch, still all loudly arguing with each other. There had been sounds of pain earlier, almost certainly coming from whichever one of them had launched the missile. From the level of punishment overheard, Calloway had doubts the man still lived.

Dropspindle followed Calloway closely, as they moved in the darkness away from the Mamá Gansa and into deeper shadows, between two structures that supported ore offloading chutes. The men were in, now, the hatch ruined in the process. From the cacophony, they were running amuck within the Gansa, likely searching for whoever had been piloting it. Their preferred method of detection seemed to be loud angry shouts and smashing noises.

"I'm afraid." Dropspindle was shaking. Calloway couldn't blame her one bit.

"Me too. But we just have to stay one step ahead of those bastards." Calloway thought for a moment. "How did they get here?"

"They just were here!"

"No... well, yeah, but there isn't enough here for that many men to live off of. They can't be from this depot. They came here from somewhere else, somewhere with food and water." Calloway strained his eyes against the impenetrable dark. "They must have vehicles. Trucks, burros, bicycles... something. I just can't see a damn thing!" The lights from inside the Gansa, combined with the fact his own eyes had not adjusted yet, frustrated him.

"Trucks. Big trucks. Over there." Dropspindle pointed a hoof in the direction of the covered depot, but Calloway didn't see it in the dark of their hiding spot.

"Where? How can you..." He laughed, softly, nervously "Big eyes. You ponies have those big, big eyes. It must be like high noon for you."

"I can see clearly, if that's what you mean."

"Okay, little kitty-cat, lead us to the trucks - provided that there is nobody guarding them. There's nobody guarding them, right?"

"I'm a pony, not a cat! And no. They all seem to be inside our poor ship." Dropspindle's fear turned briefly to grief. She had liked the Mamá Gansa.

"Get us there, quietly. I can't see a goddamn thing." He could, of course, just clearly not as well as Dropspindle.

Dropspindle took the lead with Calloway clutching, once more, tightly to her mane. It still hurt, the way he did it, but under the circumstances it was oddly comforting. She led him like a service animal carefully across the open ground between the chutes and the depot, then around the side of the depot. By now there was no ambient light. The night was pitch, and it was clear that Calloway truly couldn't see anything at this point.

Dropspindle pulled Calloway around a rusted pile of metal rods, through several stacks of crumbling pallets, and to the opposite side of the covered depot. There, around a dozen or more various vehicles were parked. There were all manner of trucks, motorbikes, modified jitneys and even a jacked-up limousine outfitted with oversized tires. All had seen too much time, and too much desert and definitely too much abuse.

Dropspindle felt her ears brushed by a breeze. At first she imagined that for some reason Calloway was leaning down and sending hot breath into her ears, but a quick look back showed him to be standing, hand on her withers, gazing intently in the wrong direction. Humans really were virtually blind in the dark. The breeze came again, a pulse in the still air. Weather on earth was so very strange - and random.

"Find us something powerful. Something fast and big."

"I'm sorry?"

Calloway crouched down, and patted her shoulder with his free hand. "Pick out a ride. Something that looks like it could outrun all the others. Extra fuel tanks are a plus. All terrain even better."

"I don't understand."

A soft chuckle. "We're stealing us a ride, Dropspindle. Grand Theft Auto: Southamerizone!" The joke was lost on the Equestrian. "Too old for you... and too... alien. Sorry. Pick us out a car, I still can't see shit."

"You want to... steal... one of those human's vehicles?" She seemed appalled.

"We stole a jitney, and an airship! What's the problem?" Calloway couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Those were abandoned. And our lives were at risk - anypony would understand that. But the owners of these cars are right here! We haven't asked permission!"

Calloway slapped his forehead with his free hand. His other hand wanted to shake the Equestrian by the withers, hard. "Those men are currently ripping our ship apart searching for us. If they find us, they will likely rip us apart too. Those are not nice men! At the very least they are desperate, and on this planet, that always means not nice. Jesus!" Calloway caught his breath. "New rule: on earth, you never have to ask permission from any human that tries to kill you. All their stuff is forfeit. It's... it's Official Human Law!"

"You're making that up!"

"Yes, I am, but it's still true. Now pick us a ride, and be quick about it!"

"Fine!" Humans shooting, humans prying open hatchways, nopony being nice and now stealing - stealing - things... why did there even have to be such a word, such a concept, in Humanese to begin with? It was such a crazy, mean, awful... The big truck looked fast. It had big, huge tires on it, with knobby things all over them. Those would do well in sand. And it had big tanks in the open back end, they must be fuel tanks. And it had big metal bars over the place where one sat, and a metal thing in the front of the truck that sort of looked like the ceremonial helmets of the Equestrian Royal Guard. It was an imposing, big, somewhat scary looking truck.

"This way!" Dropspindle led her human through the mass of vehicles to the Big Truck. "Here. Put your hands up... there. Yes, that's it. That's the side. Feel your way... no the other way! Yes! That's the door. Higher. The handle is way up. You're going to have to lift me up into it, it's really tall."

Calloway managed to open the door. Feeling about indicated a step to climb up in. The truck had been jacked up on shocks to permit oversized tires. Calloway bent down and grabbed Dropspindle around the barrel, and lifted her up and into the cab.

"OWWWW!!!"

"Shush! What happened?"

"My rib!"

"God... I forgot!"

"Well, it hurts! A lot!"

"I said I was sorry!"

"Ow... ow... owie..."

"I'm climbing up, okay? Move over or whatever. I don't want to slam into you!"

"I'm moving... ow... sweet meringue that hurts. Ow."

Calloway used the step and pulled himself up into the dark cab of the jacked-up high-riding truck. Due to the angle, some light spilled across the dash from the scene at the downed airship. The lights were still on in the Gansa, though the fire was out. The men would not remain there indefinitely. Calloway searched for the starter button.

The truck roared to life. A row of spotlights on the top illuminated the desert brightly. Running lights on the body of the vehicle glared baleful reds and greens. Worse, the horn honked out a brief musical passage before it fell silent.

"CHRIST!"

Calloway found the accelerator with his foot and pressed it, somewhat harder than he perhaps should. The truck leaped forward, bouncing and rumbling over the ground. He did not bother with finding the road - in any event what road they had seen from above ran parallel to the Barrier. There was only one direction - East. Away from Equestria. Dropspindle kept repeating 'OW!' as the vehicle made its bumpy, rough and tumble way across the uneven Amazonian desert. Calloway steered around a pile of long dead tree segments and avoided a rocky outcropping. The view to the front was like daylight, to the sides, Christmas. Whoever had modified this truck had a very extroverted personality.

"See if you can find a way to turn off some of these lights!" The truck must be visible for kilometers in the desert night. "On second thought, stop! No, don't try!" It struck him how screwed they would be if Dropspindle accidentally turned off the headlights and the spots overhead. That could end up in a very short trip.

A brief glance down revealed several gauges. Some of them were fuel related, one for each of the many tanks in the back. It was hard to make sense of it, but it seemed that they had a lot of fuel onboard. One positive thing about the situation, at least. Dropspindle had picked a fast, big truck. And it had a lot of fuel. But it was also the most brightly lit, gaudy thing Calloway had ever seen. They were a moving bullseye, and there was zero hope of sliding unseen into the desert.

Calloway barely missed the edge of some kind of pit or cliff or ravine - it was hard to tell - and hazarded a look at the rearview mirror. Everything was shaking and bouncing too much for him to get a good visual lock on the mirror, much less what it showed. "Look behind us! Are they following?" Of course they were following. What else would they do? Laugh and say 'let it go, no big whoop?'.

"Ow... Calloway, it hurts to try to... OW! Okay... um... there are lots... lots of lights behind us. Pairs of lights. And sometimes bunches. Of lights."

"Those are the mean men trying to catch us. They are probably a little bit upset about our taking this truck." Calloway narrowly avoided an unfortunate incident with a boulder. The vehicle shook as it swerved, then bounced for a while on its large wheels.

"I told you it was stealing!"

"Listen... Dropspindle... just listen. If... if I fuck up, and they catch us, if you get the chance, I need you to run. Just run. As fast and far as you can. Run, keep on running, and don't look back. Don't think, don't talk, just run." Calloway steered onto a dry riverbed. It was narrow, but not unlike a road. Nice. "No...! No happy pony bullshit out of you about this! If I say run, if the car breaks down, if we smash into something, you don't think, you don't fuck around with me, you run - UNDERSTOOD?"

"Calloway, I would never..."

"UNDERSTOOD?"

"I won't abandon you! Equestrians don't..."

"SHUT YOUR FUCKING FACE AND AGREE!" Calloway's arms bulged as he wrestled the wheel. "UN-DER-STOOD? My world, my rules!"

Dropspindle was silent for a while. "Understood. Calloway."

"Good!" The dry river was turning out to be a blessing. For now. "Those aren't nice men, Dropspindle. Maybe they were, once. Probably they were... miners... or ranchers or something. They likely got left behind when the money pulled out. They might not even know what is coming, or if they do they don't care, or they don't know what to do. But their actions... shooting us down like that, even if it was an accident or an itchy finger..." More likely the latter, considering what must have happened to the guy who did it "...means that whatever they might have been once, they are dangerous and mean now. You're going to have to trust me on this - if things get bad enough, even good men can go bad too."

Many bumps and a long silence passed. "Are you going to turn bad?"

"NO! Why would you even say such a thing?" Calloway was personally offended. After everything they had been through together!

"Sometimes I think you humans are very confusing."

"What?" There was a lot of gravel here, and it was noisy.

"Sense! You don't make sense!"

Calloway laughed. "Welcome to earth." He steered off the riverbed, to follow a slope down into a low, flat region that looked like it went on forever. It was free of rocks and dead stumps and basically anything. Most likely a salt or alkali flat. It was flat, at any rate.

For a while, the ridge behind gave them a sense of having eluded their pursuers. But the feeling was short lived. The lights of the following fleet of vehicles made their way down to the flats and soon regained their position, directly behind. The angry blimp-killers were not going to give up. Not without a fight. Probably not even then.

"Calloway..."

"Yup? Good news, I hope?"

His quick glance at Dropspindle did not indicate good news at all. "They... the mean men... they are closer now. I think it was harder for them on the rough ground. The flat ground is helping them. I think."

She seemed subdued. That bothered Calloway more than the information.

"Can you get us back onto the rough ground again?" Dropspindle's voice was barely audible in the rumbling truck. He wondered if he had yelled at her too fiercely.

Calloway looked out at what appeared to be an endless plain stretching beyond where the truck lights could go. They were on an ocean of flatness. "If you have any spells or magic you've been hiding, now would be the time to surprise me."

"I've told you that I..." Dropspindle half smiled, half frowned. "I wish I did. I'm sorry."

"Then pray to your princesses, because here they come."

On the right, the equally high-wheeled limousine drew near. On the left, a dirt bike and a dune rider began to approach. In the side rearview, Calloway noticed unshaven, dirty faces with feral chimpanzee grins inside the limo. For the first time in his life, Calloway Kotani fully saw his own species as the animals, as the beasts, they were. They looked like apes in cars, and they were apes in cars, and they were enjoying the thrill of hunting him down.

They would enjoy hurting him in vengeance for his audacity even more. That was the end game when humans played 'chase' as adults - tasers or clubs or knives or axes or guns. Blood. Blood and injury and screaming and laughter. Shrieking chimpanzees, dismembering their prey. This was fun for them. They were loving every moment of it.

And the worst part, the very worst part was that deep inside himself, Calloway was too. "Dropspindle! Your side! Watch out!"

It was a given they would have guns. Men loved guns. Men loved the power to kill easily and instantly.

Dropspindle watched in quiet horror as the bike and its rider pulled close to her side of the truck. The running lights made a glowing red demon of the helmeted man. He held the handlebars with one hand while reaching out with the other for the handle of Dropspindle's door. "CALLOWAY!"

Without a thought, Calloway turned to the left. The impact barely shook the truck. Dropspindle watched as the dirt bike rider tumbled to the flats, only to catch under the wheels of the dune rider. The small buggy seemed to stumble over the body of the man, and began to turn sharply. Something caught in the hard soil and the lightweight dune rider flipped over throwing two more men into the vanishing darkness behind them.

"Calloway! You killed all of those men!"

He could only give her a mask of a glance, his lips pressed tight. There was no use getting into an argument. How could she ever comprehend any of this? "I need your help. My side. Get your ass over here and do something, anything! I need magic now!" There was no way he could bash the limo without wrecking the both of them. He didn't have the skill. He felt sure there were all kinds of tricks that Blackmesh probably learned about vehicular combat. He didn't know a single thing. Only what he had seen in old movies.

"What can I possibly... there's barely any room..." Dropspindle, caught in a nightmare, shocked almost beyond reason, complied because she could do nothing else. Ponies helped. It was the last bit of her that was not completely traumatized by what had just happened. Ponies helped. She squeezed into the half-meter space behind Calloway's seat, and peeked out of the narrow slice of window there. If her rib hurt, she was beyond caring. "There's a big, long, dark car! With big wheels!"

Calloway glanced to the right. The car was full of men, and the windows were open. Guns were being pointed, but it was difficult to tell at what with such a brief look in such dim red light. "Dropspindle. Magic. Now." His words were measured and just loud enough to overcome the racing of the motor and the rumbling of the wheels. They were constrained panic, and the feeling was palpable.

Dropspindle heard them, heard how terrified and lost Calloway sounded. Over and over in her mind, the same words, the only words she had left that still made any rational sense. Ponies help. Ponies help.

She ran down every spell she knew. She only knew a few. She hadn't been a good student except when it came to what she loved - fabric. She was very good with fabric. She'd won an award. She'd been mildly famous in textile circles. That's why she was allowed to come to earth to study. To learn. She knew only a little magic. Vestication. She could apport clothing. Tincturation. She could dye or remove dye in the blink of an eye. She laughed. It was funny and she didn't know why, because she was actually terrified and horrified and sickened. Ausokinesis, automatic weaving. It was fun to watch cloth weave itself. Very soothing. Adjunctication. Oh, that was a good one. Magical effects applied to clothing. Make colors brighter, make things shine, or ripple or glow. Clothometry. She could experience the history of any piece of...

Instantly, the clothing of the nearest man in the car lit up like it was on rainbow fire. He shrieked silently, beyond the truck window, dropping his rifle as his hands flew to pat out the not-fire he wasn't being consumed with. The man directly behind him suddenly found himself naked, his clothes briefly appearing beside the limousine in a burst of thaumatic light, before being blown behind and under by the winds of speedy travel.

The big-wheeled limo jerked suddenly to the right and split away, falling behind. In the driver's panic, he failed to see the one lone dead tree on the whole of the plain. For dozens if not hundreds of kilometers that lonely tree had stood, the only thing left of the once mighty Amazon jungle. In the whole of the flats, nothing had cut it, disturbed it, or hit it... until now. The impact was terrible, the dry wood of the tree exploded in the faint automotive lights. As the remains of the limo vanished behind them, the only light that came from it was the false flames of one passengers glowing clothing, and the real flames of the burning wreck, until both became tiny and vanished in the distance.

Dropspindle sank to the floorboard, smashed into the narrow space behind Calloway's car seat. She laughed and laughed and laughed, then giggled at a shrieking pitch. The rapid, nervous giggles turned to wails, and the wails became hollow, yowling cat cries in the night.

"Dropspindle?" Calloway tried to see her in the mirror, but she was too low. "Dropspindle!" He took one hand off the wheel, briefly, to try to touch her. She shrank from his hand. "Dropspindle? What's going on? That was brilliant! Genius! Dropspindle? Dropspindle!"

She cried and screamed for what seemed like an hour. The fleet of vehicles had ended their chase, undoubtedly to deal with their wounded and dead. They would believe that whoever stole their truck had strange and incredible powers. Terrible and arcane magics at their command. They might just be frightened enough not to continue the chase. It must have been truly nightmarish to be invisibly attacked inside the safety of their limo by forces they were incapable of comprehending. It must have seemed like demons and sorcery and every horror holo all at once, coming true.

Maybe they wouldn't pursue. Maybe they would consider such terrors too terrible to follow.

"Dropspindle?"

She was weeping now, and somehow the softness of her crying was more horrible than her anguished wails. It was an odd sort of tears, despondent, destroyed, the grief of a child who had just seen their mother die before their eyes. He had never heard such crying before. It was terrible simply to be in proximity to.

It sounded like the death of god.

16. The New House In The Forest

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Sixteen: The New House In The Forest

It had once been a soy plantation. It had been built right during the Collapse, likely just before the Testicide Incident.

Soy had been one of the worlds biggest crops, but that ended when a genegineered variant was found to cause total sterility in males. The strain spread, inevitably, and soy developed a very bad name. Fields were burned, scoured with fire and plasma. But nothing can put the genii of genes back in the bottle once it escapes. This was before the Last Harvest and the end of wheat, but it foreshadowed that terrible event.

The plantation was compact, with two large silos and a processing center and a little green farmhouse. The once bright green was faded to a shade of olive-despair, but the house still stood. Beside the house was what looked like a broken windmill - there were no blades, just a tall tower of metal struts. The silos had partially fallen, the rivets giving out under the assault of time and weather. Calloway had parked the Big Truck in the shadow of the farmhouse, and had carried, after much coaxing and finally a bit of manhandling, Dropspindle into the structure.

They needed to sleep, they needed to eat and attend their hygiene, above all they needed a break to recover. Calloway had kept running due east for almost twenty straight hours - he could literally drive no more. When the leaning silos had appeared in the distance, he had diverted to them. On the infinite and flat plains, they were the only thing that stood out. He had shouted "Land Ho!" but Dropspindle had not laughed. She had not made a sound since she had finished her weeping. She had just remained still, mashed behind the driver's seat, voiceless and silent.

She was on the bed in the farmhouse. Calloway had laid her there after removing the dust shrouded bedcover first. The house was intact, if coated with the fine filth of abandonment. The front door had been locked, as if the owner had intended to return one day. It was hot, but the house provided shade. It had its own well, which much to Calloway's surprise still worked - thanks to a hand operated mechanical pump. There was an air conditioner, several in fact, but no power to run them. The food in the house was mostly doubtful, but he found a treasure trove of Nanobars and a later product Nanomeals, both of which had been advertised to last until the end of the world. The company had, somewhat ridiculously, meant the expansion of the sun in a few billion years.

Equestria had guaranteed that their commercial campaign had not been a lie after all.

Calloway worked to turn dry, packaged, vegetable soup into actual soup without a working stove. The result, made by soaking the Nanomeal package contents in a bowl of room temperature water was less than wonderful. But, as far as he could tell, it was edible, if ghastly. "Dropspindle? I made something not entirely like soup! Food! It's all vegetarian too!"

He sat on the bed, offering a bowl of desperation and food powder but Dropspindle only turned away. She stared at the wall opposite Calloway, barely breathing.

Calloway attempted to sip his creation, but choked on an undissolved bit. He set the bowl down on the nearby nightstand. "Dropspindle... talk to me. And at least drink some water. You need water to live."

The unicorn mare remained resolute in her effort to bore a hole in the peeling paint.

"Dammit." Calloway sat for a moment, looking out the dirty window. Brown land met gray-brown smog to the end of eternity. The heat wore at him, making him feel more anger than he should. "I get it. I really do. You're a pony, and ponies aren't built for taking out the trash - but god fucking dammit Droppers... that was definitely kill-or-be-killed! That was self defense! Those cock-sucking bastards hit us first! Why the hell don't you GET that?" He was breathing hard, partly from the heat and the stale air, and partly from his own frustration.

"Dropspindle: you did good! I... I just don't get how you can't understand that. You didn't do anything wrong. Those spells you did? They didn't hurt those men! You made glowy clothing and one guy naked. That was awesome! You scared 'em without hurting 'em one bit! It's their own damn fault they managed to plow into the last god-damned tree in the entire Amazon!" Calloway chuckled. "Hell...that was hilarious! The last damn tree on the entire continent, and they crammed right into that th..."

Dropspindle was off the bed and marching out of the room. She stood in the dining space, barely aware of what she was seeing. Calloway was up and after her, he stood in the bedroom doorway, watching.

Dropspindle suddenly kicked a chair. She raised up her hindquarters in a flash and bucked the chair into a cloud of dust and shrapnel. The bits of wood impacted the walls of the dining room with such force that some were embedded in the peeling wallpaper. It had looked like an explosion. It had almost sounded like one too.

Calloway picked himself up from where he had instinctively half-ducked, half-fallen. She was so fast, and even being just a unicorn terrifyingly strong compared to a human. Then again, being a pony, or at least pony-like, her species was built for power and endurance... just like horses on the earth had once been. Calloway did not dare to approach her.

"Fuck you, Calloway."

Calloway's mouth fell open. Ponies never swore. Not real swearing. Not ever. Newfoals, the recently converted, even the saltiest of them swore only in pastry. He had been told, by a disreputable - and clearly wrong - source, that native Equestrians didn't even do that.

Dropspindle walked to the door and smashed it free from its hinges with a single blow from her forehoof. The door cracked and hit the ground and lay broken in the diffuse daylight. She trotted out of the house.

Calloway didn't move from the bedroom threshold for some time. What had he done wrong? He'd tried to comfort her. He'd made her soup, as best he could. He had begged her to drink some water. He'd tried to explain things, and even complimented her on what she had done! She was the reason they were even still alive - he couldn't have gotten them out of that scrape alone. Hadn't he made it clear he was proud of her?

Ponies weren't helpless. That was a falsehood that some humans clung to. They could fight, if they were cornered. He'd read about a pair of earthponies facing down several HLF bastards in an alleyway once. They'd opened up several cans of high-grade whoopass on those anti-government terrorists and had left them in pain and stitches by the time the Blackmesh showed up. And the HLF men had brandished guns! How was what had just happened any different?

Yeah, it was very likely that some of those car bastards had died. You fall out of a speeding vehicle, you smash into a tree, there's a real good chance you aren't going to live through that. Last damn tree in the entire continent. Maybe the whole world. Calloway laughed again. Absolutely flat, utterly empty, and they hit the only tree left. Damn. Hilarious.

He had to do something. She was messed up, somehow. Those earth ponies in the alley, according to the article, they weren't damaged at all. They had seemed like any human coming out of a fight with a win against shitheads that deserved what they got. They weren't broken by the experience. And they were natives, too, like Dropspindle! Well, as far as he could remember they were. Maybe it was a unicorn thing. Okay, it was probably the killing thing, at least in part, but... there was no other choice. And she didn't kill them, bad driving killed them. And a tree. Arborcide. He chuckled again. The Revenge Of The Amazon. Trees Gone Wild. It was a ninja tree done leapt out and straight-up kilt 'em, officer!

No, no... this wasn't at all funny to Dropspindle. Something was wrong with her because of it. Something he didn't know how to fix.

