Chapter 28: Backstage Pass

Evening came, and with it an unexpected buzz on Dr. Hardy's door panel.

"Pinkie?" Dr. Hardy said, holding his apartment door open. "I'm a bit surprised."

"I decided to come after all!" Pinkie chirped and bounced through the opening, smiling widely. "You don't mind, do you?"

"Not at all. I meant it when I said come by anytime." He gestured towards the couch somewhat awkwardly. It was not often that he had guests. "Please, ah, make yourself comfortable." He closed the door behind her, and it beeped softly as it locked.

Pinkie bounced and hummed her way to the couch, moving as effortlessly as a ballerina.

He observed the pony for a moment, a thoughtful expression on his face. She sprang into the air and landed like a feather on the couch, delicate and almost weightless. A moment later she sank into the cushions and purred like a cat.

"Oooohhh soooft!"

Dr. Hardy's face broke into a small smile at her casual denial of physics. Her playful antics were indeed infectious, and everything seemed brighter in her presence. He walked towards the kitchen divider counter to make some tea.

She leaned over the coffee table. "What's this thing?"

Dr. Hardy glanced up briefly. "It's a Rubik's cube. It's a kind of puzzle."

Pinkie shifted and picked up the colorful cube in her hooves. "It's all... mixedy-up. What do I do with it?"

"You can spin the small cubes, and try to make all the sides one color."

He poured some distilled water into a pot, watching as Pinkie tentatively rotated the sides of the cube.

"Hmmm."

Suddenly she began spinning the cube so fast it turned into a whirl of colors. Her hooves blurred, and the cube whirred between them, a flickering gray sphere moving so quickly that the individual features were indecipherable.

"And there and there and there there there there there!"

She dropped the cube back onto the table with a clunk, each side solidly a different color.

"It's kind of fun... I guess. But not as much fun as watching you stand there with your mouth open!"

Dr. Hardy blinked. "Pinkie, can you tell me how you did that?"

"I just made the colors match!" Pinkie smiled widely, bobbing her head.

"I can see that. You've never touched a Rubik's cube before, have you?"

"Noooope! Why do you think I asked you what it was?"

He opened his mouth to reply just as the teapot began whistling. "Um, just a moment. Do you prefer green tea, or Earl Grey?"

"Anything that's sweet!"

He pulled out two teacups and setting them on a tray next to a bowl of sugar and a small creamer pitcher full of milk He dropped two Earl Grey bags into the teacups and covered them with the hot water. Then he grabbed several red velvet cupcakes he had nicked from the cafeteria and placed them on the tray. Carrying the tray in one hand, he picked up a chair from the dinner table and brought it near the couch, positioning it near Pinkie so they could talk comfortably.

Pinkie took a look at the cupcakes and immediately engulfed one with her tongue, chewed twice and swallowed, her face filled with evident delight.

"Do you have red velvet cupcakes in Equestria?"

"We have EVERY kind of cupcake in Equestria! And more! I can make THE BEST cupcakes!"

"I'm going to have to cross over and visit sometime." He leaned back, and allowed a serious look to come over his face. "Although I am greatly enjoying your company, I must ask you some important questions."

Pinkie looked at him, and some of her brightness seemed to fade. "I know. That's why I came here. You want to ask about me. How I can do things like-"

She was gone.

"THIS, right?"

Dr. Hardy gasped as her hoof touched his shoulder from behind. He turned towards her, and chuckled nervously. "Yes. I know that a Unicorn or an Alicorn can teleport using magic, but what you do is different, isn't it? You have no magic horn."

Pinkie returned to her spot on the couch, and for the first time in days, there was a tinge of seriousness in her face. "I go around you." Her voice was lower than normal, the squeakiness gone.

"What?"

"I go. Where the things aren't. Where you aren't."

"I'm sorry, I don't exactly understand. I see when Twilight teleports, there is a flash of light. She can explain it in a way that makes sense, as much as magical madness ever makes sense. But you seem to simply disappear. And you defy gravity."

Pinkie Pie leaned forward, her mane starting to droop. "Doc? Nobody ever asks me about this. I never talk about this. It is hard to explain, and if I think about it too much, it's not fun.".

She paused for a moment, and he waited. When she spoke her voice was slow and controlled.

"I will talk about this now because it's important." She paused again, and Hardy waited. "Have you been to a live play before?"

He nodded.

"Think for a moment that you and I, and everyone, are actors on the stage. The things on the stage look real from the front, right? But, if you step back, they are actually flat. If you walk off the stage and into the shadows, you can step around the flat plants, and the flat buildings, and the people because they only see what they are supposed to see."

Gary said nothing, staring at her, his mind working.

"But on the backside, every house is flat, with boards holding it up. There are ropes and curtains to the sides, and above. And I can walk around behind the things, where I can't be seen. Off the set, on the sides of the stage, through the catwalks, through the trap doors."

"What's it like? In the wings?" Gary asked softly.

