The Medium Is The Message
"Inexplicable," Twilight Sparkle said as the Wyoming countryside rolled slowly by outside the car window.
"Ooh, good one," I said, and the car lapsed into silence as we both returned to our thoughts.
Twilight rested her elbow on the window ledge, running fingers through her hair. I let my attention drift from the road to once again drink in the sight of the frail young woman who had showed up at my doorstep two nights ago. Inexplicable indeed — her story about being a magical pony princess stuck here in human form after miscasting a dimensional spell was somewhere north of unbelievable. And yet there was something about her which had made me drop everything to drive this stranger across the country to a middle-of-nowhere "ley-line nexus" she claimed might take her home.
"Unexceptional," she said. "That's one letter longer."
"I don't think I'm going to get anything better than 'neurotoxic'," I admitted, taking a hand off the wheel for a shrug. "It's really hard to find words with the letters 'NXC' in order."
"I think that wins the 'style points' award for the round, though," she said as a Ford sedan flashed by us in the other direction.
"Leaving you with first word, shortest word, and longest word." Which was fine with me — being humiliated by her intellect was a small price to pay for seeing her perk back up, given her increasing withdrawal as I kept trying to break the trip's monotony with conversation. I thumbed toward the receding car, glad I'd taught her the license-plate word game I'd played since childhood. "You catch the letters on that plate?"
"BLM." Despite her adorably nerdy coke-bottle glasses, her vision was inhumanly precise — she'd read several oncoming plates at a glance that had gone by far too quickly for me to resolve. "Sublimate."
I laughed. "Oh, geez. At least give me a chance. Um …" I paged fruitlessly through my mental dictionary, trying to ignore my brain's attempts to expand the letters like an acronym. "Bulimia?"
Twilight blinked. "I'm sorry, what?"
I chuckled. "Are you trying to say you know the word 'habronemic' but not 'bulimia'?"
Her cheeks flushed as she gave me a self-conscious smile. "Habroneme," she corrected. "Having the appearance of fine threads. You learn some interesting geological terms with friends like Rarity. And no, I don't. What does it mean?"
"It's a mental disorder. People who self-induce vomiting after they eat —" I faltered as her smile dropped away — "and, uh. What?"
"Nothing," she quickly said, turning her head to stare out the car window. And there was that distance again. I had to do something before it became unbridgeable.
"It doesn't sound like nothing," I softly pressed.
She sighed, then said much more quietly: "It's just … every time I think I've started adjusting to your world, well." She opened and closed her mouth and tried again. "Why would anypo— anyone — do that?"
"… Because they think they need to be skinnier to be pretty? I don't know. It's not a thing I do. It's a word."
"It's a word here."
My gut tightened in the silence.
"Forget bulimia, then," I said. "Blame. I'll take shortest."
"Balm," Twilight said distantly as a Toyota whooshed by. "Look, forget about it. New round. TBD."
I lunged for the first-word award. "Stabbed."
"Trouba…" Twilight trailed off and sank her head into her hands. "Stars' love, Jeff."
I sighed and pulled over to the side of the highway, shifting into Park before turning in my seat to face her squarely. "Twilight. What's wrong?"
She whirled on me, eyes wet. "What's wrong?! What's wrong with your world? What's wrong with you, that even something as innocent as a word game has to get twisted into … into …" Instead of finishing the sentence, she flung her hands around in a vague gesture, then turned away, balling up on the seat. "Just … drive." Her voice broke. "I want to go home. If I even can."
I let out an exasperated breath. "Twilight. Look. I'm sorry. I'm an idiot —"
"No, you're not," she said, not moving. "You're smart, and generous, and you've been nothing but kind." She choked back a sob. "That's what hurts the most. How could 'stabbed' still be the first thing you think of from those letters? You're a wonderful person and yet I'm still getting flashbacks to facing off against Tirek."
"Because I said a stupid thing, and I'm sorry for it, and let's please not make something out of it that it isn't."
"Jeff, you haven't named a single positive word since we started playing."
"That's … not …"
… oh.
She finally looked back at me. Her eyes looked so tired.
I swallowed. "Really shitty coincidence. I don't … I mean, I can …" I started frantically sifting through letters as I babbled. T-B-D. Troubled. … No, not helping! … Entombed? … Oh my god. What kind of monster am I?