Dropspindle's mother held her little filly in her forelegs, and pressed her head close. "Oh, sweetheart... my poor little dear." The kiss on her ear helped. Dropspindle continued to sniff. Billowstreak and Whirls hadn't invited her at all! Because she was a unicorn and not a pegasus. It had to be. It hurt so much! Always flying and there was NO WAY she could keep up! And they hung out in the tree tops and she couldn't climb and why hadn't they invited her? They'd invited Cherry Morning, and she was an earthpony! Earthponies weren't pegasuses-es neither, and neither was Zephyrnight! Hey! Zephyrnight was a unicorn! They invited him!

"Honey, you... sometimes you need to stand up for yourself."

"Mama?" Dropspindle snorted, but a big gob still managed to run down her muzzle. Her mother dutifully wiped it away with her pastern.

"You're a very quiet little pony. Such a good little filly! I don't think they meant to forget you... it's just that, well, sometimes, if a pony is too quiet and shy, they just aren't noticed as much. According to your teacher, you just sort of sit in the back, and you hardly say a word."

"But tha's no reason to forget me!"

"Well, my beloved one, yes, yes it sort of is. If you don't see something, or hear something, how do you know it's there? Hmm?"

"But I'm there! I'm there every day!" Dropspindle pouted, her ears at half mast.

"Yes. Yes you are!" Her mother groomed her mane for a while. It always felt so good when her mother groomed her mane. "But sometimes, well, sometimes a pony has to kick up a little fuss once in a while. Say something, speak up, or else they... they sort of end up not being seen. That's all I'm saying. You're a very good filly, and kind and sweet... but you could be just a little bit louder sometimes. Kick up your hooves! Flash your horn a little. Just a little?"

Dropspindle raised her weary, sweaty head. Her neck was stiff, and her body ached. The heat was relentless. The human's barn-thing offered only marginal comfort, and it smelled strange. Like whatever had once grown here, and been harvested here had been wrong, somehow.

That was what problems were, back in her rightful world. Being overlooked for being too quiet. That was a serious problem, worth tears and comforting. That was the Big Bad Awful Thing that could happen. Or not getting first place in the Macramé contest and feeling sad because you knew that if you'd only tried harder, and not gone on that picnic by the river and lost your special, magical, imported Jute that had come all the way from Griffonia... that maybe you would have won. That was some great cord, it glimmered like stars reflected in a lake when the light hit it. It would have taken the show, done up in Cavandoli style, all geometric and regular to show off the...

But not here. Not in this place. Here it was always a struggle of life and...

Those men. The mean men. Of course they were mean. They blew up the Mamá Gansa! Nice humans wouldn't blow up a pretty airship with a bright orange stripe across it. Or any airship. They were mean men. Mean.

And they would have done bad things if they hadn't been stopped. They would have... they would have done... very bad... things. And those spells were harmless, they were completely harmless. Fancy clothes... and no clothes. If anything, losing the clothes should have felt better, being so hot and all! Those spells couldn't harm anything, ever. Just make it prettier, or... or make it easier to undress. Kind spells. Helpful magic.

Who knew there would be a tree? A dead tree still standing? Why would the humans leave one tree standing when they cut down every last one of the others? Why do that? How could it live on its own? It would just dry out and...

Calloway. If only she hadn't tried to find him, if only she had gotten on that pegabus and... but then it would be the same thing, wouldn't it? If she had left him behind, wouldn't that have been the same thing as what happened to those men in the.... only it would have happened to Calloway instead.

No matter what, this world was determined to make her a... a... killer.

How could it be like that? How could there ever be anything that happened like that? What monster ruled this universe that even allowed situations where no matter what you chose, no matter what you did, somepony had to... to... die?

They said this universe, this human universe, didn't have any alicorns - or anything even like them. No princesses made this world. No princess designed the animals and the plants and the sun and the stars. It just... happened. It just all happened by itself, with nopony in control, all from chaos, like the Everfree. This universe was the Everfree universe, only... only even more so. That's what the instructor had said.

It was madness. It was an insane cosmos of horror. She'd just wanted to learn about Peruvian weaving! They had been trying to get everypony to accept the Newfoals, to see the humans before they were converted as being sort of like ponies. Which meant that Newfoals would only be even better, when they came, because they would fully be ponies then. How humans had families, and played games, and sang songs and... and made art. Pretty fabrics and wonderful designs and...

Fabric from another world! Designs and patterns from an alien universe! Even more marvelous than far Griffonia... and all she wanted to do was learn. Just learn a little about these things, because they were going to go away. The human's world had died, that was why they needed to be rescued, because the princess had promised them. Their world was going to go away forever.

Good riddance. Dropspindle clenched her teeth and howled through them. The tears came again, hard, and ran down her dirty cheeks. It was so painful, Celestia! It's been so difficult and so awful and all just to save one poor human who missed the bus and... oh, Luna! Sweet Luna, protector of foals, keeper of dreams, oh you helped once, can't you please, please help once more? Can you even hear us all the way out here?

This was much worse than dangling from a clockleg. There was no Luna here. Nopony was coming. Nopony would ever come to the rescue here.

How could the humans live like that? Knowing deep down that nopony was coming? Nopony cared. Nothing watching over except the chaos and the emptiness and the dark?

Dropspindle opened her thaumatic eyes and the daylit world became a dim and gray realm of translucent shadows. She looked at her own body, at her hindquarters, at her hindlegs... and she was still bright, still a glowing blue-white pony inside, filled with swirling arcane patterns, the very stuff of life, the essence of magic. She still had a couplement, she was still truly alive, and still a part of Equestria. She cried and cried at that, at the knowledge that despite everything, she was still made of eternal light, inside.

She raised her head, and looked around at the gray darkness. It wasn't entirely colorless, it faintly reflected distant magic. Her thaumatic eyes found the source. Equestria filled half of everything. Endless color and light and beauty shining beyond this dead, gray realm. So close, so huge, so incredibly magnificently near. Her heart yearned for home, for green grasses and bright flowers, for kind ponies and loving princesses. So close. So very, very close. So surprisingly close, oh... oh...

Uh oh.

Calloway adjusted the antique volume knob gingerly. The batteries seemed to still carry charge. He had thought the tall structure by the house had been a windmill that had lost its blades. It was in reality a vintage amateur radio tower - ham radio - which the owner of the plantation apparently had been involved in. Afraid to follow Dropspindle when she was in such a mood, he had decided to explore more of the house. There had been a pull-down staircase, and a low attic. Inside, he had discovered a fairly elaborate ham station, with a bank of batteries charged by something outside, on the roof... very likely solar panels which they had not noticed coming in.

The setup had been left seemingly in a hurry - a dry, caked coffee cup remained on a desk. It had once been full, over time all the fluid within it had evaporated, leaving a solid, rock-hard mass at the bottom. The radio set up was quite impressive. Calloway knew nothing about such machines, but with careful experimentation he had managed to turn the system on, and immediately had heard something. The radio was tuned to a signal already, almost certainly whatever the original owner had been listening to just before he had left forever.

Radio was rare. Almost all information was strictly regulated and sent through cables. Radio now was what it had always historically sometimes been - a rogue element within any attempt to button-down the world. From the repeating broadcast, it seemed that these renegade hams enjoyed using ancient callsigns and identifications that were now no longer valid or recognized. They clung to a lost and almost forgotten past - electronic Amish, medium-tech luddites, keeping a dead dream alive right under the nose of the all-watching, all controlling Worldgoverment.

" ...Knysna, ZS1NAT, Current Incursion Status Bulletin for the twenty-second of July CTZZZZZ CCKHHHHSSSSouth Africa, Year Five. ReporTZCZZZZZ KHSSSSS KSSSSSermed by official Worldgovernment channels. The Solar Princess presented a prepared statCHZZZZCHUSSSSSSS TZCHSSSS CTHXXSSSSollows now:

'Our sister and we have strived with diligence to hold back the advance of the Great BarriTCHZZZZZ CHSSSSSS KXZZZZSSSSSermit the Conversion and evacuation of our beloved earthbound citizens and citizens-to-be. But the Barrier possesses a life of its oTZCHHHHH PZSSSSS TCH TCHSSSSSSpand rapidly. Releasing of the Barrier will alleviate dimensional compression which would result in earthquakes, fractures of the planetary crusTZZZCHHHHHH TSSSS TSSS KCHSSSSSop when it reaches a new equilibrium, roughly located near the earthly Longitude of 4TCHHHHHSSSSS TSSSHCCCSSSS TSSSelp of the Worldgovernment and to follow the directions of the helpful Blackmesh forces during all evacuation and Conversion KCHZZZZ TZHSSSS CHSSSSS SSSS KSSSS'

TSSSSCHHHHpansion similar to the one that occurred last year. Blackmesh troops will remain until the very lasSSSSS KSSSSSTCHSSS TCHZZZ KSSSSSraft and passenger transports. It is recommended that CTZZZZZ CCKHHHHSSSS PZSSSSS TCH TCHSSSSnd to TZZZCHHHHHH TSSSS TSSS KCHSS at Cape Town. Refugee centers are alreaCHZZZZCHUSSSSSSS TZCHSSSS CTHXXSSSSuring this current expansion crisis.

Broadcast repeat of CHZZTZ ZZCHHHHHH TSSSSZZ CHUSSSSSSS TZCHSSSS CTHXXSSSSdred hours."

There was a pause, and then the transmission began again. The static was terrible, but Calloway had no understanding of how to clear it up. His hand hovered over the dials, and ineffectually attempted to randomly pick a control to diddle with. In the end, he lowered his hand. He had got it to work, he could control the volume. But everything else was unlike any technology he had ever been personally confronted with. There were no active surface interface panels, no holographic icons, nothing that made the least sense to him beyond numbers, and he was unsure what they designated. Radio was a mysterious magic he had never encountered except in old movies or books.

Finally, he switched the ancient device off. Dropspindle should hear this. The message repeated regularly, it seemed. Maybe she would know something more about what was being said, she was a native of Equestria, that was her princess talking.

But Calloway actually did have a very good idea of what the news report was saying - he just didn't want it to be true. It was too soon, it shouldn't be happening this early, should it?

The Great Barrier of Equestria almost always expanded at a steady pace of 0.64 kilometers per hour. Fourteen kilometers a day. Except when it didn't. It could lay dormant, remaining the same size for weeks or months, then suddenly increase in size over the course of mere hours. Or, it could remain constant for months and months until mysteriously expanding at a vastly increased rate, only to stop and pause once more. Some had speculated that the Barrier liked to rest, and digest its meals before it hungered once more. Some believed it was alive in some unthinkable way.

There were even those crazy daisies who had claimed to have communicated with it! There were endless stories and wild tales. But the Barrier had altered its progress before. Three times before - sudden expansions that gobbled hundreds of kilometers of the planet in mere days.

This explained too much. The 'Going Out Of Humanity Party' in Jaén. The sudden evacuation of Huancabamba that had started their journey. The terrible sandstorm with its howling winds. The desperation of the men who had tried to capture the Gansa, but had only succeeded in shooting it down.

Even the sudden evacuation of the soy plantation they were in. No person who still clung to the ancient technology of ham radio would leave any of this technological treasure behind unless they were fleeing for their lives.

Everyone had known about this for months. Everyone except him, hiding away, deep in his cave, deliberately thieving a vacation from his elite masters.

He had to find Dropspindle. Angry or not, hurt or not. He had to find Dropspindle now, and they had to get moving.

Because it was almost certain that ready or not, Equestria was coming for them.

17. The Lively Little Rabbit

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Seventeen: The Lively Little Rabbit

"Those humans. The ones that shot down the Mamá Gansa."

Calloway had just rounded the open door of the processing enclosure. Dropspindle was laying there, in the dirt, staring at him as he entered. She spoke immediately, before he could say anything himself. "Um... yeah."

"If they had waited, politely, greeted us nicely. If they had asked for our help, we would have given it. Right?"

Calloway knew to say yes, very clearly, and immediately. The look in the Equestrian's eyes... it wasn't right. They didn't look like the eyes of any pony he had ever seen. The gaze was hard, cold. Bitter. It was severe. It was eerily human, and it made of Dropspindle a candidate for the Uncanny Valley. "Absolutely."

"There were so many things that could have been done." Dropspindle stared right into Calloway, and it made him feel as if he was not in the presence of a harmless herbivore at all, but instead a crouching predator. "If they were too many for the Gansa to carry, we could have towed them in a cart or in cars behind us. But they already had cars, didn't they? And fuel, too. Maybe they thought flying was the only way... we could have worked together, removed bulkheads and chairs inside, reduced the weight tremendously. Dumped the entertainment system and the beds and all the bottles of booze in the galley. We could have carried all of them easily."

Calloway felt like running. But he stayed still, forcing himself to appear relaxed as best as he could. A pony could easily run down a man. Even an unathletic unicorn could. But she wouldn't have to. She could reach out with invisible arms to any distance. There was no place he could get to quickly enough to be beyond the power of her horn. "I think so. No, I'm certain we could."

Dropspindle turned her head and gazed at the machinery by the wall. Calloway briefly considered fleeing once more, but forced himself to stand still. If any part of her wanted to hurt him, running would be the surest way of engaging it. "Equestria is coming, Calloway. I don't mean in general, I mean it has sped up. Greatly. The Barrier is rushing at us, growing in size. I can see it clearly. It is so close now."

"I know. I found a ham radio in the house and got it to work. There's a broadcast from the SouthAfri..."

Her eyes locked onto his, silencing him instantly. "You aren't worth it. As creatures. You aren't worth any of this. Do you understand? Do you grasp what this means to me?"

"Uh... no?" Calloway felt certain, with every human, earthly instinct evolved within him, that this Equestrian, this pony, had become capable of killing him, and would - if he said or did the wrong thing. Dropspindle was no longer a friendly, harmless, furry little alien.

"I think that my princess, princess Celestia, is an idiot. I think she is a fool. I think that the same princess that created the ground and the trees and the animals and all of my kind... is stupid. That isn't right." For a moment the hard look in her eyes softened. For a moment.

Calloway's stomach churned. Dropspindle just kept staring at him. He didn't know whether it was better to remain standing by the door, or to sit down where he was. Sitting down might seem less threatening, or it might seem like he wasn't riveted upon her every word or taking her seriously. He decided to not move. At all. "Okay."

"I think she's an idiot because she is putting everything I love at risk to save... you." Those eyes, those magenta eyes. "Of course..." Dropspindle looked back at the machines by the wall, back in the direction of Equestria. Calloway reckoned that she was looking straight through those walls, with her magical vision. "Of course, I'm an idiot too. An idiot from a race of fools. But still better than you."

Calloway said nothing.

"Those men... all they had to do was ask. Just be nice. Even after they shot us down, they could have said they were sorry - maybe we could have repaired the ship, maybe we could have worked together... but, no, they made one of their own scream and cry, and then they tore open the hatch and came for us with guns and sticks. There was nothing good, nothing kind in them at all. You know what gets me the most about it?"

Calloway swallowed. His throat felt dry. "Ahh... what?"

"That they cared more about taking things and hurting us than they did about their own survival. They must have known the Barrier was coming, maybe not as fast as it is now, but eventually. They clearly wanted our ship. I'm an idiot, and Celestia is an idiot, but those men..." Dropspindle turned her head back to Calloway. "...Those men were too greedy, too cruel, too truly stupid to live."

"I'm not disagreeing." Calloway shuddered. Dropspindle's words were so quiet, so calculating, so passionless. Her manner reminded him of too many holomovie serial killers from particularly gruesome shows.

"And Celestia has committed the entirety of Equestria to saving you shit-for-brains fuckheads."

Despite his overwhelming feeling of dread, Dropspindle's newly increased vocabulary was more than he could take. He tried to hold in the chuckle, but that just turned it into a laugh. He fought, choking slightly, to keep the laugh from escaping, but that only caused it to magnify into a guffaw. Before he could slap his hands to his mouth he was roaring with laughter, tears in his eyes, all born of tension and terror both. A pony, a native Equestrian... 'shit-for-brains fuckheads'! Not pastry or chocolate or candy. Fuckheads!

Dropspindle began to laugh too. She started with a giggle that quickly rose to howls of merriment. Calloway slapped his knees, the tears dripping from his eyes, the laughter so deep that it made him choke and gasp on his own saliva. Dropspindle was cackling, her own eyes wet from the tears of hilarity!

Suddenly he was on his back, flat. His arms hurt from the sharp edges of Dropspindle's hooves pinning him down. His head rang and his neck ached from the sudden impact of being knocked down hard. Her breath was terrible, foul, sour with stomach acid and indigestion. But her eyes... her red eyes were portals to hell, spotlights of quiet, bottled rage so horrifying that Calloway felt a tiny warm trickle inside his trousers.

"I've been having thoughts."

Calloway whispered, shaking. "W-what kind... of thoughts?"

Dropspindle leaned her head closer. The smell of her sour stomach was awful. "I could make a tiny bubble of my hornfield, anywhere inside your body, and just expand it. Your heart, your brain, anywhere. Or just move it up and down and side to side. Just a single hoof to the side of your cranium would crush it like an egg. Or a tiny little stomp to your chest, right... there." One leg was removed from his left arm, and tapped over his heart.

He swallowed. "That would do it alright."

"I no longer know for certain that I cannot do such things anymore. Did you know that?"

"No. I didn't."

Dropspindle grinned, but it wasn't a happy grin. "At first, I didn't like you. Then, I sort of did, because you were trying. Trying to be nice. But now... now I think I hate you. Seriously. I've never felt that before. Not ever. And I really don't like it; it's a terrible feeling. It makes me feel awful, like I hurt all over, inside and out. And that - here's the funny part, it's really very funny - that pain, the pain of hating you, makes me hate you even more. I hate you because I hate you. Pretty funny, isn't it?" Her words were quiet. She could have been talking about which foods she enjoyed or disliked.

"I'm sorry"

The look on Dropspindle's face suddenly changed. It had been relaxed, now it was contorted in barely restrained rage. Her words were clipped, and hard. "DON'T you EVEN try that with me!" Her sharp hooves pressed more deeply into his agonized upper arms. It felt like knives cutting into his muscles.

Calloway was shaking. He couldn't stop shaking. The rest of his bladder just gave up and released entirely.

Dropspindle's nose wrinkled. She gave a slight sniff. Her face softened. "We... we have to get out of here."

Calloway just stared up into her magenta irises. They were so close, her head was so close to his, that her two eyes blended into one big eye for him. He couldn't say a word. There were no words to say.

"Equestria is coming. Fast. I need you to drive." She looked briefly up, in the direction of the Big Truck and the house. She looked back down at Calloway. "Do you think you can do that?"

Calloway nodded the affirmative.

"Okay, let's get going." She was off him, already heading toward the vehicle.

Calloway lay still, in shock, only for a moment. Then he shakily forced himself to a crawling position, and used the edge of the doorway to help himself gradually regain his feet. His pants were soaked and cooling in the light breeze. His arms hurt where Dropspindle's hooves had dug into them with her full weight. His head hurt, and he wanted to cry like a child. A tear ran down his cheek, then several. He mewled a little sob as he took a step forward.

He made his way unevenly to the Big Truck, blinking back tears. A hand on the doorhandle, he used the other to wipe his eyes and face. Calloway sniffed, and took several deep breaths. Just before he pulled himself up into the driver's seat, he remembered how short Dropspindle was. He walked around the front of the vehicle, one hand on it to steady himself. He was still shaking.

She came out of the house, carrying several canning jars of water and a small cloud of Nanobars and Meals in her hornfield. "From the pump. I noticed the jars when we first came in. Water."

She no longer seemed angry or dangerous. Her tone, her expression... was entirely different. Calloway stood where he was, uncertain, unsure.

"Don't worry - my field is over and through these. They should be... uh... sterile now. That's the word, right?"

Calloway nodded. He stared at the jars and packs of foodstuff. Finally he remembered why he was on this side of the truck. "Want me to lift you up?"

"Yes, please." Her voice was so utterly different now. It sounded as if nothing had happened at all. Somehow, that was even more disturbing than if she had still been angry, or at least grumbling.

Calloway cautiously approached.

"Don't worry, I'll keep the jars and my field far away from you. I know better than to burn humans." So pleasant. Just like when the journey had started. It was chilling.

"I'm gonna have to pick you up now."

"I know."

"Um. Okay." Calloway delicately, carefully, lifted the Equestrian. If her ribs still hurt her in any way, she did not react. He carefully set her on the seat, as best he could. It was clumsy work, because the level of the seat was roughly at his shoulder. She settled in and levitated the unlidded jars of water to the floorboards beside the packs of food.

"I'll try to keep the water from spilling, as best as I can. I know it's going to be bumpy."

Calloway nodded, then closed the door on her. For a brief moment the fantasy of running off into the desert passed through his mind. It ended the moment the flat emptiness registered. Besides, a mere truck door could not hope to stop a pony. One or two kicks and the metal would yield like foil. It would be a very short run.

He walked around the front of the truck, staring at his feet. The wind was picking up. He could feel it in his hair and on his arms. Calloway climbed up into the drivers seat and pulled the door shut. He buckled himself in and pressed the starter button. The truck whined for a bit then started up, once again blaring the short musical phrase.

"I'm very tired. We haven't slept, and we haven't eaten. I... I'm not sure... how well I'm going to do here." Calloway waited, but there was no response. "Maybe we should sleep first, maybe eat something..."

Dropspindle gave him a look as if he were a retarded child being difficult. "The Barrier is coming. They are coming too."

"They?" Calloway's sleep-deprived brain tried to make sense of the statement. "You mean... the men?"

"Yes."

"How... how do you... how can you..."

Dropspindle looked off to the West, with her eyes closed. "Remember the man whose clothing I made glow? Rainbow fire?"

"Y-yeah." Calloway did not feel like complimenting her again or laughing at the incident at all.

"I can still see that. Everything is dark and empty, except for Equestria, and that suit. My spell is still active. Equestria is so close, its energies are keeping my spell going. And they're coming. Those clothes are coming toward us right now. Right over there." Dropspindle pointed off into the desert with a hoof, her eyes still closed. She lowered her leg and opened her eyes. "Better get going, unless you want to experience human nature."

Calloway put his foot on the accelerator and eased the truck away from the plantation. "I'm a little impressed by their tenacity." The only road led North. There was no choice but to cut cross-country once again. "Then again, I'm suspecting we have their best truck and most of their fuel." He gave the big rig more juice. "It's going to be bumpy."

"I've got things under control."

Dropspindle was doing something with her horn, something magical to the jars of water. Calloway couldn't tell what it was, but his best guess was that she was covering them with little forcefields that she would have to maintain moment to moment. Like holding a hand over a jar to keep marbles from falling out.

Except they've already been lost, he thought to himself.

Calloway entered the desert, cutting through an area filled with rusting barrels. The house and the plantation were behind them now, along with beds, sleep, the rest of the food, and the antique radio. Very angry men were coming, and right behind them, Equestria.

