The day had gone normally, well as normal as you can get when your life is as hectic as yours. Moving, even temporarily, was a pain. Mom was poor, being a landlord does not mean you have money. Debra Finley was no acception. being a single mother of a autistic child (me) was even more difficult. Let's start with a story:
Debra had started out her adult life, straight out of collage, with a degree in finance, making her unliked in her rather old fashioned family. (who believed in that 'housewife is proper' kind of mentality; Grandma at one point saying, at least according to mom, that she was going to 'educate herself out of a husband') Of course Debra was a strong and independent woman, and she did not take crap from anyone. she started working at northwest mortgage, earning lots of money, enough to have a nice house built. and offord a nice car, an alfa romeo. In hindsight, grandma may have been right about the 'educate out of a husband' thing because the guy who she ended up getting pregnant with was a complete moron. but this is not his story. this is the story of her son, James.
Now, James inherited more from his father than his mother would have liked, including his looks (skinny as a pencil), and his (sometimes bad) intelligence. In fact (to his mother's charging) the only real thing he inherited from his mother was his brown eyes. Now, debra eventually quit her job at northwest mortgage, in favor for a more natural job as a master gardener/landscaper. Debra was never one to half ass anything, became the best master gardener in the region. Her work was so good, in fact, that when she first handed out flyers, she had over 100, after that, she had 20 clients, and about 50 flyers. Almost 30 years later she only had maintained one truck and one employee, and never needed to print another flyer again. New client were indeed a rarity.
But she was still poor. and being poor meant that she still operated a 1993 ford F250 heavy duty truck with a crew cab and a extended bed. That truck shad taken more of a beating than anything else in the whole business, it may not be going strong anymore, but by golly it was still going. despite being poor she still managed to make put food on the table. Until, seemingly out of nowhere, everything bad seemed to happen at once. The first one (and likely a catalyst for the the situation that caused the receptionist incident) happened when she was cutting wood with a chainsaw; Being poor meant cutting on costs as much as possible, the gas bill was a big one. the biggest way that Debra chose do reduce the gas bill was to completely stop using the furnace, in favor for a wood stove, and a large one at that. Wood was easy to get when you are a master gardener, as you ended up hauling a lot of dead wood home. (dead parts of trees needed to be removed very quickly, as if the limb fell, it could hurt someone. There was a reason they called such limbs 'widow makers') Unfortunately, such wood was not yet in log form yet, and it need to be cut. The days where this happened where few and far between. Usually only once a season, those days were spent as productive as possible, spending as much time as possible cutting the wood that accumulated during the summer. On one of these days, Debra slipped on something, and the chainsaw went right into her leg.
after 3 days in the hospital. And at home recovering, she was able to walk again. But some things never heal. and she could only walk about a mile before having to sit down due to intense pain. Because of that, she decided to get rid of 2 of the three rental houses, that she owned, because she could no longer maintain them. But before she could do that, something else bad happened: grandpa Steve died. Now this was no big loss to the family. (grandma married 3 times and Steve was her first) I mean Debra was the closest to him, so she cried. but his house was now hers. In many ways this house was worse than her own house, the water was terrible, the location was bad, and it was smaller. Debra decided to do the thing she always did when she got a house: fix it up and sell it. Unfortunately the house was over 2 to 4 day drive away, so Steve's house would be being lived in while it was being fixed. That left Debra a month (or more) amount of time where her house was not being lived in. To profit off of this, she decided to rent out her house for the duration of the trip. On the forth run to Steve's house. things where more hectic that usual, it started out as a simple departure delay, due to some outstanding orthodontist appointments (that needed to happen before she left) for her son that would have left them homeless for a week, if it wasn't for the fact that the rental house that she was planning to get rid of needed to be repainted for it's last renters. So Debra decided to feed two birds with one scone, and live in the rental house for a week. Now this story begins on the final day at the rental house, at the final orthodontist appointment.
The elevator dinged as it opened, and I stepped out. the reception room was the same as always, only it had Halloween decorations up. By habit, I made my way next to the receptionist's desk to a self sign in kiosk, it was a new addition, and it made it so much easier. As I was using it, I stole a glance to the two receptionists on duty. What surprised me most about them was their seemingly minimalist costumes, consisting of only colored unicorn headbands with dyed hair. Then I looked at the big picture, and I was internally shocked: the headbands and the dyed hair color of the two receptionists where white. for the on on the left. and blue for the one on the right. It clicked in my head almost instantly: Celestia and Luna. I mean I only really watched mlp for the lore so I could understand that fimfiction website that I enjoyed so much. The actual show was a little bit cheesy for me, (although to be honest, I really wish I had found this show when I was 10, because, having autism makes it hard to pick up on social cues and that made making friends hard. If not downright impossible due to the fact that the neighborhood I lived in had nothing but old people and young couples, nothing against old people, great at conversation about history, witch is one of my favorite subjects, but it would be nice to talk to someone my age) but still it made me jump slightly, I was not expecting to see those kinds of things here. My mom had always taught me to be polite, so I decided to say something to tell them I recognized their very minimal, (and slightly obscure to this age group) costumes.
