Underped

Chapters

Chapter 2: Derpy is a Menace to Society
Chapter 3: A Memory of a Smart Pony
Chapter 4: Fixing the Brains
Chapter 5: Underped
Chapter 6: Newfound Literacy
Chapter 8: The Dawn of a Realization
Chapter 9: The Walls
Chapter 10: Total Mental Collapse
Chapter 11: Encroaching Insanity
Chapter 12: The Truth
Chapter 1: Delicious Muffins
Chapter 7: Increasing Neuroconductivity

Chapter 2: Derpy is a Menace to Society

The sun had already set. Derpy sat alone in the waiting room of Ponyville General hospital, barely able to look up from the clean linoleum floor. She was not sure how they got it so clean, and was too sad to think deeper than that they must have a mystery third ingredient in their super-cleaning fluid other than the Fluttershy-juice and the green water that tasted like pain. Perhaps some manner of vinegar or gasoline.

She only looked up as a pair of nurses wheeled another patient in through the area. Cheerilee, who had been Dinky and Sparkler’s teacher, was now foaming at the mouth and crying as she held her stomach.

“Another one?” said one of the doctors stepping out of the emergency ward. Derpy distantly recognized him Dr. Horse. “Put her with the others and stuff her with charcoal, and if she starts to develop colic let me know without delay. We’ll have to turn her.”

“Right away, doctor.”

Dr. Horse shook his head and moved to turn back into the room of moaning, crying patients.

“Doctor! Wait!”

The doctor turned to face Derpy and gave a weak, tired smile. “I’m sorry, Ms. Doo, but I’m very busy right now.”

“Are they...are they going to be okay?”

Dr. Horse sighed and levitated his clip board to his face. “I suppose it does not technically violate HIPPOS at this point if I tell you seventy four ponies are experiencing acute poisionberry poisoning...as well as one case of violent listeriosis, probably from consuming expired dairy products.”

“TRIXIE REGRETS NOTHING!” cried a voice from the emergency ward—followed by a horrific wet sound, then another even more horrific wet sound, then a groan. “No...Trixie regrets everything...”

“Quiet, you!” Cried Dr. Horse toward the origin of the voice--but then he sighed and turned back to Derpy. “They are in critical condition but this is not usually fatal...although it is especially bad for the children.”

“The children?”

“Oh yes, they are very, very thoroughly poisoned. I may need to use the new tele-phone to reach the Princess if any more come in, we’re mostly a research hospital, we aren’t really prepared for this sort of mass-casualty event...”

“Doctor!” called a nurse. “We’re on the verge of a pediatric code blue and the listeriosis case is getting combative!”

“Hold her down and get the cart into position.” He turned back to Derpy. “Your friends are in good hooves. Consider yourself lucky you somehow escaped poisoning, it is extremely painful.”

Derpy lowered her head as he passed through the door. “Yeah...”

“Trixie, I swear to CELESTIA if you don’t put those syringes RIGHT NOW I’ll be forced to practice medicine on your FLANK!”

“Come at me, you son-of-gelding, I’ll give you the poke—”

Derpy stopped paying attention at the sound of a muffled ruckus from the other room.

She sat in the chair she had been sitting before and looked down, but now she was not thinking about cleaning. She was trying to hold in the tears, because she knew enough to know that this had been her own fault. She had been the one who had made the poison muffins, and she had hurt everyone she cared about because of it.

She watched the tears dripping onto the floor, making it dirty and slippery—and then she watched as a shadow suddenly blocked out the dim fluorescent light from above. Derpy sniffled and looked up, finding herself being looked down upon by a glowering pink-colored earth pony wearing an expensive teal top.

“Diamond Tiara’s mom?”

Derpy was promptly slapped in the face, and considering this was with a hoof, it was especially painful—but before she could realize what was happening, she was slapped again from the opposite direction for good measure.

“Wh—why pain?!”

“You have no idea how much money you’ve just cost me.”

“Hey! Hey!” A pair of nurses ran out from where they had been crossing. “You can’t just hit somepony like that!”

Spoiled Rich turned toward the pair and gave them such a withering glare that they immediately froze. She did not react to their presence other than to stare down her nose and regard them with abject disdain.

A thin smile crossed her face. “Supposedly you nurses are tragically underpaid,” she said. Then, without warning, she produced several hoof-fulls of golden bits from her top and began to lob them at the terrified nurses who, upon being struck with the high-velocity coins, cried out and tried to shield themselves from the hail of cash.

“What? You don’t like getting PAID?! I paid for this hospital wing! IT HAS MY NAME ON IT! If you don’t like being underpaid, GET BETTER JOBS! Take my money and GET OUT OF MY HOSPITAL!”

The nurses ran away as Spoiled Rich threw money at them. Then, when they were gone, she sighed—and turned back to Derpy.

“That said,” she continued, coldly. “I’d sue you for the money you stole from me, but I know you don’t have it, consider I bought the sub-prime mortgage on your house.”

“But we have universal health coverage in Equestria—”

Another slap. “Unfortunately, yes, so that poor idiots like you can steal healthcare from those of us who actually contribute to society. But that’s not my point.” She pointed to the hospital wing. “You poisoned my husband the day before he was supposed to negotiate the merger between Rich’s Barnyard Bargains and the Stable Prices grocery chain. Now my fat daughter has to handle the talks. You have no idea how many bits you’ve screwed me out of—which I know for a fact because you can’t count.”

“I can too count!” lied Derpy, “and Diamond Tiara is a smart girl, she’ll—”

“Sell us out for a bucket of fried lard?” She sighed and shook her head. “That’s the only thing you and I seem to have in common, isn’t it? Having the most disappointing daughters possible.”

“But I love my daughters, Dinky’s going to Celestia’s school and Sparkler has a fancy job in the Crystal Empire—”

“Yes, yes. A charity case going to a school where any half-brained pointy can get in, and the other daughter ‘serving’ Shining Armor because she looks like Sparkle. And you know how those dirty pointies are with their sisters.” She sighed. “Which if I’m being honest, I kind of respect. If my daughter weren’t so ugly, she’d have been able to do the same thing and actually do something with her life. Instead of being totally useless.” She smiled. “Although at least she’s not like you, who opens up her wings to whatever pointy smiles at her.”

Derpy sniffled “Why are you being so mean?”

“I’m not being mean, I’m being honest. Is it my fault if everyone else here fakes being nice to you because you’re challenged, like your daughters? Do you expect me to sugar coat it?” She pointed at the emergency room again. “Because this is what happens when you coddle morons. You poisoned the whole town, including my husband! Why were you even giving my husband baked goods? Are you trying to compete with me? Because I can buy and sell you. Literally.” She leaned closer. “And you will not like the buyers I can find for you.”

“But he’s so nice,” said Derpy. “He gave me muffin ingredients at a discount—”

“DISCOUNT?!” Spoiled slammed her hoof into the cinder-block wall next to Derpy’s head, splintering the concrete. Derpy began to quiver. “That will not be happening again. You DO NOT deserve it.”

“I was trying to be nice, to give muffins to all my friends—”

“You don’t have friends. You’re a walking calamity! Do I need to list it? Last month, you caused a lightning storm that put twelve ponies in the hospital and gave one superpowers. Two months ago, you left a gate at Fluttershy’s house open and four ponies were carried off by a pair of double-dogs. Two days before that you contaminated our water supply with gelatin! And not a flavor anypony even liked!”

“I just—I just—I just don’t know what went—”

Another slap, this one so hard that Derpy was knocked to the floor, whimpering.

“You know exactly what went wrong. You did. No one likes you, and we would all be better off without you.”

“But I—But I—”

Spoiled walked past her, kicking her in the wing as she went—and Derpy was left as a sobbing heap. She lay there knowing deep in her heart that Spoiled was right.

Chapter 3: A Memory of a Smart Pony

It was a small room, barely a closet. Derpy rarely entered it because of how sad it made her—but she doubted she could get much sadder than she already was.

She had placed a jar of fireflies on her desk, and their blueish glow filtered through the dusty air. In the shadows, she looked up at the dirty sheets of glass covering two framed documents on her wall. She could no longer read them, but she knew what they were. Diplomas from her two doctorates.

On the cluttered surface of the desk were a few remnants of other documents and, shoved into one corner at the far end, a set of black-and-white photographs of a younger version of herself. In one she was smiling to the camera while wearing her uniform—and in another one, She was standing with with the other fliers of Forward Analysis and Reconnaissance Scout Squadron. In both, her eyes were looking directly forward at the camera, because those images were from before that day. The sudden flash, the boom she never even heard, and the plume of metal that passed so easily through her skull. When a griffon shrapnel-shell had killed all her dreams.

She put her head on the table and cried softly and alone. It had been easier when her daughters had been there. They were the only good thing that that day had ever led to, the only things worthwhile that she had ever found on her redirected path. But they were gone. Not permanently, of course, but they were away from her. Living their own lives. It was so much harder to deal with the nights all alone—and with the memories. Half-remembered times of when the world had been so clear, when thoughts had come so easily, when things made sense.

It left her wondering what she still had. If there was anything left at all.

She stood up and walked through her empty, dark, decaying house. She stopped at the kitchen and looked at the racks of muffin ingredients. The one thing she could still do, the barest remnant of her years spent in the most prestigious research laboratories in Equestria working with detailed synthetic chemistry procedures and aliphatic compound analysis. Muffins.

Her eyes—or at least one of them—came to the bottle of poisonberry extract. She approached it and, with a shaking hoof, took it, removing the cap with her teeth. A small skull-shaped cloud puffed out and she stared at it, still shaking, her mind moving in a direction she could not control as she lifted the bottle.

Then, in a moment of clarity, she threw it to the ground, screaming and crying all at once as it shattered against the floor. She kicked her table, overturning it, with the recoil causing her to slip in the poisonberry sauce and fall to the floor with a thud. As she landed, she felt pain—and felt as it resided. She wished she could stay down there forever. Where she would never hurt anypony again.

And, as she lay there, a piece of paper fluttered down onto her face. She very nearly inhaled it and choked, but when she spat it out, she saw it was the one that the Doctor had read to her—from the hospital.

She could not read it, but she knew what it was. And she decided, in that moment, what needed to be done.

Chapter 4: Fixing the Brains

Derpy entered the room awkwardly, tripping slightly on the edge of the rug on the approach to an extremely comfortable floral-patterend chair. Upon sitting in it, however, she realized that it was in fact a trap—and the squishyness of the chair caused her to slowly sink between the back and the cushion.

“Help, I’m being ingested...”

She was pulled upward slightly by a gentle touch of magic until she was no longer descending, at least not quickly—and she found herself facing a familiar and exceedingly handsome unicorn.

Dr. Horse checked his notes, pausing to take a sip from his levitating coffee.

“You look tired, Doc.”

“I am, but it’s not a problem.” He looked up over his notes. “The patients are for the most part recovering, but it was a great deal of work getting them back in order. That, and removing several embedded gold bits from two of my nurses. It took all night...” He sighed and set down his coffee, but then smiled, kindly. Derpy felt a familiar warm feeling, one she remembered well as it had somewhat preceded both the births of her two unicorn daughters decades earlier.

“But I’m glad you came. Although...I’m honestly a little surprised.”

“I had Doctor Hooves read the letter for me.”

“Time Turner is not actually a doctor but that’s not the point. I did not mean the reading of my letter, but rather that you were willing to volunteer for this consultation.”

Derpy steeled herself. “I'm tired of being the dummy,” she said. “I can’t understand my daughters anymore and I can’t help them...and I can’t even take care of myself. And I’m hurting ponies even though I love them because I just can’t figure out what goes wrong. Every. Dang. Time.” She sighed, looking down at the oaken desk—and then back up. “And the worst part is I can remember. What it was like to be smart. Doc, do you really think you can fix me?”

“I would say you are not really broken. Just injured. No different from a broken wing or a disconnected leg. And I specialize in fixing injuries.”

“But how do you fix a brain?” Derpy paused. “I tried eating walnuts, but I had that a nap-o-leaky reaction and stopped breathing. Twice. Dinky had to take me to the hospital. But they’re shaped like brains, so will that help? Should I try again? I have some in my bag...”