Calloway snorted himself awake again. The monotonous expanse of brown had caused him to nod off for seconds at a time, many, many times in a row. It was approaching noon now, if the clock on the dashboard was accurate. It felt like noon. "Dropspindle?"

"Yes?"

"How about a Nanobar, or something. I'm really hurting here."

"Um..." She measured the sad little pile with her eyes. "Yeah. Okay. I should eat one too." The ground was becoming increasingly uneven. They had left the flats and were now onto rolling hills and the occasional dried out tree stump. "I have a problem, though. I am at the limit of my holding capacity. I can only make five fields at once. It's pretty pathetic, actually. Most unicorns can make six. I'm not sure I can... bend down and use my teeth and keep concentration at the same time. I'm really tired."

The jars remained still as if they were glued to the floorboards, and the water in them had not leaked a drop.

"Okay... ah... maybe I can reach down... this is pretty straight here, no stumps or rocks. I can do..." Calloway managed to duck down, one hand on the wheel, and snag two bars from the pile with his fingers. He was up and driving properly again almost immediately. "...this! One bar for me and one bar for... oh."

Calloway put one of the bars in his lap, and raised the other to his hand on the wheel. He tried tearing the wrapper open with his fingers, while steering with his palms, but the packaging wouldn't rip. Eventually he raised a leg and pressed it against the wheel while he quickly brought the bar to his face. His teeth served to tear the wrapper just enough for his fingers to do the rest. He held the bar out towards Dropspindle by the half removed wrapper.

"Thank you." Dropspindle took a bite and grimaced, but chewed. Calloway brought his hand back and bit off a chunk for himself, then held the bar back toward the unicorn. Calloway liked Nanobars, he hadn't had one since he had been a small child. His grandfather used to bring them, back when he was alive. Calloway had always thought of them as old people's candy. The taste held memories for him. They didn't make them anymore, so finding some was a bit of a treat. Clearly it was not a treat to Dropspindle, but she dutifully chewed and swallowed her bites.

By the second shared bar, Calloway was feeling a little perkier. The sugar helped, the stimulation of the flavor helped, and probably the bar had some stimulant factor as well for all he knew. They put all kinds of crap in candy. The little mini-naps while crossing the last of the flats had not been unhelpful either. Such micro-sleeps wouldn't be a good idea now, however. The ground was very rough, and the stumps and piles of debris were getting increasingly more numerous.

"Water?" The candy had made his thirst much worse.

"Can you do that... hand trick... again? On the jar nearest. Tell me when, and I'll release my hold."

The notion was a little daunting - he did not want to get a thaumatic burn. "Yeah, sure. Count of three. Three, two, one, NOW!" Calloway once again leaned and ducked beneath the level of the dashboard. He grabbed the jar of water and lifted it up. A little sloshed over his hand and splattered on the dash, but at least he hadn't spilled the entire thing - or crashed the truck.

"Thanks." He paused for a moment, holding the dirty jar. The water looked a bit murky. But then again, Dropspindle had said she had run her field through it. All over it too. Nothing biological could survive thaumatic radiation. That water, that jar, would be more sterile than the finest operating theater. It must be absolutely devoid of even a single living bacterium - especially considering how long she had been holding it in place. It was utterly radiation sterilized, murky or not.

He swallowed a mouthful. It was warm, because the day was hot, but it didn't taste too bad. A little metallic, from the pipes and the well, but it was wet and he was thirsty. He took another sip. Then he held out the jar for Dropspindle.

With one eye on driving, and the other on not spilling the jar, Calloway waited until the mare had downed a few sips herself. She too was being careful not to drink too much. Like the limited food, it had to last.

"Should I put it down now?"

"Yes. As soon as your hand is out of the way, I will take it. Go ahead, I'm watching."

Calloway waited until the ground ahead was open and clear, then did another duck down. He set the jar and pulled his hand quickly free. Once both of his hands were on the wheel, he checked for any signs of mage plague. No dark spots. Good.

"Calloway!" Dropspindle seemed agitated.

"Yeah?"

"They... they're here. I feel my spell. Right behind us." Dropspindle had not turned her head. She kept staring at the jars on the floorboards, projecting a faint glow around each of them.

Calloway checked his rearview mirror. At first, there was nothing. Then he caught a gleam from metal. Then another. They were back there. They were closing. Or were. Dropspindle had mentioned they went faster on the flats, but that the rough terrain was a problem for them. Likely because most didn't have big knobby jacked-up tires. The one car that had... the limo... wouldn't be participating in this race. Or any others. The thought made Kotani chuckle.

"What?"

"Um... nothing. You're right, though."

"About what?"

"We do have company. They're still pretty far behind us, but they seem very motivated." Calloway glanced once more; the gleams did seem a tiny bit nearer.

Dropspindle clenched her teeth for a moment. "Doesn't matter."

"Huh?" Calloway wasn't sure what she meant.

The unicorn's red eyes narrowed during his quick glance at her. She wasn't the same pony anymore.

"Because Celestia is a fucking idiot, but I think... I think I no longer am." The strange, grim half-laugh from Dropspindle following her pronouncement chilled Calloway to the bone.

18. A Day In The Jungle

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Eighteen: A Day In The Jungle

The Big Truck was a tiny thing as it pressed onward over the rolling, bumpy desert. It seemed lost amidst the endless dunes and debris of what had once been the most dense, diverse and gargantuan jungle upon the earth since the advent of agriculture. But the tiny little vehicle threading its way between stumps was not alone.

Behind it followed other trucks, and cars, and cycles and buggies of all kinds. What had once been a small fleet of chasing vehicles had now grown into an armada. The original miners that had attacked the Mamá Gansa and lost a few compatriots trying to finish the job had called in every favor they had from every friend they knew. And those friends had done likewise. All wanted two things: the gaudy, noisy Big Truck with its diminishing accumulation of fuel, and the blood of the pair that had audaciously stolen it.

"I don't know how many! Many many!" Dropspindle had turned around and was using her sideview mirror now. She had begun to feel her cracked rib once more, and the effort of looking directly back through the rear window had become problematic.

"When it rains it pours. Heh. Morton Salt." Calloway was fighting the steering wheel as if it were an opponent in Street Beef Turbo X: Knacker Grabber Edition. The wheel often seemed to be using a cheat code.

"What?" Dropspindle still hadn't fully adapted to the random spouting of her compatriot.

"It's amazing how many things we say originally came from ad campaigns. Marketing is culture now, I guess."

"Speak for yourself, monkey-boy. My culture is traditional Equestrian!"

Calloway narrowly avoided a rather nasty pit in the ground. As he passed by it, he hoped it might catch one of the pursuers and wreck them. "Won't be for long. With nineteen billion humans gone pony, you'd better get used to old earth advertising slogans... and old earth everything."

"Doesn't mean all nineteen will make it. I don't think those boys behind us are going to be ponies."

Calloway was silent for a while. His face was grim and a little sad. "Yeah."

"Calloway?"

"Just thinking about WHOA!" He narrowly missed a dessicated section of log. "Sorry. You okay?"

"Ow... yes. That swerve... my rib is acting up today." Dropspindle gently massaged her barrel with a patch of thaumatism.

"This is difficult ground. But it's helping - we're staying ahead of those poor bastards. I just feel sorry for them."

Dropspindle seemed startled by that. Her ears lowered and she looked down, at her hind hooves dangling away from her, unable to reach the floorboards. "I... I should care about them too. I should worry for their survival, that they manage to get Converted in time. That they end up happy and contented. And here you are..."

"You've been through a lot." Calloway hazarded a glance in the rearview. So many cars. Why was this stupid truck so important? Or was it just pride? Had taking their special, fancy, flagship truck hurt their pride that much? Probably it was just there was nothing to do anymore and this was the most exciting thing that had happened to them in years. Men loved a good chase, a grand hunt, especially when they thought it was for pride and glory.

"I'm... I don't feel right, Calloway." Dropspindle's ears were flat to her skull, and her eyes were worried. "I don't feel like me."

Calloway nodded. "You aren't. I think you've seen too much, been through too much." The rolling dunes and debris was gradually thinning. The desert was increasingly cracked mud broken only by occasional historical attempts at underbrush. "You've had to face things you had no way to expect or prepare for. You've been tossed into the deep end, waaaayyy out of your element. Want some advice?"

Dropspindle clung to the seatbelt straps as best as she could and nodded.

"We apes evolved here. We know how this place works. We're part of this place. We know when to fight and when to run, and how much of each and how far to go. You don't. You're an alien from an alien universe. Stranger in a strange land. And..." The ground was very flat again - that would be an advantage to those that were chasing them. The Big Truck was better at rough terrain. Flat ground was a big equalizer. Calloway pressed on the accelerator, and tried to gain whatever lead he could before the mob made it past the dunes. "...and one of the big things we learn here is don't try to be something you aren't. Gets you into trouble every time. Stick with what you are, who you are. That's what works. Let me be the killer ape."

Instantly she was angry again. "BUT YOU TOLD ME TO HELP!"

"Yes! Yes I did! And you helped!" The rearview confirmed that the motor armada was now on the cracked mud plains. "We wouldn't be here without what you did! But you have to understand that ALL you did was scare those guys in that truck! YOU didn't hurt anybody! THEY reacted poorly. And found the only tree left in the Southamerizone. Which was awesome. But NOT your fault!"

"I don't know if I can..."

At that point the rear window exploded. Calloway and Dropspindle were showered with tiny bits of safety glass. The windscreen sported a neat little hole around which 'Cracky The Safety Spider' danced in their bumping vision. Calloway stared at the hole, and Cracky, and brushed some glass from his hair. "Look around! What's near us?"

Both human and pony wildly searched through window and mirror. Dropspindle saw it first. "The biker's back! A biker, anyway. He brought a friend, sitting behind him. Some kind of long metal thing. He's fussing with it!"

"Rifle of some kind. Blew out our back window. Which side is he on?" Calloway couldn't spot the attacker. The fast bike must have zoomed ahead of the pack for a quick kill and all the glory.

"My side... no, your side... mine again! And behind us! He's not getting closer!"

"I guess they learned from last time. Dammit. He'll probably try for our tires. He won't shoot the fuel, they want the fuel." The back of the Big Truck was solid with tanks and hoses, everything bolted or welded into place. Most of the impromptu gauges and dials on the dashboard were associated with those containers. Aiming at the back window was a hell of a risk... then again, if they thought they had no chance at all to win... or if they were scared enough to risk losing the truck entirely... humans would do that. They would definitely do that. Maybe the window was an accident. Maybe they were aiming for the tanks and missed? 'Scorched Earth' wasn't just for the former Russians of the Midasiazone.

"Shit." Calloway couldn't do crap about this new biker... or the same biker with a friend. This time he was being cagey, and they could nibble the Big Truck to death, get a lucky shot on a tire or someone's head, or a direct hit on the biggest fuel tank, and that would be the end of the ride. Dropspindle was already broken, the last thing she needed was any more human crap on her conscience.

Then again, if she was dead, her mental health would no longer matter. Dammit. This was the last straw. Calloway muttered under his breath: 'Celestia, Luna, whatever - if you're there, if you listen at all, let us get out of this, with Droppers intact, and I promise - I swear - I will get my pony on without complaint or hesitation. First chance. On my honor.' He tried weaving, desperate to see the bike and its riders. He caught a brief flash of red and black in the rearview, the bike weaving from side to side behind him. They were still frightened, that was clear. Good.

"Dropspindle. We're in a desperate place and I hate to ask you for this bu..."

"I'M ON IT! I can take those bastards out EASY!" Her horn was already glowing, her ears even flatter, her nostrils flaring.

"NO!" Calloway yelled directly at her, straight at her ear. She jerked at the shock, and used a forehoof to rub her pinna. "Listen! Listen to me Dropspindle. Yes, this is earth. Yes, sometimes we have to do violent things here, deadly violent things. But YOU AREN'T HUMAN! Remember your raising's girl! You are a pony, and you haven't killed anybody - yet. Keep it that way. KEEP BEING A PONY. You don't want any part of what we are. Scare those bastards, make them back off, make them lose aim... but NO KILLING! You understand me?"

"Then how..."

"Be clever. Find a way." Calloway swerved just as he noticed the rider on the back of the bike taking aim. The shot was loud, but there was no sound of impact. A miss. "If you kill, even once, deliberately, then you don't have the right to hate me anymore. Not one bit!"

"...YOU!"

He hadn't heard the first part of what she had said, but he had a pretty good guess it was another example of her newly expanded English vocabulary.

Dropspindle watched the biker pair as they darted back to her side and behind. It would be so easy to make a small thaumatic bubble right inside the curve of the nearest helmet and... no. No, no... whatever happened, live or die, one thing had to remain true: she was better than that damn ape Calloway. That had to remain true. His fault. It was his fault she was here at all. He was to blame, all of his kind was to blame.

There had to be another way. Make their jackets glow? The sun was bright, that spell was best in the dark. Perfect for moonlit parties in...

A wave of sorrow and loss crippled Dropspindle. She bent over from the emotional impact of it. Equestria. How could she ever fit in there again, after this? How could she ever take back her life after all that had happened? After all that she had seen and done? Later. That stuff was for later. The bike. The bike had to be dealt with! And no killing!

Okay, no glowing cloth. What else? Apport their duds? Make the naked apes even more naked? Would they even notice in the middle of their human bloodlust?

That wouldn't work. Probably just make them feel cooler and more sprightly. In this heat, it would be a blessing.

Take the color of their clothing away? Pointless. Wouldn't even notice. They just kept weaving, back and forth, taking shots, trying to...

Weaving! The jackets were some kind of... something hard and flat and shiny, but under them was loose woven cloth. Thin, but cloth. Cotton, maybe. Threads. Fibers. Ausokinesis!

Dropspindle's horn began to glow a light, bright, eerie shade of blue. Calloway blinked at how glaring it was. "What are you up to? Dropspindle? Droppers? What... what are you doing?"

"Shush! I'm weaving!" Dropspindle seemed almost gentle. Calloway drove straight, trying to help her by not losing her target. He would just have to hope she hadn't completely lost her soul.

In the rearview mirror, Calloway watched as the bike and its two riders slowed down rapidly and apparently stopped. Their heads, their helmets seemed to have vanished, covered in what looked like spiderwebs or gauze. The bright red and black was gray now.

"HA! You play with ponies, you'll lose your shirt!" Dropspindle had never figured out human gambling games, but she had heard some colorful expressions in Huancabamba.

"What did you do?!!" It was less a question than a command. Calloway watched, in quick glances, as the bike vanished from view behind him and was swallowed by the vast armada of chasing vehicles.

"I used ausokinesis on them!" She was grinning, ears high and a happy lilt in her voice. "I didn't hurt them one bit - did you see? Did you see how they stopped, safely? They didn't fall off or anything!"

"Yes, I saw! Great job - you didn't harm them one bit. But what did you actually do?" Calloway felt a great burst of relief. Dropspindle could have fallen entirely, she could have done something from which she could never recover... but she hadn't. In her moment of choice, in her Chapel Perilous she could have been taken by the soulless mad gods of earth, but she had remained true to her real and vital Equestrian soul.

"I rewove their undershirts. It was blintzing simple, I just had the fabric weave itself uncontrollably, cover as much surface area as possible. It's what we're taught NOT to do - 'never let the spell get out of hoof' - that's what my teacher always said. But I did - and it's probably still trying to keep them covered up!"

"It looked like spider webbing." Calloway felt like singing. She hadn't even noticed, but he had. Dropspindle had used a pastry expletive for the first time since she... had broken. Never in his life had he ever enjoyed hearing a pony swear in pastry so much before.

"Well... there's only so much cloth, so many fibers. They'll still try to cover everything, but they just get thinner until the spell wears out."

Calloway laughed. Who could have imagined that textiles could have a legitimate offensive use in combat? "So those shirts aren't going to try to conquer the planet?"

Dropspindle giggled at that. The sound was a heavenly chorus to Calloway's ears. She hadn't lost her soul. She wasn't completely destroyed. "No, silly. Spells wear out. Like my... um... that language... enchantment."

"Spanish?"

"Yeah, that!" Dropspindle's ear's flicked. "Anyway, I stopped them from hurting us, but I didn't hurt them!"

Calloway was beaming. "I am so proud of you! I was worried... nevermind. Ne-ver-mind. Just... keep being yourself, okay? I know... what you think of me, but I absolutely do not hate you in return. I admire you. I want to be Equestrian myself. I have no doubts, and no hesitation now. I want to go pony so bad it hurts. And it would hurt me for the next three hundred years if the price of that was... was you not being... you being turned into... just be a pony, okay? Just stay pony, Dropspindle."

Dropspindle was silent for a while, occasionally glancing behind them. The armada had fallen back, probably to deal with their enshrouded comrades. If they had any doubt of magical powers arrayed against them, that would be gone now. "I don't hate you. I'm... I'm sorry I said that. I'm sorry for... a lot of things. I just... this... this has been difficult!"

Calloway wanted to pat her, to reassure her, but after the incident at the soy plantation he was wary. Her emotional state seemed better, but that could just be in the moment. Better was not fixed. Whatever had gone wrong in Dropspindle wouldn't just vanish because she had bested the demon growing inside her. Sometimes scars never healed. "Yes... it has. But thank you."

"I did save us, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did, and I am grateful and impressed. But I mean about... not hating me. I don't want you to hate me. I'd hate that."

Dropspindle giggled. Calloway followed. "I'd hate having you hate me. That would be pretty hateful."

"Hate. Hate. Hate-ful. Hat-eh-ful. Huh."

"What is it?" Calloway felt a chill run down his back.

"That word. 'Hate'. It's hard to say all of a sudden. And it's like it doesn't mean anything. Hate. Haayy-tuh. Hay-tuh. Spatzle, that's weird."

"Let's... let's keep the talking to a minumum, okay?" Calloway hoped it was just her pony mind reasserting itself. There was no room in the uncompromised pony mind for hate, no place where it could live. "I'm afraid... I'm worried that... you said all spells eventually wear out. At least on this side of the Barrier with all the entropy and everything. If you lose English too..."

Dropspindle's ears, so tall before, slammed flat against her skull. She nodded, her muzzle tightly shut.

For some time, as they made their way across the lumpen desert of what had almost certainly once been Brazil, it had seemed as if they were finally alone. There was no sign of the armada of vehicles desperate to overtake them. But there had been signs of the greater reason that Calloway kept the pedal to the metal.

A wind was growing, a familiar wind, the same that had chased them all the way back in distant Huancabamba. It pushed at the sand and at them, granting marginal extra speed. It cooled the broiling air that they had still not entirely gotten used to. It wrinkled the global smog layer over their heads, rumpling the blanket of Man's thoughtless expulsions.

Dropspindle, unable to remain entirely quiet, had turned to singing in her native language. Speaking in Equestrian would not affect the enchantment that granted her the use of English. The sounds she made were strange to Calloway's ear, a barnyard of curiously sweet, complex animal noises that were also language. The tune of the songs she sang were uncannily earthlike, however, and some were distinctly catchy. He found himself humming and La-La-ing along with some of them, once he had heard enough of the melody. This made Dropspindle sing with much more gusto, a great smile on her muzzle, her ears high and her head bouncing along with the rhythm. During one particularly bouncy piece, she stomped base with her forehooves on her seat, the cabin walls, and the glovebox.

It was during a repeat of one of her earlier acapella efforts - while she did not know very many songs, the ones she did know she apparently loved a great deal - that Calloway noticed a gleam of silvern metal behind them. The bastards were coming once more. Not even two mind-mangling demonstrations of eerie alien forces could dissuade them. Then again, not one example that they had been given had directly caused any one of them any damage at all. They were obsessed, they were angry, but they were not utterly dim - they could recognize patterns.

They could grasp that however bizarre the powers used by those that had stolen their Big Truck were, the strange results were - of themselves - harmless. The armada would not be stopped by silly tricks this time, or ever again.

"Dropspindle?"

"ʨʢ₮₮ʚ¸ѯ ʘɸ¹ ɅǂƫƔȴɂǁ¬ƾ ʑɵѯѯʑ ȝʚ¤ϪΞѯґ ҩ¹ᴥ₮₹₺ⱴ¸ ʨʢʚ¸ ʘƾʑƔƔɵȝʚ¤¸¬Ϡϐ... Huh?" Dropspindle looked briefly embarrassed, her ears flicking down then up again to stay at a quizzical half-mast. "What? I mean..." She instantly closed her muzzle tight, remembering the issue about using English too much.

"We have company again. And I think... this time... they aren't going to be dissuaded by tricks." Calloway tried to give her a reassuring smile. "However clever they are. I think by now they know we aren't out to hurt them. Not deliberately, anyway."

"What do we do? Ulp!" She placed a forehoof flat to her muzzle as if trying to keep her own mouth shut.

"That's a very good question. I don't know. Yet. We have some time still, they're getting closer but they're still pretty far back. They're..." Calloway hazarded a glance behind, through the rearview. "Oh, jesus fuck."

"ϠϐϑϞѯ¬?" Dropspindle turned around, as best she could, to look out the absent, broken rear window of the Big Truck. "ʢʚʘɸ!"

"Yeah... I agree."

The armada was there, dozens of vehicles, all driving as hard as they possibly could in the same direction, following behind Dropspindle and Calloway in the Big Truck. The many cars, trucks, bikes and buggies were clearly making every effort to catch up - and likely pass by the pair in their stolen contraption.

Behind the armada of cars was something more important than vengeance or retribution or recovering stolen property.

The rising air pressure made Calloway's ears pop. The effect was so sudden and powerful he almost lost his sense of balance. The Big Truck weaved but did not crash.

The armada was coming, but it no longer cared about Calloway and Dropspindle, because Equestria was coming too, right behind it, and Equestria was coming faster.

19. Little Lulu and Her Magic Tricks

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Nineteen: Little Lulu and Her Magic Tricks

It had taken Calloway hours of driving and glancing down before his sleep-deprived brain finally worked out that the labels were a joke. A very nerdy joke, about very old things.

There were sixteen old-fashioned dial gauges hacked into the dashboard of the Big Truck. Each gauge tracked the level of fuel in a specific tank that had been bolted or welded into the open bed. The rear of the Big Truck was basically an eclectic collection of diverse, assorted fuel tanks. No two were identical in size or shape. It was almost a museum exhibit of fuel tank artistry through the ages.

Each gauge was associated with a valve and tubing, and every gauge had a printed label affixed to the glass. The fuel tanks had names. Calloway had worked out that the valves opened a line to the truck itself - the Big Truck could store fuel for others in discreet tanks, or drain those tanks for its own use. During lulls in the driving, Calloway had tried to work out the why of it all.

The best answer he could come up with was that the owner of the Big Truck must act as a sort of fuel banker. Fuel, likely scavenged from wherever, possibly manufactured if equipment still existed and still functioned, might be banked in the Big Truck for later. The big truck banker had the right to take a cut of the fuel directly for himself. Perhaps it acted as a mobile fuel bank, rescuing stranded miners or delivering stored fuel when requested. Certainly it was protected by quite a large gang.

