Dead Cat Bounce: A Fanfiction Fanfiction

Chapter Three: Hobby Horse

Pretty much every pony my age in Hörpsen was in the room.

Oh no! I thought, Have they called us here to reveal that Hörspen is overpopulated and the only way to survive is by thinning out the population by pairing us up to fight in hoof-to-hoof combat to the death?

I realized that that cloud had a silver lining.

“Alright, everypony, shut up,” Hotel Hotel said. Nopony was talking. I think he just wanted to feel powerful. With satisfaction, he surveyed the silent crowd.

A crudely drawn triangle appeared on the projector.

“I’m sure you all recognize Mt. Moriah,” he said. “And I’m sure you’re all familiar with the Snowdark atop it.”

After struggling to center the projector, the A/V aide drew a little black dot on the upper part of triangle.

“A cache of supplies has supposedly been secured in the Snowdark, and I, as the boss, have decided that it is critically important we recover it if it exists.

“So I need somepony to go check it out. Head south down the Dalton Highway, climb Mt. Moriah, talk to the contact, and come back and tell us if the supplies are really there. Three days round trip, very simple. Your reward will be me not bitching you out for skipping out on a half-week of your duties.”

The projector switched to a photo of a bag of chips and a box of breakfast cereal.

“Of particular interest are the Watercress chips and Strawberry GeckO’s,” Hotel Hotel said. “Ask for them by name. Their flavors are supposed to be heavenly.”

A vacant “What.” came loudly from the back of the room. Grumbling ponies slowly began to file out of the room. A unicorn, out of spite, grabbed all of the punch and cookies by the door.

Hotel Hotel watched the exodus for about a minute before he said, “Any volunteers? Anypony?”

Three days outside with no Flanders? Sign me up! I thought.

“Three days outside with no Flanders? Sign me up!” I said.

“Flanders, will that work with you?” Hotel Hotel said.

Flanders went on and on about how she and the trainee could run the reactor while I was gone. I really hated it when she tried to manipulate me by making a show of how accommodating and reasonable she was.

“We’ll be using the buddy system. Who wants to be Charlie’s buddy?” Hotel Hotel said.

Hesitant murmuring filled the room. Ponies looked at the ground. Hotel Hotel looked around, becoming more and more exasperated as the tension built.

“Romeo Bravo!” he said. Romeo looked up, startled.

“You two are friends, right?” Hotel Hotel said.

“I don’t like where this is headed,” Romeo said.

“Sounds like a yes to me! There, that does it, you go with him!” Hotel Hotel said. “It’s settled! You can all go now. Meeting dismissed!”

Nearly everypony had already left.

One of the ponies who had stayed started to walk up to me. Not him, I thought. I pretended not to see him, and I made my way to the exit.

If I could just get myself behind Crystal Clear, he’d have—

“Charlie! I have a quest for you, for you to do in addition to your main quest!”

Damn it.

“Hi, Pizza Hut,” I said.

“My secret sources tell me that there exists a knick-knack collector who is currently inhabiting a settlement out on the on that winding road that they call the Dalton Highway, and if the gods of random chance have been so benevolent as to see fit to favor me, this aforementioned collector might have a RuPony Kenshin wallscroll that he may be willing to part with for the right price, and obviously, you getting me one would be a crowning moment of awesome,” he said.

What is it with today and ponies who think they’re gonna find their heart’s desire within eighty kilometers of their bedroom? Don’t they know we’re living in a wasteland? I thought.

“Here, take this, it may help you on your quest. It may take you into absolute territory.” He pushed one hundred and fifty-two “bitcoins” into my hoof. “On behalf of the fandom, I thank you for this epic deed.”

What the fuck are bitcoins? Is this supposed to be money?

“I don’t know, Pizza Hut,” I said. “RuPony Kenshin really isn’t my thing….”