Twilight silently uncurled — looking hollowly forward, hands clasped in her lap, shoulders slumped. "Let's go," she said.
I shifted wordlessly into Drive and pulled back onto the highway. Silence entombed the troubled car.
My mind continued racing as the scenery drifted by. Twilight stared blankly out into nothing.
We passed a highway sign, and epiphany hit. "Westbound!" I said. It felt a little like cheating, but relief flooded in nevertheless.
She looked up at me. I gave her a hopeful smile. She smiled back, cheerlessly, but reached out to rest a hand on my leg for a moment, and I felt our distance close incrementally.
"Troubador," she said. "Tabulated. Tabard. Tubed, for shortest. Weatherboarding, for longest. For style points, take your pick — starboard, featherbed, outbid, unattributed."
I couldn't help but laugh. "You are a marvel."
"Thank you." Her smile — however fleeting — felt more genuine this time. "And I'm sorry."
"No, I'm sorry you have to deal with our world. Equestria really does sound like a paradise. I wish Earth was more like it." I sighed. "For both our sakes."
"Me too," Twilight said, subdued. "You deserve better."
"Thank you."
We lapsed back into silence for a long while. I looked at the trip odometer, then glanced at the directions I'd printed. Still over four hundred miles to go.
"How do you do it?" Twilight asked abruptly.
"… Do what?"
"Live here. Stay sane."
I tilted a hand off the wheel in a half-shrug. "By thinking of words like 'stabbed,' I guess?"
She frowned at my joke. "I'm being serious. And you know what I mean — that's the problem. All the violence on your tell-a-vision, the fear and misery in the newspaper, the bickering and insults on your computer. The negativity everywhere. How do you endure that and stay good?"
"You go numb," I said. "You ignore it."
"No you don't," Twilight said. "You didn't. You went out of your way to help me."
"… You make exceptions."
"But that's not how being good works!"
I turned my head. She was fidgeting with her fingers, rolling them past each other between her hands in an utterly alien way.
"I don't know what to tell you, then," I said. "Unless it's 'I'm not good'."
"But you are. … Aren't you?" She thought for a moment. "Why did you help me? Honestly."
"Because you needed it," I said firmly.
"See, there you go."
I chewed my lip. "… And, honestly? Because your story was utterly crazy, but in a beautiful way worth upending my life for, based on the slim chance you were telling the truth. But … mostly because you needed it. You were so desperate that you knocked on the door of a complete stranger. I couldn't ignore that."
"But I wasn't desperate, at the time," Twilight said. "I assumed you'd help, or at least point me to someone who could. Because that's just the way the world works! Except, as I found out more and more about where I'd ended up, it isn't." She began fidgeting again. "In hindsight, I'm terrified how stupid I was, and I can't believe how lucky I am that this worked out."
"Most people would have helped you, I think." I glanced out at the desolate countryside. "Well, not to this extent, maybe. But at worst, gently said no."
Twilight shook her head. "I'm sorry, no. That's illogical."
"What do you mean?"
"If most people were good, your world would be like ours."
I had to think about that one for a second.
"I think that comes back to the ignoring thing," I said. "Like … right now, I'm not out giving money to homeless people on street corners. But I am helping you. I think that for most people — including me — something has to break through your shell. With it up, you don't care. But once you do — once you let yourself see that there's a need — I think almost everyone wants to help. That's the default. We've just gotten so good at ignoring all the shouty loud voices of fear and hate and desperation that we miss the whispers of need, too."
Twilight was silent for a while.
"I don't understand that," she finally said. "But I'll take your word for it."
"Fair enough," I said.
She didn't say anything else, and I didn't press her, so she turned back to the window and we drove in silence for half an hour until I stopped for gas. When I returned to the car, though, she stirred.
"What's it like?" she asked. "Being numb."
"Uh, I don't know?" I said. "It's not like I'm numb numb. I still feel stuff. You just … sort of learn to be okay with bad things all the time. That's all."
"I can't imagine that."
"Well, of course not. It's like looking at your blind spot. It's not there when you actually focus on it."
Twilight gave me a puzzled frown. "But I'm talking about being okay with bad things. Like, the homeless people you mentioned don't disappear when you're not looking. It's a moral question, not an optical phenomenon."
I sighed. "It was an analogy."
"It's a faulty one."
I thought for a minute as I pulled back onto the freeway.
