The early fall sun came through my window, and reminded me with a vengeance that I had been sitting on my couch all day. Three years out of school, the economy sucked, and despite pounding the pavement all summer I hadn’t been able to land a job better than putting together pizzas for the local outfit. Oh, I should introduce myself, just so that you can try to google me at some point and come up with a blank.

The name is James Edgar Allens. Yes, I know. Why isn’t it ‘Edgar Allens Poe,’ or something along those lines? Probably because my parents, who could find a straight line in a nest of snakes, ran out of room on my birth certificate form. Or maybe they just couldn’t bring themselves to fully pun the name of their son. I’m nearly twenty-one and since the day I graduated, I’ve tried to make use of what thirteen years of the public education system has put into me. Only to find out that, along with most of my peers, about the only thing most of us were good for was digging ditches or saying, “Do you want fries with that?”

So, driven by the primal need of all young men to prove themselves, I left the home and sleepy town I had grown up in and moved to the big city.

There have to be good, well-paying jobs here, I remember thinking to myself. Well, a year here had taught me that there were indeed jobs in the city. Just as long as I was once again willing to say, “Do you want fries with that?” So, I sucked up my pride and took one of those jobs and I am now the proud renter of the cheap bachelor apartment now bathed in the sun of early autumn. Instead of back home in Itoldyouso, Indiana.

I looked around the sparsely furnished main room. The second-hand couch on which I sat had seen better days, but it had been free off of Craigslist, and thus, perfect. As was the table with two mismatched chairs in the cooking area. I had also scrounged a couple of bookcases for my collection of paperbacks, and my mattress in the loft almost rounded out my furnishings. A life lived in four hundred square feet.

My second-hand laptop was plugged in and sat on a second-hand table beside my couch. The laptop was attached to my one and only vice: The Internet. Ah, the lovely, lovely internet. My window to a bigger world that wasn’t second-hand. A world with movies, music, cheap furnishings and most of all, job listings. Booting up the laptop, I immediately went online and started running down through the various job boards. Nothing but an array of minimum wage jobs, sweatshop ads, and outright scams. I was paging through one of the lesser used sites, when an ad coloured by Dr. Seuss’s shotgun caught my eye.

Responsible, reliable, individuals sought for courier work, long hours in conditions beyond those of mortal comprehension, successful candidate must be intelligent, with a good memory and a flexible attitude toward reality, body types and the laws of physics. Significant travel. Knowledgeable in more than one language a plus. Significant remuneration, travel expenses covered, full medical and dental.

There was a contact number after that intriguing blurb and I considered writing it off as fake because it started with the movie classic of “555”. But the sheer bold faced uniqueness of the ad kept drawing me back to look at it. Finally I gave in, dialed the number and to my surprise, the call went through

“Thank you for calling Dissonance Enterprises,” a pleasant voice said from the other end. “If you are calling to respond to our recent ad, press ‘1’ now.”

“Naturally,” I muttered. “Well with any luck this won’t be a phone tree for a phoney company.”

“I will have you know there isn’t anything foamy about our operation,” a slightly outraged voice said in my ear. “The only foam we have is packing peanuts, but they do get everywhere. It’s something of an omniversal law.”

“Ah...um, sorry,” I said, terminally embarrassed. “These automated systems are annoying sometimes.”

“Which is why we answer the calls personally,” said the voice, and I could hear the smugness as they felt they had put one over on me.

“So, that was you at the beginning?” I asked, trying to recover my lack of poise with a little flattery. “Wow, I’m impressed. I really thought that was an automated system there.”

“Why, thank you,” said the voice, and I could almost see them preening on the other end of the line. “You sound interesting, young fellow. Tell you what, be at the old post office building on Fourth at 10 A.M. tomorrow.” Unseen by the voice on the other end, I high-fived the universe as my parents endless reminders that politeness and a little flattery seemed to be bearing fruit.

Smiling at the memory, I grabbed a pen and started jotting down the information. Which was a good thing because what I heard next nearly broke my brain.

“Your folks definitely were right, and it warms my spirit to know there are young folks who still respect their elders,” the voice said, as my brain locked up. “I’ll see you tomorrow at ten,” the person on the other line said, followed by the click of the line hanging up.

