Prologue. Luna vs. a Lucid Dreamer (version 2).
Author's Note
In the middle of the story this chapter didn't feel right, so I turned it into a prologue. Enjoy some brutal human-on-alicorn action. (In a completely non-sexual sense 
)
The viewpoint protagonist is introduced in chapter 1. The CMCs appear in chapter 2.
"Calm"'s description isn't set in stone yet. He looks like some well-known stallion. Which one? Suggestions are welcome.
Update 2015-12-26: Hopefully, a better explanation what was Luna doing there.
Prologue. Luna vs. a Lucid Dreamer (version 2).
Princess Luna peered through a window. For some reason this dreamer seemed to focus on inanimate objects much more than on ponies. The building and furniture looked quite solid, while all ponies including the host herself looked like blurry blobs. Of course, a dreamwalker as powerful as Luna could bring them to focus with a bit of concentration, but she didn't want to risk forcing her preconceptions upon this dream. If her ideas were not quite right, at best she'd miss something important, at worst she'd also force the unlucky mare to watch this botched dream. Mare... That reminded her. Twilight wrote that their guest was not a pony, but a lot like a pony. What could she mean? Solving this riddle justified some interference.
Moon princess looked at the most solid of blobs weaving between tables. Under her stare the diffuse blotch quickly solidified into a pony-like shape. Yes, Luna guessed right, the dreamer was a donkey. Just as Twilight described her — beige, with chestnut mane. Hadn't she seen donkeys before to describe one in such vague terms? One thing less to worry about, but it didn't explain the feelings of despair that had attracted Luna's attention yesterday.
In her dream the mare was working as a waitress. Probably this was her workplace before the accident. She wore a long sleek dark blue dress peppered with cyan flowers. The narrow hem almost touched the floor, but the long slits on both sides allowed her shapely legs to move freely. Luna feasted her eyes upon the way the waitress gracefully moved between the tables. The way she swivelled in narrow passages, too narrow for anypony, constantly almost-but-not-quite falling, balancing up to five trays full of plates... This wasn't something the princess saw every year.
This performance was fun and perhaps educational, but Night Princess didn't enter this dream to watch it. She had a foreboding this idyllic place was going to sprout a nightmare strong enough to reach the waking world. Any second now. But where was it hiding?
“We shouldn't waste resources on epoxys!” an elderly stallion shouted behind her. “They don't live long.”
She looked back. A trio of blobs, a bit less transparent than most, was approaching the restaurant.
“Cut most branches? No wonder you find nothing,” his younger-sounding companion said derisively.
“If we keep all the rubbish we get the combinatorial explosion too soon,” the third blob, also young, tried to pacify them. “But he's right. Let's follow several branches a step further. Or two.”
Their conversation made no sense, which was no surprise. But if they were audible, and even possessed some rudimentary personality, they must be important to the dreamer. Perhaps they were the bringers of nightmare.
And the blobs continued to argue:
“Who's gonna sieve them? You?” The old one didn't yield easily.
“Yes, if necessary.” Whoever was going to be sieved, they better beware, for the second voice promised no mercy.
The first blob, whom Luna dubbed “Stubborn” opened the door and entered the restaurant. The second one, “Angry”, followed. Suddenly the third, “Calm” stopped at the threshold blocking the door. He had no face, yet Luna could feel him face her and eye her confusedly.
“What's up? Anything wrong?” Angry hurried back to him.
“No... nothing.” The blob wobbled, which probably was its way of shrugging, and followed Stubborn, who already was settling by a vacant table.
Luna sat in wait by the table too. She could feel Calm shooting glances at her, while Angry did his best to avoid looking in her direction. Stubborn was obliviously lecturing them about something radical. It did not take long until the dreamer approached them. But she didn't come to take their order.
“Your remedy didn't help!” she half-whispered half-shouted accusingly. “The nightmare didn't stop.”
The word “nightmare” put the princess on full alert.
“And my hallucinations keep getting worse.”
The dreamer's attention was solidifying the blobs. They were stretching, taking distinct forms of ponies. Only the forms felt wrong.
“I've told you already, yesterday I felt as if somebody's been secretly watching me all day.”
They were anything, but ponies now. Tall, heavy, menacing. Luna could dispel them easily, but she wanted to see where this was going.