“Oh, don’t worry your little head. One day you’ll like it,” he said. He let out a weird shuddering chuckle. “They always come around. RuPony Kenshin is just too awesome. You’ll be part of the nakama soon enough.”

Before I could get a word in, he turned around. “Oh, wait till I tell Spaghetti!” he said to himself as he walked away.

_____

We stood at the stoop of the supply shed. It was adventure time, but first we had to gear up. I loved gearing up! Getting all that stuff together and making sure it all was ready always made me feel like such a badass.

I lugged the barrel of hominy over to my saddlebags. I unscrewed the lid, but I pawed at the sack inside the barrel. The knot was just too tight, and the burlap was just too slippery! I tipped the barrel over to get better access to the sack. I managed to pinch my hoof under the barrel as it came down, but I accomplished little else.

I got up on my hindlegs to try working it with both hooves. It was a precarious balancing act, but after much struggling I finally undid the sack of hominy. In my brief moment of elation I lost focus on keeping my balance. I tumbled backwards and fell off the stoop into a puddle of mud. Hominy scattered everywhere!

Defeated, I slumped down and wallowed in the mud. I wiped the sweat from my brow. “There’s got to be a better way!” I said, shaking my head as I rubbed my bruised hindside.

“There is,” Romeo said. “Just pay attention to what you’re doing.” Romeo’s well-organized saddlebags and gear sat neatly on the table.

Once we’d gotten our supplies in order, Romeo and I went back inside and got to work on preparing our Actaeon boxes for the journey. It was going to be an exciting opportunity to point Actaeon at stuff, but we had to pull out all the stops if we wanted to keep the system running for three days.

Actaeon was our little pet project and bonding activity. It was a saddle mounted battlefield control system. One night we got bored while reading some StableTec promotional literature, and we decided we’d see if we could fake a PipBuck computer using our own only-very-slightly-water-damaged Flim&Flam Fun-D-mental 550 semi-portable computers.

Actaeon works kinda sorta like SATS and EFS, which are two pieces of boring incomprehensible StableTec technobabble that, blah, blah, blah, long story short, make finding and murdering things ludicrously convenient.

Actaeon could tell us where the bad guys were after we tagged them, and it could even shoot our guns for us. Romeo designed and built the hardware modules, and I was responsible for everything else. It was our lovechild, and like any baby it was a little finicky.

The trigger wire on the feedback escape prism had come loose again. At least it didn’t snap this time, I thought as I wound it back up. We had to put the prism in because the Actaeon targeting module had a bad habit of trying to shoot itself. In certain situations the targeting module could mistake the sensor scans of another Actaeon module as its own, and it would conclude that it was its own target.

The computer would then try to solve this existential crisis by firing continuously until it received mechanical intervention.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I knew exactly what the problem was, but fixing it would mean me having to go through a bunch of code and would probably mean me swapping 1s and 0s a million jillion times. So instead we just hooked up a prism on a little lever that temporarily disconnected the targeting module from the gun servos every time the module got too excited. It was a simple, easy, and reliable solution.

I disassembled the battery case. I looked for any leaky envelopes or misaligned heatsink contacts as I went over every cell. Acrylic sealant and pair of pliers corrected the defects, and I topped-off the cells that were low on conveyant. Finally I went over everything again with a file to make sure it all fit back in the case. I closed the latch, and the battery hummed to life as the gemstones inside expanded into their mounts.

With the salvaged military batteries retrofitted to our FDm 550s, we expected we’d able to power the machines for up to a week. However, the Flim&Flam Fun-D-mental 550 model semi-portable computer was never meant to stay on for more than seven hours.

Once we’d set up Actaeon modules there’d be no way to get at the power switch of the FDm without having to disassemble the whole apparatus. Unless we got lucky and found a clean, hard surface to take apart the Actaeon boxes, we were going to have to run them non-stop for the next three days. My theories on the consequences ranged from “negligible loss of efficiency” to “fire.”