“Wait, what?” I said. “I didn’t say that out...” I blinked and realized I was sitting alone, on my couch and nearly yelling at a dial tone. It took me a few minutes for my mind to reboot and I did my best to kludge it up to speed. There is no way whoever it was on the other end could have read my mind. I must have muttered that bit about my parents while I thought it and the company rep had heard it. I was just lucky they had a sense of humour.

The next morning found me frantically dashing around from the moment I had woken up. Showering, shaving, and getting on my best office casual outfit. Black slacks, brown leather shoes, and a dark red dress shirt with the top button open, that contrasted nicely with my trim dirty blond hair. I gave myself a quick once over in the bathroom mirror and my green eyes looked back out from the image of a young man I barely recognized.

Nodding in satisfaction, I grabbed up the messenger bag I carried with me and checked through it as well. Multiple copies of my resume, my references and generally anything and everything I thought I might need looked back at me from sections of the bag. Yesterday, I hadn’t been so nervous about this. But that was before I went online and checked out “Dissonance Enterprises.” Every message board I checked, and every person I was able to DM about the company said the same thing in different ways.

The company had showed up out of nowhere a few weeks ago by leasing the entire upper floor of the old post office building, and had started interviewing. A lot of people had been drawn in by the “significant remuneration” part of their ad, and the applicants had been as thick as mosquitoes on a tourist. What had people believing this wasn’t some kind of scam was the universal rejection of everyone who had applied. No fees were asked, no references were taken, no please “tell your friends,” none of the classic marks of a scam operation were in evidence. These folks were obviously looking for just the right sort of person, and by my empty bank account, I planned to be that person.

I left early, catching a bus heading out before I had to leave, because the last thing I wanted to do was to be late. But my early departure ran me smack into the tail end of the morning rush, and I found myself packed into a solar heated sardine can on wheels, that seemed to be doing its level best to convince its captives that they really should use their own cars. As I bounced and jounced along with the mass of humanity I was a part of, I mentally cursed my choice of transport, as the heat of the sun and my fellow passengers conspired to draw a trickle of sweat from my body.

The bus finally pulled into its stop on Third, and as I stepped off the slight breeze was welcome as it cooled me and evaporated the sweat I had accumulated. I had a good thirty minutes before I had to be at the old postal station. Plenty of time to walk the couple of blocks necessary to reach my final destination and I walked with care through the old area of town.

My city had been originally founded as a railroad terminus, and as such the main post office had been originally beside the rail depot. But as time and road travel had pressed on, it had become more efficient to move the main post office to a more central location in the middle of town. Thus, the large and impressive stone building sat largely empty now, and the postal service would dearly love to be rid of the impressive upkeep costs of the building as well. But there wasn’t much of a market for 150 year old, four story, stone buildings. Even one remodeled to take advantage of fancy new things like electricity and indoor plumbing. So, other than one small corner of the place, the monument to the best sorting technology of the 1800’s stood empty.

Which was probably why they were so eager to rent out a chunk of the place to anyone willing to pay some rent. I turned the corner and laid eyes on the grassy plaza that surrounded the old rail depot and post office. I let out a small curse and picked up my pace, because despite the fact that I knew I was early, there was a small crowd of men and women clustered around the entrance to the building. All of them obviously job seekers like me and all of them no doubt as hungry for that “significant remuneration” as I was.

I needn’t have rushed though, as I got there in plenty of time to join the crowd of about twenty or so individuals milling around. Some were talking to others, some double checking their resumes, a couple even having a quick smoke. I didn’t let myself get drawn into conversations and I stayed well away from the smokers. I was here to get a job, not make friends, and definitely not to walk into an interview stinking of cigarette smoke.

A few minutes later the group’s patience was rewarded as the doors to the massive building were unlocked and a young woman, dressed in a light grey business suit, stepped out to address the group. Two things about the woman stood out. First off, there was something wrong with one of her eyes. One eye was looking at us, the second was staring off on a tangent. It wasn’t a false eye, because a blink later the eyes reversed their roles. The other item of note, was a yin-yang cameo centered on a grey velvet choker about her throat. The band of the choker had stitching on it, so that it resembled a pair of grey wings emerging from the cameo to hug her neck.