Alternatively, the Big Truck might have been the treasure vault of some local fuel mafia. Whatever the actual purpose of the Big Truck within its community, a lot of attention had been given to making it fancy. Lights, music - everything, sadly, but air conditioning. Perhaps air conditioning wasn't macho somehow.

The joke of the dial labels stretched even Calloway's knowledge of pre-Collapse media. Apparently, the denizens of the Southamerican Production Zone did not rate anything new. It seemed that all they were allotted down south was ancient media. Calloway liked Pre-Collapse stuff, but these people were still living in that time as far as what they watched or listened to. Except for the Hamburger Lord. But then he had been very rich, once.

McCoy, Whittaker, Cushing, McGann, Hartnell. Names, certainly, but of who? Other gauges read Davison, Baker, Tennant, and Capaldi. Sixteen tanks, sixteen names. Eccleston, Hurt, Pertwee - Of course! It was that old, old show... Professor Whom! Or... Doctor Which... it was about that guy with a time machine and some kid with a floating skateboard or something - AH! 'Box To The Future!' That was the name of it - Box To The Future! The time machine was this big blue packing crate or something. And they were always replacing the main actor, so that was why there were sixteen gauges. Wow, they liked the obscure stuff down here!

Nearly every last name, nearly every last tank was empty now. Calloway opened the valve for 'Traughton'. It was the last useful tank of the sixteen, and it had not started full. A great deal of the contents had been used up, or portioned out, before they had even begun their stolen drive.

A quick glance in the mirror reminded Calloway that the armada, and the Barrier were still behind them, and even closer than before.

Calloway and Dropspindle had found a means to keep pressing on, day after day. Calloway had taught Dropspindle how to drive. She had become pretty good at it, actually. Dropspindle only had to generate four thaumatic fields, and with their meager water gone, the importance of keeping a lid on the jars was no longer an issue. Neither could go without sleep indefinitely, and microsleeps were dangerous at best.

Dropspindle would use one field for the accelerator, one for the brake, and two for the steering wheel. She had insisted that one for the wheel was sufficient, but Calloway had argued that he felt safer if she used two. They had endured a short argument about the issue, but in the end, Dropspindle relented. At least while Calloway was awake. When he nodded off, she simply encompassed the entire wheel in a single, larger field, and made the wheel a direct extension of her will. It was difficult, she reasoned, for humans to comprehend what telekinetic control really represented - they were stuck thinking of every grip in terms of 'hands' alone.

"Dropspindle? Droppers! Wake up! Shift change!" Calloway was exhausted, having driven through the night. The morning was well over, and the sky ahead was diffuse but bright. The sky behind was also bright - shockingly so, as the Barrier reflected the light of day like a mirror from their angle. "DROPSPINDLE!!!"

"Huh? What?" Dropspindle struggled to clamber back up into her seat. She had slid gradually down to the floorboards, pouring through the loose seat belts like a liquid blob of pony. "What's going... oh. Yeah." She took an upright position in her car seat, as best she could, with her tail to the side, and her hips angled to that purpose. "Ʌǂ ʑɵȝʚ ?"

Calloway considered. "Neih whehh... Neih whehh... 'Neih' is 'what-how-where-when' sort of... and 'Wheh'... sorry... 'Whehh' can represent... uh, 'self, you, the situation'... you're asking... basically, you're asking 'What up?' or 'What's the situation now?', right?"

Dropspindle nodded and smiled. "ƔƔʘ!"

"Hah! I can't say it exactly the same... don't have the mouth for it... but I feel like I can at least sort of mimic the sounds you make. And I'm learning." Calloway yawned. "Um... WhiHiHi Hunhh Huuh... Nehii hehh hnn!"

"What?"

"I was trying to ask what you wanted for breakfast." Calloway nodded at the two remaining choices, a Nanobar, and a synthetic Tandoori Chicken Foodpak. Both contained the same amount of real meat, which meant Dropspindle could eat either freely. Not with impunity, but freely.

"Um... you kind of asked what dung I wanted placed in my face. Sort of." Dropspindle giggled.

"Then I said it right, after all. Take your pick." Calloway grinned and steered the truck carefully down a fairly steep embankment to a lower level of rolling hills and stumps.

"I'm... I'm not actually hungry. Thirsty though. I am so thirsty I could drink a lake!" Dropspindle worked her tongue around her mouth, trying to paint what saliva she could inside her own inner cheeks and palate.

"Can you smell any water? Give it a go, what the hell, right?" Calloway had hoped that superior Equestrian senses might detect water in the desert as they traveled. They had gotten into a routine of Dropspindle hanging her head out like a dog and sniffing the breeze, scanning for anything drinkable. It hadn't worked yet, but at least it was something.

"ґⱴⱴ¬."

"So nay, basically." Calloway chuckled at his own joke. Dropspindle just tilted her head quizzically. "You seemed to be having quite a dream. Lots of noises and you mumbled out loud in Equestrian quite a lot."

"What'd I say?"

"I have no idea. But you were having a hell of a time, I can tell you that." Calloway noted that the amount of debris was increasing. More rocks and stumps.

"I was being chastised by an animal all night." Dropspindle tried to lick the dryness off of her front teeth. It tasted awful. "I've been having dreams on and off about it for a while now, remember? I thought it was a squirrel or something... anyway, it's a talking animal, and it didn't even have hooves! All night long, it berated me for not studying harder in school. I think it took place in school. Hard to remember."

"The hell?" Calloway laughed. He had not expected ponies to have dreams like that. He'd expected they would dream about... candy or muffins or something.

"Yeah, I know! And not just any class, oh no, it had to be Miss Dweomer's class." Dropspindle's ears went low. "My first magic teacher. 'A unicorn is known by her horn, to use her horn is why she was born!' - what a naggy-baggy she was! I had trouble making fields from the start, and her nagging me didn't help. To this day I can only make five, most unicorns make six... I think I told you that already. Anyway, what I didn't tell you was..."

Calloway placed a hand over her muzzle. "English, remember? I want to hear, really I do. But we're trying to keep what you have... just in case. It's my fault." He put his hand back on the wheel. "I shouldn't have asked. I forgot because I'm tired and... I miss talking. I miss chatting with you. I'm trying to learn Equestrian but... It's really hard when your mouth doesn't make all the sounds."

Dropspindle nodded. She thought a moment then added "ɵȝ¸₮₹ʚ¤."

"Learn? Teacher? Teaching?" Calloway couldn't see much behind anymore because of the steep slope blocking most of the view in that direction. "School? Hn-wiin... and then that sound I can't do. 'hllu...hnn' or something. You mentioned your magic teacher already."

"That strange animal tried to teach me something, but you woke me before I could learn it!" Dropspindle was excited about her dream. "It was something really neat too. I wish I could remember..."

"I wish we didn't have to worry about the possibility of you forgetting English!" Calloway frowned. "God, I wish there was some water out here too. And maybe a nice airship port with regular flights to Cape Town and a nice restaurant while our flight is prepared. Now enough dreaming - I need you to drive for a while so that I can..."

It was just a glance, the briefest glance. The small slope down was far behind now, and the armada had cleared it. They were arrayed behind, a huge line of desperate vehicles trying to keep ahead of the Barrier.

They were failing.

The wall of shimmering light had accelerated suddenly, its speed horrendous and terrifying. Calloway's ears popped and popped again. Dropspindle shrieked and pressed her forehooves to her pinna. The change in air pressure could be felt in their bodies, in their chest and barrel. "My god..."

The most distant, lagging cars and trucks in the armada began to panic, weaving back and forth. One lost control and spun, flipped and rolled over and over on the hard ground. In seconds it was swallowed by the advancing Barrier Of Equestria. The global smog layer above wrinkled and rolled, pushed ahead of the advancing Barrier, all the way to the front of Calloway and Dropspindle's view. Above them blue sky suddenly replaced the omnipresent gray. Again their ears popped and their chests felt pressed. Half of the entire horizon was rushing them, smashing forward with impossible speed. Though Calloway had the accelerator floored, the sensation was that they, and the armada, were somehow sliding backward, falling into an impossibly vast ocean of vertical water.

"FUCK FUCK FUCK! WE AREN'T GONNA MAKE IT!" Calloway screamed, his eyes wide in terror. One by one, cars, buggies, trucks and bikes were being swallowed behind the Big Truck. They were still distant, but it was clear they could not begin to hope to outrun the sudden forward rush of the Great Barrier.

A colorful, gaudily- painted jitney raced in desperation as the Great Wall of color and light swept swiftly over it. Calloway could just make out some kind of burst on the other side. Butterflies? Candy? Ribbons? It was impossible to tell at such great distance, but whatever the vehicle and its occupants had become, there had been a lot of it, and it had been very colorful - but it also had been anything but a jitney and an unknown number of passengers.

"CHRIST - THIS IS A NIGHTMARE!" Calloway's eyes were round in terror, his pupils small. He couldn't help but keep taking terrified glances behind him while trying to keep the Big Truck moving hopelessly forward at top speed.

At least ten cars, bikes and buggies lost the race almost simultaneously. They fell through the Barrier and splashes of hue and ripples fanned out where they had once been. It looked like colorful, wet fireworks, or perhaps like drops of multicolored ink spreading through a pool. And then even that was gone, the racing wall a pure, liquid shimmer reflecting an alien world once more.

The Barrier was coming - and it was coming unbelievably fast! Dropspindle pressed her forehooves to her muzzle as she watched, in horror, as nine more vehicles fell behind, one by one, like stones tossed into a well. Plip. Ploop. Plop. And the cars, and their riders, were no more. They were not Converted, they were made of earthly meat and earthly metal. They would not still be cars and people on the other side.

In the fourth year, the Barrier had learned a new trick. Instead of acting as a solid, impenetrable wall to primate tissues, it began accepting them. It had already learned to transform small creatures - insects, mutie-rats and such - into Equestrian forms. Bunnies and birds, butterflies and even fish to populate ponds when they appeared. Some scientists imagined that the Barrier might one day learn to transform humans all by itself. By the fifth year, it had become clear that the Barrier could learn, but it could not learn such a complex task soon enough. Human flesh now went through... but it did not become pony on the other side at all.

Dropspindle stared in fear and wonder at an astonishing thing. The vehicle was an adapted double-decker bus, crimson, with a white stripe. Spare fuel tanks had been randomly welded to the sides, it seemed bulky and mutated but it moved surprisingly fast on its partially jacked, oversized tires.

As she watched, tiny shapes emerged from inside to stand in the isle, and on the seats, that covered the top of the bus. They stood tall and unafraid. Some raised their arms high and apart. One seemed, perhaps, to salute - the distance was too great to be certain. As the bus drove flat out, tiny passengers continued to gather on the roof. In the last moment, just before the shining Wall swallowed them, they all raised their arms high, as if they were on some amusement ride.

There was a burst of color and spreading ripples, and then there was just the Barrier... placid, like a lake that covered half of the sky.

"Oh, god Dropspindle, oh god, oh god, I thought we would make it I thought we would actually make it but this, this, this isn't... we aren't gonna survive this one, there is just no way we're gonna get out of this one..." Calloway's knuckles were white. He didn't even glance back anymore. All he could do was stare straight ahead, a deathgrip on the wheel, his foot flat to the floorboards crushing the accelerator. "Forgive me, Dropspindle. I couldn't save you, you saved me, you tried to save me anyway, but I couldn't keep us alive and I tried, I really tried and I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry..."

The Great Barrier devoured the last remaining vehicle in the armada. It was a very fast motorbike with a curiously bright flag. When the Wall took it, and the bike and its rider exploded into something like confetti and colors, the flag flew up, carried by powerful winds. As the flag twisted and floated on the other side, in the brief moment before the incredible forces of the Exponential Lands on the other side swept it away, Dropspindle recognized it.

The flag was colorful because it was a pair of human trousers imbued with the magical essence of beautifying rainbow fire.

And then it too, was gone.

Dropspindle sank back into her seat. Her rib hurt, but she did not care. She turned her head and watched Calloway drive. He had become part of the machine around him, functioning robotically, knowing only the task of avoiding obstacles and pressing onward as fast as the engine would allow.

He didn't even react when the engine sputtered as 'Traughton', the very last tank, ran entirely out of gas.

The Big Truck slowed down. Calloway kept trying to make it go fast, but it wouldn't. The fuel was gone. The Big Truck would flee no more. It went slower and slower, the silence of the engine deafening despite the rumble of wheels on rough soil. Finally the Big Truck stopped entirely. Calloway pressed the accelerator over and over. He turned his bloodless, pale face to Dropspindle.

"Run."

They were out of the truck now, running, running as fast as they could, despite the heat, despite the complete pointlessness of the act. Pony and human, man and mare, they put foot after foot, hoof after hoof, dripping with sweat, breathless and beyond thought.

The Barrier behind them jerked forward in a blink. It halved the remaining distance with a bright flash of thaumatic light.

"THAT'S CHEATING!" Only Dropspindle saw, because only Dropspindle possessed a flexible enough neck to run and look back at the same time. As she returned her concentration solely to running forward once more, the anger in her built. Anger at the stupid humans who couldn't be bothered to get their stupid asses converted in time. Anger at the idiocy of chasing them over a single stupid stolen truck. Anger that the beautiful Mamá Gansa being shot down for no Celestia-damned reason at ALL! Anger at that STUPID LUNA-FUCKED CALLOWAY WHO STARTED THIS ENTIRE CLUSTERFUCK IN THE FIRST SHIT-ASSED PLACE! ANGER AT THAT STUPID DARK BLUE ANIMAL IN THE DREAM GOING ON AND ON ABOUT HOW FUCKING SIMPLE IT WAS TO

Calloway hurt all over. His eyes ached, his arms tingled. He couldn't move his legs at first. Everything smelled like burned hair and overdone pork-like simumeat product. Gradually he found he could move his legs. They felt like spikes were jabbing them.

He curled, slightly, changing from laying on his back to his side. His clothing looked singed, almost burned. There was a rhythmic hushing sound roaring softly. He lay there and listened for a while, waiting for the tingling pain to stop, and his hands to obey his commands. Shhhhh....Hushhhhhh. Shhhhh....Hushhhhhh. It sounded like waves. Like waves hitting a beach.

The breeze shifted and Calloway found himself sniffing. For a moment the smell of burned hair and pork was replaced with salt and metals and chemical poisons. And water. He forced himself up on one barely working arm. It was an effort to raise his head, and another burden to focus his eyes. Gray, dirty, polluted water stretched as far as his eyes could see, all under a blanket of smog. It was waves. It was the ocean.

It hurt, but he gradually forced himself to look behind. He was on sand. Beach sand. Sand and bits of material washed up by the sea. Chunks of building materials, piles of plastic bottles and old romball cases. Ropy strands of fibers in every color. Old tires and sea-worn hunks of ancient driftwood.

And the Barrier. The Great Barrier of Equestria, dividing the entire world in half. A wall that stretched to infinity, to the left, to the right, and above. It did not move anymore. It stood quiet, immobile, at equilibrium.

Calloway stared at the Wall for some time, as he sat and rubbed his singed limbs. He felt dazed and confused. It was difficult to think. There were little black spots and patches all over his skin. It looked like he had been sprayed with tiny drops of ink. Of course. The Barrier. He was lucky to still be something other than ashes, blowing on the wind. The Barrier, right there, right behind him, less than eight meters away. He was only eight meters from the Great Barrier and he was still alive. He had actually touched the Barrier once. Years ago when it was solid to humans. As a guest of the elite. They had all the calculations and had arranged a picnic inside a cancellation zone. A place where the thaumatic energies cancelled each other and you could walk right up and put a hand on the Barrier and it wouldn't hurt you. He remembered his hand sliding off. It just felt hard, solid but utterly frictionless.

This must be like that. A cancellation zone. Anywhere else, and he would be dust floating on the breeze... black ashes and white, gleaming bones.

Calloway couldn't see Dropspindle. Not from where he was, sitting on his butt. He moved to a position of knees and hands. He tried standing up, but fell down. Everything tingled and hurt, and smoldered too, as if he had been hit by lightning. Maybe he had. Lightning in the dead, dry desert? Why not? The world was insane now. More insane.

Calloway finally made it to his feet, where he swayed unsteadily for some time. The constant shissshing of the ocean was hypnotic. He wanted to just collapse, fall to the sand and sleep. But he had to find Dropspindle. She had to be here. She just had to be.

He stumbled and made his first few steps. No sign of the Big Truck. No sign of the desert, for that matter. They were on a beach, eight meters from the Barrier of Equestria, beside the ocean. The only ocean he could think of was the South Atlantic. Was this Paraíba? Alagoas? Ceará? Somehow they had traveled hundreds of kilometers. It didn't make sense. It wasn't possible, was it?

Dropspindle lay on the other side of a pile of tires and driftwood. Her mane and coat were singed too, and smelled like burned hair. Her horn looked rough and lightly charred, as if it had been touched by fire. Calloway stumbled to her and collapsed beside her prone form. She seemed asleep... or dead. Afraid, he checked her barrel. It rose and fell, slowly. She was breathing. She was alive.

He lay on his back and caught his breath. Even his lungs felt singed. What had happened? How could they have survived? How could they be here, on the coast of the Southamerizone. Assuming this was the Southamerizone, of course. So tired. Everything hurt. He had just awakened, yet he was so exhausted he just wanted to go back to sleep. He forced his body to move again and cuddled in close to Dropspindle's back. He buried his face in her mane and slid an arm over her belly. He patted her belly, feeling the warm, animal comfort of her fur. The ocean breeze was cool, compared to the middle of the continent. Her warmth was comforting and soft.

Before he knew it, he was asleep.

20. The Shy Little Kitten

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Twenty: The Shy Little Kitten

Calloway awoke to the sound of a faint flapping, scratching, struggling sound. The air was nearly still, with little breeze. The scrabbling was not caused by atmospheric conditions. It clearly sounded like a living creature. It reminded Calloway of the time he had found a mutie-rat scavenging in his apartment near Cape Kohlsaat, on Graham Bell Island. It had gotten caught in the no-kill trap he had placed, and it wasn't happy about captivity.

He rolled slightly, and wiped his own drool out of Dropspindle's mane. How long had they been sleeping? It seemed like mid-day, but was it the same day? He patted Dropspindle's flank, and called to her softly, but she only moaned and grumbled. He decided to let her continue to sleep. Maybe he could find something to eat or drink, or some sign of a ship - anything useful or positive.

He pulled himself to his feet. He felt better, but still shaky and sore. There was sand in his hair, and in what remained of his clothing. There wasn't much of that remaining - just his Red-Level borrowed trousers and his shoes. The small black spots on his hands and arms and chest itched. He knew better than to scratch them, but it was hard to resist.

The Barrier remained immobile, thankfully. It must be at that mysterious equilibrium he had heard mentioned in the ham radio broadcast. How long that blessed state would remain unchanged was anyone's guess. They needed transport. If the Barrier began to expand again, there was nowhere to go but the poisoned sea.

He followed the sound of the animal noises, his singed shoes crunching in the sand. There were piles of debris on the beach, some quite large, washed up by the waves. On the other side of a nearby pile of garbage, tires, and driftwood, he discovered the source of the sounds.

The man - it was probably a man from the look of his bare feet - must have been laying on the blanket when the Barrier jumped forward to the shore. Clearly, he had come to picnic, his 'basket' - a cooler-container - stood open nearby. Calloway followed the edge of the blanket with his eyes, to the man's naked toes, his dark ankles, and then to his legs. He followed the man's legs up to just past the knee, where they abruptly ended at the Great Barrier Of Equestria.

Just beyond the shimmering wall, lush, unearthly green grass and enormous flowers adorned small hills. The scene ran off into some unfathomable distance, where it met the most perfect, beautiful, strangely teal sky that Calloway had ever seen.

The small bunny blinked at Calloway, from behind the Barrier. It then even more vigorously worked to pull itself free from the stump of the human leg it had been born from. Other bunnies approached, concerned for their sibling. They must all have been created by the living mass of the unfortunate man's torso, arms and head. The Barrier had indeed gotten quite clever. It could preserve life, even human life, after a fashion. It had gradually, iteratively learned to convert primate flesh into something that could live in Equestria. Not yet a complete pony. Instead, it made bunnies, multiple bunnies, from the living flesh. Or at least from this one man's flesh.

Perhaps the choice was random. Perhaps some bodies became butterflies, or doves, or frogs. The Barrier had finally decided that meat was meat, and let even primate flesh through. The king of all animals was welcomed by the Barrier at last. But it had still not conquered the problem of pony-level intelligence, or the complexities of the Equestrian form. It was clearly trying - but it had a long way to go.

The little bunny was almost completely formed. Only one rear leg was still connected to the human stump, a single unlucky rabbit's foot that had not yet been shaped and molded from the flesh of the absorbed man on the beach. The poor bunny was tired - it must have been struggling for some time to pull more of the heavy leg stump through. Calloway felt pity for the sad little creature, attended by its brothers.

Calloway, fighting his own mortal revulsion and horror, forced himself down on his knees before the pair of legs. The majority of the bunnies beyond the Barrier scattered into the tall grass to hide. One brave brother remained to comfort the trapped animal. It stood defiant, ears tall, body rigid, studying the human creature crouched on the sand on the other side of the rippling wall.

Calloway grit his teeth, and hesitantly placed a hand on the sole of the foot of the amputated leg. It somehow made it worse that the truncated human limb felt warm under the unrelenting sun. He grimly began to slide the leg forward into, and through, the Barrier. He had no certainty that his plan would work, but at least it was something, at least it was an effort to help. The trapped bunny seemed startled, but there was a strange intelligence in those tiny blue eyes. It was no earthly lapine, there was something bright and thoughtful under those floppy ears.

The trapped bunny's companion immediately grabbed hold of its friend and began to pull as Calloway morbidly pushed the disembodied leg. The pinned bunny struggled beyond the stump, squealed, and then finally pulled free. It tumbled onto the matted grass around where it had been stuck, and licked its now completely formed limb. Perhaps there had been just enough viable cells in the leg stump to generate the rest of the bunny's foot as it was pushed through. Perhaps the Barrier even had some control over life and death itself.

The bunny was free, and it was whole. Calloway pulled the leg back and away from the Barrier, so that no new creatures would begin to form and possibly get trapped. It was an awful task, but he managed to lift and toss both dead human limbs away from the Barrier and onto a driftwood pile. This made them even more visible - they were high on the pile now - but Calloway could not stomach climbing after them to do any more. He sank again to his knees and rubbed his hands through the sand, desperate to somehow purify them.

The bunny stared at him. When Calloway looked up, It waved a paw, as if it knew what he had done - as if to say thank you. It's companion also waved. Then the two Equestrian rabbits ran away to join their recently created clan, mayhaps off to populate the incomprehensibly vast Exponential lands. Calloway watched them until they were specks amidst distant, perfect green.

