The Hollow Kingdom of Big Macintosh

Exhibit F

When night comes ponies lay inside their beds. Some sleep, but others do not. Big Macintosh is part of those who cannot sleep, but not because of some bout with insomnia or some frantic worry that keeps him from resting. It is just one of those nights where sleep can't find him. Sleep has forgotten the road or walked too slowly to take in the night or perhaps he has met some old friend and the two are so estranged they find it hard to find any words to share with one another but they try anyway because that's just what being a decent pony is all about.

Big Macintosh waits for sleep. He wants it, for sure, because he needs it. He is a hard worker and hard workers need their shuteye. He must rise with the sun and he will have every advantage if he can sleep along with it in the night. He can't afford to spend his night staring at the ceiling.

Looking towards the window changes things. There is a pony on the outside looking in. The suit-wearing stallion is just standing there looking in at Big Macintosh through his sunglasses, but this room is on the second floor. Coast Tucoast does that sometimes. It is not the main thing he does, but it is certainly an activity he partakes in on a regular basis.

He was doing it the first time Big Macintosh saw him. During the day, Cheerilee had not shown up for school.

"Weird, she's here everyday," Shoehorn said. "You think she's sick?"

"Eeyup." Big Macintosh was sure of that. If he had any worldly possessions, he would have bet any of them on that fact. It wasn't until Coast showed up that night.

"She's been taken," he said. "The aliens beamed her up into their ship."

"Why did they do that?"

"They are doing experiments, no doubt. Social experiments usually. Sometimes they do more invasive surgery."

"What do we do?" Big Macintosh asked. He did not know how to fight against aliens or trick them. He didn't even know what they looked like or how they might react to his plans to rescue his friend.

"Their spaceship has to be around her somewhere. I will check around the town, so you check the orchard," Coast said. Big Macintosh did as he was told. He spent all night looking around the orchard. He did not stop searching until after the sun had risen and Coast found him again. "They do not come out in the daylight. We will have to look for them tomorrow night."

Big Macintosh was far too young to be staying up all night. His body protested against going to school, but his half-lucid mind forced it forward. Everypony took notice, even Cheerilee.

"Did you sleep at all last night?" she asked him.

"Nnope. I was up all night looking for you."

"I was at home last night. I didn't come to school yesterday because I was sick," she said. It seemed so obvious to Big Macintosh. He wondered where he even got the notion that it could've been aliens or why he had bothered believing Coast.

"She's not the real Cheerilee; it's an alien in disguise," Coast told him. He was so certain about it that Big Macintosh could clearly see in his mind the image of a strange creature stepping into a Cheerilee costume and stepping off its ship into a shaft of light. The search was on again. Big Macintosh had started sleeping in the afternoon only to be awoken by Coast, so he was ready for another rough night. He wasn't prepared for another unsuccessful night.

"The aliens are good at hiding," Big Macintosh told Coast when dawn came. Coast just nodded and then over his shoulder. "What should I do about the fake Cheerilee?"

"You have to be careful around the fake Cheerilee," Coast told him. "It is possible she knows you know she isn't the genuine article. She's got your life in her hooves. You must go on exactly as if nothing were wrong or she will end you."

Big Macintosh eluded death by acting normal for the rest of the week. He never found an alien spaceship and Coast never found it either. He began doubting the reality of Coast's claims, or rather he began doubting their validity.

"Who are you exactly?" Macintosh asked one evening when Coast appeared at his window.

"Just a stallion who knows the truth," he said. "All I want to do is expose the truth. The truth is always hidden."

"Always?"

"The surface is never the truth." Coast turned away from the window and Macintosh to look up at the stars. He took of his sunglasses to he could see. "The truth is always one step deeper and one shade darker. I'm not even sure we can ever actually get to it." It was right then that Macintosh noticed that Coast was standing on the air. He got up on the windowsill and looked down at the plain air holding Coast, an earth pony, off the ground.

"How are you doing that?"

"This?" Coast glances down at his levitating hooves as if he knew along all along there was something odd about them. "Like I said, the truth is one step down and one shade darker."

Big Macintosh did not go searching for aliens that night and the following night Coast did not show up at his window. It was certainly not his last encounter with the strange pony, but then came the day or moment when the ghosts and aliens Coast wanted to chase became childish. He did not entertain Coast's crackpot theories, and when it became apparent that Coast himself was not real he stopped entertaining him all together.

Now he is back at Big Macintosh's window, sunglasses and all. He cannot sleep anyway, so he rises from bed and goes to the open window.

"You don't believe I exist," Coast says, reminding Big Macintosh of what he already knows. "You saw an alien with your own eyes, but you don't believe I exist."

"Aliens existing and you existing are two very different things," he says.

"What if I was an alien?"

"That isn't relevant." Big Macintosh reaches out for the shutters.

"You're supposed to stay away from Capricorns."

"It's my choice if I want to avoid them or not," Big Macintosh says. "All my horoscope said is they offer happiness or something."

"But before it said that it warned you explicitly to stay away from them."

"I don't understand why." Big Macintosh found talking with Coast appropriately like talking to himself.

"Maybe you're not supposed to be happy."

Big Macintosh closes the window and returns to bed.