“Those of you here for the interviews please come with me,” the woman said, and we obediently followed her into the building and up the broad, worn stone staircase at one end of the large entryway. Man, they do not make buildings like this anymore. High vaulted ceilings, contoured pillars and a floor of honest stone. As we trudged up the stairs I kept my eyes focused on the woman from the company, who maintained a spot at the head of our group. She was a little taller than average, with the build and carriage of someone who used their body a lot.

Not like that, you pervert. I mean someone who worked physically for a living. Someone like...a mail carrier. Which made a lot of sense considering where we were. Anyway, she moved easily up the stairs, almost flying up them, her sensible flat shoes barely seeming to touch the stairs, and by the time we reached the top at least half of us were huffing and puffing as we tried to keep up. One of the bonuses of being broke is that you either walk or bike almost everywhere to save money, so I had endurance to burn and I was one of the few who were barely winded at all by the climb.

So, when we reached the top I had a chance to see that we had come out into a wide corridor straight out of a film noir detective novel. The corridor was long, with golden parquet flooring and frosted glass doors every ten feet or so stretching the length of the building. Old light fixtures suspended from above lit the passageway in pools of light, and we were escorted to a large waiting room.

“Please have a seat, everypo--everybody,” the woman said, indicating a number of chairs around several tables. “I’ll be taking you in groups of three for interviews. From each group, one individual will be picked to move on to the final evaluation. Are there any questions?”

“Yes, Ms...” a dark haired fellow in his thirties said. He was dressed impeccably and everything about him screamed “salesman”.

“Hooves,” the blond supplied.

“Ms. Hooves,” the salesman-type continued with a raised eyebrow at the odd name, “would you like to take any of our documentation?”

“No,” Ms. Hooves said. “If you pass the final evaluation we will take your documentation then.”

“Ma’am,” said a petite asian girl to my right, “how many people have you hired so far?”

Hooves seemed to deflate a bit as she replied, “So far, we have been unable to find a suitable candidate for the position. I have time for one more question before I have to take the first group for their interview.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said. “You said no one has passed the evaluation. Is it dangerous at all?”

“Not physically,” Ms. Hooves said, and pointed to three individuals “Now, if you three would come with me, we’ll get started.” The three pointed to got up with smiles, and followed the blond woman out the door, probably to a neighboring room where the interviews and evaluation would be done. With nothing else to do, I began to look around to kill some time.

The waiting room with the twenty odd of us was well lit by windows letting in the late morning sun. The corridor leading here had been a mining tunnel in comparison to the sunny brightness in the room. Other than the chairs and tables in the room the place was almost bare, except for several flyers and small books on the tables. Bored, I swept one up and had a look at it. Oddly enough, it was a flyer advertising the services of a farrier.

“Huh,” I said out loud, attracting the attention of the asian girl on my right.

“What did you spot?” she asked. I could tell she was as bored as I was, and looking for anything to make the time go by, just like me.

“Look at this,” I said quietly, holding up the farrier flyer. “Doesn’t this strike you as an odd thing to be lying around a business setting like this?”

“Well, how about this?” she asked, holding up a slim volume that had been on her side of the table. The title read “How to Maintain Your Tack.”

“Weird,” I said to her, and half getting out of my chair I cast my gaze around the room, trying to peer out the titles of the other bits of printed matter around the room. Every one of them had something to do with either horses, or horse maintenance, and not a single one of them was a work of fiction. It was almost like someone was either doing research or...I sat back down with a wide smile.

“What?” the girl asked. “What did you spot?”

“A trend,” I said, “and maybe an explanation.” I was being deliberately a little mysterious because the idea that was going through my head was too incredible to believe.

“Out with it,” the girl said, looking intently at me. “C’mon, don't leave me hanging.” I just smiled, leaned back and shook my head. There is no way she would believe what I was thinking of. I mean who would believe that someone was planning to revive the Pony Express in the modern age, but it was the only thing I could think of that fit everything so far. In fact, it was probably part of the interview process to see if someone would pick up on it. The clues were all there. Based in a post office, looking for elite personnel, travel, and on top of that, the underlying pony theme of all the literature lying around..

It all added up to “Pony Express International” and there was no way I was going to ruin my chances at the job by clueing someone else in. Asian Girl bugged me a few more times over the next hour, trying to get me to spill my guts. I just put her off by telling her, “You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.” After the fourth attempt, I was saved by her being called for her group interview, and I got to be bored again, until ten minutes later when something weird happened.