Dropspindle was stretching and yawning when Calloway returned with a cooler full of beer, a cloth filled with delicious smelling coxhinas, and a tub of still warm feijoada. Whoever had become all those bunnies either had been, or had known, someone very clever with cookery. They had also known ponies, and those ponies had grown real food earthside - as they often did in the favelas and fallen cities. Of course both dishes would be meatless, and thus safe for Dropspindle to eat. The still-fresh food inside the cooler smelled beyond wonderful. Calloway could not help but wonder why the man had not Converted in time, if he had access to such treats? Only ponies could grow anything on the deceased earth. The dead man's story had vanished forever, like his face - unless, impossibly, some remnant of the man lived on somehow, within all of those many Equestrian buns.

Throughout their journey, Calloway and Dropspindle had always been within a cancellation zone. Even now, the only damage to Calloway was a few black spots. He had just sat less than a meter from the Equestrian Wall. How intelligent - and compassionate - was the Great Barrier? Had it somehow chosen to avoid fatally irradiating most of the humans in its path? That would not excuse the sudden leap forward... unless the Barrier had somehow lost the battle against its own growth. Perhaps it leapt forward only because it could no longer resist the inevitable higher-dimentional collision with earth? How smart and aware could such a bizarre structure become? Could it think? Could it... care?

Calloway craned his neck as he followed the curve of the immense energy shield up, up, beyond the small puffy clouds that were forming in the wake of the receding smog. Up beyond the intense blue of the sky he so seldom had ever seen. Up into harsh brightness, reflecting the unfiltered light of earth's star, beyond the very atmosphere, into space itself. "Thank you, if you can hear me."

"You're welcome... though I have no idea how I did it." Dropspindle shook her head as if trying to flick fleas of drowsiness out of her mane. "I just got so mad! I've never been so angry in all my life!" She almost seemed happy about the fact.

"Huh? Oh! What?" Calloway opened the containers of food, and set them down, which set Dropspindle's nose twitching.

"How did you ever... oh sweet... whatever... that... food! You found food!" Dropspindle sniffed deeply. "It smells like real food! Really real, real food! How? Are there other ponies here? Gardens? This... this is Equestrian... grown here, I think, but the vegetables and grains could only be Equestrian - you don't have them here, anymore." A small blob of the vegetarian feijoada floated out of the container and hovered up to her waiting mouth. "Mmmmmnnn... oh... oh my. Real... food."

Calloway checked the cooler. There were no plates, and no utensils. Anything of that sort must have been placed where the Barrier now covered. "Dropspindle... there's no... nevermind." Calloway resolved to stick to the dry, lumpen coxhinas because they seemed to be clearly finger-food. He couldn't think of any polite way to eat the stew-like feijoada. He wasn't just going to stick his fingers in and scoop. The coxhinas looked good too. The instant the roughly drumstick-shaped delight hit his tongue, his stomach rumbled and nearly cramped from hungry expectation.

"Are you alright?" Dropspindle, savoring another levitated glob, had noticed Calloway's slight wince and grimace.

"Just... really hungry. Too hungry. And thirsty." Calloway opened two beers, locally nanofabbed reproductions of 'Antarctica Cerveja'. They weren't antique originals kept in storage - Calloway noticed the little 'N' set in a stylized benzene-like molecule that was the official symbol of nanoreplication. Replicated or not, they were still cool, if not cold, and the contents were wet. "Oh, sweet Celestia, hallowed be thy name. I thank you for this beer!" Swallow followed swallow, conquering his thirst, and helping sooth his physical pains.

Dropspindle glared at Calloway for the latter comment and sipped her beer, levitating it to her face. "It's a bit sour and bitter. But I taste an attempt at grains, so that's not bad. It's almost like a strong barley tea, with a lot of lemon in it or something. It's a bit spoiled, though - be careful - I'm not certain it won't poison you."

Calloway laughed. "That 'spoilage' you taste is alcohol. I guess it would just be that to you, wouldn't it? You guys get high on salt, or so I've heard. Alcohol is salt for humans."

"Wait... this is alcohol? The stuff that makes humans loud and violent?" Dropspindle remembered the bar in Huancabamba on Saturday nights. "Stop! Don't drink any more of that!"

She seemed truly frightened. Calloway had to struggle to not spray, and swallow before he laughed again. "It's okay. Really it is! Not all humans react the same. And this is not enough to get a man drunk, I promise. I'd need to down quite a few more than this to be affected at all." She seemed doubtful in the extreme. "Look, here.." He pointed to the label "...four percent. That means that only four percent of this entire bottle is alcohol. The rest is just water and... hops and crap. It's mostly just flavored water with a dash of spirits in it. You can get drunk on beer, but it takes a bit of effort." He took another swallow. "Depending on weight and tolerance. I'll be alright, and I won't get mean. I'm not a mean drunk in any case. I'm the sleepy-silly type."

"There are types?" All Dropspindle had seen was loud men shouting in Spanish and trying to cut each other with knives. It was horrible. She had stayed indoors, with her door locked, all Saturday long.

"Oh, god yes. Alcohol is a poison, you're right about that - but it affects brains in a weird way. Shuts down judgement and self-control. Whatever is inside, bottled up - so to speak - tends to come out. Bitter, angry men become mean. Sad men cry into their beers. Some men just... I guess I'm childish, really. I just get silly, then I get sleepy, then I sleep. Just a big kid. That's me." The small amount of alcohol was beginning to affect Calloway, much to his surprise. Then again, he was severely dehydrated, starved, and suffering from heat exhaustion. He could feel a numbness in his lips and tongue that normally only came with quite a lot of beer. He finished his bottle and opened another. He wasn't interested in getting buzzed, he was just terribly thirsty. Both of them were.

"Another for me, too, please?" Dropspindle found the taste of the human beverage less than pleasant, but the water content was beyond desirable. They had gone too long, in too much heat, without water. The ocean was no use - not only was it poisoned with dangerous metals and other toxins, but the bizarre seas of earth were salty. A pony would quickly become utterly blintzed drinking the oceans of earth.

"How the flying baby-shit did we survive? That is the question!" Calloway looked up and down the narrow beach that bordered the invincible Barrier. "I guess I'm a believer now. Celestia... or the... the other one... must have heard our prayers. She - they - really do listen! I'll be damned!" He giggled. "Or not. I guess I'm not damned. Hell - I'm saved! We're saved! Bathed in the glory of pony, hallelujah!" He laughed at that.

"It wasn't... them. It was me." Dropspindle seemed serious, and a little bit miffed, too.

Calloway swallowed beer and ate another vegetarian drumstick. "It couldn'ta been. Had to be them."

"I'm telling you I brought us here. I teleported us to this location. It almost killed me to do it!" Dropspindle was strangely upset.

Calloway took another pull. "Nuh-uh. You can't do teleport... tate... ing. Whatever it's called. If you could have, you would have. We wouldn't had'ta drive across most of the Amazon if you could teleport. Besides - think about it!" Another 'drumstick'. "The two of us, all our molecules, transported instantly thousands of... hundreds of kilometers... and plopped down just inches - well, meters - from the Barrier! And all of that while accounting for the curvature of the earth, and the speed of rotation, and the earth orbiting the sun, and the sun... doing whatever it does... this isn't some flat, eternal paradise, girl, this is... a... a bunch of complex stuff! We didn't appear up in the sky, or down in the dirt! It's more than one brain can do!" The food tasted so damn, damn good. "Only a god... thing... could do something like that."

Dropspindle was frowning. Had her pride been hurt? Calloway felt the need to mollify her.

"You're amazing! Droppers! You are just incredible! The way you handled those bastards, your clever yarn spells... that was brilliant, and I will always be amazed. Pretty funny too. But... that stuff is way far from teleportatiation... telepor... blinking us here in an eye! No, no, that was Celestia and the other one doing that. Wow." Calloway licked his cracked, parched lips. "I've finally got religion. Damn. Is there a church or something in Equestria? Our pony full of grace?"

"NO! And it wasn't Her!" Dropdspindle was standing now, stomping in the sand. "I've been helped once, remember? But not by Her. Not by that Celestia. And that is not how they do things. I teleported us here, I did this, I don't know how, I may never be able to do it again - and I don't care how difficult it was, you don't know borscht about magic! You don't know anything! I do know, I actually have seen Luna, as a filly, and they come in person, not through some vague, ill-defined 'miracle' that is really just mere coincidence like what you creatures cling to - they show up, right there, larger than you can imagine, and they talk right at your muzzle and there is NO DOUBT!"

"Hey! That's soup!" Calloway found this incredibly funny for some reason. "You just swore in soup!"

Dropspindle's mouth hung agape for a moment. "What?"

"You just swore... you cussed... in soup!"

"Have you heard a single thing I said?"

"You always cuss in pastry. All ponies do. At least all the ponies I've ever heard." Calloway opened a third bottle. Noticing Dropspindle had finished both of hers off, he lifted another for her and shook it at her. Repeatedly. While grinning.

"NO THANK YOU!" Dropspindle paced away then back. "You want to know what I've learned on this little trip, Calloway? I've learned that my princesses are fallible and foolish! They didn't help us, they aren't going to help us, and they aren't anything like I thought they were..."

"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!" Calloway felt rebuffed and his stomach felt upset. So long without food or water and now they had both - after a fashion - and all she could do was fuss and carry on. "You..." he said, pointing at her "... are bitter. You are a bitter pony, and I don't blame you, because it's been hard, it's been difficult as hell, and we're still not safe, hell, you're probably scared, too. I certainly am. I've been terrified this whole time - fuck, I've been scared to death of you!"

"Scared of me?" Dropspindle appeared shocked.

"'I hate you?'" Calloway "'Little bubbles of force or whatever waving around inside?' Remember that? You dug your hoof into my arms, I have a huge-ass bruise there - both arms, actually. You nearly killed me right there, Dropspindle! I was scared for my life!"

"I... I didn't mean that... I... it wasn't me, that wasn't... I wasn't thinking right, there..."

"No. You certainly wasn't! Weren't. You definitely weren't thinking right. You sounded like my old man back then. Terrified the crap outta me." Calloway offered a beer once again. This time Dropspindle nodded. He opened it. She took it from him with her hornfield, and floated it in front of her mouth so she could drink. "Uh oh." Calloway was staring at his hand.

Dropspindle folded her legs and sat on the sand. "What?"

"I can't feel part of... the skin on my finger and here... the inside of my thumb. There. When you took the bottle just now."

"Oh?" She thought a moment. "Oh! Let me see!" She crawled on her folded legs close to Calloway. "I'm sorry... I'm really sorry. I... I forgot. I was so upset I just... I think I caught part of your skin in my field. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."

"It doesn't hurt."

"No... thaumatic radiation. My field was too strong, I grabbed the bottle too hard, the field strength... oh... no... that's looking red, isn't it?"

Calloway studied the skin on the side of his index finger down the webbing to his thumb. The flesh was becoming red and swelling, clearly inflamed. "Yeah. I don't think that was good for it. Jesus - you don't even need to dick around with balls of force to kill us, do you? Just grab at us with that horn of yours and we're right fucked! Dammit. It isn't turning dark, though. Not yet, anyway. But it is starting to sting. Ow. Damn... it's like a burn. I guess that's what not getting a full dose is like. Damn that stings." He drank more beer.

"I'm afraid, Calloway."

"You're afraid. I might still need my thumb to get us out of this mess!"

"I'm afraid I'll never fit in again. I'm... I don't think I'm... I'm broken, Calloway. I'm broken now." A tear ran down Dropspindle's muzzle. "Who would ever want to be around me after this? With what I've become?"

"I would." Calloway sucked at the webbing of his hand, between his thumb and forefinger.

"Why? I've threatened you - I've never threatened anyone, ever! And I hurt human people!" Another tear ran down Dropspindle's face. "And I think you already know I don't particularly like you." She lowered her eyes, and ears, at that. "I don't hate you, exactly, but..."

"Yeah, well, that's pretty much the average human marriage right there." Calloway laughed, briefly, then stared at the puffy red skin of his hand. "I know you're not the same - hell, you just said 'anyone' and not 'anypony' back there. You really got my attention back then with the threats and all... I kind of listen really close now. So, no, you're not the same, but... who would be, after what we've been through? I'm not the same as when we started either!"

"How have you changed?"

"Well, for one thing, I realize that I've been wasting my life. There are things more important than playing video games and getting to splurge on the elite stick... on the credit of the eli... get stuff free. There really are bigger things, it isn't just pointless and empty... at least not where you come from. You... you shouldn't talk like you do about your princesses. I think they did help - I know you don't agree, I know you think it's just me spouting human religious crap - and maybe it is.

"Maybe I'm just a funny talking animal that thinks crazy things, but... I honestly think we were somehow helped. Rescued. Something put that knowledge into your dreams. I don't know who or what or... but I do know that teleporting-tation - whatever - that teleporting is not something you could do before and somehow you did it. You can't explain that, I can't explain that, you don't even know how you did it! But it happened, and we're alive. How unlikely is that, huh? And we've been praying like crazy to the princesses all this time! It has to be them! They helped us, Dropspindle!"

Dropspindle drank more from her bottle, then set it in the sand. "I haven't been 'praying'. I wouldn't even know how. We don't do that. We don't have gods."

Calloway laughed for some time, then choked and coughed. "Oh, yes you do! Oh, you absolutely do. Maybe not 'Wrath And Brimstone' King of the Jews, Old Testament, 'Allah Akbar' type gods, but you got gods. Goddesses. Two of them. You're so used to it, you don't even notice it. They're just there. Call 'em up on the 'net and stare 'em down in their little beadies. Ask 'em out to lunch, and they might actually go. But they're gods, make no doubt. And I did pray, I prayed this whole trip. I whipped off a prayer right before we did the big transporter beam. I prayed, and BOOM! Here we are!"

"That's... that's not even a decent causal connection!"

"Dropspindle - when the impossible happens, there is no point in denying it. I don't even know why you are... " Calloway finally figured out how he could eat the feijoada without jamming his fingers into it. He lifted the container and poured some of the thick stew-like substance directly into his mouth. He chewed the cooked beans and tomatoes and carrots and swallowed. He replaced the container. The feijoada was cold, but it was food, and it was good. "Actually, I do know why you're denying so hard. You expected the one that helped you before..."

"Luna. Princess Luna. She saved me."

"Luna. You expected princess Luna to appear and save you, whisk you away from all of this. But maybe here - earth - is dangerous for her. Maybe she has more important things to do right now - there are two entire universes colliding, you know! Maybe all she could do is send you a dream, or get somepony else to send you a dream... or whatever... the point is, these are tough times, Droppers! Not even gods can always be there, in person, right in your face. We were saved, impossibly, in the most unlikely way. Something happened. Something... well, miraculous."

Dropspindle lay down, her belly and head flat on the sand. "I don't know anything anymore. I certainly don't know who I am anymore."

"I know who you are." Calloway lay down too, flat on the sand, looking up at the sky. Half of it was Barrier, the other blue. "You are Dropspindle, a very nice unicorn who came to Peru to study weaving. You've had a spot of trouble, met a devilishly handsome man - that's me, by the way - experienced a miracle, got beat up a little, but you're here! Alive. Eating cold food from a dead man's chest and drinking beer. On earth, on this planet, well, kiddo, you just won all the lotteries."

"Dead man?" Dropspindle did not seem the slightest bit happy to hear this news.

Calloway jerked. There was no point - and probably much upset to suffer - in describing the Man Who Became Bunnies. "Uh... turn of phrase! Old pirate days. 'Yo-ho-ho, dead man's chest, bottle of rum?' They didn't teach you that back in 'Let's Go To Earth' school?"

Dropspindle relaxed. "Everything about your world is grim."

Calloway laughed. "Now THAT'S the Dropspindle I know!"

Calloway was careful to lead Dropspindle down the beach in the opposite direction as the downed Watership man. There was no use in her having to deal with the ghastly view of two rotting human legs, and truth be told, Calloway was less than eager to see them again himself. They traveled South, instead, along the narrow corridor between sea and Barrier.

Half a kilometer from where they started, they came to a set of plascrete and arborite docks. The docks were in good repair, but there were no boats to be found. Plascrete walkways ran from the docks up the beach and straight into the Barrier. Covered tables, a portable bar, and banners also ran up the beach and into the Barrier. It had been a resort, likely for the lesser elite. An affordable vacation spot for those who still possessed wealth enough to take vacations - but not position enough to no longer need them. The outdoor bar was set up next to half of a stage for performances. It provided the pair with all the bottled water they could drink. Calloway took delight in surprising Dropspindle with her first taste of 'fuzzy water' - carbonated water, used as a mixer, stored also in bottles.

They were searching for any hope of food when Dropspindle spied the airship. Calloway strained his eyes, unable to pick it out at such a distance. As they sipped seltzer, reclining on the beach, the huge vessel drew near. It was clearly designed for long-range travel, nearly a small city in the sky. It was painted in bright crimson, with white highlights and was extremely stylish. It was the sort of airship that someone with far too much wealth and no sense of scale might have custom built to circle the globe, endlessly.

There was only half a globe left to circle, at this point. Calloway briefly hoped that whoever owned the stunning ship had already seen the part that was absent - there were no second chances when universes collided.

Calloway and Dropspindle made a great fuss of waving banners and trying to reflect light with serving trays from the bar until they grasped that the airship must be coming just for them. The sheer unlikelihood of a colorful, eccentric lifting-body suddenly arriving at the exact point they happened to be along what remained of the coast of the Southamerizone was vast. They sat down once more, and continued to sip seltzer. Calloway made Dropspindle a fizzy soda using hibiscus syrup which she greatly approved of.

Finally, as the sun began to set, the slow moving, gargantuan airship finally found a safe, low position from which to lower a ramp. Dropspindle and Calloway waved back at the pleasant man wearing a captain's hat who gestured at them from the huge open hatch. They climbed the ramp, the dark-haired man grinning as he greeted them.

"Welcome aboard the I.D.B. 'Lady Venice', the most beautiful and luxurious airship of exploration in the entire world!" The apparent captain stated grandly.

Calloway goggled at the gorgeous interior. Synthetic wood and marble, crystallite chandeliers and brass fixtures gleamed under mood-regulated artificial lights. "I... D... B?" It was no commission prefix he had ever heard of. This certainly wasn't a Worldgovernment registry ship.

The captain laughed heartily. "I Don't Bow!" He tapped something embedded within his forearm and the ramp withdrew into the ship and the hatch began to close. "To anyone. Not yet, anyway. Soon, maybe, but not now." He nodded in the direction of the Barrier, just vanishing behind the closing hatchway. He saluted it. "To She who cannot be denied!"

Calloway and Dropspindle felt cool air blow over them. Air conditioning. At last. At last.

"I am quite impressed - you were just where she said you would be. And sipping drinks no less! Such style! You must have quite the story to tell! But later, after showers, a big meal, and bed perhaps? In the morning then."

Calloway couldn't help it. The tears were rolling down his face and there was no force within him to stop them.

"There there, my friend. All will be better soon. You shall see. Come." The captain waved them on, through the fantastic and palatial craft. "Oh - introductions. I know who you are - Mr. Kotani, the lady Dropspindle - but you do not know me. Nor should you - I strive to keep off the detection grid at all times, both socially and especially governmentally. My name is Bertand Cudicini, and I am captain of the Lady Venice. Our mission is to see the last of the earth, before it is gone. Well, that, and to do favors for She who can not be denied!"

"She who... cannot be denied?" Dropspindle stared into the vast, gilded chamber that captain Cudicini seemed to be indicating was now their personal cabin.

"Well, her servant, anyway. She's gone now. The cat, I mean. She sends her cat when there is work for me, and in return, she provides... freedom, shall we say... to one such as I, despite the Worldgovernment. I am a fugitive, you see. I may not bow, but I also know which way the wind blows. One must, when one lives on a ship of the air!"

Cudicini thought his jest was funnier than either Calloway or Dropspindle did, but they laughed anyway. It seemed their host was perhaps a tiny bit on the insane side, what with taking orders from cats, and flitting about the globe while the world ended. But he did have excellent, and extravagant, tastes. They chuckled and smiled. It was the polite thing to do, after all. It was also the fastest way to the showers, food, and bed. Suffering, inevitably breeds pragmatism.

21. The Night Before Christmas

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Twenty One: The Night Before Christmas

"She just gave you all of her money, just like that? Bam! 'Here, you're rich now!' C'mon, where'd you bury the body really?"

Captain Cudicini, who had insisted he be called by his first name, Bertrand, gave a polite chuckle. Dropspindle, however, could tell he hadn't particularly liked Calloway's implication. He seemed almost reverent towards his benefactor.

"I'm quite serious, Cal, that is exactly what she did. And I - and my original crew - are not the only impoverished souls to be granted such a boon. Quite a few of the lesser elite, when they decide to go pony, tend to become generous. It only makes sense, if you think about it." Bertrand took another scoop of Melanzane alla Parmigiana and set the savory, breaded eggplant on his plate. The very real tomato sauce gleamed crimson wonderment as it drizzled to fill his dish. All of their food was real, and abundant, acquired from Newfoal farmers along their journey to survey the world.

"By the time they make the decision to take the purple, most of them have already embraced Equestrian values. Is it strange to think that they would try to do something kind before they left this sad globe behind? But what could someone such as they do? I ask you!" Bertrand savored a bite of his eggplant. "The only tool they know is the power of credits - and so, this is the tool they use for their salvation before they go to their reward. Do you know the saying? 'Behind every great fortune is an equally great crime'. No family ever becomes so very wealthy without leaving behind a trail of bodies... or worse. No man ever became a quadrillionaire without either inheriting, or damning himself through despicable works. That is how real fortunes are made - always at the expense of others.

"Well... except for gifts given... at the end of the world!" Lucía Tamayo was Ernesto's wife. She and her three children sat with him across the table from captain Cudicini.

Bertrand smiled at her comment. "It is only reasonable, I think, that when one of the truly wealthy turns the compass of their heart towards Equestria, that they should take the measure of themselves and find it wanting. Some, I have no doubt, relieve their new-found shame and guilt through acts of sacrificial generosity. Their fervor is religious, and their tithes... well, their tithes are absolute. Besides - of what good are earthly credits when soon there will be no earth?"

"There was... wasn't there a family? In Jakarta I think. Some elite just up and gave the keys to his mansion away?" Ernesto patted his wife's leg, just happy to be beside her. Ernesto had been Cudicini's navigator on their old ship, the Auxesia, when Betrand and he had suddenly become unearthly rich. Ernesto had planned to return to his family with his new fortune, and had done so - until Bertrand showed up and offered to take the entire Tamayo clan on board the Lady Venice. Several families lived on the vast air yacht now. The dining room was packed, yet surprisingly restrained and quiet for a table of seventeen... plus two new guests.