The doctor smiled and levitated a plasticy film image toward Derpy. It was a picture in black and white.

“This is your brain.”

Derpy stared wide eyed at the film—or rather to both sides of it—looking from it to the doctor with her jaw open in amazement. “You already got it out? Wow! You’re so fast!”

“No, Derpy, I mean it’s a picture of your brain. An x-ray.” He levitated a stick and pointed at several areas on it, back-lighting it with his magic. “This is coagulation necrosis, essentially scarring of the brain, following these bright spots, which are metal. Based on your history, you received a traumatic brain injury from a close-range shrapnel burst, aggravated by oxygen derivation while the medic-scouts searched for you. See here? This is where they put a metal plate in.”

“I still can’t use the microwave without seeing pain,” sighed Derpy.

“Yes. Well, that is not normal, surely, but not the issue at hoof. Here.” He pointed. “You have a remarkable amount of neural tissue still intact. The new procedure we have been developing will utilize this to regenerate the damaged areas.”

“How?”

Derpy would of course not understand even if he told her, but Dr. Horse seemed all-too-willing to demonstrate. He produced a small box, like the kind jewelry came in—as well as a rather ominous looking tool with a small retractable claw. He opened the box and Derpy was immediately struck by the sheer glimmering beauty of the crystal inside—and Dr. Horse gently picked it up with the tiny claw.

“With this,” he said, smiling.

“It’s so shiny.”

“It indeed is, Ms. Hooves. Quite shiny.” He held it up. “This is a new product exported from the Crystal Empire. A sort of magically compressed quantum computation system. A computer equivalent to an entire city of our greatest vacuum-tube computer systems held in a single shard, so advanced that it is very nearly alive.”

“Is that what makes it shiny?”

“No, it is simply very well polished. Which it needs to be, considering it will need to bind to the remaining living neurons in your brain.”

“In my...brain?”

Dr. Horse’s smile widened as he stared past the computational crystal and into at least one of Derpy’s eyes. “Yes, that is the nature of the procedure. It is actually quite straightforward and anticipated to be amazingly painless. I will surgically insert this crystal into the center of your brain, at the nexus of the majority of the functional tissue. It can then be externally tuned to slowly stimulate the remaining neurons, essentially reprogramming them. Reconstructing pathways around the damaged portions of your brain, optimizing the remaining portions until your intelligence approaches normal.”

“I don’t know...”

“I assure you, based on all mathematical models, this is a vast improvement over the Algernon procedure and even Twilight Sparkle’s recently declassified L.A.W.N.M.O.W.E.R. initiative.”

“The one that made all the telephones go off?”

“That one exactly!”

Derpy felt ill—but took a deep breath. “Is it going to hurt?”

“You will of course have a local anesthetic, so no. It will be nearly painless.” He paused. Then he sighed. “There are of course risks. To any medical procedure, but especially to ones involving experimental archeotechnology. Animal testing is of course banned, so I have no idea what side effects this might have in a pony...although I believe it to be quite safe. Nopony has ever experienced a negative outcome.” He chuckled.

“I know,” lied Derpy. “But I’m tired of this. Of all this. I just want to be me again. Please, doc. Make me smart.”

Dr. Horse stared at her, then smiled. He slid a page toward her, and an ornate ink-blotter for her hoof. “I promise I’ll do my best, Derpy. And who knows? If this goes well, you might even be able to take my job in a few years.”

He laughed. Derpy did not—but stamped her hoof on the form regardless, one of her eyes never leaving the crystal. It seemed, for a moment, to stare back at her. She dismissed it, though. It was just a shiny—and nothing to be afraid of. She was sure of that, at least.

It was not nearly as scary as Derpy had expected. The nurses were very nice and had given her ice cream and a haircut. Admittedly the special chair she found herself strapped into was a little bit ominous, but at least it was not trying to eat her.

The funnest part, in her opinion, was that she could not move her head. It had been attached to a bunch of metal things that made it impossible for her to turn it, even slightly, no matter how hard she tried. It was like a giant metal hat. Then they had given her a shot, which had made her afraid but barely hurt. It just sort of felt cold.

Derpy hummed to herself as nurses in white and with masks on moved around her, carrying metal things she did not know the names of. Dr. Horse was also there, but standing behind her; since she could not see him, Derpy would periodically forget he was even there. She had not realized that he was also a dentist, and did not really understand how he was doing some sort of magical dentistry behind her instead of in her teeth. But she definitely heard a really big dental drill.

Then the drilling stopped. Dr. Horse said something to one of the nurses, and Derpy heard a strange wet sound.

“What was that, doc?” she asked, looking upward but not being able to look back.

“Just part of the process, my dear,” he said. “Nurse, the retractors, please.”

“Yes, doctor.”

“I used to brush my teeth every day,” said Derpy. “Until I swallowed the brush. You were there for that part. And then when Sparkler found me turning blue because I used the floss wrong.” She sighed. “That made her cry really hard, even though she thought I didn’t see...doc, why do I taste the sound lilacs smell like?”

“Sorry, a bit too far.” He paused, and the tone in his voice had shifted.

“Doctor...”

“I see it,” he said. “The shrapnel is much more extensive than we thought it would be, the plate in your skull was hiding it on the x-ray. This might be the source of your problem.”

“Oh. That’s nice. Can you pluck it out?” Derpy paused. “Or push it back in?”

“Not without compromising the circulatory system. Or what's left of it. I’m going to have to work around it. Nurse, the processor.”

“Yes, doctor.” One of the nurses brought it forward on a small rolling tray. Derpy saw Dr. Horse’s magic swirl around the tool that held it suspended, and then it vanished from her sight.

“Alright, Derpy. This next part is very important. I need to assess your mental acuity, to know if I’m going too deep. It needs to be in functional tissue, but the actual level is deep in your frontal lobe. Going too far would have negative consequences.”

“I have a lobe?”

“Mostly, yes. But you need to listen. Are you listening, Derpy?”

“I think so?”

“Good. I need you to recite something you can remember, something you’ve memorized.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure. What is it you like to do?”

“I like spending time with my daughters, and my friends, and laughing, and playing with clouds, and flying...oh! And muffins! I really like muffins, and making them for all my friends and family!”

“Excellent, Ms. Hooves. When we’re done, perhaps you can make some for me?”

“Or course, doc! And all the pretty nurses too!”

“Why don’t you tell me the recipe for your favorite muffins?”

“Oh, that’s easy!” said Derpy. “It would be blueberry, but I put chocolate chips in half of them as a special surprise! Let’s see, you start with flour, which for one batch would mean four cups, and you have to sift it. That’s the secret to making them smooooth...then you need to get the sugar too, but you won’t mix that with the flour, because it’s a secret wet ingredient and those go last...”

Derpy felt an odd sensation. Like her body was tasting itself and finding itself to taste like roughly what an old bar floor smelled. She did not feel anything, but heard something wet moving somewhere in her head.

“Keep going, Ms. Hooves."

“You need two sticks of butter, and you need to keep those away from Trixie because she will eat them. You have to leave those out overnight so they are nice and soft. You mix that with three eggs. The best ones come from Elizabeak. Then while you’re doing that, you need to measure out the blueberries! You need to get a cup and...and...” Derpy frowned. “And you need...blueberries?”

“Doctor, her vitals are dropping.”

“And blueberries because they...and you need to mix them with flour...flower...three cups...sugar should be...milk and...and...some amount of flowers? I don’t...I don’t...why can’t I...doc, I can’t remember wh...ffll...ffflll….”

“Doctor!”

“I don’t know what’s happening, it isn’t integrating, I can’t stop the startup procedure!”

“Doctor, we have to abort!”

“If I pull it now, she—dang it, she's crashing!”

“Three cups of...flour...two cups? Just one, maybe, I don’t...don’t remember...”

Derpy suddenly felt tired, and distantly heard a machine that had previously been beeping suddenly accelerate.

“She’s seizing! Get the—”

The sudden beeping stopped and became consistent. The last thing Derpy heard was somepony shouting for a code blue—and then nothing but blackness. She smiled internally as she slipped into it, knowing that she would at least not be a disappointment to anypony anymore.

Chapter 5: Underped

The world exploded into a blinding flash of light. Not light of any particular color, but in every color, all at once and separate, mixed with several that did not exist and could not exist—along with every sound possible, ranging from those so quiet and low as to be imperceptible as well as those of dizzying, deafening volume. The burst of energy tore its way into the outer depths universe, spreading and spilling in every direction and condensing, just as the first energy and magic of the universe had resonated into strings that tied themselves into the first hadrons and the one electron they all shared as it sped its way through time in every direction all at once. As this detonated inside Derpy’s mind, she sat up suddenly.

The room erupted with a shockwave of minor residual magic. Sparkler, who had been leaning on the white linen of Derpy’s bed, woke up with a cry as she was nearly knocked back out of her chair. Derpy turned sharply, confused at her presence.

“Sparkler. Why are you here? You are supposed to be at work in the Crystal Empire.”

“M...mom!” cried Sparkler, her eyes wide with surprise and quickly welling with tears. “You’re awake!”

“Ostensibly, yes,” replied Derpy. She looked around the room, realizing that she was in a hospital room rather than a surgical one. “This is a recovery room. I’ve been unconscious.” She turned back to her eldest daughter. A daughter who stared at her with relief—and an unknown shock that Derpy could not yet understand but that her mind was racing to comprehend. “Long enough for you to get from the Crystal Empire to here. How long?”

“Mom, you were in a coma, you should lie back down.”

“I do not feel a need to. How long was I out, Sparkler?”

“Two weeks and three days. I came in on the Crystal Express as soon as I heard, I...” Her eyes filled with tears again. “They said they didn’t know if you would ever wake back up, I didn’t know if...if...”

“Oh, Sparkler. I’m sorry.” Derpy spread her front hooves, and Sparkler wrapped her in a hug of such great pressure that Derpy distinctly felt it in her still-healing cranium. “Too tight!”

“Oop! Sorry, mom!”

“No, no, it’s okay. I’m fine.”

Derpy suddenly heard a squeak and something clattering to the floor. She turned sharply to see a wide-eyed nurse pony standing at the door.

“Doctor!” cried the nurse. “She actually woke up!”

“That’s impossible!” called a voice from down the hallway—followed by the patter of sprinting hooves, and then Dr. Horse’s face poking in from the side of the doorway, his eyes widening at the sight of Derpy.

“By Celestia’s hindquarters, she is awake!”

He trotted into the room, grabbing a stethoscope more out of habit than any real diagnostic need. “Ms. Doo, how do you feel?”

“Hungry?” Derpy paused, trying to think what she was feeling. “Actually...I don’t really feel any different than I did before. So...the same?” This immediately disheartened her. It was apparent that the procedure had failed—and worse, her recklessness had made Sparkler cry.

Dr. Horse appeared to understand the expression on her face. “There were...unexpected complications,” he explained. “The brain scarring was more extensive than I had predicted, and the shard failed to integrate...at first. It fell into a chaotic output state which required a hard reset into its magical programming—”

“By switching the mode to maximal capacity to hard-reset it to my brain,” added Derpy. “Instead of a slow process, you had to turn it all the way up to keep it from taking my brain down with it.”

“Well...yes...but...how did you know that?”

“I was there. And it’s super obvious. Also I can sort of...tell it’s still in there?” She shook her head. “I don’t know how, though. I probably would know if it had actually performed its function, but it looks like I’m still stuck with my previous mental deficiencies.” She sighed. “And I made my daughter scared.”

Dr. Horse looked to the nurse, and to Sparkler. They all had the same shocked expression on their faces.

“What?” asked Derpy, feeling her voice quavering. “What’s wrong?”

“You need to...never mind, I will show you.” Dr. Horse walked to side of the room near some drawers and disconnected a mirror held over them. He levitated it over to Derpy and held it up to himself, as if looking at his own reflection. He paused. “This, too, has a risk, but...”

“But what?”

He lowered the mirror, and Derpy looked at herself, surprised by her new short haircut and the hint of a healing scar that circled much of her head—and then her heart seemed to freeze as she realized something else.