There were only about six of us left in the waiting room at that point, when a loud commotion in the hall outside brought everyone to their feet. A moment later the door burst open and in it appeared Asian Girl, hair disheveled, one shoe missing and her eyes wild. Those eyes locked onto me and she ran across the room so fast I swear she flew.

Grabbing onto me with desperate strength she babbled, “Don’t let them take me! I don’t want to be saddled and bridled. Don’t let them...” She broke off with a wordless cry of terror as Ms. Hooves came in.

“What’s going on?” I asked, putting myself between Hooves and the girl. The two other guys in the room also moved to stand between Hooves and Asian Girl. I wasn’t sure what was going on but I would be damned if I was going to let Asian Girl go without knowing she would be safe.

“Some applicants have a bad reaction to the final evaluation,” Hooves said sadly. “It’s okay Miss, you’re safe. No po...one will do anything to you that you don’t want. Come with me, I’ll get you a drink and show you it was all a simulation.” Asian Girl peeked around me as Hooves words seemed to sink in.

“S--Simulation?” she asked shakily. “It wasn’t real?”

“No,” The blond Hooves said, slowly walking up and putting a hand on the girl. “You’re safe, it’s all good. Come with me, I’ll get you a drink and you can leave whenever you’re ready.” Slowly the girl began to unpeel herself from my side.

“You’re not going to bridle me?” she asked in a stronger voice, as Ms. Hooves put an arm around her.

“Of course not, dear,” Hooves said, confidently assuring her. “Let me take you to my office. You can sit for a bit, have a drink, breathe and when you’re ready you can head home.”

“Okay,” Asian Girl said, and I could see she was getting her bearings back. The other two guys looked as puzzled as I felt, but everything looked to be under control and Asian Girl seemed to be okay as she said, “I’m sorry I freaked out like that.”

“It’s okay, it happens sometimes,” Hooves said, leading her out and her voice trailed off as they left the room. “Let’s get you that drink...” There was a slight delay before the next to last group left for their interview. As they did, Asian Girl poked her head back in the door and waved “bye” to me. I waved back, relieved that things did seem to be on the up and up. About ten minutes later, after over an hour of waiting, it was my turn.

Ms. Hooves led myself, the well-dressed salesman, and another fellow out of the waiting room, down the hall a couple of doors and into a smaller room. In this room was a simple set of three chairs, sitting in front of a wooden desk and at the desk sat an older man. He was quite tall, with a lean build and a well trimmed dark goatee that was well flecked with gray. As for what he was wearing...

The man looked like his clothing had been assembled from random bits of the outfits worn by Dr. Seuss characters. Oh, they fit him well enough, but the combination of colours and fabrics was eye-watering. The salesman guy literally blanched as he walked in the door and caught sight of who he was going to be dealing with, and it took everything I had not to laugh. This was obviously planned in order to rattle us and for someone so obviously pre-planned as the salesman guy it worked. But I was made of more flexible stuff and I decided to just roll with it.

“Hello sir,” I said, holding out a hand.

“Ah, yes,” the man said, and I recognized the voice from yesterday’s phone conversation. “We spoke yesterday.”

“Yes, we did,” I said, smiling. “I don’t see any packing peanuts around.”

“We cleaned up just for you,” he said, smiling as well. “Very well, fellows. My name is Discord, and I’m going to ask you a few questions.” These folks sure seemed to like dropping hints. Most people wouldn’t know that discord and dissonance are synonyms, but thanks to my pun happy parents, I happen to be among the lucky number that do. I’m not sure what the significance was, but I had a feeling it was important in some way. My attention snapped back to Mr. Discord as he asked us his first question.

“All right then, you are walking through a forest when a large monkey charges toward you. He wants to attack you for the candy bar in your back pocket. What’s the best way to stop him using only yourself and the candy bar?” Mr. Discord asked, leaning forward.

“I throw the candy bar in one direction and run away in the other,” the salesman guy said with barely a thought.

“I throw the candy bar at the monkey,” the other guy said, almost as quickly and they both looked at me for my answer.

“I quickly eat the candy bar so there is nothing to fight over,” I said, and the eyes on the other two bugged out a bit.