"Oh! I remember that story!" Rumi had been a maid aboard the Auxesia when the wealth had been handed out. Now she was a grand lady of leisure. She traveled on the Venice because she had always liked captain Cudicini, and - honestly - didn't know what to do with so many credits. Flying around the world in style seemed nice to her, and Cudicini had welcomed her. "Keys, big car, air yacht - not as fancy as the Lady Venice, but impressive - and... and several mansions. Not just one. All around the world!"

"Yeah! That was it. It was all over the holos. The Worldgovernment loves to publicize that stuff because it helps their efforts to get people into the Bureaus." Ernesto grinned through a mouthful of linguini. "Mphourse... of course..." He chewed and swallowed. "...nobody saw our moment." He looked directly at Calloway. "That's why we're on the run. Pirate fugitives, global criminals - we can't live by their rules, man!"

Bertrand laughed. When he laughed for real, it was a deep, delightful Santa Claus baritone of joy. "My friend has become as prone to extravagances of speech as myself! The father of our... benefactor... had his pride wounded by the act of his daughter. He makes many claims, all of them quite false, but all of them sufficient to see us shot from the sky." He took a drink of imported cider. "Thus our many little 'deals' and 'agreements' with powers both earthly... and beyond."

"Captai... Bertrand? back when you rescued us - thanks again for that, by the way -"

Captain Cudicini smiled, nodded and gave a dismissive wave of the sort that communicates 'it was nothing, think no more about it'.

"- you knew our names, and where to find us... basically everything. I am kind of curious..." Calloway had to stop and take another bite. The Melanzane was beyond perfect. "...who told you? If it is not a secret, just who is 'She Who Cannot Be Denied?'"

"Ah! It is a secret! One dark and mysterious, shrouded in infamy and dramatic..." Bertrand turned to his navigator. "... Ernesto - what is the word I am looking for?"

"Captain?"

"Word! Something dramatic!"

"'Secrecy'?" Ernesto was dependable, honorable, true, dedicated and not very imaginative.

"It will do. 'Secrecy' then. But I shall tell you, for we are all great adventurers here, are we not?"

The table collectively shouted "HUZZAH!"

"Our great benefactrix, She Who Cannot Be Denied, is a Lady of perfect wisdom and superior taste, cultured, royal, dark as wine and twice as intoxicating, she adorns the night with..."

"Luna. It figures. Excuse me." Dropspindle got down from the difficult human chair and began to return to her cabin.

The captain was quite taken aback. "My good lady Dropspindle? Have I done something to offend you?"

"Thank you for the dinner. Goodnight." Dropspindle trotted rapidly away.

Captain Cudicini looked to Calloway for an explanation.

"Please excuse me Captain... Bertrand... I... think I should check on her." Calloway got up and lay his napkin reluctantly down. "Please excuse her, everyone. She's been through a lot. Probably too much, honestly. She's very... hurt. Inside. Forgive me. Us." Taking one last look at the rest of what just might have been the best meal he had ever had, Calloway forced himself to leave the dining room.

Calloway followed the corridor to a circular branching space centered around a spiral staircase. He took the stairs down and followed another corridor and took a right. The floors were polished arborite here, looking very much like real wood, the fixtures brass. The habitation level had the air of luxurious fantasies of ancient sailing ships about it. He opened the door to their suite and entered.

"I thought I locked that!" Dropspindle turned from the curving window where she had been pointedly staring at the top of the global smog layer.

"You did, but the handle's keyed to me, remember?" Dropspindle didn't have any implants, so she couldn't use a door properly. They had left their cabin unlocked so that she would always be able to get in. She could lock the door from the inside, but it would be useless against the permatech in Calloway's right arm.

"Well... then take the hint!" She turned back to her intense study of nothing in particular.

"Dropspindle... the captain is concerned for you. I'm sure everyone is - they're all really nice people. I'm concerned for you. What... what is going on?"

Dropspindle's ears dropped but her eyes remained fixed outside the window.

"Droppers? Talk to me. I care about what is going on for you." Her ears had flicked, but she had otherwise not responded. "Droppers?"

"STOP CALLING ME THAT!" Her full attention was now on Calloway. "My name is 'Dropspindle'! I don't like that... that... shortened... twisted version... of my name. Not even in Humanese!"

"Nickname. Humans like to use nicknames. They're endearing."

"Shall I call you 'Cal' then? Would you like that?" She seemed to be trying to insult him.

"The captain does. A lot of people do. You're about the only person who ever calls me 'Calloway'. Everybody calls me 'Cal'. It was a little strange at first, to tell you the truth." Calloway sat on the back edge of the bed, not oppressively close to the over-padded divan on which Dropspindle had been watching smog.

"Well, 'Cal'..." Dropspindle returned her gaze to the window. "Go back to your fine new friends and enjoy your dinner. Tell the captain that I am sorry." She lowered her head, her ears flat. "And ask him for a cabin of your own, while you are about it."

"Last night you begged to share a cabin! You didn't want to face sleeping alone!"

"Well... that was last night. Goodbye, Cal." She raised her head to stare out the window again, but her ears remained flat. "Thanks for... for... oh, Mulligatawny! Just go."

"Dropspindle." Calloway adjusted his seat on the bed, so that he was more comfortable. "Pushing me away isn't going to push what happened away too. Yeah, it was hard. It was scary. It was really difficult for me, too! Do you think I go around fighting for my life every day? That's why I needed your help - I was in way over my head! This was just as strange for me as it was for you! My life is normally just collecting boring samples from rock and studying them under a microscope. The closest I've ever been to car chases and scary stuff is movies and hologames. Do you think I liked any of this?"

Dropspindle sat silently for a few moments, then turned her head to face Calloway. "Yes. I think you did enjoy it. You were grinning the whole time like it was a birthday party! And all of that cackling about how funny it was that those men crashed into that tree - and all those compliments about how clever I was to... to... anyway. Yes. I think you liked it. I think you loved it."

Calloway brushed lint off of the fairly fancy new clothing that captain Cudicini had given him. He sighed. "Yeah. Okay. A bit. It was fun, in a way. It was exciting... and parts were funny. They were!" Dropspindle's expression did not agree. "But that's just human! If you watch holos about the Plains Indians, or the American nationals at war, and the Three Kingdoms or any stuff like that, it's pretty clear that people get hyped up when they fight! They laugh and smile and even compliment each other on how well they battled! And Wuxia films - all that magical martial arts, all that 'Your Kung Fu is weak, old man!' - all that stuff! It's human nature! But just because I laughed, just because I grinned or enjoyed parts of it doesn't mean I LIKED it!"

Dropdspindle stared. Then she shook her head. "You are truly crazy. Your entire species really is insane. Of course I'd go nuts being around you! They warned me. I can't say I wasn't warned." She seemed on the verge of tears.

Calloway moved closer. "It's not insanity. Well... maybe it is. But it's necessary. For living here. On earth."

Dropspindle sniffed.

"A lot of humans think ponies are insane. Did you know that? All that trust, all that sharing - they look at that and think 'Jesus, an entire race of marks ready to be fleeced!' To a lot of humans, the way you are adapted to your world is just as nuts as what you see when you look at us. We're each adapted to the world we have to live in. Do Newfoals act like humans after they're Converted?"

"Not entirely."

"No, they don't! Because Conversion adapts them to survive in your world. They'd never make it two days here if it weren't that there are so many of them staying earthside, and that the Blackmesh are sworn to protect them. Some don't survive. I've never understood why they hang back and make gardens in the cities. That's pretty crazy right there. They should just go to Equestria, where it's safe! Huh. I guess Newfoals do kind of act like humans after all.

"But that's not my point. My point is that they stop being violent, they start trusting and sharing just like any pony does. Because they are ponies now. I guess what I am saying is... a fish, I've never seen one, but I've seen pictures - a fish can't live on land. They lived in water, right? You have fish in your universe, right? And birds - you have those, I know you have those - they can't live under water because they would drown! Fish are adapted to water, and birds are adapted to air! Dropspindle... if a bird got tossed into the sea, it would have to learn to swim, or it would die, wouldn't it? But it would never be a fish. No matter how good at swimming it became, a fish would always just rip right past it, do circles around it."

Dropspindle's ears raised slightly.

"But that bird, once it gets to shore, it can shake itself off. It can... do whatever birds do to get dry. And then it would fly again, wouldn't it? It would just up and fly! And the fact that it had to learn how to swim, in order to not drown and die, that doesn't change the fact it is a bird, that fact doesn't make it a fish. It just means that the bird was clever enough to not die."

Calloway moved even closer. He was close enough now to touch Dropspindle, but he did not try. "Too many Newfoals die here. On earth. And natives too. You hear about incidents all the time on the net. Those ponies didn't adapt - hell, even the ones that used to be humans mess up and go down the wrong alley or trust the wrong human. They didn't re-adapt to the world they chose to stay in. So they died. But you are alive. You made it. I made it - because of you! I could not have survived any of this without your help, Dropspindle. Because you found a way to adapt - to earth - because you did that, we are both alive! I owe you my life, Dropspindle - and not just because you got me out of that cave. Because you were a bird that learned how to swim."

Tears were rolling down Dropspindle's muzzle.

"Dropspindle... Dropspindle..." Calloway wrapped his arms around the shaking mare. "Shhh... it'll be okay. It will. It will be okay. One day. I know this because humans have to deal with this stuff all the time. Any creature here, on earth, has to deal with stuff like this. And that's how I know. That's how I know that one day, both of us, you and me together, we'll get past this. It may not feel like it now - it never does, this soon. But it happens. I promise you, you can heal even from earth. Because I've done just that, several times already in my life."

Dropspindle hugged Calloway back. She was overly strong, and it hurt a bit, but Calloway endured. "Luna didn't come!"

Calloway lay his head - carefully - over hers, avoiding her horn. "No, not in person. But she sent help! You can't argue that isn't so, because the captain said so, by name! She remembered you, and she helped you." He lifted his head and pulled away so he could look her in the eyes. "Dropspindle - humans would kill just to believe that some all-powerful being cared even a tiny bit about them. Actually, they have. Throughout history. But you... just because she didn't appear in person on a shining cloud or whatever - she still sent this ship, she sent captain Cudicini here, she probably 'did' stuff all through our trip for all we know. I think... I think it's a little ungrateful of you to want more than what she was willing and able to give. She has her own life, she has the fate of two universes to care about - yet she still took time to send help for you. Show a little gratitude, okay? I feel nothing but!"

Dropspindle's eyes widened. "You do, don't you? You really do!"

"Of course I do! Christ, Dropspindle... I feel total gratitude for you saving me, and Luna saving you... and me by proxy. Why wouldn't I? Think about it, Dropspindle - on this world, as harsh as you've just seen it can be, wouldn't gratitude be a big survival advantage? Wouldn't it be a useful adaptation? If someone helps you, if they are nice to you here... it means a lot! It isn't just expected, here. It's a gift, it's special just to be treated with respect! If you are going to swim with us fish here, learn that lesson. Learn gratitude for every little kindness. Because here, they are rare. I... I wanna say something here, but... but..."

"But what?" The two were still holding each other, arms and forelegs on each other's shoulder and waist.

"But... I figure you might get upset. So understand, I'm taking a risk here."

"Alright... Calloway."

"I'm... actually... I'm a little upset with you for being so angry with your princesses. To me, having lived on earth my whole life, it seems, well, spoiled, frankly. Privileged. And I suppose it is, because your world is different, and you are used to a different 'normal' than I am but... from where I am, on this world, what you see as being snubbed, I can only see as being blessed. Hell - more than blessed, straight up singled out for special treatment with all the trimmings!" Calloway pressed his forehead gently against the part of her poll just under her horn. He could feel her horn pressing against the top of his skull. "It's going to get better, and you will be okay one day. But part of that is you're gonna hafta learn one more swimming stroke and let go of being mad at Luna. And Celestia, too. And this world as well. Let all of that go. Do it for you, not them. You have to let this stuff go, for your own sake. That's how it works."

They sat there, on bed and divan, awkwardly embracing, for some time.

"Calloway?"

"Yes?"

"Don't go ask for another cabin. I don't... I..."

"I understand. I'll stay. Actually, I've gotten really used to curling up with you, too. It would feel... lonely, now, I think."

"Yes! That's it exactly!"

"Do you want to go back to dinner?" Calloway could still taste the incredible eggplant dish, thanks to a little bit he found stuck near his back molar. God, they ate well on this ship.

"I think dinner would be over by now." Dropspindle wiped at her face with one hoof, the other still around Kotani. "Sorry."

"No, I'm sorry. For putting you through all of this."

"Ponies... help."

"Yeah. They do. They absolutely do."

"And this... is our special bar. We have all the amenities. A changing room that can be hosed down - you would not believe some of the things we carry in our bodies - a fine selection of just about ever variant ever produced. And some curios that are my private pleasure." Bertrand Cudicini brought down a box from where it had been locked onto the shelves. He placed it on the curving nightclub-styled bar and pressed several active surface releases. Inside was an oversized glassine egg filled with a curious reddish-purple swirl that churned and roiled like a storm.

"P.E.R. 'Area Of Improvement' nanofluidic gas grenade. Creates a surprisingly large, stable cloud that acts as a semi-rigid foam. Anyone within the region becomes a pony within ten minutes. Half the Conversion time of the government standard potion."

Calloway had heard many stories of the PER. "Are you...?"

Cudicini laughed. "No, no... no PER here. And no HLF either. It's just a collector's piece. I have come to enjoy the possession of rare and strange objects. They possess great mystery and wonder to them, I think. It's quite something to get to see, is it not?"

"I... guess so. I've seen news stories showing the aftermath of this very thing. Crowds of freshly made Newfoals, all shrouded in a cloud that just sits there, as if it were almost solid." Calloway reached for the egg, but Bertrand stopped him.

"It's better not to handle it. Don't want any accidents."

Calloway pulled his hand back. Cudicini relocked the egg box and returned it to the shelf. "Now, my fine friend, here is a bit of an antique... if four years can be considered ancient. Considering how fast things are changing - for all of us - perhaps four years is an eternity now!"

The captain donned thick gloves and unstrapped a metal case from the shelves and brought it down to the countertop. He unclamped some simple, mechanical locks - not a single active surface to be seen. The case opened, and the inside revealed a stoppered Erlenmeyer covered in government seals. A tag hung from a strap, covered with numbers and letters. The contents of the bottle were translucent red.

"This, my good doctor Kotani, is from one of the very first runs of ponification serum ever made. Often referred to as the 'cherry' potion, because of the flavoring used, and the color of course, this has a peculiar history and effect. It is rumored that this batch was created from templates provided by the original six ambassadors, all mares. And the result of taking it is always, and without exception, the creation of an Equestrian mare. Fancy being a mare, doctor?" Cudicini was not laughing, he had not meant his words as a joke. The offer was genuine, and without judgement.

Calloway shuddered. "Uh... no! No... no thank you!" Involutarily, he stepped back, as if facing some dangerous creature.

The captain laughed heartily as he replaced the rare, collectable ponification serum. "I have learned not to assume in these matters. Do not be alarmed. No cherry for you!"

Bertrand went to what appeared to be a large keg ensconced within a complex arrangement of protective roll bars. The container had many government stamps and seals, and an active print card that hung from a strap. The card constantly scrolled a projection of information and symbols drawn in animated ink upon its surface. Red warnings were followed by reams of text crawling across the thin, dangling rectangle.

"Official Worldgovernment 6.03 Ponification Transformation Serum. A 'Pony Keg' as the humorless bastards in the government named it - they honestly didn't even get their own, unintentional joke. Is that the government or what?" Cudicini seemed particularly jolly today. From his remarkable collection, it seemed that ponification fascinated him at some level. "This is the latest stuff - well, next to the latest. I hear that they've upped to 6.04 this month, but honestly - I can't imagine what the difference would even be. This is the proper purple, the most technologically advanced transformation serum in existence. It isn't fancy - it doesn't make standing clouds, or possess a time delayed effect, or crawl about in blobs seeking out targets - no. This is just good old, government approved, Bureau standard potion."

Calloway stared at the keg. He watched the active card print and dissolve ink as it displayed images and text.

Cudicini placed a hand on Calloway's shoulder. "So, Cal, good doctor Kotani - shall I be your bartender today and pour you a glass?"

Calloway remembered his promise, back in the Big Truck, driving that terrible road between life and death. A promise to the godlike princesses of another universe. "Yes sir. Please. It's been a thirsty several thousand miles."

Captain Cudicini roared at that and slapped Calloway on the back. "Well said, well said!" He reached under the back of the bar counter and pulled out a small device. "Genetic scanner. Allergenotype - for the anesthesia." Calloway extended his arm and let the captain scan him. "Type C, coming up. You're a rare man, doctor Kotani!" Cudicini motioned towards the compact, spotlessly white room across from the bar. "Please step into the changing room and undress completely - don't be modest, you were nearly so when we first met! I will bring you your drink shortly."

Calloway left the captain to his measuring and mixing and entered the blank room. It resembled a large, cubical shower stall. The corners were curved and everything was smooth and sterile looking. There were several grated drains in the floor, and places for water to shoot down from the ceiling, but no handles or valves to control it. Inset into one wall was a large covered slot with biohazard symbols and text on it.

"That is where the 'tech goes, when it leaves your body. Permatech, softech, people forget how many augmentations and devices they have inside. Scanners, trackers, fillings, phones... heart valves, artificial livers and kidneys, lenses in the eyes, ports in the skull. Sometimes I think, if the ponies hadn't come, and if we hadn't killed our planet so early on, we would have ended up machine men entirely. Perhaps with a human heart in a little box, just to pretend we were alive." Bertrand wore nanoprene hospital gloves and carried a beautiful silver tray. On the tray was a crystal goblet. Inside the goblet swirled a thick, viscous 'wine'. The bright purple liquid sparkled with little lights and glints of metallic silver.

Kotani thought he could almost hear faint, distant, curious music coming from the glass as the captain handed it to him.

"There are rules, Cal. Sit down, there. Like that. Good! Now, when you drink, drink it all in one gulp if you can - the wine of Equestria is not to be sipped, but chugged with a full heart. Then I will take your goblet, and you will fall over and begin your transformation. You must do this correctly - all at once. The goal is to get it inside you as rapidly as possible. Do you understand?" Bertrand seemed very concerned.

"I... I understand, Betrand." Calloway stared at the goblet and its contents. This was it. This was his last moment wearing human flesh. The last seconds of fingers and toes, of naked skin, of violence and sin. Here was a cup of absolution, of escape from the fate of all apes. If only there was such a cup for Dropspindle, to wash away her sorrows and conflict. In this moment, it did seem that humanity was getting the better deal, and that the natives of Equestria were only suffering because of it.

Calloway resolved to try, as a stallion, to balance the equation. If he could. Perhaps there was little he could do, but whatever could be done, he would do for her. If Dropspindle had not come into his cave, he would have died playing Slaughterstrike... and it wasn't even the best game in the series.

"Kanpai!" Calloway downed the goblet in a constant gulping swallow. He burped. Then he fell over.

Bertrand Cudicini bent over and picked up the goblet where it had rolled to. He stepped back, out of the changing room, and set the goblet into a biohazard container. Then he returned to the doorway of the changing room. Already Calloway had turned shock white, the color of bloodless dough, his skin and organs beginning to move and squirm. His eyes were shut tight, the lids growing together and sealing. Cudicini gave a grand salute, as if to an officer.

All of Calloway's messy raven hair fell out. Then something made of metal and neoplastic and ceramics began to push steadily out of the swelling dough that had been his right arm. More devices followed, from various parts of his body. Dutifully, captain Cudicini picked each bit of detritus up with his gloved hands and dropped them into the changing room biohazard slot, before stepping back to the doorway. One day, every member of his crew, and then he himself, would visit the bar. One day. But not today, not just yet.

22. What's Up in the Attic

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Twenty Two: What's Up in the Attic

Deep inside the body of Dr. Calloway Kotani, six unique species of nanomachines began a complex ballet of tasks. The tiny mechanisms had been designed and crafted by very clever men and women, working in association with powerful artificial intelligences. The microscopic robots were the size of viruses, yet even more complex. They were all powered by the thaumatic energies of Equestria, condensed into liquid form.

Because they were driven by extropic forces, they generated no heat as they tirelessly worked. They had many jobs to do, and many carefully calculated stages to achieve before Kotani was transformed from a human into an Equestrian. It was a process so refined now, that it only took twenty minutes from start to conclusion.

At first the meso-scale mechanisms swam through Calloway's blood and lymph and reproduced using available materials. They preferentially sought out fat, tumor cells, and arterial plaque, as well as the heavy metals trapped throughout his tissues thanks to a life drenched in industrial wastes. They were shy about borrowing from implanted technology, however. This had been done to prevent them cannibalizing medical implants that might be required for a subject to live. Within the first twenty-seven seconds the micro-machines had doubled their number. They would continue to increase their population as needs demanded.

One type of the nanomachines specialized in deconstruction. The bones of a human and a pony were virtually identical. To those human scientists and engineers who had created the microscopic robots, it had been revealed that the solar diarch of Equestria had used earthly life, long, long ago, as a template for the creatures of her own world. The connections between Equestria and Mundus ran deep and wide. For Calloway's arms to become forelegs - for example - certain bones would need to be dramatically shortened, while others would require expansion and lengthening.

The machines set to work. Kotani's humerus was attacked by the tiny deconstructor machines. They acted as a mechanical acid - polyatomic ions and free protons tore calcium carbonate apart, dissolving bone at a frightening rate. The shrunken, collapsed bones were pulled together by strong, encapsulating protein strands woven by a second species of nanomachine dedicated to building an internal infrastructure that guarded, and shaped, the developing pony body.

Constructor nanomechanisms took over then, and rebuilt the bones, making them strong and sturdy. Before the protein weavers dismantled their binding strands, they repaired cartilage and tendon while yet another breed of nanomachine worked on muscle and vein, connective tissue, and the rearrangement of fat. Soon, Calloway had a short humerus, a modified ulna - shaped for greater leverage - and robust cannons and pasterns where before fragile metacarpus and phalanges had acted as central finger bones.

The teams of men and women that had labored to find a way to turn a human into an Equestrian had found their great work simplified by the basic similarities between all earthly mammals. All were built on the same plan, all used the same blueprint, and Celestia had borrowed that blueprint for her own universe. Internally, his organs were adapted and remolded, and a multitude of functional improvements were implemented. Celestia had tinkered with the blueprints she had borrowed from earth, and intelligently optimized the haphazard efforts of terrestrial natural selection. During the time that his organs were repaired and improved, Calloway's neck also lengthened, and his coccyx expanded and grew out to become the tail that it had once been, millions of years ago.