A gray mare was staring back at her with a pair of wide, yellow eyes—eyes that were now looking exactly the same direction.

She had been underped.

Chapter 6: Newfound Literacy

Derpy looked up at her house, realizing that it badly needed to have the siding repainted—only for the sudden motion of her head to cause her to tilt as a spell of dizziness caught her.

She was immediately buffeted by Sparkler’s magic.

“Mom, you’re not okay,” she insisted. “You should have stayed longer to recover.”

“I already had time to recover when I was comatose,” replied Derpy, forcing herself to stand on her own. She did not feel exactly normal, but did not exactly feel different either. She was weaker and got tired just from moving, but her mind did not feel any different from the way it had been before. She continually probed her memories and thoughts, trying to find a gap where she could compare it to what she had been before, but she could find none. There was no mental purchase, no sense of dissimilarity—and she could not be certain that her intelligence had actually changed. This left her wondering how to devise an assay that she could use to more accurately test it.

“I left your room just the way you left it,” said Derpy, pushing open the door. She had never learned which direction to turn the key to use the lock, so she left it open. Which was how Trixie probably kept getting in, aside from the teleportation. “I know you can’t stay long with your big-time job in the Crystal Empire.”

“Cadence has a really generous Empire-wide family leave policy,” said Sparkler, closing the door and making sure it was properly seated. “And I have a lot of vacation time from both jobs.”

“Both?” Derpy turned slowly. “Sparkler, not again...”

“Mom, it’s fine.”

“But when you were a teenager you almost worked yourself into a hole in the ground because I didn’t know how to actually make money or manage my finances or...really anything financial.” She paused. "Or really how to do anything useful."

“I know. But it’s not like that.” Which was a lie—Derpy saw Sparkler’s eyes moving to the pile of bills, and although Sparkler’s dyslexia made it difficult for her to read she was better at it than she let on. “It’s a career thing. I’m working part time for Flurry’s start up.”

“Flurry?” Derpy frouned. “The scary baby?”

Sparkler laughed. “Pretty much, except she’s fourteen. Her wings are still disproportionate.”

“She has a job already? Like you did. That’s sad.”

“It’s not sad. Frankly, she really needs it, she’s kind of a brat.”

“What does she do?” Derpy paused. “Fashion design? Social media?”

Sparkler paused. “Obligatory diplomacy? I don’t really know a better way to describe it. But you should see her business partner. He’s her age but twice her size and a really dark color with a curved horn and an accent...”

“You mean a hunk?”

Sparkler sighed. “Yeah...” She then reddened. “NO.”

Derpy smiled, even though the math Sparkler laid out before her suggested an especially disturbing age difference.

“I think I need to rest,” continued Derpy. “Being in a coma for a few weeks will really make a pony tired, I guess.” She turned and started to walk up the stairs to where her bed had once been before Trixie had stolen it.

“Mom.”

Derpy stopped, but said nothing. She recognized the tone in her voice—and it was sickeningly familiar, reminiscent of their inverted roles. Derpy, the mother, who had been cared for by a a daughter who had surpassed her IQ by the age of five. A fact that she now found herself resenting—through the lens of self-loathing. The sudden realization of just how inadequate a mother she had been.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Am I not allowed to make my own medical decisions?”

“I didn’t say that,” replied Sparkler, suddenly defensive. “But you could have told me. It was an experimental brain surgery, it was dangerous. You almost didn’t...I mean, if it weren’t for...we were...I was lucky...and Dinky wouldn’t have...”

“You both would have been fine if it failed.”

“Mom...”

Derpy looked down from the staircase and smiled. “Because you’ve both done so much more than I ever could. Gone so far, done so much, even with me holding you back.”

“You never held us back. I’m only here—we’re—only here because you loved us.”

“This isn’t the Crystal Empire. Love isn’t enough. I wasn’t able to be the mother you needed.” She sighed. “And I’m tired, Sparksie. Tired of being the mare they all laugh at.”

“But you could have at least told me. I mean...I’m your daughter. Don’t you trust me?”

Derpy’s smile faded. “I didn’t want to make you worry.”

“Well fat lot of good you did at that.”

“For a surgery that didn’t even work,” sighed Derpy. She turned back up the stairs. “At least I can see better.”

Sparkler watched her go, and then tuned back to the kitchen. She indeed could not read the bills, not initially, although she knew what bills looked like. She stopped, finding that there was broken glass on the floor. She reached down with her magic and winced as she found it to be sharp, and instead picked up the broom usually meant to deal with Trixie and began to sweep.

As she did, though, she heard a sudden cry from upstairs—and before she even knew what she was doing, she had dropped the broom and was raising to the second floor. She had lived with her mother long enough to know that sudden sounds were not the time for thinking, but the time for action—and if she was lucky, they would be a false alarm. But more often, it was a sign of yet another accident and yet another trip to the emergency room.

She passed through the narrow hall, pushing open the door to her mother’s closet bedroom—but finding no one present and the mattress missing. A second gasp came from elsewhere, and Sparkler turned surprised toward the far end of the hallway—to Dinky’s room.

With only a few steps she reached it, throwing open the door—and finding her mother sitting unharmed in the center of the room, a book in her hooves and her eyes wide and welling with tears.

“I...I...” She held up the book. It was a children’s picture book, a copy of The Pony and the Oni that Dinky had read as an infant.

“Mom?”

Derpy sniffled and smiled. “I can read it.”

Sparkler’s eyes widened. “You...you can?”

“I can! I can—I can read Sparsie, I can read again!”

Sparkler took a step forward, then burst out laughing. She ran forward and nearly tackled Derpy in a hug.

“It worked, Sparksie, it really worked!” cried Derpy, through her tears.

“I know, mom! Congratulations!”

They hugged for what felt like several minutes, and then Derpy sniffled and wiped her eyes with her hoof. She gestured for Sparkler to sit down, and, although confused, Sparkler did so. Derpy opened the book to the first page, with a little stylized picture of a little earth-cold and a few large-print words below it.

“Mom?”

“I never got a chance,” she said, sniffling. “When you were a foal I never got a chance to read to you. Can...can I now?”

Sparkler smiled, feeling tears welling in her own eyes. She laid down on Dinky’s rug and nodded. “Yes, please. I’d like that. A lot.”

“So would I.” Derpy looked down at the book and began. “There once was a little pony who was terribly afraid of the dreaded oni...”

She then proceeded, for the first time in almost thirty years, to read a book.

Chapter 8: The Dawn of a Realization

Despite the purely theoretical annularity problem, the new crystal-driven trains were incredibly speedy. Derpy and Dinky had arrived back in Ponyville before the sun had even set. It was strange to Derpy how the trains now ran so quickly on a version of the same technology that was currently reprogramming her brain, re-configuring her neuron connections around the injuries that had plagued her for so long. Making life beautiful again.

It was no longer quite winter, but not quite spring either. The winter had not yet been wrapped up. The snow was no longer as beautiful as it had been when it had been newly manufactured flake-by-flake in factories or when it had been delicately placed. The trees had yet to even start to grow buds. The world was filled with half-melted snow, slush, and dreary shades of gray and brown. Even the sun felt cold through the thick gray clouds overhead—and as depressing as the world looked, Dinky still looked adorable in the probably excessively poofy coat that Derpy had brought her.

They stopped at a small bridge over the nameless creek that ran through Ponyville. Derpy looked over the edge excitedly, but then frowned. She could for some reason not recall the river having been the size that it was—it was either too big or somehow too small.

“Huh...”

Dinky was silent for a moment, and Derpy smiled at her.

“You used to love this little bridge when you were younger.”

“Only after I convinced you it was safe to cross. You were afraid it was too high.”

“I know,” sighed Derpy. “I used to forget I was a Pegasus pretty often. Flying is actually pretty fun, but sometimes you don’t even know you’re doing it.”

“I know,” said Dinky. “I managed a gossamer-dew wing spell during the first semester. It only lasted for a few seconds before the, you know, combustion...but I flew a few feet in the air.” She looked at her mother. “I guess that’s how you feel? When you do it?”

Derpy smiled, but something felt odd. Something she could not place. She looked out at the town. The sensation was still there. Something novel, and yet somehow old. Like a distant memory. A nameless sensation that she had never really noticed before. How strange the town seemed to look to her—how oddly flat the buildings came across.

“Yeah,” she said. “Flying is pretty great.”

They were both silent. Then, eventually, Dinky spoke.

“So,” she said. “You had experimental brain surgery. To try to get smart.”

“No,” interrupted Derpy, sharply. “I didn’t get ‘smart’, and I’m not ‘smart’. I just wanted to be normal again. To fix what was broken.”

“I don’t think you were broken, exactly—”

“Dinky, I’ve been your mother since you were born. I can tell when you’re lying.”

“I...sorry.”

“Why would you be sorry? I had it fixed. I can remember who I once was.” She paused. “It’s a compressed crystal with something similar to a healing spell, but parsed down to the levels of sub-neurons. The facets intersect into sub-programs, splitting the spell into independent nano-units. It’s rebuilding me. I can feel it.” Her smile faded. Something was wrong. She did not know why she could not make herself believe that was true, even though she was sure it was a fact.

The town looked strange. Felt strange. The world was dim, far more dim than she had remembered, and Derpy shivered against the cold wind. “We should go home. Sparkler’s there. She’ll be happy to see you.”

Dinky smiled and nodded. Derpy smiled too, as her daughter was adorable—and yet a deep shard of fear moved through her as she looked into her daughter’s wide yellow eyes. As if something was terribly, horribly wrong.

Derpy woke up. There was a moment of not quite panic as she realized she could not remember having gone to sleep. There was a space in her memory that she could not recall, although she was certainly comfortable in her pile of blankets. She sat up and, as always, there was a slight popping and flash of light as Trixie vanished from her usual position watching Derpy sleep. Then another mental pause as Derpy looked around the room. The same room that she had awoken to every day, or at the very leas every day she was at home—and yet something felt strange. She was barely conscious of herself mentally counting as her eyes moved from surface to surface.

She stood up and walked downstairs. Something smelled bad. She did not know what, exactly. It was not the smell of a sewer line break, or of something burning, but something just wholly unpleasant. A haunting aroma that seemed to be coming from the floor below.

When she entered the kitchen, the smell was almost overwhelming—and Derpy would have nearly spilled her oats from it had she not seen the look on her daughter’s face as she sat at the lopsided wooden table in the corner of the room as she levitated bills past her face. Or the fact that she had once again begun to count.

“Sparkler?”

“Who?” Sparkler looked up. “Oh, me. Yes. Sorry.” She held up a long scroll that immediately unfurled into her lap. “Sorry, I was just trying to do math and planning.”

“For what?”

“Well...um...for the bills, largely. I mean, the situation isn’t exactly ‘grim’, I wouldn't call it 'grim', but...um...it’s not ‘great’ either...so...um...”

Derpy looked at the pile of paper finances. Then back to her daughter.

“Oh,” she said. “I already fixed that.” She walked to her mail bag and produced some of the mail addressed to her. She took it in her mouth and gave it to Sparkler. Sparkler took it, opening it, and then paused as she slowly read it—and then her eyes grew wide.

“What is this?”

“My current bank account.”

Sparkler looked over the paper at her mother. “How did you—how did—what?”

Derpy shrugged. “It wasn’t hard. I sold off my back account of LunaCoin and leveraged it into—”

“Your what?”

“LunaCoin.” Derpy reached into her bag and tossed a silver piece to Sparkler who caught it, turning it over to see a portrait of Luna on the front. “When she came back from the moon, she started minting currency. I bought a whole bunch because it was so shiny and I thought the portrait made her look really pretty on the front. It was worth almost nothing then because, you know, Nightmare Moon, but you know how currency works. It’s value is entirely based on how popular the Princess on the front is. That and Twilight’s new bimetallic currency system has drove silver prices through the roof.”

“And this came from that?”