Unfortunately mom came in at that moment and I did not want her to know what I enjoyed reading, so I proceeded to my appointment. but when I was on my way out, I quickly said to the one on the left,
"Nice costume Luna" and gave her a thumbs up
Instead of smiling at me her jaw dropped and she looked at the other receptionist. Unfortunately we were in a hurry, and the elevator door closed before I they could say anything more.
Later that night, after I had gone to bed, tomorrow we would have been going on the 3 day trip to Steve's and all this would be over. Now I don't get dreams that often, so I was surprised when I found myself piloting the Buran space shuttle through space, (outside orbit, witch only meant I had used the Energia-2 launch vehicle to lift off it was the only thing capable of taking Buran into deep space and not just orbit) I quickly read the mission goals and was surprised to find what we were doing here. looking up at the window, I spotted our goal: snoopy Apollo 10's lunar lander, used as kind of a rehearsal mission for Apollo 11, testing all of the systems before being dumped in deep space before the crew took the command module back to earth. To this day it is the only surviving lunar lander be left in one piece. (the others either burning up in the atmosphere or being crashed into the moon to study it's composition by creating 'moon quakes' that were picked up by a pre-placed seismograph setup.) And there it was, a priceless piece of history just floating there. Engaging the front maneuvering thrusters I braked us, causing us to stop and just sit there in space. I knew that took a team of people to crew the shuttle, and the boom operator would be needed to pick up the module using the manipulator arm that the cargo bay had. I looked around the cockpit. (and would have jumped out of my seat if there wasn't a harness holding me in) In the pilots seat, was Princess Luna herself. she was looking back at me. I waited for her to say something.
"You know," she started, "I admire your species getting this far in the exploration of my- no your stars, it just means so much to me that your species would put so much into the exploration of what I love so much."
"why are you here?" I ask,
"To ask some questions; and apologize." she said
"OK, let's start out with your question" I responded warily
"How do you know my name? and about equestria?" she asked
"Seriously? that's your question? I mean, I thought that would be obvious." I responded
"Obvious? why?" she said, with a raised eyebrow.
"Obvious because there is an entire TV show about Twilight Sparkle's exploits" I said in exasperation.
"If that is true, then it will make the apology that much harder" she said sadly.
"how come?" I ask.
"because I cannot allow the knowledge that Equestria exists out, even one person would be too much." she says sadly.
Before I could protest, she gave me a warning.
"You will be transported to equestria where you can live your life however you wish. Any items that you wish to take with you will be duplicated exactly as to not leave a trace that you left; any one object that will fit into your pocket will be in your pocket when you are transported, any other objects, will be given to you on arrival." She looks at me patently
"One question, can you give me some things that I don't own, but want?" I ask
"I do not see any reason why not" She says, shrugging.
Sighing, I look down at a piece of paper I begin to wright.
1.) my three hard drives and my collection of memory storage devices.
2.) Some 5 1/4th and 3 1/2 floppy disks, memory tapes, universal floppy disk and and memory card reader, IDE/ATA floppy channel controller. with cables.
2.) Larry's Farmall cub, it was going to be mine anyways.
3.) my complete vinyl collection. (at least one 16 2/3 rpm record, never got my hands on collecting one)
4.) mom's alfa romeo car
5.) Grandpa Ed's white truck, (can you fix it for me?)
6.) 1 colt Paterson revolver modified for metallic cartridges
7.) a connection to the internet.
8.) my grandma's camera and everything that it belongs to
8.) all of my cameras (including the one on my nerf gun) and my digital sound recording device.
At the last thing on the list, I started to cry. I know I am 19, but things are sad. Never again will I talk history with Larry, or play lego worlds with andrew, or read a book with Constance. I let out a sob. When I open my eyes, I'm in a interrogation room, a young queen chrysalis looks at me. I am wearing my favorite outfit: cargo denim jeans with a white t shirt and denim jacket. Chrysalis looks at me and frowns.
"Tell me about yourself" she says.
This is going to take a while.
Author's Note
BTW this kinda happened IRL, it kinda inspired this whole story