“Ha!” Discord burst out. “You, I like. Okay, second question. If you had to pick something, what would you say is your special talent in life?”

“I can sell pretty much anything to anyone,” Mr. Salesman said, first off the mark again. He must have thought he was impressing Mr. Discord by replying so quickly.

“I’m a whiz at diplomacy and customer relations,” the other guy said. “I can tell people to go to hell so nicely they look forward to the trip.”

“Interesting,” Discord said, and then looked at me. “What about you?”

I thought about my answer for a moment. So far, things had shown a definite tendency to be logical, but in a twisted way, which shaped my answer.

“I can get into places that I’m not supposed to. I call it ‘Boldly going where I should not have gone before.’ Nothing illegal, just places I’m not supposed to be in,” I said, and looking back at the other two, I folded my arms over my chest, daring them to say anything.

“Well,” Mr. Discord said, “I think I can skip the next questions because I’ve already decided who is going to the final evaluation.” Salesman guy just leaned back in his chair with a small smile and I could feel the smugness radiating off of him right up to the point our interviewer pointed at me and said, “You. I really do like you. Come with me, and let’s see if you can pass the final evaluation.”

“What?” Salesman exclaimed, tilting back forward. “All he did was just say random things that didn’t make much sense.”

“I know, isn’t it wonderful?” Discord asked rhetorically, and made a shooing motion with his hand. “As for you two, off you go. Thank you for coming, have a great day, etcetera, etcetera.” The other two both shot me dirty looks but said nothing as they got up to leave. Once the door closed behind them, the interviewer got up and shook my hand. I was impressed at how tall he was, easily as tall as a professional basketball player, and his grip was firm as he pumped my hand up and down.

“Well, you’re our last chance of the day to the fill the position,” he said, and opened the door leading out of the room. “Are you ready for the final evaluation?”

“Yes,” I said simply, getting up and following Discord out of the room and down the hallway. We went a few doors down the hallway and walked up to a door I hadn’t noticed before when I had come through with the big group. All of the other doors in the corridor were the classic wooden door with a frosted glass window design, but this one was all wood, with no glass and painted in a crazy quilt of colours.

That was one of the things with this whole process that kept intriguing me. There was this framework of normality that seemed to be supporting a weird playful randomness that kept making me smile inside.

“So, this is the final test that no one has been able to pass?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow up to Mr. Discord. As I asked the question, I saw Ms. Hooves come up behind him, carrying a blue mid-sized backpack.

“Indeed it is, and I admit I have great hopes for you. You are one of the most promising candidates Derpy...er, Ms. Hooves and I have seen to date,” Discord said with a smile as he passed me over the backpack. “This is the test. Put on the backpack. Carry it to the end of the corridor, making sure that you look out the windows as you do so. At the end of the corridor there will be a full length mirror. Look into the mirror for a full minute and see how you look with the backpack. Then come right back out.”

“Wait, that’s it?” I asked, a little confused. “No wind sprints, no physical testing?”

“This is the test to see if you have what it takes on the inside to work with us,” Discord said, putting a hand to his chest. “What we are outside is simple flesh, and it changes from day to day. It’s what is inside that counts, and this will determine if you are the one we’re looking for.”

“All right then,” I said, settling the backpack onto my shoulders and as I did I noticed that it fit well, really well. Most times, if you borrow someone’s stuff, you have to adjust it to fit you. Not this backpack. It settled onto my shoulders and my back like it had been made for me, like it was a part of me, as the best quality ones will. I nodded to Discord and Hooves to indicate I was ready and he opened the door.

The door opened into a surprisingly long, narrow, dark corridor. There was a light right where I was, and one pooling light at a mirror, at the far end about a hundred feet away, but between the two extremes stretched inky blackness. I took a breath and stepped through the doorway. The door was closed behind me and three things happened in the next few fractions of a second. First, the light overhead went out, plunging my immediate area into blackness and as it did, a wave of vertigo swept over me and I staggered a bit. Then, in the next moment, some windows opened up, spilling light into the middle area of the corridor.