After ten minutes, the process of Kotani's Conversion was half completed. Two mechanical breeds of the six began to rapidly collect within his brain and spinal column. They had a daunting, but not impossible task: to reconfigure Calloway's brain while retaining his identity and memories. As his skull was dissolved, enlarged, reshaped, and hardened once again, his brain began a rapid series of expansions and reductions in both its mass and structure. He would soon be smarter, but also vastly less aggressive. He would gain a nearly infinite Dunbar's number - everypony would be family at some level to him, and no life would be worthless or expendable ever again. His capacity to care and nurture was enhanced, while his selfishness and territoriality was reduced. But above all, the wiring of the hunter-gatherer that had evolved to raid and rape and kill and fight was remade into the configuration of the herd animal designed by the princesses of Equestria to be a integral part of the workings of Equestrian reality itself.

Gone forever was the killer ape, and in its place was the gentle pony temperament established.

By fifteen minutes, Calloway's body was nearly complete, with the exaggerated fingernails that were hooves sprouting from the bulbs of his nearly finished legs. Everything that happened to his body was complex, but except for the extraversal source of power that the tiny laborers used, explainable within physical terms. Kotani's species change was less a magical transformation than a clever rearrangement of the puzzle pieces of the machinery of his body. Everything of him that was visible to the human eye was still essentially governed by terrestrial physical laws.

But what was not visible to the human eye became rich, and strange, and otherworldly. That same energy which drove the microscopic devices also possessed its own, private agenda. More than mere driving power, it could and had been programmed. The power source of the nanobots was itself the Equestrian equivalent of them. Spells woven upon spells, following logical steps to an alien conclusion. Beneath the veil of reality, as the human's tiny machines moved atoms and molecules and spun proteins and lipids, the thaumatic engine that powered them altered those same atoms into their cubical Equestrian equivalents. Calloway Kotani was not merely rebuilt, he was, in the end, converted into unearthly substance. E-Matter, Equestrian atoms, molecules and forces. But there was still more - beneath the veil, Calloway's entire pattern, body and brain, was duplicated in arcane form. Superimposed upon his physicality was now a superphysical thaumatic couplement, a spectral self that could not be broken nor dissolved by time. In human cultural terms, he was manufactured a real and immortal soul.

By the time twenty minutes were up, and Calloway was completely a pony, by the time that the tiny nanomachines broke themselves down into simple sugars within his blood, he was not merely ponified - his very substance and self had become literally otherworldly.

Calloway had bought a special adapter for his MicroSony Mindset. It attached to the top and back of the helmet-like peripheral, and interfaced directly with the implant in his brain through inductance. He had always disliked cranial jacks and ports - they were difficult to clean. Inductance happened through the skin, without the need of portholes in his skin. Nothing to get infected, nothing to have to clean out. Calloway liked things simple and easy.

He enjoyed a lot of games - exploration games, puzzle games, and role-playing worlds especially. But time and again he returned to Slaughterstrike. First person shooters were team sports, they were exciting, they had a curious rhythm to them - a flow of advance and retreat - that struck some emotional chord in him. He overlooked the bloodshed - his enjoyment came from teamwork. He liked to feel victorious of course, to see anyone capture a location, or take the other team's McGuffin and dash home to base. It did not have to be he himself doing such grand tasks - he simply liked believing that the shared victory would not have happened without him. He liked to feel as if he mattered to others.

He often played those roles in the game that suited this ethic. Medic was a favorite, healing and buffing teammates. He also enjoyed playing Engineer, repairing vehicles, fixing bases, getting generators or vehicles up just in time. But sometimes, when he was angry at his job, or lonely, or upset in general, then he would pick a front line assault class and try to frag with the best of them.

But he was never the best of them - he just no longer had the microsecond mental responses of the younger players. Still, when he got a clever snipe, or managed a rampage through two or three opponents in succession, it got the mad out of his heart, and made him feel powerful. He never felt powerful in real life.

Calloway worked on the catapult. He was playing engineer in the second of Slaughterstrike's five standard time zones. The first was referred to by most players as 'Caveman'. The ancient realm unrealistically paired early, hairy hominids with dinosaurs. The engineer role within that time zone involved hosing the beasts down to cool their 'overheat' status with tiny mammoths that squirted cool water. The weapons were clubs, rocks, and spears.

The 'Medieval' zone featured knights, crossbows, and castles - and the catapult that Calloway was working on. Next came 'WW2' with the usual tanks and guns, after that 'Modern' - a favorite with the Blackmesh wannabes. It covered the unification of the globe during the aftermath of the Austerity Wars. Lastly the futuristic 'Mechfight', which offered various sizes of giant robots and superscience force fields and beams.

In every case, Calloway's usual playstyle involved hanging back and watering the dinos, putting a wrench to the tanks, or using repair beams on the mechs. Or, like today, hammering away on the mobile catapults, to keep them working.

The aggressive punks always lone-wolfed ahead to engage the enemy right away, seldom working as a team. Calloway hung back, found their burning wrecks - or panting dinos - and set to work fixing them up. As soon as he was done, some trigger-pumping jerk would jump in or on, and rush back into the fray without so much as a thank you.

But at the end of the match, Calloway got his reward. It was easy to see, from the game stats, that his actions often turned the tide of battle. That final push, or game winning cap could not have been done without a lot of tanks, and usually Calloway alone was responsible for the fact any tanks remained at all. Slaughterstrike was not generous with respawns - it was part of its charm - and the loss of equipment and men held real weight. Not that most players understood this as they ran forward and got themselves shot up. There had been more than one match where Calloway had found himself the last surviving member of his team, spoilt for choice with a fleet of tanks, dinos, mechs or whatever - and one last lone-wolf enemy to hunt down for victory.

Sadly, despite having all the big toys, he was usually shanked in the back by the younger, faster player.

Calloway hammered away at the catapult, whistling a merry tune. He'd always liked the Medieval zone. Wide, green fields usually surrounded the castle bases, and trees towered to the sky. On the times he himself joined the actual fighting, he enjoyed lurking in the forests and running out for a quick frag before ducking back in to hide. Thick bushes were his best friends in Medieval Slaughterstrike. His score was not high, but he usually survived all the way to the final tally. He hated getting fragged, and being forced to watch like a ghost, while those living finished the match.

The catapult was almost finished. Just a few more blows with the hammer, and the last cracks in the busted wheels would vanish.

* SPECIAL DROP! *

A wooden crate fell from the blue sky, drifting down on a suspiciously da Vinci-looking screw propeller. That was new. In all the time he had played Slaughterstrike, through all five iterations, he'd never seen a da Vinci crate.

Calloway left the unfinished repair of the catapult and walked to the drop. The crate was an elaborately carved wooden cube almost as tall as he was. A single blow from his hammer broke the crate open. Inside was a very strange new weapon.

It wasn't a sword, or a club, or a crossbow. It wasn't even his favorite, the multi-purpose Halberd. If anything, it looked like... a gun. It had a stock, a grip, and a trigger, but extending from it was a long, white, spiral cone that shimmered with subtle rainbow colors. Calloway picked up the bizarre weapon drop. On the side of the stock, the strange device was labeled 'Alicornitron Ray'. That was just plain wrong! By the name and shape, it should have come from a later time zone. The Mech realm. But the construction was polished wood, brass, and... a horn. Had they decided to introduce fantasy elements - magic - into Slaughterstrike? That was something fans had been demanding for some time. Fireballs, and a wizard class were popular suggestions in the Slaughterstrike forums.

He felt the weight and heft of the strange weapon. It seemed legit. He pointed it at a nearby tree and pulled the trigger. A rainbow beam arced out, showering the tree in chatoyant ribbons of arcane force. "Whoa!"

The tree did not explode. Neither did it burn. Instead... it looked significantly more beautiful. It wasn't just an upgrade in texture resolution - the entire design and look of the tree was new - and much more pleasing. Instead of a dark, dreary tree, the bright, colorful replacement felt cheery and inviting. It was a tree from a different sort of game entirely. Calloway walked to the tree and touched it. The intracranial haptic feedback system informed him that somehow the tree even felt better.

It was then that he heard the stomping rush and jangle of a soldier covered in chainmail. The player was not part of his team, and by the morning star spinning over the running warrior's head, he meant to do Calloway some harm. The magical ray gun was in his hands. Calloway aimed and fired.

The ribbons of color wrapped the enemy soldier in brilliant colors, covering him completely like a mummy. The enwrapped shape began to shrink and alter its contours. The spectral energies faded. In the place of the fearsome rushing player with murder on his mind, stood a cute powder-blue pegasus stallion dressed in tailored medieval garb. The little pony looked up at Calloway, blinked several times, and smiled.

"Hello! Wanna be friends?"

Calloway stepped back, astonished. Had the anomaly in the Pacific been included within the game? Did Slaughterstrike actually have ponies in it now? "Um... hello? Are... are you okay?"

The tunic-wearing pony nodded. "Yes! I feel great - thanks for asking." The pegasus stallion looked back at the castle behind the catapult depot. "You know... I like playing engineer too, usually. I was thinking - I can lift things, even push them through the sky. Weight almost doesn't matter. I'm thinking we could rebuild that castle a bit. I think we could make it... at least ten, maybe twenty percent cooler looking. If we worked together." The pegasus smiled up at Calloway.

"W-what about the battle? The other members of your team?" More and more of this was not making sense. "You're supposed to be on the other team!"

The newly made stallion laughed. "I'm not on any team, right now. I'm just playing. For fun! So, you wanna fight, or you wanna build and play?"

Calloway looked back at the still unrepaired catapult. "Actually... every time I've ever played this game, I always wanted to be able to enjoy the castle, explore the lands beyond... and yeah, that castle could be a lot neater looking. Fighting was fun, for a while... but it gets repetitive, you know? Bang bang, you're dead, over and over and over."

"Well, then!" The dark gray maned pegasus smiled. "Let's get you ready to play then!"

"Ready? To play?" Calloway looked around. He couldn't hear the distant sounds of battle anymore. Only birds and running water met his ears. It was very soothing, and strangely musical.

"Well, you're not going to be much help as an armored warrior. You've got the special pick-up in your hands. Turn it around, give yourself a blast, and let's get busy building a better castle!"

"I can change class with this?" Calloway held the Alicornitron Ray up to the level of his eyes and studied its construction. It was remarkably detailed for such a whimsical game asset.

The blue and gray pegasus laughed again. "Yeah. That's what it does. It frees you from teams, gives you a new class, and buffs you with magic powers. Oh, infinite lives, too. It's a bit of a cheat, I suppose, but it's also a lot more fun than the base game. You see those hills?"

Calloway looked beyond the castle to the mysterious hills in the distance. He'd always wanted to see what was beyond them. Once, he had even tried, but he had left the Battle Zone and was informed that if he didn't return to the fight, he would be killed as a deserter. He returned as the seconds counted down. Just in time. "Yeah?"

"No zone limit. No skybox. No invisible walls. If you don't want to play with the castle, we could just go exploring. For as long as you want."

"Seriously? This cheat does that? How? Some kind of procedural add-on to the code? How does this even..."

"Something like that." The pegasus stallion swished his tail. "So... what will it be? Back to the stabbing or hooves into the horizon?"

"Hooves." Calloway turned the strange ray gun around and pointed it at his heart. "Does it hurt?"

The former enemy warrior shook his pony head. "Only if you can't forgive yourself. Pro-tip: just let everything before go. You couldn't help it, you were bound by the rules of the game. It's a new game now. New rules. Be a foal. Start fresh. Respawn."

Calloway nodded. As he pulled the trigger, as the rainbow cascade of light surrounded him, the little stallion watching him also began to change. He grew massively in height, blanching to snow-pure white. His gray mane flared up into a rippling field, the colors of the dawn. His tunic turned to a gold peytral, set with a violet jewel. Calloway managed one word, as he shrank and changed - "Celestia!"

The solar diarch, the sun princess of all Equestria winked at him with a sly grin. "Gotcha."

The Newfoal on the bed was laughing even before he was fully awake. He had begun laughing in his sleep, and his own guffaws had brought him out of his apparently hilarious dreams.

"Calloway?" Dropspindle lay near the brand new stallion. She had waited patiently despite her worries about his long unconsciousness, for nearly an hour. Captain Cudicini had explained to her that it took time for the anesthesia to wear off, that he knew the timing well - but she would have none of it. She would not leave Calloway alone for a moment. Not even a banana smoothie on the cloud deck could tempt her. Dropdpindle had heard a great deal about the effort to save the humans, about the Bureaus and Conversion and Newfoals. But she had never actually met a Newfoal. The magnitude of what had just happened to Calloway had finally hit her. The naked ape she had traveled thousands of kilometers with was no longer naked. And, more to the point, he was no longer an ape.

Calloway slowly opened his brand new eyes. Colors leapt at him, some he had no names for. His ears twitched with his sudden emotion, and they became his single focus of interest for a few moments. Gradually it dawned on him that he had a tail, and he spent some quality time swishing and flopping it about on the bed. He couldn't help but giggle - he felt wonderful!

"Calloway!" Dropspindle wanted to crawl forward and nuzzle him, pony to pony, but she felt frozen to the spot. It was so incredibly strange - even for a mare raised in a universe of magic and wonder. This astonishing total bodily transformation was new and incredible to her. She felt confused and unsure how to act. Would he want to be treated as a pony now, or would he still think of himself as human? What exactly was he, really? Was it still even Calloway at all? He looked utterly different. Everything she had been taught about Newfoals somehow didn't seem to matter now that she was confronted with the reality right in front of her.

Calloway drowsily focused his large purple eyes on his adventuring companion. "Dropspindle? Oh! That's weird!"

Dropspindle crawled slightly closer. "What?"

"My mouth! My teeth are all different... and my voice! Oh, that's... well, actually, it still sounds like me, just younger. Huh. 'Three hundred more birthdays' - that's what it says on the Bureau posters, right? I guess getting youth... re-youthed... de-aged? I guess that's part of... Dropspindle!"

"Yes?" She wormed herself a little closer still, fascinated by this strange new creature before her, yet still somehow the same old creature too.

"I'm not too young, am I? I'm not a foal or anything, right?"

Dropspindle chuckled. "No. A little younger than me, but not by much. You're not a foal or colt. You're an adult. Young, but adult."

"This is all so weird!" Calloway spent some time marveling at his forehooves, turning them this way and that, studying them with the intensity of the scientist he was. "The really odd thing is that all of this maps. I don't feel like this new body is wrong, or that anything is out of place. I guess my internal homunculus... pon...unculus? Is that even a word? I guess it was altered to fit my new form. Good thing, actually! It would pretty much suck to be stuck in a pony body and hate it." He rolled onto his side, toward Dropspindle, then continued onto his back. Dropspindle found herself pressed up against the powder-blue stallion.

"Hey! Look! I'm blue! Like you... sort of. A lighter shade. Huh! Like in my dream." Calloway's new muzzle frowned. "Ouch... something... something hurts on my... back?" He rolled rapidly away from Dropspindle, back onto his stomach. "Will you look at these!"

Calloway extended his wings, noticing them fully for the first time. "I've got... wings! What the pastry? They hurt if you roll on them wrong! I need to remember that. I... sweet Luna but I feel giddy! Am I giddy? Because I feel giddy. Really super, duper giddy. I think."

"Bertrand... told me that when you woke up, you'd be... silly... for a while. Maybe even an entire day. He called it 'conversion euphoria'. He said it's normal. It happens because so much has changed, and because, apparently, being human hurts somehow, and becoming a pony is a relief. And there are... brain chemicals, too." Dropspindle felt mesmerized by how Calloway seemed delighted with the smallest things about his new body - things she had always taken entirely for granted. He couldn't seem to get enough of playing with his ears and tail. He even licked his hooves and laughed, as if it were the most wonderful thing in all the world.

"Hoo! I... I do feel good. I feel really, really good. No pain anywhere - bagels for breakfast, I feel fresh and new and every joint, every muscle... I feel like I was just born! I guess I am new. New... foal. Newfoal. Ahh! It makes sense now. It's hard to express how giggly I feel, Dropspindle. It's not like any drug, it's definitely not like booze. I... it's... I just feel really super healthy, super genki, you know? And content, and glad, and happy and... oh, the colors and especially the smells..." Calloway sniffed briefly. "Lemon. You ate a lemon pastry and... drank hibiscus tea. Not that long ago. My Celestia... I'm smelling that through your abdomen! WOW!"

He had flipped around and had his muzzle pressed into Dropspindle's side now. He was sniffing and even gave a lick, as if he expected to taste her snack through her somehow.

"CALLOWAY!" Dropspindle couldn't help but giggle, his sniffing nose tickled and the entire thing was just so ridiculous. "What are... you really are silly, aren't you?"

Calloway had already given up on Dropspindle's belly and was now trying to sniff - and taste - his own wings. He looked up, his pinions in his mouth. "Mfph?"

Dropspindle laughed. "Now stop that - you'll get your feathers all droopy and you won't like that. Goodness... it really is like taking care of a foal with you, isn't it? There - stretch them out, now give them a flap. That's it. Do that a few times and they'll dry off." Dropspindle sniffed. "You smell better, I have to say that. As an ape you were pretty stinky, honestly. I can see why they call you 'skunk apes'."

"Who calls humans that?" Calloway was trying to catch his tail in his teeth. So far, his tail was winning.

"Some ponies that have visited earth and returned. We had to talk with them as part of the preparation class. I probably should have paid more attention." For a moment, Dropspindle looked sad. Then her ears raised up again. "But... maybe it was worth it, to see this. Your... joy... it's kind of catching, somehow. Careful! Not so hard..."

"Ow!"

"Well, what do you expect? That's your own tail! You can't bite it like that and expect it not to hurt!"

"Logged and noted. 'Don't bite tail hard'. There's so much to learn!"

Dropspindle laughed again. "You are one seriously goofy pony, Calloway."

"You didn't even get to see him have his First Meal As A Pony? Oh, Bertie, sweet Bertand... that is simply a moment not to be missed! In every Bureau, literally everywhere, it's become a universal tradition! Because it's so much fun! That first meal, with new pony senses - well, you've certainly heard me go on about my time and... oh, I wish you'd taken a holo of the entire thing!"

Captain Bertrand Cudicini sat at the expansive, antique desk inside his private suite. On the desk was an elaborately carved chest, about the size of a shoebox, and like the ancient desk, it was made of wood. Unlike the desk, the chest was made of wood from another cosmos - it was on loan from the nocturnal princess herself. Within it was an ornate, bejewled oval mirror, which could be set upright within a slot shaped into the velvet that lined the box.

The mirror radiated so much thaumatic energy, that merely to set it into position, Cudicini had to use a pair of special tongs - he dared not handle the artifact directly.

Its primary purpose - and the reason for his possession of it - was that the mirror allowed direct communication with the princess, should that be necessary. And it had been necessary, four times thus far. The mirror did not reflect what was around it - rather it only reflected images from other universes. It could make a link between itself and any mirror of any kind, anywhere, so long as it was outside the universe in which it existed.

Cudicini had been granted the additional privilege of using it for his own purpose, as a special kindness for his help in the past. That purpose was to speak with, and see, his lover and best friend - who now resided behind the Barrier, within Equestria. "I did not want to interrupt them in any way, love. Both of them have been through the most terrible of adventures, as I described. I am not in any way exaggerating about how emotionally damaged the mare is - she is deeply wounded. I believe that her salvation is to be found in nurturing that silly little man - stallion, now. I got the idea from you, beloved - what you told me last time about how Equestrians are defined by the way they care for others." Bertrand sipped some of the wine he had taken to his room. "But I can assure you the platter I had Ernesto deliver was a smorgasbord of Equestrian delights beyond compare. No Bureau could ever match it!"

"Now I'm jealous! Pout!" There was a giggle from the mirror. "You made Ernie play maid? Really?"

Bertand laughed. "Actually, he was eager to do it. He wanted to see the new doctor Kotani very much, for some reason. Perhaps I will be losing my navigator and his family before our mission is complete. He's been moving in the direction of going pony for some time now."

The Equestrian on the other end of the transversal mirror looked sad. "I wish that Ernie would lose you instead. I want you to come home. To me. If Ernesto takes the purple... join him? I miss you. I miss you every day!"

Bertrand studied his hands. Then he looked back up to the universe defying artifact. "And I miss you. But I have to see this through, at least a little longer - besides, our princess has come to depend on me! I am one of her many secret hooves, a member of her spectral forces, hiding in the shadows of midnight!"

"Ooh! I liked that one!" The pony grinned. "Still, think about it, please? There can't be much of that wretched globe left, can there? I was glad to get to leave it. I'll never understand what you are trying to find flying around back there."

Betrand sighed and blew a kiss to the stallion of his dreams inside the mirror. "Myself, I think. Love, I'm trying to understand what it meant to have been a man, before I join you, and become a stallion. And I need to see this world, truly see it, before I leave it behind. I don't want to spend the next three centuries feeling like I left something undone, something I can never do. And I truly am helping the princess, in my little way. Be patient, my light. This can only last two more years at the very most. 'There Is No Year Eight!'"

"Just get here before the Barrier gets you. That's all I ask."

"I will. I promise. Earth may ride me currently, but it is not my true rider."

Through the mirror that connected two universes, a golden stallion smirked and laughed. "You are such a naughty little pony!"

23. The Very Best Home for Me

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Twenty Three: The Very Best Home for Me

"Are those bananas?" Mrs. Wojciehowicz was puzzled by the new Mark on Caraway's flank.

"No, heh, no. They are sort of the same shape, I admit." Caraway swiffed his tail, slapping his own hocks. He couldn't help it, it just felt so good. "They're seeds, Missus Wojciehowicz. Caraway seeds. Like my name."

"I've never heard of 'Care-a-way'. Is that something from Equestria?" Mrs. Wojciehowicz was very talkative. Inside, she was still an eighty-seven year old widow, lonely and forgotten. Like many of the aged recently Converted, she had not yet fully grasped what her new body represented - that, in pony terms - she was just barely an adult, fresh with youth. "My old Stan would know, if he were still around. Knew everything about everything, that stallion."

Caraway noted the unconscious use of 'stallion' instead of 'man'. He was still cataloging and studying the subtle changes to his own brain, and the brains of others. He might have a new life free from fussing about oil and rocks, but there was still a scientist in him. His own recent Conversion had become a source of fascination to him. "It must be now, considering the world, but 'Caraway' was actually native to earth."

Most Equestrian things had originally come from earth. Celestia had just improved and updated them. Equestria was Earth 2.0 - that thought made Caraway chuckle.

"Mr. Caraway?" The formerly old Mrs. Wojciehowicz wondered if there had been a joke she had missed. She had long ago gotten used to missing a lot of what was going on around her, yet still felt vaguely annoyed about it.

"Just a stray, goofy thought. I'm a very silly pony sometimes, pay me no mind. Caraway was a plant that was very popular in ancient times. They used the seeds for medicine and flavoring. There were even myths about it. But it's also similar to my human name. I've been a bit clever with my name, I think, and I suspect my Butt Mark is a seal of approval with..."

"PLEASE TAKE YOUR SEATS, EVERYPONY. WE WILL LIFT OFF IN TEN MINUTES. THANK YOU!"