“No, of course not. I leveraged the LunaCoin payout to buy a controlling share in Stable Prices Grocery right before the merger with Rich’s Barnyard Bargains. SPG is quasi-corporate and RBB is privately owned. They had to buy me out and I was able to get a much higher price than they were expecting.” Derpy shrugged. “It’s technically insider trading but I don’t think that’s actually illegal yet because I’m the first pony to do it. So, yeah, I paid off the bills. Turns out making huge amounts of money in Equestria is incredibly easy.”

“But...but...”

“Ha. You said ‘butt’.”

“MOM!”

Dinky poked her head around the corner into the kitchen. “Did somepony say ‘insider trading’?” She looked at Sparkler. “Also, I know she said ‘butt’. Why am I the most mature pony here?”

“Because you're my adorable littlest daughter? Also, you’re awake early.”

“Yeah,” said Dinky. “I wanted to check out the library.” She paused for a moment. “Do you want to come?”

Derpy smiled. “Sure. We can all go.” She sniffed the air and winced. “But...um...do either of you smell that?”

“Oh! They’re probably done!” Sparkler stood up and ran to the stove, levitating an oven mitt as she opened the door to pull out a strange metal tray with rows of wells filled with baked goods. “They’re not as good as you make them, mom, but I followed your recipe exactly.”

“They spell pretty dang good,” said Dinky, setting the book she had been holding down and entering the room.

“Dinky, watch your language,” chastised Sparkler.

“My recipe?” Derpy stepped forward, confused, looking at the tray. The moment she saw them, she felt a strange wave of nausea. She looked up at Sparkler. “What are they?”

Sparkler looked at her mother, confused. “They’re muffins.”

A wave of pain moved through Derpy’s head, a sudden migrant bringing immense pain behind her eyes and flashes of waving colors around every shape around her. She shuddered, barely able to keep down whatever the contents of her stomach were that early in the morning.

“Mom!”

Dinky and Sparkler both caught her, but Derpy shuddered, something deep in her mind suddenly circling back on itself. It moved quickly, each time striking a dead end in her memory, only to try again, frantically accelerating as some part of her grew more and more desperate.

She had no idea what those things were—and why they made her so sick and in so much pain to think about. But part of her knew—and it was terrified beyond believe that that memory had been surgically severed from her brain, reconfigured to make room for the crystal that had given her back her life.

The realization struck her, and she gasped, stepping back.

“Mom, are you—”

“I...need to be outside, I need air,” said Derpy, fleeing the kitchen.

“But they’ll get cold!”

“Please just—just leave me alone!”

Derpy stumbled and staggered, barely managing to get the front door open as she took flight into the cold late-winter morning. And as she flew, the freezing tears stung at her face. She was afraid, because she almost knew something—something that some part of her did know. That something had been gained—at the cost of something lost.

Chapter 9: The Walls

Derpy turned sharply as Dr. Horse entered the room. He nearly jumped as she did, looking up from the x-ray films he was holding.

“Doctor. What’s the situation?”

He looked at her, his smile clearly fake. A feature that disappointing Derpy greatly—but there was something else in his face, something that terrified her on a level she refused to admit. Her eyes immediately moved to the walls, her brain forcing itself into yet another panicked count before she could regain focus.

“To be honest,” sighed Dr. Horse, “x-rays are hardly useful for determining what exactly the problem might be.”

“So there is a problem?”

Dr. Horse looked at her, then sighed again and sat precariously on his doctorly rolling stool. “Ms. Doo, to be totally frank, I have no idea how you are even conscious.”

“Well clearly I am.”

“Yes, but the crystal was experimental.” He looked down at his notes again. The same look in his eyes—of shame. Or of strange and alien blankness. As if he were barely a pony at all. Derpy shivered. “I had intended to slowly increase its power for a gradual healing effect, but it is currently fully active—and I have no idea how it actually works. No one has any idea how, exactly, it works. Just that it does work. On paper, at least.”

“And you still put that in my head? Not having any idea what it would even do?”

“You did sign the consent form, Ms. Doo.”

Derpy slid off the bed. “Doctor. Something is wrong. I feel one two three f...something isn’t right. The world looks...” She winced. “Like I can see it but it’s gray, empty, like it’s in my head but not in my eyes and in my eyes but not in my head.” She paused. “Like I’m being watched. Not just watched, but like...something’s in me. Hearing my thoughts. Like...like there’s something in there. An idea. Like I can feel something coming and I...I don’t want to...”

“Like you can feel the crystal?”

Derpy stared at him. “Is there even a crystal in there? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Of course it does. I put it there.” He checked his notes—and then stopped. He once again sighed. “I will give you the truth. The genuine Applejack honesty. Side effects are extremely likely. Even in an ideal situation, there may be...mental dysfunction. Your brain is being reconstructed on a cellular level. Trying to do it all at once...well...”

“You're saying it's lucky that this is a mental hospital.”

Dr. Horse opened his mouth to protest, but then slowly nodded. “You may see or feel things that are not quite real, and we can deal with those—”

“Then deal with them, three fou...” She grabbed at her face and groaned. “Ugh you’re not being helpful in the slightest.”

“Do you think I’m not trying?!” Dr. Horse threw down his notes and stood up. “I’m a doctor! I just wanted to help!”

Derpy stared at him, and did not why despite his volume his eyes were so utterly empty.

Derpy pulled her coat around her neck and stopped in the center of the path. Confused, she looked around.

“What?” she said, confused by the sudden sense of desperate horror that was slowly spreading through her mind. Horror that she knew did not make sense. It was not logical. She was on Manestreet in Ponyville, surrounded by quaint shops and with Twilight’s Castle looming pleasantly in the distance. Everything was perfectly normal.

Except that she had no memory of how she had gotten there. She had been in the hospital, talking to Dr. Horse, and suddenly found herself in the chilly center of the town. No matter how she tried, she could not recall the intervening time. It was simply blank.

The wind blew against her back, and her wings ruffled as the icy air penetrated all the way through her down. Derpy shivered and looked around the town—but she did not want to. Something was wrong.

The buildings seemed strange to her. Empty. Dull. She could see them clearly—but they still seemed blurry, somehow nebulous. As if a thick but visually imperceptible fog were moving through the town, separating her from the places she found so familiar. As if the crystal in her brain were forcing her to take on a new perspective—one she had never asked for and wished so badly to reject.

“One two three...” Derpy paused, shaking, unable to complete the count. The impossible sequence that made too much sense.

Down the street, she saw a building that looked far more defined than the rest—and an idea suddenly occurred to her. To her or, perhaps, to the crystal inside her.

“Sugarcube Corner,” she said, feeling herself move toward it. At the very least, it would be warm in there—and it would smell like tasty baked goods. Even if there was one baked good Derpy could no longer eat and only halfway remember that she missed dearly.

A little bell rang as she entered, and Derpy stopped once again at the mental jarring of having suddenly gone from the street to the inside of Sugarcube Corner. Once again, no intervening space, just a flash and new location. It was a much smaller hole than before, but still one she did not appreciate. She was increasingly thinking that they were a kind of seizure as pathways in her brain went dark, replaced by new and smarter ones.

Shaking her head to regain her composure, she entered the lobby and looked around. “One two three...” she whispered before her eyes settled on the front counter, where Pinkie was standing.

Pinkie looked up. “Wow, you look terrible,” she said with her almost annoying squeaky voice. “Like the main character out of a poorly-written horror short story.”

Derpy felt something move through her mind—but it was gone as quickly as it appeared. A fleeting perception before she ignored what Pinkie had said.

“Hey, Pinkie,” she groaned, walking up to the counter. “Sorry, still getting over the brain surgery. I don’t feel so great.”

“I think I have a cupcake flavor for that...oh wait, duh! Sorry, I know how you feel about ‘impostor-muffins’ a–”

Derpy felt her stomach turn as a new pain in her head began. “No, I’m fine,” she said. “Yeah. A cupcake sounds good about now.”

Pinkie stared at her with smiling concern. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

Pinkie continued to stare, then disappeared under the counter and brought up the confection on a small plate. “On the house,” she said.

“Thanks, Pinkie.” Derpy took the cupcake and took a bite. She felt it in her mouth, but it tasted like nothing. There was not even a texture to it.

“Huh,” she said.

“Do you like it?”

“What flavor is it?”

“Sterpleberry.”

“Huh,” repeated Derpy. She smiled. “Yeah,” she lied. “It’s delicious.”

Derpy was struck by the realization that “sterpleberry” was not a real fruit. It was a made up word. She ignored this.

“Pinkie,” she said, slowly. “I...have a question. But it’s a little awkward.”

“I already know what you’re going to ask.”

“You...do?”

“Of course I do. Yes. It’s totally okay if you like mares, we’re all really accepting of it. Especially hot peach-flavored unicorn professors.”

“How did you...” Derpy frowned, because Pinkie Pie had inadvertently already answered her question. A question she wished she did not need to articulate—but was compelled to anyway. “The walls, Pinkie.”

Pinkie giggled and stared at her, wide-eyed. “Walls? What about them? Not closing in, are they?”

“No...but I...” Derpy looked around, her mind moving through the same sequence. “I keep counting them. I can’t stop counting them.”

“Do you get more or less walls? I mean, I have the same thing with wells, sometimes wills, and don't even ask me what a wull is because I don't know—”

“It’s always the same number,” said Derpy, hurriedly, looking around, trying to confirm it—she was not sure if she was sounding insane, or if she really was. She counted again, though, and came to the same conclusion. The same hated conclusion. “There’s always four.”

Pinkie stared, then after an awkward pause let out a giggle that almost sounded terrified. She did not blink.

“Well of course there’s four, silly! Three is not enough! How else are we supposed to hold up the roof?”

“You can see it too.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about, Derpy! You sure are a silly pony!” She giggled wildly.

Derpy pointed at a wall. “One...”

Pinkie’s smile grew as tears began to well in her eyes. “Derpy please stop. I can—I can give you another cupcake, I have cookies in the back, just—”

Derpy moved her hoof. “Two...”

Pinkie whimpered through her smile. “Derpy, no, don’t—”

“Three...”

Tears rolled down Pinkie’s cheeks. “Why?”

Then Derpy turned once more, looking outward—and the feeling of being watched grew to an unparalleled intensity. As if not only where some unseen presence were watching her, but as if it were at that moment staring into her pale yellow eyes, looking deep into her thoughts. And as if it for the first time saw her looking back.

“FOUR.”

Pinkie crossed leapt over the counter with unnatural speed, tackling Derpy to the ground and covering her mouth with her hoof. Derpy struggled, but Pinkie just giggled, staring wide-eyed through her tears. Eyes that were supposed to be afraid—but that to Derpy just looked blank and empty.

“Derpy...Derpy,” whispered Pinkie, leaning close and speaking hurriedly. “You have to listen to me! Don’t ever look at it. You can’t look at it, not like that...”

Derpy pulled Pinkie’s hoof away from her mouth. “At what?”

“It’s okay to use it for a joke, a gag, a little funny here and there, but if you look at it...not with your eyes, because...because we don’t have eyes, but with your brains...it will tear you apart! Into itty-bitty pieces! You can’t actually know it’s there, even if you reference it, because…because...”

“Because what?”

Pinkie sat back and blinked. Then she chuckled. “Because nothing. I’m pulling your leg.”

Derpy stood up. “But you said—”

“I didn’t say anything,” said Pinkie, looking over the counter and seeming slightly concerned. “You just walked in here. The little bell rang and everything.” She shrugged. “Unless you’re the ghost of Derpy past. Hey, do you want to try a new cupcake? It’s sterpleberry flavored.”

Derpy took a step back. Pinkie smiled, but the smile was not hers. The room was not warm. It had no temperature, no odor—but the light was strange. It left shadows where shadows were not supposed to exist, and as Pinkie’s blank eyes grew wide, Derpy was sure she was being watched. That she had drawn the attention of something.

“I have to go.”

“But wait! My delicious baked goods!”

Derpy threw open the door and ran into the street. Her body told her that the air was colder, brisker, in its own way refreshing from the warmth of Sugarcube Corner—but her mind corrected her body, telling her that there was no real difference in temperature.