The vertigo passed and I started walking down the corridor toward the far end. Right away I noticed that the sound of my footsteps sounded different, with sharper impacts, sort of like the “tock” sound you hear when a woman’s high heel hits a hard floor. I ignored it and concentrated on moving forward and being ready for any surprises. I was moving easily, and surprisingly my shoulders seemed to be very much into the motion, propelling me forward almost as much as my legs. The backpack had settled into a barely noticeable weight that I only really felt above my hips.

About thirty seconds in, I reached the windows and blinked as I realized that they were higher up than I had realized at first. I had thought they were about waist height on me, but as I reached them it turned out they were actually shoulder height on me, and I looked out of them as I had been told to do, and I blinked in surprise.

I was looking out into what appeared to be a busy mailroom. Sacks of mail lay around, the walls covered in pigeon holes into which envelopes and small packages were being sorted and arranged. But that wasn’t the surprising part, not at all. The surprising part was who, or maybe I should say what was sorting the mail. Several small, devastatingly cute little pastel ponies were hauling the mail around, sorting it and putting it into outbound sacks. I guess one of them must have heard me when I d'awwed at them and he waved to me.

I smiled and nodded politely back at the impossible creature. Horses didn’t come in that size or that shade of blue, nor did they sort mail or wave at people. It had to be the simulation Ms. Hooves had spoken of earlier, and it fit in with the whole “Pony Express International” idea. Not too mention that friendly, colourful, and cute ponies would make wonderful characters in training videos. It made sense and the CGI was fantastic on these characters. But, I had an assignment to fulfill, so I turned from the window and continued to the end of the passageway.

In the dim light at the end of the corridor stood a floor length mirror and as I reached it a light snapped on above me. I’m not vain, but I do take some pride in my appearance, so it was with some pleasure I looked at the reflection of the handsome, brick red stallion looking back at me from the mirror. His dark blond mane and tail with their dark highlights contrasted nicely with his coat and the saddle bags he wore. I blinked.

“What the hell,” I said and looked down. Sure enough, I was a little four legged horse with a dark red coat and dark hooves. I giggled. I couldn’t help it slipping out because the whole idea was just too awesomely absurd. I spun in a little circle, and I saw my tail...my tail, flowing behind me like a dark blond flag and I realized that the “tock” sound from earlier was actually the “clip-clop” of my hooves. I’d been a pony since I walked into the corridor and hadn’t even noticed, because I have been so focused on passing the evaluation.

I laughed, and it felt good to laugh. I had been so right about everything and at the same time, so wrong and laughing about it all just seemed the natural response in this body...my body. I kept laughing and I heard Mr. Discord coming up the hall.

“Are you okay there, my little pony?” he asked, and as the lights came up, I saw that he was no longer human either. He had become a long sinuous creature that sort of looked like a chinese dragon with parts of various other animals glued on and I couldn’t help but laugh even harder.

“HAHAHA...Pony Express!” I belly laughed, falling to my side. “HEH HEH We’re the ponies not the Express!” Then I saw Ms. Hooves behind him, and I lost it so hard I actually whinnied. She had taken off her choker and I could see she was slowly changing to a pony form herself. “HOOVES!” I chortled, pointing a hoof at her. “HOOVES...” I just rolled onto my back and laughed while Discord stood there looking down on me with a goofy smile on his own face.

“You okay down there, or did we break you too?” he said after awhile, and despite that broad smile still on his face I could hear concern. It was hard, so very hard, to stop the laughter and pull myself together, but I did it over the next minute or two, taking slow and even deep breaths to steady myself.

“You were right,” I said, as I pulled my thoughts out of the crazy mirth they had been swimming in and rolled myself to my chest with surprising ease. “It’s what’s inside that counts.”

“Indeed it does,” Discord said. “You’ve done better at accepting this than anypony else we’ve interviewed. Do you want the job?” He held out a paw to help me up.

“I’m interested,” I said, putting a hoof in his paw and letting him pull me up. “Tell you what, how about you explain it all to me and I’ll give you a straight answer.” Behind him, Hooves beamed approval as her mane lengthened another inch and her hands changed to hooves a little more.

“Sounds good,” Discord said. “Let’s head back to my office and we can go over the details.”

“I’ll say this,” I said, as we clip-clopped back up the corridor, “it certainly is a unique opportunity.”

“Friend,” Discord said, “you don’t know the half of it.”

Author's Note

This is my first story written in the 1st person perspective. I hope I haven't mucked it up too badly.