The Conversion Bureau - How I Learned to Teach Newfoals

How I Learned to Teach Newfoals -Room 301
By Berry Pony

“It doesn't look very inviting.”

“It's a hospital room, Juicy Fruit. They just fixed it up to house ponies while they're staying here.”

May Howard and I were standing outside Room 301 in the west wing of the Bronx Conversion Bureau. May was a tall, slender black woman, a student at CUNY who planned to study ponies for her degree in anthropology – and I was a plum-colored pegasus mare with a mulberry-colored mane and tail. I had just finished teaching my first class of new pegasus to fly and was looking forward to relax in my quarters.

We had left the lobby, turned down the hallways toward the west tower and looked for stairs leading up. May had suggested using the elevator – which she had to explain first. The elevator itself was a bit cramped and I had fought down a moment of panic as the doors closed. May studied the touch pad before tapping '3'. With a shudder, the elevator started up. Startled. I opened my wings, jumped into the air – and the elevator floor rose to slap me down. I fell down. May broke out laughing. I regained my footing as the elevator dinged. The doors opened. I stepped out onto the third floor, telling May that we would never do this again. The next time, I would use the stairs.

Looking over the room, I asked, “It's rather large. And why two beds?”

“I think it's rather small. You're all of... about 48 inches tall. (1.2 meters) That's the size of a young human girl. The room – like the rest of the hospital – is scaled for an average human height. May grinned, flicked on the lights and entered the room.

The storm outside beat on the window. The room was long and narrow, featuring two beds, two closets, a long set of shelves and drawers running down one wall and a single door which might be the bathroom. Shelves over the beds showed where equipment might have once stood.

May sat on the bed closest to the door. “I figured you'd want the bed closer to the window so that you can see what is happening.”

After dropping off my saddlebags on the other bed, I walked across the room, put my hooves on the window sill and looked out. Heavy rain drew a gray veil over the view. Dim lights showed through the downpour. Wind splattered raindrops across the window. I gave a sigh. “I almost wish I was out there in that storm. Can this window open? I want to feel the wind, taste the rain. I've been cooped up inside since I've arrived here and I want to get out.” I examined the window, looking for levers or pull ropes.

May got off the bed and joined me. After studying the window, she shook her head. “I don't think it does. See, this building is designed to be climate controlled and the designers didn't want anyone to open windows. Many buildings are constructed this way.”

“Isn't there anyway to go outside?” I gave May my most appealing, pitiful look.

May thought for a moment. “Perhaps there is an external stairway.” She walked across the room and back out into the hall. “It'd be at the end of this hallway.”

By the time I dropped down from the window sill and followed May out of the room, she was already at a door at the end of the hallway marked, 'Fire Exit'. She pushed it open to let in a swirl of wind and rain.

“Here's your way outside,” May shouted over the howl of the wind. She struggled to keep the door open.

I spread my wings and flew quickly down the darkened hallway, past May to land on the stairway landing outside. The storm blew at my mane, the rain drenched my coat of hair. The excitement, the energy of the storm was.... awesome. I closed my eyes, relaxed my wings, and leaned into the wind.

“Better not get locked out here,” May said, putting her back against the door and bracing against the pressure of the wind. “This door can only be opened from the inside – and locks automatically when it closes.”

I raised my head and let the wet wind blow across my face. The rain smelled a bit dirty. The wind brought traces of oils and fires and smoke to my nose. But the storm was cleaning the air and blowing the stink of the city out to sea.

“Juicy Fruit?” May said after a few minutes. “How much longer are you...”

I glanced at May. She was trying to keep dry as she fought to keep the door open. “Okay, I'm coming.”
Reluctantly, I left the energy of the winds and rain and stepped back inside.

May let the door slam shut and studied me for a moment. “Oh no. No, no.” she said as she began to backpedal away from me.

I shook myself off in a spray of rainwater that covered the hallway floor, the walls and May. She glared at me before striding back to Room 301. I followed.

Once in the room, I hopped onto the bed, laid down, opened my saddlebags and began to take out items that I would need for my stay at the Bronx Conversion Bureau. May disappeared into the bathroom, returning with a towel to finish drying her hair. She sat down next to me and began to study the things I had unpacked.