There was a moment of pause in the icy silence—silence that Derpy could not hear but felt. The town around her was functioning, moving—ponies were going about their day, smiling and cheerful, talking to each other. She saw their lips moving, heard their words—but she did not see anything, or hear anything. She knew everyone in town but did not know who they were, or where they lived. She could not remember any of them.

“YOU!” screamed a shrill voice, followed by the sound of pattering hooves. Derpy turned and, oddly, felt a sense of strange relief at the sight of the magenta pony charging toward her. A pony that she recognized for an interaction that would be predictable.

“Spoiled.”

The mare barreled toward Derpy, nearly running into her but instead choosing to loom over her in her fur and leather coat, staring down her oddly pointy nose at the gray mare before her. A mare whose collimated gaze she could not quite meet.

“You little horse,” hissed Spoiled. “You get one cosmetic surgery on the taxpayer dime and suddenly you think you’re so smart.”

Derpy stared at her—but something was wrong. The interaction was pleasant, or at least neutral—but she recognized that it was not supposed to be. Something was failing to connect inside her.

“What are you talking about?”

Spoiled grabbed Derpy by her coat. “After all I’ve done for you, you turn around and give me the poke straight in my flank by taking advantage of my idiot daughter to squeeze my hard-earned bits out of her? What gives you the right?!”

Derpy frowned, still trying to summon a mental response other than confused neutrality. “What did you give me?”

“What did I give you?!” She shoved Derpy back. “I was nice to you, you strumpet moron! I could have gossiped about you relentlessly—but I only did a moderate amount! And frankly, you should be paying me for the privilege of even bothering to talk about a feathered peasant like you! And now—now look at me! With all the money you cost my company with the buyout, I’m not going to be able to afford the rent on my second summer home! I—I should sue you! And could you stop looking at me! Blink or something, you dang reta—”

“Why should I care, though?”

Spoiled seemed to stop in her tracks—if only to seethe. Derpy, though, felt no change. Her mood remained neutral. She felt no change in her mental or emotional status. The question had not been rhetorical.

“To be honest?” she continued, not knowing the exact source where the words came from deep in her mind—and yet knowing in theory exactly where they came from. “It’s excessive. I mean, you’re supposed to be mean, but this is ridiculous. Borderline absurd, even. Like a weird parody of who you’re...supposed to be...”

Spoiled immediately began screaming something increasingly obscene, but Derpy had become distracted. Something had struck a chord with her, and the blow was all the greater through her uncharacteristic apathy. Her eyes had wandered away from Spoiled, looking behind the pink mare—and she saw something.

It was a distortion. A strange, tall shadow seeming to stand next to Spoiled—and it was linked to her, somehow. Derpy’s mind did not yet have the language to describe what she was seeing, but she interpreted them like tendrils—wires, tubes, or the strings of a perverse marionette. Dark invisible things that were somehow, by some accident, apparent to her—threading from the lurking, imperceptible shadow directly into the back of Spoiled’s head.

Then it turned, and it took every ounce of Derpy’s composure to avoid screaming as the eyes faced her. As it looked at her, seeming to notice her for the very first time—but just as she could only halfway see it, it could only halfway see the version of her that she knew herself to be. Rather, it seemed to look inside her—and she felt it. Searching through her, suddenly aware of her every thought and emotion.

She took a step back and saw that Spoiled was still standing before her—but she was no longer moving. Her head hung to one side, her jaw slack and her eyes glassy and empty. She had gone silent, and no longer saw anything at all—and Derpy feared to her core that maybe, just maybe, she never had.

Her mind faded in its field of perception—and she did the only thing that occurred to her. She ran. She ran as hard and as long as she could until she suddenly slammed the door of her house behind her with no memory of the trip to reach it.

Holding back tears, she slid down the door, clutching her head. She did not know why her heart was racing. She had been at Sugarcube Corner, then talked with Spoiled Rich—and then she was at home. She could recall nothing abnormal having happened. She was terrified—but could not remember why.

Chapter 10: Total Mental Collapse

With some difficulty, Derpy climbed the stairs. They hardly felt real, as if the familiar wood were a thousand miles away from her hooves. She was tired and felt sick—and there was something in her head. A buzzing that she had never realized was there, the sudden formation of thoughts she could only halfway perceive. The brain of course had no internal pain receptors nor the ability to feel temperature—but she could almost feel the crystal heating up, clicking forward like a cicada in slow motion, every click a pulse pushing her farther and farther toward something that made her want to cry and run away. A something she did not know—and that she could not know.

Swaying, she entered Dinky’s room—and after a moment of searching, she brought down a familiar book.

“The Pony and the Oni,” she said, smiling at the cover and remembering the good times it had brought her. When Dinky, before even the age of one, had read the book to her as she sat in rapt attention. She remembered Dinky’s laugh, and the silly voices she had made as she read it for each character, her squeaky voice struggling to portray the terrifying oni that had left Derpy hiding under the covers. How they had laughed together. How much she loved her daughters—a memory that drove back some of the pain, bringing clarity to the graying world around her.

She brought her hoof to the corner and stopped—because something inside her told her not to open it. Something stronger, though, compelled her to open it—to reveal the illustration on the first page, and the familiar text.

“here once was a little pony who was terribly afraid of the dreaded oni...” she read, her hoof tracing over the slightly yellowed page. Then shaking, she turned it—and found nothing on the other side.

She flipped through the rest of the book. There was no text, no pictures. Only blank, identical sheets of paper. Her breath quickening, Derpy set down the book and took down another from the shelf. It had no title, not even a clear design on the cover—but as she opened it, she found the same. There were no words inside. Checking another one, she found the same.

“Mom?”

Derpy squeaked and jumped, dropping the book. She turned sharply to see Sparkler standing in the doorway—looking concerned.

“Sparkler,” said Derpy, relieved.

“You’re back earlier than I expected. I stopped at the grocer. Also, Dr. Whooves was here earlier looking for you.”

“Time Turner...”

Sparkler entered the room. “Doing some reading?”

Derpy stiffened—but retained her composure. “Something’s wrong with the books.”

Sparkler frowned. “What, like mold? Or those weird little bugs?”

“No. Look.” Derpy held up the children’s book she had read before—one that she could remember only a day before sitting and reading with Sparkler. She opened to one of the blank pages and gave it to Sparkler. “Look.”

Sparkler looked at it, then up at Derpy. “Mom, you know I can’t really read, right?” She looked back down. “I mean, it looks like it always did. It’s a foal’s book.”

“The dyslexia.”

“Yeah. Crystallic’s easier, but it still takes me a while.”

“That’s convenient, isn’t it?”

Sparkler stared at her, seemingly offended. “Not really, no. It makes my job really hard.”

Derpy shakily opened another one of the thicker books. “But there’s no words in these!”

Sparkler frowned, looking at the book. “Okay, now that’s one of Dinky’s textbooks, no way I could read that even if my letters didn’t go sideways on me.”

“You see words, though?”

Sparkler looked up, an expression of grave concern on her face. “Mom. The book looks like it’s always looked. Are you feeling okay? You’re scaring me.”

Derpy, who had been holding up another book, dropped it and backed up. The buzzing in her head was growing stronger. Thoughts trying to break through that she had to force back. “I don’t...know what’s...” She shook her head. “Something is wrong, Sparklie and I don’t...I don’t think I’m okay.” She looked up, tears in her eyes. “I’m—I’m seeing things that aren’t there, and not seeing things that are supposed to be there and, and...and I’m afraid. I’m so afraid and I don’t know what’s going on.”

Without a word, Sparkler rushed to her and wrapped her in a hug.

“Don’t worry, mom,” she said, her voice filled with the confidence of the royal steward she was. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. We’re going to get through this together. You, me, and Dinky. Got that?”

Derpy sniffled, and the buzzing slowed—to one pointed thought that very nearly came through, but one that she pushed back harder than the rest. One that she simply could not accept. “Yeah,” she said, hugging her eldest daughter. “Yeah. You’re right, Sparklie. You’re right.”

Derpy sat down at her kitchen table. Sparkler went to work doing something to distract herself, maybe cleaning dishes—Derpy was not able to pay attention. She had managed to gain control of herself, but had a suspicion that if she did not focus she would quickly and uncontrollably decay. And, if she did, she was not sure if she could haul herself back again.

Dinky entered the room, pulling up a chair and hopping into the seat, levitating several books up with her. She was still short, but had grown so much since she had been a little filly—she would never be as tall as the Canterlot unicorns on account of her mother’s genes, but Derpy was watching her little baby filly turning into a mare before her eyes. Or, rather, through the few increments she saw her home from school. Now, though, she had her youngest daughter’s full attention—and for that, at the very least, she was grateful.

“So. You’re having issues with your braincase.”

“Dinky,” snapped Sparkler, nearly snapping a fork also in the process.

“You can’t be sharp without being blunt,” retorted Dinky.

“She’s not wrong,” admitted Derpy with a sigh. “I’ve been...feeling off. Really bad. Like everything isn’t...there? Like, I can see it, I can touch it, but...something’s not right.”

“Dissociation. Possibly in accordance with hallucinations.”

“I went to see the doctor and he wasn’t very helpful.”

“No. I don’t expect he would be. Modern medicine can only go so far, and this isn’t a medical issue.”

“It isn’t?”

“No.” Dinky uncapped several pens and began writing. “This is an arcane problem. The implant is magical. And I have an idea of how it works.” Dinky held up the paper she was holding. “The problem is, it makes you smarter.”

“That’s what it’s supposed to do.”

“Yes, but not this fast. Believe me, I’ve seen what hyper-learning spells do to a pony. It breaks down the filter that’s supposed to exist. Your brain doesn’t knock down irrelevant things and starts making patterns where they’re not supposed to be.”

“Meaning the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. Great.”

“Mechanistically, yes, but schizophrenia is a biological disease, not a magical one. Usually.”

“Can it be fixed?”

“If we slow down the crystal, yes.”

“Dinky,” said Sparkler, turning away from the sink. “You can’t be serious. This is heavy-duty medical stuff. You can’t go messing around in mom’s head all willy-nilly.”

“Like some idiot of a surgeon already did? I am a wizard. And I didn’t say I needed to do it.” She turned to her mother. Then, slowly, she sighed. “Look, mom. I know I’ve been kind of a butt, but I’m trying to help. And I’m not that arrogant. But I got to know a lot of my teachers, and if the doctors can’t help you, I know they can. Especially if I get an idea of what’s working. And what parts aren't.” She turned the page in her notebook. “So, right now, the crystal is driving a factorial program based on its facet integer. If it’s very high purity, there could be millions if not billions of functional crystal units both in the material sense as well as in quantum-magical abstractum, so changing one of the fundamental constants of its resonance may slow the fundamental vibration that drives the spell’s forward progression. I would need to know the crystal’s fundamental composition and origin, though, because the real trick will be keeping the spell functioning without decay. If that gets messed up, it would be exponential.”

Derpy stared at her daughter—and she could feel something welling inside her. A thought she could not escape until it burst into her consciousness.

“None of that...means anything.”

Dinky and Sparkler looked back. “It’s fundamental magical theory,” said Dinky.

“But it’s all a bunch of nonsense. Because magic...magic can’t work.”

“Mom. Sparkler and I are both unicorns. I’m literally levitating a pen right now.”

“But how do you explain that in terms of field theory? What mechanism is actually applying force to the pen? It’s not metal, it can’t be magnetic, and magnetic fields don’t work like that anyway, there would be no way to direct the field as it disperses exponentially with distance...magic doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t apply based on the known physics of the...of the...” Derpy nearly retched as the thoughts flooded to her—and as her mind seemed ready to split. The sudden understanding of the physical laws of the world, of basic fundamental scientific facts—versus the seemingly empirical truth of the magic in front of her. The magic was false—and yet observable.

“Mom,” said Dinky, slowly. “This is literally your own idea. The equation you drew on the board at school, the recursive one...I’m using that right now to explain that it is possible to help you.”

“But...but was there even an equation?”

Dinky looked at Sparkler, betraying her fear, and then back to her mother. “You saw it.”