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Wojciehowicz... time to take our seats. But thank you for chatting with me, you've been very kind." Caraway the pegasus gave a clumsy little bow and turned to make his way through the crowded pegabus to his seat.

"What a nice young stallion." Mrs. Wojciehowicz waddled unnecessarily back to her assigned seat. She was no longer old, or frail, or fat, but it would take her brain some time to finally grasp these facts. For now, in her mind, she was still the elderly widow that no one wanted to deal with. She was grateful for any simple kindness.

Caraway made his way back to his seat with Dropspindle. The trip to the toilet on the immense Super Pegabus was thankfully uneventful. Back on the Lady Venice, before they had been dropped off in Port Elizabeth on the tip of the southern Afrizone, Dropspindle had made sure that Caraway was potty trained before they went to Equestria. Potty trained, basic hygiene trained, essential manners for table and social gatherings, and even how to greet the princesses should he meet them. The process of teaching Caraway how to be a pony had seemed to do wonders for Dropspindle.

"No... problems?" Dropspindle set her head forward until Caraway remembered to give her a quick nuzzle and grooming in greeting. He was still having trouble with some of the basic Equestrian social behaviors, thus Dropspindle was taking every chance to reinforce them.

"'Raise your tail up, high like a flag, and there'll be no need for mop or for rag' - I remember! I did well. You can be proud of me. No mess. Not even on the newly young old mare I met on the way back!"

"I wondered what took you so long." Dropspindle scootched closer to the window, to allow Caraway to clumsily arrange himself on the heavily padded flightbench. She used her horn to buckle him down after he had his legs comfortably folded under his body.

"Still getting used to this. Thank you." He tested his buckles. He was held snug - if there was any turbulence, he would not end up tossed about the cabin. "Nice old mare, but the lonely type. Still hasn't gotten used to being young again. She even walks like she's old, out of habit. The brain is a curious thing."

"What I'm curious about is when this bus is finally going to take off. This is the second time they've called us to buckle in." Dropspindle looked out the window at the flashing lights of the Blackmesh urban assault vehicles surrounding the landing strip.

"It's too many humans, Dropspindle. They're all crushing into South Africa. The native population is pretty upset about it. Basically, every human left is trying to come here, and the crowding is terrible. So is the issue of keeping them all fed and watered - the Blackmesh are at their wits end. From what Mrs. Wojciehowicz told me, the problem is that they are spilling past the barriers onto the airfield. Even pegasai need some room to get up to speed - at least for something this big."

The Super Pegabus was as enormous as a human airship, though not close to the class represented by the Lady Venice. The entire, pressurized mega-carriage was pulled by thirty-one pegasai, all bottled up in individual pressure suits. Caraway had wanted to get to talk with even one of them - about their job, about their suits, about just being a pegasus with a job - but he hadn't gotten to. They'd been hustled quickly onto the pegabus in part for their own safety.

The humans streaming into South Africa from all over the remaining half of the globe were not, by and large, pony-positive people. They were still holding out for an alternative solution, or for a miracle from some god or secret society. They had dragged their feet on getting hooves for so long it had become habit... or doctrine. Some simply could not face making such a momentous choice. Many were opposed, sometimes violently, to Equestria, the Worldgovernment of Man, and ponies all. There had been incidents. There had been atrocities. Everything was rapidly spiraling out of control. Only the courageous men and women of the Blackmesh prevented open rioting and mass slaughter.

Outside the flying bus, Dropspindle noticed something happening. Shrieks and crying filled the cabin as Newfoal after Newfoal turned from the windows and buried their heads in the ponies sitting next to them. Dropspindle watched, calmly noting "Looks like the humans breached the fence. They're rushing us. The Blackmesh are doing their best, but I think there's too many for them."

Calloway shuddered and found himself glad that he couldn't see out the window. He noted that inside himself, remade and renewed, he was definitely in the 'hide your eyes' contingent. He forced himself, out of stubborn pride, to remain with head upright and not buried in Dropspindle's fur. "T-the Blackmesh are the best the world has. H-has ever had. They'll think of something."

"BUCKLE UP PONIES! EMERGENCY TAKE OFF IN FIVE, FOUR, THREE..."

The large team sent every erg of thaumatic force they could through their harnesses and by way of them, into the pegabus as a whole. Caraway felt a ripple of force run through him, which made him shiver with something not unlike delight. Magic felt good, somehow.

The Super Pegabus, all three levels of it, began to move both forward and vertically. The thirty-one suited pegasai coordinated through their wired pressure helmets to pull the bus in such a way as to mostly avoid the screaming, angry humans rushing the field to smash the bus apart with whatever they could find at hand. Several humans landed blows to the rear of the vehicle as it left the tarmac. It sounded like hail on the back of the bus.

Louder spanging sounds came as bullets hit the underside of the bus. Many Newfoal passengers, raised on action holos, understood what the sounds meant, and cried or shouted in fear of the bus being shot at. Calloway lifted his head from Dropspindle's barrel and watched the pony attendants searching for holes in the bus - or in the passengers. After some time it was decided that the pegabus was intact and unhulled, and that they would make for near orbit and then Equestria.

The thirty-one pulled the strange, pressurized super-carriage higher and higher. In a flash they were through the global smog layer. Equestria was vast, but no longer just a wall. As they flew higher and higher still, the great sphere that intersected the earth began to show its curvature. It looked like a great pearl of a moon, frozen in mid-collision with the smog-shrouded corpse of the world. The sun was setting by the time they passed the last of the noctilucent clouds at seventy-six kilometers high. The hemorrhoid sky ached around them as they passed into darkest blue, traversing into black. Tiny fairy-leaves of frost formed on the edges of the windows, and on the helmets of the pegasai. Still they climbed.

"Dropspindle!"

"What is it Calloway? Caraway!" The unicorn mare grimaced. "Why did you have to pick such a similar name? I was expecting some sort of crazy, koo-koo Newfoal name. Sorry. What?"

"Let me see!"

"Huh?"

Caraway struggled to try to unbuckle his straps with his teeth. He was having no success. "I have to see! I've never been this high up! Not ever, not even on the Government's creditstick! This is space - or as close to it as I'll ever get. Lemmy see! Please! I've got to see this!"

Dropspindle fought with herself, inside. Always obey the rules. Follow directions and everything will be alright. But this was still earth. This was still... "Alright! But be quick about it!" She used all five of her telekinetic fields to unbuckle Caraway.

He pushed himself partially upright, half laying across Dropspindle in order to press his muzzle against the window. The sight that greeted him was dazzling.

The curve of the earth, gray and shrouded, but with a bluish-purple translucent skin that faded into the black. The blue layer of atmosphere turned brilliant laser red as the curve swept into the remnants of sunset. The equally vast curve of the Great Barrier reflected the earth, the stars and the sunset of the earth, making for a double sunset spread across two worlds. Away from the glaring brilliance of the reflected light, Caraway could see through the Barrier, into Equestria from on high. There, beyond the domain wall that separated two entire universes, he watched the sun rise from Equestrian night. As the sun set on earth, another sun dawned beyond the Great Barrier.

When he finally realized he had stopped bothering to breath from the wonder of it all, Caraway took several deep lungfuls and whispered "Thank you."

"It's okay. But get back to your bench! Quickly, before somepony comes!" Dropspindle put up with the indignity of Caraway's clumsy hooves as he clambered off of her and back to his previous position. She got the last of the straps buckled down as one of the attendants passed by.

"Everything alright here?"

"Fine, fine!"

"Hows... things with you? There? Good?"

The attendant puzzled at their sheepish grins, but affirmed that all was well, and that they would be passing through the Barrier into Equestria soon.

Dropspindle and Caraway giggled conspiratorially to themselves after she moved on.

"Another adventure survived!" Caraway was beyond glad. He had always wanted to see space, and even if it was only just the bare edge, he had still seen stars, shining in the black. "Does Equestria... does home..." It was still very strange to think of the alien universe as such "... have, well, space?"

Dropspindle had to think a moment, to recall how strange and different Caraway's universe was from her own. "Not... not like you mean. I think. This side... the stars are... suns, right? Only very far away. And it all just goes on forever, right?"

Caraway nodded. "Yes. As far as we know. Well, not forever. Maybe. Maybe forever."

"Then no. Not like that." Dropspindle looked out at where earth's atmosphere met vacuum. "Nothing at all like that." She shuddered. The emptiness of it all, the vast, vacant black horror of what the stars meant here ate at her soul. It was terrifying. "In Equestria, the stars are living beings. Luna made them, and they play on the dome of the sky. Sometimes they put on shows, I assume at her command. They aren't like those..." She nodded with her head out the window. "... not tiny and scary and far away. Our stars - your stars - are friendly, and close, and bright. They even helped our princess, once. Maybe many times - history wasn't my best subject."

Caraway sighed. "The stars I am going to sound wonderful... but..." He glanced at the window by Dropspindle. "...the stars we leave are scary, yes, and far away - very far, very, very far. But they are also beacons of mystery and awe, sparkling in the night. I will always miss them. Can't help it really. Too much sci-fi, I guess."

"Sigh-fye?"

"Science fiction. Slang term for it. Too much space ships and aliens from other worlds." Caraway began to laugh.

"What?" Dropspindle was baffled at the stallion's sudden switch from melancholy to laughter.

"You know, it never hit me, truly hit me, until this moment. I can't believe it, but it never really hit me!"

"What? I don't understand!"

Calloway leaned his muzzle close to Dropspindle. "I used to watch these shows, right? Had space captains meeting strange, alien races from other worlds. Loved those shows with a passion. And here you are!"

"I still don't understand."

"You're a native. Of Equestria. You were born there. You grew up there."

"Yes. Caraway..."

"No, hear me out. From my perspective - though I didn't truly, emotionally grasp it until now - from my perspective, well, you are... a strange alien from another world! I got my fantasy, and I didn't even know it at the time!"

Dropspindle worked to process the meaning of Caraway's statement. "You were... humans are... strange aliens to us!"

Caraway shook his head. "But did you have an entire literature, an entire subculture built up about how cool it would be to meet aliens and be their friends or space battles or..." The latter bit, ravening lasers against impenetrable shields was no longer enjoyable to him. Fighting wasn't fun, now. Ponies would get hurt. "Well, anyway, you don't have sci-fi, do you? But we did. And it was my fantasy - to boldly go where no pony has gone before! To seek out strange new worlds and strange new civilizations! And, well, I did. And here I am."

"Caraway?" Dropspindle had noted yet another sweeping change of emotion in the stallion.

"Now I am the alien. And I belong to the strange new civilization on the strange new world. I am Spock."

This set Caraway laughing again, and while it was merry enough, Dropspindle had no idea what had made him so jolly.

"I don't know where I'll go. I suppose we'll all get relocated out in those... Exponential? Exponential Lands. That was it. Exponential Lands. Apparently they're vast, a brave new frontier and all that. Probably have us starting new towns out there. Settlers. The Oregon Trail, only without all the dysentery. I hope, anyway." Caraway turned from the earthpony mare who had been chatting him up across the aisle. "Dropspindle? There's no dysentery in Equestria, right?"

Dropspindle, who had been trying very hard to Not Listen One Bit, startled and tried equally hard to Not Give Away That She Had. "Uhh... Oh? What was that again?"

"Dysentery. Doesn't exist in Equestria, right?"

Dropspindle had never heard of that pastry before. "I don't think so. But surely somepony might remember the recipe. You could probably learn to make it, if you tried."

Caraway, the mare, and several other Newfoals who had been listening in, all laughed for a long time. "Oh! Good Luna, I hope not!"

"That's one recipe I hope nopony remembers!" A large light-orange unicorn stallion on the bench to the fore laughed heartily.

"What did I say?" Dropspindle felt strangely alienated, despite being entirely among ponies. They all knew and shared so much in common that she knew nothing about. For the first time in her life, she felt like somehow, impossibly, she was a stranger among her own kind.

Caraway nuzzled her. "It's a disease. Earth disease. Really bad. Humans died from it a lot when they settled newly conquered lands." His ears dropped. Every time he talked about earth, it really did seem to have something bad or cruel in it. He wouldn't have thought twice about such things, before.

"Oh. I see. I thought it was a cake or something." Dropspindle's ears were low too, and she seemed to be shrinking inside herself, away from all the ponies around her. Even Caraway.

"It'll be okay, soon, Dropspindle." Caraway stroked her withers with a hoof. "We'll pass through the Barrier in just a few minutes. And then we'll land, and we'll all get shipped off somewhere. You'll be home, with ponies you know, probably by the end of the day. No more Newfoals saying weird things... or reminding you of... back there. Give it time. It'll all be just a bad dream that happened a long time ago. You'll see."

"No! It won't!" Dropspindle's ears were flat now, and her pupils small. "What we've been through... that's never going to go away. Maybe you're right that I'll feel better someday, but... I've seen things, done things... who can I ever talk to about any of this? Ever? I'll be alone! I'm not the same, I'll never completely fit in, not ever again! How can I? And I need to talk, I need to be able to talk about these experiences, but..."

Dropspindle turned her head and stared at her own hooves.

"Well, then, let's talk. You have me at least until we land and disembark." Caraway groomed Dropspindle's mane just as she had taught him. He nibbled at the hairs along her withers with a gentle and massaging chewing motion. "I know I put you through a lot, and I truly appreciate that you risked your life - and your sanity - to rescue me. I am always willing to be there for you. Always. Well - as long as they'll let me, of course."

Newfoals had to be shipped out and resettled in the Exponential Lands. There was simply no other option. Before Equestria's collision with earthly spacetime, it was a relatively tiny, pocket universe. The entire, collective, native pony population was not more than two hundred thousand. Dragons added only ten thousand more. Griffons were an undetermined number, but it was known to be not large. They did not reproduce often, or in large clutches. The best estimate was around two thousand Griffons. All of the original Equestrian spacetime could fit within a region barely the size of the earth-moon system itself.

Now, after processing terrestrial space, time, matter and energy, Equestria could be measured in light years. One guess made by the Worldgovernment scientific research committee on Equestria had placed the new Equestria at about a parsec in diameter. No one earthside knew the truth, of course, but it was probably not a bad estimate.

It was looking as if somewhere between ten and twelve of the earth's nineteen billion would ultimately be rescued from the demise of the planet. Just barely in time, with only three generations left before the total failure of the biosphere. Before there was no more oxygen in the atmosphere left to breathe. Before the planet finished dying. Equestria had almost arrived too late. Any later and there would have been no need for Bureaus at all.

But ten to twelve billion was an unthinkable population to Equestria - and it had quickly become apparent that Celestia had not been prepared for such a vast herd of humans. Without the sudden appearance of the miraculous and ever-increasing expansion of the Exponential Lands, there would literally have been no room aboard lifeboat Equestria for the teeming hordes of humanity. Somehow, the princesses had made space.

Possibly literally.

"Maybe... maybe you don't have to... go. To the Exponentials. If you don't want to, of course. Maybe you do. They say it's quite an adventure, to found your own village." Dropspindle barely whispered the words.

"I've had enough of adventures for three lifetimes. I'm not looking forward to being shipped out. I've just been trying to be grateful for my new life. What, is there some special appeals process or something? Can I petition the crown to stay in proper Equestria? What do I have to do, Dropspindle?"

Dropspindle was quiet for some time. She glanced out at the stars of horror, the distant suns of earth's universe. They were almost to the Barrier. In moments, friendly stars would replace them. She swallowed. "You... you could stay... with me. There's a provision for... for Newfoals as... family members."

"But... you don't... you said you don't even like me. Has that changed? Because I'm a pony now?"

Dropspindle shook her head. Then she nodded, slightly. "A little. You're better as a pony. I've enjoyed you... learning how to... be your new self. But, the fact is... well... you're still you. You haven't changed that much. We don't have a lot in common, your sense of humor often offends me. You're not... a bad pony, and you clearly care, deeply, but... somehow... you sort of annoy me."

"Then... I don't understand. It sounded like you were proposing back there or something. Unless Equestrian families are different than I think."

"No... not entirely. No. Families are families, Equestria or Earth." Dropspindle stared hard at Caraway. The look in her eyes was decidedly, almost disturbingly, Not Pony. "We could register and pretend we were mated. We could get married, and legally you could stay. As long as nopony found out the truth, it would work. You would be a Central Equestrian Citizen by marriage, and not have to go to the Exponentials." She sounded almost feverish. "You could get to see Canterlot - our Capitol! We could visit Manehattan and the Great Salt Lick. You could experience things almost no Newfoal ever gets to see! And... and it would be safe, and secure, and you would be in the very heart of Equestria, right near the princesses and everything interesting! You might even get to meet a dragon! They visit!"

"Dropspindle... out with it. What's your game here?" Caraway gave her the side-eye.

"Alright. I don't particularly feel attracted to you, I mostly just tolerate you. Sometimes, you're fun. And you worked really hard to save me right back, the whole trip. You can be nice, sometimes. But I'm never going to love you, and we're never going to be best friends forever." Dropspindle stared at her hooves intently. Then she raised her head and locked eyes once more. "I need you, Caraway. You're the only other pony I can talk to about any of what we went through! I feel completely alone around ponies now! I felt strange around the pegabus team, and they're all natives! Like me! I felt like I was the stranger, I felt like I was a Newfoal around them!"

Caraway laughed.

"None of this is the least bit funny! See, that's what I'm talking about!"

"Let me get this straight, Dropspindle..."

Just then, the pegabus passed through the Great Barrier of Equestria. It happened swiftly, instantly, because of their tremendous speed. The forces of the Barrier flashed along the length of the Super Pegabus and the next moment, tingling, everypony found themselves within another universe entirely.

Caraway could feel it in his very bones. Magic. Home. This was the cosmos his body, mind, and soul was constructed for. This was the water that the fish of his existence swam in. Equestria permeated his being. The universe, all of reality, was no longer terrifying, or empty, or cold.

"Wow. Just... wow." Caraway wiped his eyes with his pasterns and sniffed. The feeling was overwhelming. He was not alone - around him some Newfoal passengers openly wept.

He regained his composure. "Okay. You want to trap me in a loveless marriage, likely for the next three centuries - otherwise it wouldn't look very good to those in charge - so that you can have somepony on tap, at your convenience, to confide in and comfort you when you are feeling freaked out about your time on earth. That's basically the plan, correct?"

Dropspindle looked shocked. Horrified. "W-when you put it like that...!"

Caraway grinned. "Sure! You got a deal, wifey-wife! I'm all in. Do we need a certificate, or what?"

Dropspindle blinked. Several times. "What? I don't... what the broth... huh?"

Caraway dropped his full-power grin down to smile levels. "I've done a little reading. I'm not totally ignorant about Equestria. Mostly, but not totally. I definitely looked up our... shall we say... relationship... practices."

Dropspindle's eyes widened, and she looked vaguely sick.

"Heh, yeah, that. But also the social stuff. I'm a cad, but a cultured one." Caraway grinned fully once more, for a moment. "Look, here's my amendment to this little deal. I know traditional Equestrian families are little herds all their own. You don't do nuclear families very often. So, someday, if I find a mare I fancy, that I truly love, and who loves me back, well, you have to agree that she gets to marry in. You can do the same, of course. Mare or stallion - I never did hear your preference. Actually, it doesn't matter in the least! Especially for us! How about it - you get what you need, I get what I need, and in the end, everypony happy, everypony loved - by somepony or another - and it all works out!"

Dropspindle closed her mouth. "I guess... that works..."

"Listen, Dropspindle - we're comrades in legs. Arms. Muffin this pony brain of mine. Comrades In Arms. It's an earth thing. Ponies who struggle together develop a bond. It's a bond that goes beyond friendship or love - it's a family bond, of a sort. We have that. We'll always have that, because we kept each other alive when the whole world - two worlds - were against us! This is a very traditional, human thing. And it's okay. It's better than okay. It's a good thing. It's one good thing from my old world, so you can feel glad of it.

"I would love to do and see all the things you suggested. Of course I would! But... that's not why I'm willing to do this. It's part of it, don't get me wrong - but it's not the whole reason. I do like you, even if that will never be reciprocated. But most of all, I share what you feel. I feel the same way. Who in parfait would I be able to talk to about our experiences either? Most humans don't go through what we have, so even other Newfoals would just goggle at me! We're comrades in arms, and that makes us friends. Sort of. Come on - we're friends, of a sort, admit it!"

Dropspindle could not suppress the smile. It took command of her muzzle despite her best effort to suppress it. "Yeah... I guess. Of a sort."

"Well, then, pally-pal, dearest chum, buddy of buddies..."

"Don't push it, Newfoal."

Caraway chuckled. "You really have gone human, haven't you?"

Dropspindle instantly deflated.

"Hey - I didn't mean it that way. I was just joking back at you.... oh, hey, come here. Come on. I'm sorry." Caraway embraced Dropspindle. Interestingly, she reciprocated. "We'll get hitched, and we'll make it work. We'll find partners we love and who love us in return. We'll live in Equestria proper, and we'll be there for each other, when we get blue about... ancient troubles. One big family. And who knows, maybe you'll even make a decent pony you can like outta me. Stranger things have happened!"

Dropspindle laughed at that. "Yeah. Much stranger."

Caraway looked out at what he could see through the window. The sky was a different shade from earth, almost a teal color. It was relentlessly clean and pure. The clouds were different - more swirly than lumpen. The sun here didn't hurt his eyes. It was an entirely new universe to explore. And three hundred years to learn, and grow, and love and be loved within.

"Caraway?"

"Yeah?"

"Maybe I do like you. A little."

"A little is enough."

The End

The Lost In The Herd Series:
One: The Big Respawn,
Two: Euphrosyne Unchained,
Three: Letters From Home,
Four: Teacup, Down On The Farm

The Conversion Bureau Novels:
27 Ounces: A story of eight and one half ponies
The Taste Of Grass
The Conversion Bureau: Code Majeste
The Conversion Bureau: The 800 Year Promise
The Conversion Bureau: Going Pony
The Reasonably Adamant Down With Celestia Newfoal Society!
Recombinant 63: A Conversion Bureau Story
HUMAN in Equestria: A Conversion Bureau Story
The PER: Michelson and Morely
Little Blue Cat
Cross The Amazon
Adrift Off Fiddler's Green: The Final Conversion Bureau Story

The Short Stories:
Her Last Possession
The Conversion Bureau: PER Equitum
The Conversion Bureau: Brand New Universe
Tales Of Los Pegasus
The Poly Little Pony

The very first and original
Conversion Bureau Group
archives only the best Three Rules Compatible stories!

Optimalverse Works:
Friendship Is Optimal: Caelum Est Conterrens
Leftovers: A Friendship Is Optimal Story
IMPLACABLE
My Life In Fimbria

Injectorverse Works:
I.D. - That Indestructible Something

The More Conventional Fanfics:
The Ice Cream Pony Summer
Around The Bend

PRIDE related works:
Transspecieality

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