“Well, right now that watcher no longer bothers to hide. Here it is — a small dark horse, right by your table.” The dreamer pointed at Luna.
“How does a horse fit this place?” asked Stubborn. Now he looked like a clothed monkey without a face.
“It's smaller than a regular horse,” the dreamer replied hesitantly. “About as long as your table.”
“Still, it should block passage between tables. Doesn't it?”
“Yes, it does. Haven't you noticed nobody walks over there.”
“Actually, that's right, nobody walked there as long as we were here,” calmly remarked Calm. He now had a monkey face, only with moustache, beard and thick brows. He seemed oddly familiar, as if Luna had met him lately. “How long has it been there?”
This monkey needed a lesson in good manners.
“'Tis impolite to refer to a mare as 'it'...”
“She talks!” Stubborn had just noticed her.
“You!” Angry stood up on his hind legs and stepped toward Luna. “It's been you all this time!”
Luna could swear she never met him before.
“You've been standing behind my back all day, watching me! And yesterday! And all those forty-eight-hour shifts! All those years I thought I was going crazy! What the hell do you want from me?!”
Time to dispel this thing. Luna focused on erasing it from this dream... and nothing happened. She'd done it countless times without effort, yet tonight she failed. The nightmarish creature moved his forelegs with an obvious intent to strangle her. Or maybe sieve, whatever he meant by that.
Luna knew when to retreat. This nightmare was too strong, caught her off guard, but next time she'd be ready. She dodged the creature's grasp and darted away, at the same time exiting the dream. When the world around her already started to fade, she felt being grabbed by her ethereal tail.
Luna phased into the waking world madly galloping and frantically beating her wings. The creature clung to her tail like his life depended on it. She could feel and hear him hitting the furniture, but he never let her go.
“UNHAND US, KNAVE!” she demanded.
If anything, the creature only tightened his grasp. In desperation Luna turned toward a balcony and jumped over the railing. She felt the creature pulling her down, making her strain her wings, but then the weight disappeared. She looked back. The stowaway still held her tail, but now floated in the air like a balloon. A balloon shaped like a fully clothed tailless monkey, with only a head and forehands visible. His angry determination was replaced with a silly grin.
“I crashed out again! It's just a dream!” and his laughter boomed over sleeping Canterlot.
He released her tail, yet continued to fly after her. Then he spread his forelegs like wings and soared upwards, looped around Luna and sped away laughing loudly.
Luna tried to shoot him with magic, but he dodged effortlessly. Night Guard unicorns joined her efforts, but were no more successful than their princess. Flying guards tried to chase him, but he was too fast for them. He dived and rocketed and looped and spun never stopping laughing. For him it was just an easy game. When the sky started to get too crowded, he dived toward the train depot, disappearing under one of the cars.
The guards cordoned off the depot and combed every inch until sunrise, yet found no trace of the intruder. Princess Luna personally oversaw and directed their efforts. They did everything ponyly possible, but the creature eluded them. It did not walk through the cordon, it did not fly away, it did not hide anywhere in the depot, it did not tunnel its way to freedom, it just vanished. Luna tried to enter the same dream again, but by then the waitress has already woken up. Her last hope now was contacting the dreamer for any insights about this nightmare.
Monday. Awake. (Version 2)
Those two came to the restaurant every odd day. One wore a cheap business suit and had immaculate haircut and goatee. Though his unruly thick brows looked kind of out of place. The other one wore plaid shirts and jeans; with his stubble, unkempt hair and bad leg he could impersonate House M.D., if he was somewhat older. “Brows” exhibited a certain... tic commonly associated with first generation antipsychotic drugs. (And don't ask me how do I know that.) “House” seemed to alternate between blank indifference and enraged determination. Other people often dined with them, sometimes as many as four, but those changed. Brows and House appeared every other workday.
I don't know what exactly made me remember them. They were not problematic clients, though they did call a manager a few times. Their tips were OK. Maybe because they constantly argued about something job-related — and I couldn't understand half of it.
That day they brought a friend I haven't seen yet. About twice their age, unruly greying hair and thick moustache fused with sideburns, clean, but worn three-piece suit, and very loud voice. He reminded me of an illustration from some nineteenth century novel. I called him “Braggart”.