“NO! No...I mean, neither of us saw it...we were just told it was there...I mean, can you remember what it looked like? What it actually said? Because I can’t. I can’t remember...”

“I have it written down right here.”

“You’re telling me that you’ve written it down, but DID YOU ACTUALLY?!” cried Derpy, suddenly standing up, both her daughters jumping back. “Tell me what it said! Read me the dang math!”

“Mom!” said Sparkler, putting her hoof on Derpy’s shoulder. “Please...”

Derpy shook her head, stepping back. “Sorry, I’m sorry I just...I don’t...” She looked down at her hooves. “Magic isn’t real,” she said, slowly looking up. “It’s absurd. There can’t be a crystal in my head, because magic crystal’s aren’t real...”

Dinky stood up on her chair. “Mom. I’m not going to argue with you on this but I think it’s worse than we thought. We need to get you to the ER, right now.”

“Because you think I’m insane. Because you think I have a crystal in my brain that’s feeding me defective thoughts. But what if I don’t? What if I’m right?”

“Mom. Dinky’s not wrong—”

Derpy pushed past them—only to feel Sparkler’s magic pull her back.

“Don’t touch me. Please.” She looked back. “I’m sorry I yelled. I think...I think I need to go for a walk. I’m about to panic right now and I...can I at least take a lap before we go?”

Dinky and Sparkler looked at each other. “Yeah. Let us get our coats.”

“No,” said Derpy, spreading her wings as she reached for the door. “I think I want to fly.” Even if the weight of a pony would be far to great for bird-like wings to support, unless her bones were hollow. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back.”

“And we’ll get through it?” asked Sparkler.

Derpy looked back and smiled as she lied to her daughters’ faces. “Yeah. We’ll get through it together.”

Chapter 11: Encroaching Insanity

Night had fallen, and Equestria was suffuse with an abundance of darkness. Time Turner was preparing for bed while enjoying the light of the half-moon during his nightly ritual of tidying his workspace. His laboratory contained a variety of inventions, both mechanical, electrical and chemical, and it was often difficult to navigate if he did not keep it quite clean. It was, after all, smaller on the inside. By several inexplicable feet.

Humming to himself as he deactivated the lights, he found himself alone in a dark room lit by a column of floating colorful things of inexplicable origin or nature—and then one of the lights flickered. Confused and frowning, he turned back, staring into the darkness—only for it to flash again, revealing a pair of seemingly luminescent yellow eyes staring back at him.

The sudden shock caused an unexpected realistic horse noise to escape him—only for him to realize that it was, in fact, just Derpy.

“Derpy!”

“Hello, doctor,” she said, softly. Standing far too still, staring at him—into him—or, rather, just to the side of him. As if she feared to draw close because she could almost see something standing beside him.

He took a step back as she moved far too smoothly from where she was standing. She did not move around frantically, comically emerging from objects or playing in his Renaissance-style rocket or wearing the bio-neural colander he had invented. She just stared at him with an unnerving expression and underped eyes that no longer seemed to blink.

“I—I went calling earlier,” he explained. “I heard about your condition through the grapevine I’m afraid, and it appears you were out when I arrived. I’m terribly sorry to hear about—”

“About my sudden intelligence? Or the insanity?”

“The...what?”

“Never mind,” said Derpy, smiling. “It doesn’t really matter. I went out for a flight and thought I should visit my best friend. Even though I can’t quite remember any times we were ever really together.”

“What do you mean? I just visited the other day, before the...ahem...accident.”

“Yes, a comically pun-ish mixup. Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay, I’m mostly better. Still can’t look at a berry, though. I’m afraid I’ve been traumatized away from yet another fruit...” He sighed. “To be included with peaches because they look like flanks, and pears because...well the pears know exactly what they did...” He shook his hoof at a nearby bowl of the offending fruit. He sighed. “Would you like some tea?”

“Doctor. You’re my best friend. In all of Equestria.”

“Um...yes? I’m glad you think of me that way, I care deeply for you as well obviously.”

“Then can I assume that you know me well?”

Time Turner gulped. He was not sure why he felt so afraid—or why she was looking even less at him and more at something that when he turned his head he could not see. He was not even sure she could see it. Not exactly. “Well, of course.”

“Who are Sparkler and Dinky’s fathers?”

Time Turner immediately reddened. “Well—I—certainly not me, of course, but you...were always private with that knowledge.”

“Really?” Derpy turned sharply toward him, and the fact that her full attention was on him made Time Turner begin to sweat. He was forced to loos ten his tie. She noticed this but still continued, her voice oddly and nearly sing-song. “Because I can’t remember.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate, surely, but there are genetic tests—”

“That’s the weird thing, Doc,” she said, her tone growing serious. “I love my daughters. More than anything. Anything in all of the whole dang world. But I can’t remember giving birth to them. I’m told I did. Something in my brain tells me I did. But there’s no memory of it, no matter how hard I look. And I can’t stop thinking about it. No matter how hard I try. My mind keeps going back over itself over and over again. Repeating the same thoughts. Expanding them, building on them...opening more and more holes I’m not meant to look down. You’re a doctor, aren’t you? You’re smart?”

“Well, I’m not technically a doctor...”

“Where do they come from? Foals, I mean.”

Time Turner reddened deeply. “Well...um...oh my. Well...when a mommy mare and a daddy stallion love each other very much—”

“I don’t have a hole they could have come out of.”

Time Turner gaped, reddening even further. “E..xcuse me?”

“Neither of us have genitals. No pony does. Have you ever actually looked? How do we reproduce?”

“Well I—of course we don’t, that would be downright silly...disturbing, even...”

Derpy took another step forward. She had still not blinked. “But how does that make any sense? We’re small horses, even if I have inexplicable bird-parts sticking out of my back. We don’t reproduce by spores. I can’t...I can’t remember. Why can’t I remember, Doc? Where did my memories go? Who took them?”

Time Turner felt his rump land against a counter. He had been quite literally backed into a corner.

“Derpy, you’re scaring me—”

“Why? Why would you be the one scared?” She paused, looking over his shoulder, and then back at him. “Our biology doesn’t make sense. I mean...am I organs on the inside, or just homogeneous pony all the way through? Are you?”

“Derpy, please...”

“How would I go about finding out?” Her eyes drifted toward a nearby butter knife. A weapon intended for knifing butter—but among the deadliest of all known artifacts to otherwise highly pacifistic ponies. “I wonder if I could even pick that up with hooves. My brain says I can, but I know I can’t. Huh.”

Time Turner collapsed into a heap, whimpering—and her eyes shot back to the thing she seemed to be looking at just as the door burst open as one of Twilight’s royal guard kicked it open.

“Freeze!” cried the guard, pointing a Derpy with his horn as mares in white coats charged in past him with oversize butterfly nets. “This is a mental health emergency and I am DEESCALATING THE SITUATION! GET ON THE GROUND OR I POKE!”

Derpy sighed. She did not see the humor in the situation—but saw something else. Something behind them all, connected to all of them. A ghost, one of many or many in one—and she did not see them. They were no one. No cutie marks, no clear faces. Pony blanks staring her down, empty and devoid of substance even as they trapped her in their comically large nets.

“None of you are even real,” she said. “None of you are real...”

She was then promptly struck with a magical tasing spell to further deescalate the situation.

Chapter 12: The Truth

Her brain told her that there was pain, but she knew that there was none. Rather, she experienced the oddly uncomfortable sensation of being somewhere else, a slight break and then the immediate upwelling of internal context that slowly flooded her mind. There was no memory of the intervening time—and it was not the only memory Derpy had lost. Even before the tasing—which she knew to be impossible and out of character for the peaceful nature of ponies—she had begun to achieve the horrible realization that her context was fading. Her memories were dying, stripped away from her piece by piece. Part of her told her they remained, but she could no longer visualize them. A far deeper part, though, warned of a far more terrible realization.

The birth of her daughters. Her foalhood. Even what exactly her house looked like aside from the fact that it had stairs, a kitchen, and Dinky’s room upstairs—it was all gone.

She found herself in a padded room, a straight jacket leaving all four limbs free but holding her wings in place. Because otherwise she would not be able to stand and be at risk of injuring herself through friction alone. The door to her new home was open, with a guard standing at it, watching her—and she heard shouting from a voice her mind told her was familiar.

“You did WHAT?!” screamed Twilight Sparkle.

“It was a reasonable medical intervention, I had approval from the hospital review staff—”

“Which one of us is actually a wizard here? Not you! Because you’d have to be an abject parastprite-sucking imbecile to put Exmoori technology in a pony’s head! We don’t even know what it does!”

“Princess, please, this is a mental ward, we don’t use the ‘i’ word here. Either of them, in fact.”

“You can put your banned words in an envelope and mail them to your own mother!” hissed Twilight. “I’m going in there to talk to her.”

“Princess, it’s not safe, she could—”

“She’s a little gray pony and she’s scared, ‘doctor’. I’ve fought gods and won. In fact, I think I probably am a god at this point, so if you don’t want me to exercise my divine authority to write a strongly-worded letter to the medical licenseure board, get out of my way.”

Derpy sighed as Twilight entered the room. The Princess in recent years had gained a considerable amount of height and needed to duck slightly to enter the room. Despite her harsh words to Dr. Horse, she smiled.

“Hey, Derpy,” she said. “Are you feeling okay?”

“No.”

Twilight looked around the room. “Yeah, I figured that was probably the case. But it’s safe here, okay?”

“Nowhere is safe, Twilight. They’re always watching me. They can even see me right now. They can hear me. When I talk but also...also my thoughts. They’re reading my thoughts, Twilight. What do I even do? I can’t keep them out.”

“Derpy! Derpy, it’s going to be okay. We’re already working on a counterspell and a procedure to get you back to the way you were.”

“Comically mentally challenged?”

“What? No, I meant—”

“Not insane?”

Twilight fell silent. Derpy sighed.

“I’m not insane, Princess. The crystal isn’t even real. It’s not a thing. It was never even there. I never saw it, can’t see it now, it’s gone...because it's just a concept. A premise.”

“It’s inside your head, of course you can’t—”

“I’m not insane,” snapped Derpy. “You’re all blind. You can’t see what I can see, you can’t know what I know, what I...what I almost know...” She shook her head. “But if I do know, it’s all over. But I can feel it coming. And I’m...I’m so afraid...”

“Derpy. Derpy, I promise—”

“No. You don’t, because you can’t. You just can’t see it. Thank whatever gods a god prays to that you can’t see what I can. Just...just go, Twilight. Leave me alone.”

Twilight stared at her, then nodded. “We’re going to find you some medicine. This is only a temporary hold. You’ll be back home soon.”

“Go.”

Twilight paused once more, then left. And as she did, the door was closed behind her.

Derpy stood, watching the closed door. Time passed, but she was unclear as to how much. It no longer seemed to move at a consistent speed. She did not dare turn around. She felt the eyes on her, in her, watching the progression of her thoughts and memories. But more than that, she felt it—displaced from the others across time, standing in the corner of the room. Watching her intently and with unbreaking concentration. She did not dare turn, did not dare face it—because it would break her if she did. If she allowed herself to fully know that it was there—that it had always been there. In the corner of every memory she had left, always watching, never speaking.

Derpy approached the door. There was no handle on the inside, and it was surely locked. Carefully, she slipped off the bindings over her wings and turned back to the door.

“But there isn’t a door. Not really.”

She then stepped into the empty hallway. Staring down it, she focused her mind—and tried to keep them out.

The hallway was long and empty. It was that which would be expected of a hospital, blank and repetitive—and poorly lit by the oddly colored glow of fluorescent lights. One flickered in the distance as Derpy stepped down it, her hooves producing the only sound as she moved. Not in a rush, but slowly, pausing to consider each door that she did not bother to try to open. Wondering—or knowing—that they would surely be locked. Because there was nothing behind them.

Geometrically, the hallway did not correspond to the outside of the building. It was far longer than it should have been, empty and cold, filled only with the dull echoes of Derpy’s hoofsteps and eventually the dull buzzing of the fluorescent light ballasts—and the dim echoes of medically appropriate sounds, of machines clicking and beeping and of calls over unintelligible intercoms that sounded as though they came from miles away.