“Feather oil?” she asked as she picked up a small tube.

“Feathers have to be oiled to keep them working properly. The oil is best when applied after using soap in the bath.”

May fished around my belongings, picking up and setting aside a variety of brushes, hoof picks, toothbrushes and liniments before coming across a stack of books. “I see you brought some books from Equestria. Going to do some studying?” she said as she began to flip through the pages.

“Something to read between classes,” I answered. “A bit of astronomy, some mathematics, a few books from the Daring Do series, and of course, a book of maps. Gotta know Equestria from the air if you're flying.”

May held out the book she was looking at. “I don't understand. This book,” she showed the third in the Daring Doo series, “is written in what seems to be English. I'm able to read it.”

“It's a great series. The heroine is this young pegasus mare that hunts for artifacts all over the world. I like it a lot. The author writes under a pseudonym however. No one knows who the author is but I suspect that the author is a unicorn or an earth pony. That's the only reason that Daring Doo's wing always seems to get injured and...”

May flipped through the pages before picking up a guide to cloud formations. “This one, I can almost make out. It looks vaguely Greek in its letters.” She put it down and selected a book on astronomy. “And this, I can't make heads or tails out of it. It's all little stylized pictures.”

“We have three ways of writing,” I began. “The earth pony script – which most books in Equestria are written in. Pegasus script, which looks similar to the earth pony script. And the unicorn script which is more pictographic in nature, is mostly used for magical and learned texts.”

“Same language, different scripts,” May mused. “So it's like Japanese. They use kanji, hiragana and katakana to write their language.” She looked at the book. “Except they will use all three scripts in the same book – whereas ponies use mostly one script.” She flipped a few pages and stopped at one page. “Even if I can't read it, the illustrations are interest - ”

I looked up. May was staring at a illustration of the major constellations of the northern sky. She looked shocked. Pulling out her tablet, May quickly tapped on several items before stopping on a view of stars. “Just where did you say you ponies came from?” she asked slowly.

“Equestria.” I replied. “I came from Ponyville.”

“Then why you have the same stars in the sky that we on Earth do? I can see the same three stars making up Orion's belt in your book that we have in the sky above Earth. The constellation is even named the same – it's labelled here, 'Orion' in English. And here, I can see Sirius marked on your star map as a bright star.” She paged ahead in the book. “And here, the stars making up the Big Dipper – or Ursa Major – point to Polaris in the same way in your book that they do on Earth.”

“I... don't know. I'm just here to teach new pegasi to fly.” I protested.

“You said that you had maps.” May said. She put the tablet and the book down and began riffling though the rest of my collection. Pulling out a large thin volume, she opened it and flipped through a few pages before stopping. “Oh my... god,” she said, looking at the map of Equestria and the world. “It's Earth.”

“How could that be?” I asked.

“It's starting to make sense. If you ignore the possibility of parallel dimensions and alternative histories – there are way too many points of congruence – the common language, the understanding of many cultural references - then the only thing left is that... you're from a future Earth. And considering language drift, I'd say not the distant future.” May turned and looked me in the eyes. “How much do you know about your past?”

“Um. Not much more than we've learned in school. Not much at all. We covered the founding of Equestria and the rise of the two princesses...”

“No. I mean earlier than that. Where did you ponies come from? What fossil records, what digs revealed your past history? What was your earliest civilizations like?”

“I...”

She began picking up and flipping through my books before throwing up her hands. “Argh! You didn't bring anything on archeology. Nothing on paleontology. Or even paleoarchaeology. The only thing is... this fictional series of an archaeologist and these maps of an Earth.” May gathered up the books and stacked them neatly on the bed. “I guess, I'll look through this Daring Doo series. There might be some hints here.”

May grabbed the first the Daring Doo book and threw herself into a side chair. Opening the book, she scanned the pages quickly, stopped, read a few lines, flipped through a few more pages, stopped, then flipped back to the first chapter and began to read.

I took the sheath of papers that Daybreak had prepared on human culture and began to study them.

Hidden by the storm raging outside, the day slipped into evening.