"I don't think so," I finally said. "I think everyone has moral blind spots. Even you."
"Like what?" Twilight asked.
"Like …" I tapped my fingers on the wheel. "That forest you mentioned near your home? The one you said felt like our world, with its own weather patterns?"
"The Everfree?" she asked. "What about it?"
"Doesn't it bother you that it's wild? That it's filled with dangerous predators, and spawns storms your weather teams have to clean up? Aren't those things that should be managed the same way the rest of your world is managed?"
Twilight crossed her arms. "I see where you're trying to go with that. Yes, Equestria would be safer if it was tamed. But that's just the way it is, and we shouldn't fiddle with it."
"Why?"
"Its danger and chaos is a living reminder of why we manage what we do." Twilight shook her head. "It's not a blind spot."
"And has anyone ever been hurt in the Everfree? Killed in the Everfree?" I asked. "Is the reminder worth those lives?"
Twilight bit her lip. "… It's not a blind spot."
"Neither are my town's homeless people, from what you said earlier."
She abruptly turned away, and a little flutter of panic said that I'd gone too far. The panic receded into uneasiness when Twilight slowly nodded. She let out a long breath, and her shoulders sagged, and she leaned against the window, staring out at the distant mountains.
A driver that had been closing in on us from behind pulled around to pass, gunning his ancient Chevy's engine. I glanced over at his license plate as he went by.
"Forget about it," I said, forcing a smile. "R-E-D. Reading."
She didn't respond. The smile dropped away from my face.
"… Reading?" I said again. "I, uh, thought you'd be happier for me. I didn't even have to try for that one — it just came out naturally …"
She let out a little breath, and closed her eyes.
"… Twilight?"
"Corrupted," she said vacantly, and my blood iced over.
"Don't say that," I protested. "It's not that bad."
She opened her eyes again, staring out at the oncoming road, and shook her head. "No," she said sadly. "It's just ... I understand now. You're good when you choose to care. It's an infection, choosing whether to care or not. You even think in infected language — Tartarus, that's probably the first thing you made the choice for. It really is that simple — just let the infection set in and fester. Decide to not care, thing by thing."
"Hey, whoah," I said.
She smiled humorlessly out at the road. "I can do it, too. Anyone can. Just choose not to think about the hurt in your words. Rend. Greed. Hatred. Tragedy."
"Twilight, stop," I said, scared of my passenger for the first time since she'd gotten into my car.
But the words kept tumbling out. "Feared. Warred. Massacred. Herded, oppressed, brainwashed."
I fumbled for a verbal antidote. Positive words. Positive! Redact. Reduce. … Reused? "Recycled," I interjected.
"Depredation," she countered. "Predator. Harried. Buried. Distressed."
-Ed, -ed, -ed … -red … "Sacred!" I said.
She continued as if I hadn't spoken, body balling up on the seat again, eyes squeezing shut against her tears. "Shredded. Tattered. Separated." Her body shuddered. "Segregated. Prejudice. Irredeemable."
I wrenched the wheel to the side and stepped hard on the brakes, the car lurching to a halt on the shoulder. "Returned!" I shouted. "Equestria…-ed! Princess-ed!"
Then a memory of something she'd told me about herself struck. A spark lit.
I grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her face toward me.
"Friendship," I said.
She met my eyes at last, and for a moment oh god the pain and fear and solitude — and then something broke in her, more like a fever than a dam, and she leaned in against both of our seatbelts and threw her arms around me and clung to my chest and sobbed, holding on for dear life. And I held her back, this lost alien princess, doing the caring for both of us while her emotions drained away.
Author's Note
If there's only one thing you take away from this story, I hope it's this:
We are not ponies; we are not wired to care unconditionally. But we can choose to care, and we have to be willing to make that choice -- no matter what form that takes. The foundation of human civilization is caring for each other.
So if you were affected by this story at all -- liked it, hated it, found yourself thinking -- then please go out of your way today to do something good.
Give a stranger a compliment. Make a charitable donation. Pay for the person behind you in line. Provide emotional support for a hurting friend. Pick up litter. It doesn't matter what (to me, anyhow). It doesn't matter how. But go care about something, and use that to make the world a better place.
* * * * *
If you'd like more with these characters (and a side order of Magic: The Gathering), check out Cynewulf's authorized sequel Five Colors!