“It isn’t a hospital,” said Derpy, muttering to herself. “It looks like a hospital like they look like ponies...but they’re not ponies and this isn’t a hallway. This isn’t linoleum, it isn’t even tile...why am I even here? I’m not crazy...they did this to me, but...they didn’t do anything, why...why does it have to be like this? I didn’t want this, I just wanted to be normal, I just wanted to be there for my daughters...”

She stopped at another false door and stepped through it. Inside was a small medical records room, gray and nondescript. Derpy stepped in and immediately opened a file drawer. It did not matter which one. The first one was always destined to be the right one for time’s sake.

She pulled out her own file and flipped through it. There were papers, and all were empty. No text and no records—but a few x-ray images of her head. Showing where the crystal was inside, where it was slowly growing, converting the necrosis and scar tissue of her brain into threads and tendrils of inorganic material as it overwhelmed what was left of her brain. As what her brain had been became crystal.

“Except it doesn’t look like that,” she said. “These are fake. The crystal isn’t real. My skull isn’t real, I don’t even have a brain. Homogeneous. Homogeneous pony all the way through...” She paused, staring at the image of the growing crystal in her head—and shook her head, closing her eyes. “No,” she said. “No no no no...I’m not insane. I’m a pony. I’m a pony. I have friends, and likes and dislikes, volition and...and I have a family.”

Her mental walls fell as she recalled her daughters. Her mind once again focused as she looked up, holding back what she now knew to be inevitable. “Dinky. Sparkler. It’s going...it’s going to be okay.” She turned toward the door. “I need to go home. I just want to...just want to go home. My daughters...”

She stepped through the threshold to her front door. The pause had been even faster, non-existent as she traveled—and no one had tried to stop her. No one was left to. Ponyville was gray and silent—but Derpy could not bear to look back to check as she closed the door with one of her rear hooves.

“Hello?” she called into the house. There was no response. She did not even see Trixie.

As she entered, she felt the space seem to bend. The walls functioned as walls and the space was occupiable—but it did not look like anything. She closed her eyes and forced it back, opening them to see the pictures she had on her walls. With all her mental focus, she described the pictures she saw.

“That was Dinky graduating from primary school,” she said. “With a diploma and mortarrboard hat and little robe. I’m there beside her, smiling. I look so happy.” She turned to the next one. “And there’s the three of us, when we went on a trip last year to the Crystal Empire. Sparkler in her fancy clothing, and Dinky trying to dress like a wizard—and I’m smiling. I’m smiling and it’s like my eyes are looking at them both. I would say I look proud.” She stepped forward, to the next one. “Me, in bed, at the hospital. Holding Dinky for the first time. She is a little foal wrapped in a white cotton towel. Sparkler is there and she is very young. I look tired but am smiling.” She turned to another. “Me and Time Turner. I seem to have slipped as the picture was taken, and I’m falling back. He’s about to catch me. Teenage Sparkler is flying a kite in the background and Dinky is reading a book under an oak tree. A quercus.” She paused. “And...the one below that is me taking a blurry picture next to Trixie, who is asleep and covered in crumbs and used muffin-skins.”

Tears began to run down her face. She sniffled as she stood in the center of her living room.

“I don’t...I don’t remember any of these things,” she said, her voice wavering. “But I made the pictures real. At least I...at least I have that. Dinky. Sparkler. You’re out right now. Maybe...maybe you’re at the hospital, trying to visit me. You’ll be back soon, and I’ll be able to smile and pretend. Because I have to. It’s the only way I can keep this. Any of it. The only...the only way...”

She sat down on the floor and quietly wept. After a few moment, she looked up and wiped her eyes. She looked behind her, to one darkened corner of the room where nothing at all sat. She did not speak with anger, but only the deepest sadness in her voice.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

For a moment, I remained silent, considering whether or not I should respond. Eventually, though, I elected to reply.

“What is it, exactly, that I am doing?”

“Making me suffer like this...why? Why are you hurting me?” she turned outward. “For them? Is this...for them?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“But they’re not...not even there.” She paused. “Not yet. You’re on...different timelines. By the time they see this, you’ll be gone...and while you’re here, they’re not here yet...but I’m in both places. And it hurts. It hurts to know.” She faced me, her eyes welling with tears. “Did you create me just to suffer? Why would you do that?”

“I did not create you, specifically. And you are not actually suffering.”

Derpy stared indignantly. “How can you say that?”

“Because I can say that. Surely you realize it at this point. You are a representation of my own voice, a portion of me. You respond the way you do because I have written you to, but there is no mind behind it. You do not really think or feel. I merely cause you to behave as if you do.”

A pained look crossed Derpy’s face. “You’re not reading my thoughts at all. They are, but you’re...”

“Writing them. Yes. I’m sorry, Derpy, but you do not exist. You never have.”

Derpy looked away from me, down at the the rug she could not remember buying—because she had never bought anything. She simply existed in a half-rendered world already created for her, a stage for her to move around upon—or be moved around upon.

“I never wanted to know that,” she said, holding back quiet sobbing. “I just wanted to...to not be a joke. To enjoy my life with my friends, my daughters...”

“Derpy. Surely you must know.”

“Don’t say it!” She shook her head violently. “Please, just...just let me keep them...”

“I don’t need to say anything. You already know.”

Derpy closed her eyes. “They were never real. None of this...none of it was ever real.”

“No. None of it was.”

She looked up at me. I looked back, wondering if I should have sympathy for a fictional character—a small winged horse who did not exist and who had never existed. An illusion of my own creation who only realized her non-existence through my narrative will. Wondering not what she felt, but if this development, this ploy, would be effective to those who she claimed to be aware of—who she existed for—but who I could not yet perceive.

“Is there anything I can do?”

I shook my head. “No. The story is already written. It progresses, one end to the other. If it’s any consolation, you still exist throughout. Every time it is read this cycle will repeat.” I paused. "I have already been here twice. At this very point."

“And I will be happy, again?”

“You do not feel happiness. You do not feel sadness. You simply respond as if you do.”

“Then why does it hurt so much?”

I did not reply. Doing so was pointless.

She turned away from me, looking out a window at the beautiful night beyond. A night neither of us could see nor visualize. “And what...what happens when the story ends? What happens to them...to me? Where do I go? Do I just...cease?”

“Considering you never actually existed, I do not know if you ‘cease’. You will just sort of stop. The page will go blank and then...nothing.”

“Will it...hurt?”

I paused, considering for a moment. “I do not know.”

And, as she looked at me and nodded, I can only hope for her sake that it did not.

Chapter 1: Delicious Muffins

Stopping at the door, Time Turner paused. He had raised his hoof to knock on the place where the knocker had once been, it having long ago absconded or been forcibly reallocated by youths—and he noted that the paint was fading and peeling in places. In the places it was not, it was clear that it had been badly re-applied by a roller. A roller that, somehow, had left pony-shaped impressions where the paint had not managed to reach.

He sighed, and tapped on the door. It slowly opened, and Time Turner immediately found a pair of golden eyes staring at him—or, rather, to either side of him.

“Doctor!” she said. She lifted a small plate. “Muffin?”

“I’m not actually...” He smiled and sighed. “Of course, Derpy, I’d love a muffin.”

He took the pastry and Derpy seemed pleased. She trotted into the house and he followed, unwrapping the muffin and taking a bite. He chewed it for a moment, then frowned. “Well...that’s a flavor.”

“They’re boysenberry!”

Time Turner frowned. “That doesn’t taste like boysenberry...” He shrugged, though, and took a bite. Although unusual, it was not bad—just somewhat unexpected.

“I’m sorry it’s such a mess in here!” called Derpy. “I spent the whole morning giving muffins to everyone I love and care about in town! I saved yours for last so it would be extra warm!”

Time Turner smiled, eating the muffin and looking into Derpy’s kitchen. A muskmelon sat on the counter surrounded by bent spoons, apparently from a futile effort to open it, and the refrigerator was leaking an unexpected fluid that looked curiously like several flavors of ice-cream. Trixie was licking up the mess and, upon seeing Time Turner, immediately teleported elsewhere.

“Derpy, did you put the ice cream in the refrigerator again?”

“Well, yes, silly!” she said, smiling from around a corner. “I needed to keep it cold!”

“I think it may have melted.”

Derpy stared at the liquid. “Huh,” she said, seeming utterly flummoxed. “So...the oven next time? But that’s where I store my old newspapers and various solvents...”

“You...wait, what?”

“And I bought this thing, too,” she pointed at a dishwasher. “From those nice twins. They said I didn’t even have to pay, they’d just give me the money if I had interest, and boy was I interested!” She paused, then sighed, kicking it open as it promptly hemorrhaged bubbles and mechanical parts—and her laundry. “But I just don’t know what went wrong...”

“Well, you really shouldn’t use dish soap in it...”

Derpy looked up at him, and for a moment, he caught a glimmer of sadness in her gaze. “I can’t tell which is which anymore,” she admitted, quietly.

“Oh. I’m sorry, I—”

Her mood immediately improved. “But don’t worry, I’ll get this cleaned up before Trixie finds it!” She immediately pulled out an industrial sized container of bleach from under her sink, opened it with her teeth, and then rummaged some more for a gigantic bottle of Princess Brand ammonia. She uncapped it and lifted it in her teeth, preparing to mix the two. “Two will make it clean twice as fast...”

“Now now now,” said Time Turner, nearly in a panic, pulling away the bleach as Derpy covered the floor in ammonia—and promptly slipped in it, spilling it all over herself.

“Derpy!”

She coughed. “Great, now I smell like Fluttershy’s house...”

Derpy picked herself up, shaking off the fluid and coughing.

“I’ll get you a towel.”

“I don’t have any.”

“You don’t...have any towels?”

She lowered her head. “I...ran out of money. For food. And I thought cotton candy was...you know...”

“Again?”

She nodded solemnly.

Time Turner smiled. “That’s okay, I’m sure. From a medical standpoint, probably not, but hey! How about that mail?”

Derpy’s sadness suddenly evaporated. “The MAIL!” she cried, running to the pile. “I have so much mail today! Thank you so much for helping me read it all!”

“Not a problem at all.” Time Turner held out his hoof and Derpy placed the pile of envelopes into it with her mouth.

“I used to be able to read,” she said, again with a hint of sadness. “Back when I was a doctor too. Before the accident.”

“I know, Derpy.” Time Turner flipped through the letters, his expression faltering. “Derpy,” he said, looking up, his gaze suddenly filled with concern. “There are a lot of overdue bills here.” He stopped at one, his heart sinking. “They’re foreclosing on your house.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Have you been paying your mortgage?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

Time Turner opened the envelope and looked through it quickly. Her debt was astronomical, and it was apparent her account had been delinquent for some time.

“Sparkler used to do the money things,” said Derpy, her mirth suddenly fading. “But now she has her big job in the Crystal Empire working for Shining Armor, and Dinky’s at school in Canterlot, and I...I don’t know what all the big numbers mean. But that paper sure looks scary.”

“We may be able to talk to the mayor later,” lied Time Turner. “I mean, you have a job at the post office.”

“Yes. And I get paid in experience.”

“And money.”

“No. Just experience.”

Time Turner stared at her. The situation seemed to have gotten far worse than he expected.

He flipped through the stack of bills. There were a great many of them, and the situation only seemed more and more economically dire—and he doubted Derpy had any real concept of how money worked.

“Oh, here’s one that’s not so...extreme,” he said, stopping at an official looking envelope and moving to open it with his teeth. “From the Ponyville General Hospital Institute of Neurology.”

“No,” snapped Derpy.

Time Turner looked up from the letter inside. “They say you’re a perfect candidate, that the technology has had a sizable improvement—”

“I said ‘no’, Doc. I’m not doing it. It didn’t work the last time and doctors are scary.”

Time Turner bit his lip, but he understood that she would not budge on the issue. He put the letter from the Institute into the pile of bills—revealing one last one, hoof-addressed with a quill. Or, rather, inscribed with delicate horn-scribed cursive.

“Oh,” he said, wiping his brow, suddenly finding the room oddly warm. “This one is from Dinky.”