"It's... dim. Gray. Quiet, all the sounds go away, like you closed a door. And there are so many ways you could go. I can't describe that part, it's not like anything you could ever see, and if you could see it, you wouldn't understand it."

"How far can you go? Does it go to other places?"

"There are a lot of things in there, deep in the gray alleys. Things that have fallen off the stage, fallen into places where they cannot be found ever again. Forgotten things that will never be remembered. Whole cities, if you go far enough into the depths of the gray. Maybe even whole worlds, planets, stars... I don't know Doc, it's more than I can explain. But it's dangerous, there is too much, so much. If you lose sight of the now, you will almost certainly never find your way back and you will be alone forever in the forgotten places."

Dr. Hardy sat in silence for a moment, pondering. Then his gaze shifted back up to her.

"Have you ever seen anything... Alive?"

Pinkie's mane went completely limp, and a haunted look passed into her eyes, totally different from the way she had looked before. Her features were drawn, tense, a terrible memory eating her life and happiness from the inside out.

"I... I..." She was shaking like a leaf.

Dr. Hardy was surprised to find that he had goose-pimples himself. On impulse, he moved to the couch and sat next to her, wrapping his arms around her body in a defensive gesture.

She said nothing, but her trembling eased slightly.

After a moment she took a deep breath and spoke again, barely above a whisper. "The other day, in the conference room, the conversation triggered my memories of past events, things I had tried to forget. I ran. But I'm done running now."

He leaned close to hear her low tones.

"I went too far once. I was curious, brave, determined to investigate. I was stupid. I traveled far into the grayness, farther than I had ever imagined possible. In the convoluted sub-levels of eternity, I found a city I had never seen or heard of before. It was big, so big! I couldn't see the end of it. It stretched on forever, and somehow it also it curved up into the sky. It was above and below, all around, and I think it held a sun in the center, a star that pulsed feebly, a very old, dying star. And the silence! It was so quiet. It's always quiet over there, no sound. But this was different, it was an evil, brooding quiet. The quiet wanted to hurt me, the city wanted to steal my soul. It loomed over me, and in that moment I was so terrified, so alone, I cried. I remember the tears running down my muzzle, and dropping to the ground in the silence so complete, that I could hear them patter like raindrops. But I didn't know how to go back, I had made the mistake of going too far, and my fear and loneliness increased until I thought I would suffocate. And when I was there, confused and lost and falling slowly into panic, I eventually looked straight up into the sky, and there, suspended in the cosmos, I saw the worst possible thing, mind-devouring nightmare that stays with me always. When I looked up, I saw something moving out beyond the world, beyond everything, outside reality itself. It was mostly hidden in the gray, I don't know how far away. It could have been billions of miles away. Light years. But what I could see was the most horrible thing I have ever seen in my entire life, and if I even think about how it looked, my head starts to crunch up inside."

She clung to him, her unseeing eyes a million miles away, back in that otherworld city from her past, drowning in a memory that consumed her soul.

"And then I realized IT saw me too."

Tears squeezed out of her eyes, and she shivered uncontrollably.

"That was the single most terrifying moment of my life, when I saw IT, and IT saw me. I don't know what happened after that. I only remember screaming and running, my mind teetering on the edge of madness forever and ever, screaming and running in circles while IT gazed upon me and laughed in the voice of every serpent of Earth hissing at once, until suddenly I ran around a corner and into Ponyville Town Square."

She was quite for a moment, then she whispered. "It was days before the sun felt warm to me again."

They were both silent for a time, then she spoke almost inaudibly. "I remember one thing from that experience. A name."

Dr. Hardy held his breath.

"Shub-Niggurath."

Cold horror washed over him at the words. I was right. I know that cursed name.

"And Doc..." Her voice and body shook. "I couldn't tell the others. I don't know why. I couldn't... even with all this going on... I'm sorry I dumped this on you."

He forced a smile, and it came out looking grim. "What are friends for, Pinkie?"

She smiled hesitantly back at him.

"Pinkie, when you know these things, in the back of your mind... Are you just pretending to be happy every day? Is it all an act? How do you continue with this hanging over your head?"

She smiled again, more genuinely this time. "I am happy because I choose to be happy. Every day is a gift, and I will not waste it worrying about the things I cannot change! And the best feeling to push away fear, is the feeling of friendship."

Gary found himself starting to smile too, hugging her warm, fuzzy body in his arms. Suddenly he noticed that she was hugging him back.

"Pinkie?"

Her smile was very close now. How did she get in my lap?

"Pinkie what are you doing?"

"I like you, Doc," she purred, the vibration transferring to his chest where she straddled him and pressed against him. "You're nice. Being here with you makes me feel better, like everything's going to be okay."

Her head tilted back, and their mouths touched.

Her hot, sweet breath tasted like bubblegum.

Strangely enough, Dr. Hardy forgot all about the looming creature in the darkness for a while.