I was passing their table, when Braggart was finishing his expressive speech:
“—Your new interface is counter-intuitive! Can you understand it!? Counter-intuitive!”
“The study indicates that the old users need several days to adjust, but by next week their productivity increases,” replied Brows. Calm and collected.
“Hallway usability test?” House interjected. As usual he was wolfing his food seemingly oblivious to everything, yet carried on the conversation as if his mouth wasn't busy.
“Why not?” Braggart obviously liked the idea, whatever “hallway usability” meant. “Excuse me, miss,” he addressed me, “would you like to make some quick money tonight?”
This didn't sound quite right as his friends' faces indicated. Both chuckled.
“What he's trying to say, is that we need an unfamiliar tester for our new programs. ‘The first one we've met in a hallway’ as they say,” House explained.
“Have you ever heard of QWERTY Research?” Braggart asked.
“I've seen the signboards with the name, I know they are somewhere in the med school buildings, but nothing beyond that,” I said.
“Excellent. Can you use a computer?”
“Of course.” I mean, who doesn't these days?
“How familiar with medical laboratory are you?”
“Somewhat familiar.”
“Don't be too modest,” House interjected again. “You are a med school freshman, aren't you? Or what's the right word... freshwoman?..” he trailed off.
“H-how did you know?” I stuttered.
“You started working here in September. Most part-time waiters in this restaurant are from the med school. Your age looks about right. And you still have the youthful enthusiasm of someone who just enrolled.”
“Her previous knowledge would contaminate the experiment, but she'll learn faster. And as a student she won't need the extra paperwork to get a med-school pass. She'll do nicely,” Brows summarized.
“Now that we are in agreement, could you come here before 19:55 tonight?” Braggart gave me a business card with the address. Building 4, sub-basement 1, room 12.
“Wait a minute. Are you going to pay for that? Or do you expect me to work for free?”
He started typing something on his phone calculator, divided several times, then showed me the result.
“Per hour,” he said. “I hope to finish before midnight.”
I made some mental calculations. I made about as much waiting the tables. But this job seemed more interesting.
“Do you have any permanent positions open?”
“We'll see after tonight.”
I took it as a hesitant “no”. Well, something might open later.
* * *
I reached room twelve at ten to eight. There were House with some older woman, their HR. She gave me an NDA to sign, scanned my fingerprints and hurried away. House muttered something about her being late to a soap opera.
Then he led me down the hallway to another room where Braggart and Brows waited. The room was full of old computers — literally, stacks upon stacks of those. I swear, I even saw an ancient all-in-one workstation with a portrait monitor, like in that Billy Idol song video where a woman seduces a nerd. Brows stood up, motioning me to take his place at the workstation, thankfully brand new. I sat down and testing began.
“Are you familiar with magnetic resonance imaging?” House asked.
“Well, I've seen other people working with...”
“Good enough. On the disk C in the folder ‘Official Examples’ backslash ‘MRI’ open any project and turn it into a beautiful report.”
The task proved simple. The images were of high quality, I've seen an associate professor doing something like that, built-in manual was brief, but to the point, and the spectators behind my back kept saying encouraging words like "Yes, this button”. All in all, it took me half an hour to make some poor epileptic's brain look good in a PDF file.
“That's enough," Braggart said. “Now open the server ‘storage458’, folder ‘drug screening’, any file that starts with ‘blood’. And use the built-in spectral database to determine if there are any common narcotics in this urine.”
“Urine,” I said.
“Yes, urine. What's your problem?”
“Why is it called ‘blood’ then?”
“Ah... We... I mislabelled them, and now the automated tests need them under this name. We were kinda in a hurry last year...” This seemed to embarrass him.
“And you've got over four hundred servers organized like that?”
“Nah, we just don't reuse server names. We try to keep everything in one place. Or two. New server goes up, old one goes—” he looked around the room “—to the storage. Come on, open the file.”
There was no “blood” in that folder.
“Try ‘narcotics’ on server 455.”
The server seemed to take forever to reply. I decided to ask a few questions which were bothering me:
“Do you work with stool samples here? Will I need to work with them?” I'm not squeamish, I did not faint in the morgue, but I don't want to touch shit even with a ten-foot spattle, if I can help it. I hope to get over it... someday.