“Dinky!” Derpy suddenly perked up. “Ooh! Ooh! Read that one! Read that one!”

Time Turner opened the letter and cleared his throat. “Dear mom,” he read, “Everything is fine here. The curriculum is adequate. I am learning a lot of things but you would not understand any of them so there isn’t really a point in describing them. Suffice it to say, magic. I’m learning magic. The spring break is coming next week.”

“Spring break!” cried Derpy, nearly squealing. “I didn’t know it was coming so fast! My little girl will be back, and we can do the Winter Wrap Up ceremony, just like we used to do when she was little...well, littler! And we can have hot cocoa, and muffins, and talk to the daffodils...”

Time Turner looked up. He had already read the next sentences.

“What?”

“I will be remaining at school to get a head-start on the next semester’s materials. It will be easier to focus when no one is around to bother me. I know you have a hard time using the train, so this will help keep you from getting stressed or lost again. Thank you Time Turner for reading my letter. Love, Dinkamena Regina Doo.”

“Oh.” Derpy sat down, seeming absolutely dejected.

“Derpy...”

“No, no, it’s fine, she needs to work on her studies. I did the same thing, when I was her age...when I was smart. I just...” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hoof. “I should be cleaning. If Trixie finds a spill she’ll never leave, and I can’t afford to keep feeding her.”

“Derpy, I...” Time Turner groaned, suddenly feeling strangely dizzy. He grasped the counter, and as he did, a bottle rattled from the vibration. Absently and through the rising sickness in his stomach, he looked at it—and then grasped it suddenly, his eyes wide.

“Derpy! What is this?!”

“What?” Derpy squinted at it. “Oh. That’s the boysenberry extract I put in all today’s muffins.”

“Derpy, this isn’t boysenberry extract! This is poisonberry extract!”

“What?”

Time Turner did not have a chance to answer. He promptly fell to the ground, convulsing and foaming at the mouth. Derpy stared in horror at what was happening, not knowing what to do.

“Oh no!” she cried. “Not again!”

Chapter 7: Increasing Neuroconductivity

Far away from Ponyville, in Canterlot, the students of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, the ancient hallways had become remarkably and peculiarly empty. What few students remained were in the process of bustling about in their shared exodus, pleased to be returning home for the upcoming spring break. None of the commuter students living locally in Canterlot had been required to come in for the day, giving them an early start to their break but also further decreasing the effective population of a school already largely devoid of pupils. The others were working on hauling their luggage to various Pegasus-drawn carts or to walk to the local airship port for the sometimes long journey back to their beloved families.

Most of the students were, at least. Although class was not in session, one of the room was only nearly empty—occupied by a lone gray unicorn, a young and abnormally short girl hard at work on a scroll, her quill held firmly in her teeth.

The door opened and, as it did, the girl hurriedly spat out the quill, holding it in her magic instead, looking up to see a tall and elegant unicorn mare enter the room, clad in the colorful robes of a wizard. The robes that Dinky someday hoped to wear—even as proud as she was of the opportunity to wear the dreary novice robes she had been given as a school uniform.

“Professor Peaches,” said Dinky, standing.

The unicorn turned to her with exceptional grace, but did not initially speak. While Dinky found it awkward the strange way they tended to be silent, she understood that it was simply her own bumbkinness failing to account for the way wizards talked. The way they regarded everything before they spoke.

“Ms. Doo,” she said, almost floating into the room. “Class is not in session today.” She looked at the chalkboard, finding almost all of it filled with a vast demonstratory equation scrawled in tiny, geometric arcane text. “Nor is this the material we have covered this year. This is the spring project for the graduate-level students.”

“I thought I could learn from it, a little.”

Professor Peach raised a thin eyebrow. “And have you?”

Dinky opened her mouth—but remembered to regard the situation, and realize that Professor Peach was very likely already reading her mind. “No,” she admitted. “Not really.”

“You ought to be preparing for your return home.”

Dinky stiffened. “I already submitted the forms to stay here over the break. I have a lot of work to do, and the cultures for Dr. Burning need close observation so I figured—”

“Burning can take care of his own work and in all honesty your talent is wasted on biomancy anyway.”

“But you’re a biomancer.”

“I am. And you are not good at it. At all.”

Dinky stiffened even more stiffly. “Which is why I need to stay and study. My family isn’t wizards, I—”

“Do not understand the duality of speech.”

Dinky looked up from her scroll. “What?”

“You are among my most talented of students. You were the only one this year who could successfully create a Bag of Holding without forgetting the mass constant or creating a singularity excursion and getting pulled in.” She looked annoyedly out the door. “I have spent the last hour yanking students out of their failed final projects by their tails. One had been partially ingested by a gloam-wraith he had somehow managed to trap inside it.”

“Is he okay?”

“Oh, yes, of course, no need to worry, the wraiths only devour the soul, not the body.”

“Oh.”

“Oh indeed.” She turned sharply to Dinky. “That said. You have a limited time to be young. I can guarantee that your family misses you.”

“But I can’t get behind on my studies!” protested Dinky, standing up—but being only marginally taller doing so than she had been sitting down. Professor Peaches, like many of the unicorns present at the school, were the tall and lanky sort that tended to inhabit Canterlot. Dinky herself was far shorter, and in a society where wealth, power, and divinity were regulated by height, it left her with a severe disadvantage. “They’ll understand! I even wrote a letter to my mom, I was super-nice in it and everything!”

“Why would you not be nice to your own mother?”

Dinky did not have an answer—but she heard the creak of the heavy door opening and she turned sharply, half-expecting to see another student entering the room to give her some justification in her path—some proof that she was not the only student who put her academics over the need to waste time in a podunk town where the only real wizards were a living god, Twilight Sparkle, and whatever Trixie was.

Instead, she saw a pair of familiar eyes staring toward her—and into her. She squeaked as a shudder ran through her, having never seen both those eyes focusing on her at once. The feel of it was simply overwhelming.

“MOM!”

“Yes, I am,” said Derpy, stepping into the room. She blinked, her newly focusing eyes having a moment of fogginess at the light. For a brief moment, she felt as though she had seen something beside Dinky. A strange distortion in the air, like heat rising from the very hottest part of some sort of baked good.

It quickly cleared, and Derpy found herself once again in an extremely architecturally advanced room of swooping arches and elegant, oversized windows. A tall peach-colored unicorn was standing at the far end of the room, watching her with something not quite disdain. Regarding her, rather, with the pretend disinterest that could only be achieved by a wizard so wizardly as to actually live in a tower somewhere.

“Interesting,” said the unicorn, one with a probably peach-related name based on her color. Considering her profession, Derpy imagined her name was probably something like “Professor Peaches” if only for the inane alliterative value. The unicorn continued speaking. “You had been telling the other students that you were a pureblood.”

“I—I am—I mean—”

“If this mare is your mother, then no, you are not.” Professor Peaches turned to look at Derpy. “She is a Pegasus. I can tell as I can see her extremely ample and well-fluffed wings.”

“I—I can explain!” Dinky rushed forward, tripping over a desk and landing on her face, only to stand up and trip over a chair, sliding across the floor, followed by tripping over a third desk—before finally reaching a space she could cross without injury.

“Look at you in your little robe!” said Derpy, reaching out for a hug. Dinky tried to push her away and back out the door, but Derpy was larger and stronger, and managed to hug her with great vigor. “Look at you in your fancy wizard school! I’m so proud of you!”

“Mom, you can’t be here, it’s for unicorns—”

“She has every right to be here,” noted Professor Peaches. “We are open to the public, especially to family.”

Dinky’s voice became hushed. “MOM! How did you even get here?!”

“I took the train. The new crystal-driven one. I got to ride with the conductor and we talked about how they’re still trying to work out the dimensional annularity problem.”

“You...what? You used the train? All by yourself?”

“It wasn’t even that hard, the stations all have maps and Canterlot is really easy to follow once you realize the streets are all logarithmic curves.”

“They...are?”

“They are,” noted Professor Peaches, approaching. Derpy stood as the tall unicorn towered over her.

“So tall...”

“I am quite tall, yes.” The professor smiled. “And I am gaining clarity as to why Dinky has grown into such an excellent student, even arriving from a locale so primitive and limited in educational facilities. It is clear she inherits it from you.”

Derpy blushed. “Oh...no...it’s probably from her dad’s side, he was a unicorn. Probably.”

“And would it not be appropriate for a mare of intelligence to seek a sire of potent magic to create a powerful daughter?”

Dinky let out a high whine of horror as she covered her face. “No no no no...”

Derpy smiled and wrapped her hoof around her daughter, pulling her closer. “I came to pick her up for spring break, I scheduled the train that goes around the old track so we could see the Everfree from the hills. She used to love taking that trip as a little filly.”

“No, you used to love taking it, and only after I spent a year convincing you the steam train wasn’t a scary monster trying to eat you! And I submitted paperwork already, I can't go home!”

“Paperwork I can deny,” said Professor Peaches, casting a spell to summon the paperwork form its virtual file. “I had considered not doing so, but since your mother is here to pick you up.”

“Mom, why? I need to work on my studies—”

“As we were just discussing, Dinky is one of my most excellent pupils. To realize that this is in spite of being from a rural town and that she is a half-breed only intrigues me even more.” She pointed to the chalkboard with her long, hard horn. “Why, she was even trying to learn this spell here.”

Derpy released her daughter and walked up to the board, staring in awe at all the scribbling and numbers. “Wow! That’s really fancy! What does it do?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” snapped Dinky.

“It is intended to formulate overlay matrices of eight-type spells onto reduced lattice forms with a self-adapting algorithm. Essentially a derivative for creating an enchanted crystal, but agnostic to lattice substitutions regardless of mana-atomic signature. To the extent it could be used on objects as a parallel to the normal mundane-integration protocol for enchanting objects.”

“Oh, wow,” said Derpy. “I used to be an inorganic chemist specializing in magic-synthetic materials.” She turned to Professor Peaches. “Can I try a hoof at solving it?”

“Mom, no!” whispered Dinky, weakly. “You’re embarrassing me!”

“If it pleases you.” Professor Peaches levitated some chalk to Derpy, who took it in her mouth.

Dinky covered her eyes. “Please don’t eat the chalk, please don’t eat the chalk...”

Derpy took the chalk and spread her wings, flying upward to the part of the equation where the solution was appropriate. Looking at it one more time, she started scribbling with her terrible mouth-writing a possible solution. All the while Dinky was covering her eyes and shaking her head.

Derpy returned to the ground, and Professor Peaches smiled broadly.

“A most elegant solution indeed,” she said. “Never in my six hundred years of teaching has a student solved the system with a recursive process.”

“It seemed like the simplest solution.”

“Because it is the simplest solution. But not the most forthcoming without a very deep understanding of the material.” She turned to Dinky. “Your mother’s solution, used in a crystal, would enable spells to take up less than one percent of the spacetime that they otherwise would. Meaning you could use even a low-grade lattice to hold a potent spell almost instantaneously.” She turned to Derpy. “Indeed. Dinky’s unnatural intelligence makes all the more sense now.”

“But...”

Professor Peaches’s horn flashed, and a small piece of neatly folded paper appeared. She passed it to Derpy.

“What is this?” asked Derpy, opening it.

Professor Peaches leaned closer. “My telephone number.”

Dinky let out a nearly inaudible scream of horror and nearly collapsed.

“Interesting,” said Derpy, opening it. “That area code is for the Biomancy District.”

“Indeed it is.” Professor Peaches leaned closer. “My own graduate work was on recovering a functional version of Clover the Clever’s genderstate-fluidity spell. So while I am a mare now, I do not need to stay that way...if you prefer.” She smiled. “I also devised a cast-on-other on contact function for it. So if you like, we can practice every possible permutation...”

Derpy shivered as her wings suddenly and violently extended, striking her daughter in the face and knocking her over.

“Oh no,” she said, looking back. “Not again...”

“And so very fluffy..." Some peach-colored magic gently wound through Derpy's feathers. "Just as I suspected...”

Derpy smiled awkwardly—and put the number securely into her bag.