“Yes. In fact—” Braggart started, but House interrupted him:
“No!”
They looked at each other. Then House started speaking quickly, without pauses, not letting Braggart to put in a word:
“We-did-plan-for-you-to-work-with-spectra-from-a-sewer. But! We-don't-work-with-any-substances-ourselves. QWERTY-has-no-labs-of-its-own. Some-of-us-do-have-access-to-labs-elsewhere. But! In-this-building-we-only-work-with-files. On-computers! Tonight you only work with keyboard.”
By then the folder finally opened, but it was empty.
“Did anybody see the e-mail from admins this morning?” Brows said looking from his smartphone. “Disk on 455 got corrupted. They promise to restore the backup by tomorrow evening.”
“I haven't received anything like that,” replied Braggart. “Did they—”
“Spam filter.”
“Try ‘stoned’ folders,” House suggested.
Another long wait. “stoned” on 455 had two “blood” files, but they were corrupted and refused to open. “stoned” on 458 had a single file “Choucas,_put_your_files_here,_dammit.txt”.
“Try ‘CIA poisons fuel’ on server 42,” Brows suggested.
This one opened quickly. There were many “blood” files, but Braggart looked at the screen and shook his head:
“No, that won't do. ‘Two hundred’ series. Their temperature was wrong. Too hot. Let me find the files, or we won't finish 'till morning.”
I vacated the seat, and he sat down.
“It was here, I checked it an hour ago...” He clicked something and we saw a “blue screen of death”. Only it was green on black.
“Yeah, maybe we should replace this card, after all,” House muttered.
“Told ya,” Brows replied.
Braggart pressed “Reset”. For some reason the reboot was taking forever, making him more agitated by the minute. Something else was bothering him too. He sniffed the air, turning in different directions, then faced me.
“Do you smoke?” he asked me accusingly.
Well, I don't really smoke. Not much. Not every month. But today I did make an exception.
“Bad day?” House asked with a hint of sympathy.
“You have no idea.” I mean, failing a midterm is bad and being dumped is bad, but when that happens within ten minutes, you just need something to calm you down.
“Oh, yes, he has,” Brows snickered. “You don't want to meet him when he's depressed. Or smell.”
“Shut. Up. It only happened once.”
“And lasted a month,” Brows sneered.
“Ahem. If you do smoke, you are slowly killing yourself and people subjected to your smoke,” said Braggart. “At least have the decency to chew gum, or something.”
“Don't you have Tic-Tacs?” Brows asked.
Braggart fished a box with two pills out of his pocket and gave it to me.
“Wait!” House shouted, which made me swallow instinctively. The pill slid down my throat, leaving an odd chemical aftertaste in my mouth. Like that time when I was three and tried tasting grandmother's medicines for external use. I think, it was called something like “Dimexide” or “Dimecide”...
“Quick! What was there?”
Braggart was holding another box of Tic-Tacs and a piece of paper.
“Some extasy analogue from today's bust.”
“Did they all live?” asked House.
“Yes. I think.”
“Good!” He grabbed a mug from the desk and dragged me out of the room, then down the hallway to the men's room.
“We occasionally test designer drugs for police,” he explained on the way. “You know, stuff that blows your mind, but is technically legal, because nobody thought to ban it yet.”
“Yes.” I had a rough idea what he was speaking of. “Do you test them on people like me?”
“No, it was an accident. We just do computer modelling. Don't worry, he said nobody died from this one. Or went mad. But gastric lavage is advisable.”
Then he forced me to drink a lot of lukewarm water. I know this stuff should have started affecting me much later, but for some reason I felt myself drifting away. I think he tried to touch my uvula and I bit him. Did he really say all this creepy stuff to help me throw up? I vaguely remember him laundering a handkerchief in the sink then wiping my face with it. Then the three of them half-walked-half-carried me to an office with a couch. Then they started a heated discussion about “head and Fabergé”. It was all hazy and I don't know when did I pass out, what was real and what was a dream.
Author's Note
Don't worry, ponies appear in the next chapter. It's taking much longer than expected, but I hope to finish it in a week.
Update: A year later I'm no closer to finishing chapter 2, but I tried to clarify the testing scene.