But those were just minor hiccups. On a good day Actaeon was a pretty dangerous thing. Nopony would mess with us with Actaeon. All in all we were very proud.

_____

I would have liked to have begun my journey at the top of the dome where its superstructure intersects with the railway bridge. The massive gates would open, maybe with some horns blowing. We would cross the bridge, a metaphor for the journey into the unknown and personal development, and look across the canyon. From the panoramic viewpoint we would see the whole of Berlaska and the all the various kinds of dumb stuff in it.

Instead we left from one of the hatches in the sarcophagus where they dumped all the trash and vented all the smells. There were some powerful smells. Three ponies came to say goodbye to us. There was Zulu, Romeo’s boss from the centrifuge room; Drizzy, the exchange student from Drive-Thru Canyon; and Chang Ling, the exchange student from I forget where.

“I’m proud of you, Romeo,” Zulu said. “Iris and Tree Urchin couldn’t make it to say goodbye, but they told me to send you their best. Bumble Puppy said he was coming, but you know how he is.”

“Keep it real, Romeo,” Drizzy said. “Tomorrow night’s Risk game is gonna suck without you. Say, are we still going to uh….” Drizzy stopped to look for spies. Then he leaned in close to whisper something into Romeo’s ear. When Romeo nodded Drizzy said, “Right, they won’t know what hit ‘em!”

“Oh, Romeo…” Chang Ling said, and she hugged him tight. “Keep me in your heart!”

Ew, clingy. They’re not even dating, I thought. What’s her deal?

And with that they waved goodbye and headed back inside. We were alone. It was just me, Romeo, and the open road. Or at least that’s what I hoped. I really didn’t want the smell to follow us around, too.

_____

A few hours later out in the fields we passed by some villager ponies tending to their Bokanovsky Grasses. The overladen red, green, and amber stalks of the different Grasses shimmered and swayed in the breeze. The long summer days meant they could get in about eight crop rotations of Grass in the season, which was enough to fill our larders for the whole year and then some.

We had the mother cultivars for most of the nutrient grains, and that was really the whole reason why Hörspen even existed. Heat conservation was chump change. The cultivars gave us a secure source of food and capital. We sold the cuttings, which are sterile and annual, on a subscription basis to the local communities in exchange for equipment or supplies. Since most families didn’t have anything we’d want to buy anyway, most of the time we’d give them the cuttings in exchange for part of the resultant harvest and call it square.

From Manehattan to Shelberton City Grass was king, and the more mother cultivars you had the better. Without it we would all be eating tins of ossified Cram like they do in CrasherSmasher.

The Bokanovsky Grasses were engineered to complement each other and grow together, and outside of the nitrogen-fixing Grasses nothing short of industrial fertilizer on a pre-war scale could supply the staple grains with the nutrients they needed to grow. This was not an option. Even before the life-stifling darkness and cold came, the miracle Grass was useless without it.

No nitrogen-fixing Grass meant no food on the table. Only Halibut City had the mother cultivars for the nitrogen-fixing Grasses, they had like everypony with a monopoly on a cultivar, they kept it that way. And that meant Halibut City was the queen bee.

Things in Hörspen had been pretty tense with them ever since that time when we broke Mr. Potato Head. We were lucky that we the heavy equipment to run the old industrial Haber-Bosch process for nitrogen fixation, so we were able make our own fertilizer after they stopped selling their cuttings to Hörspen. We might have been able to scrape by without their nitrogen-fixing Grasses, but for anypony else pissing off Halibut City like that would have been a death sentence.

The logistics of making all that fertilizer and then selling and distributing all of it to our client-farmers was a hassle, but it was probably for the best. In principle I thought it was better to be out from under the yoke of those Junkers, anyway. Freedom is what’s really important in life.

_____

The dusty dirt trail of the farmlands petered out, and we found ourselves walking through shrubland. I ended up getting like fifty different kinds of burrs in my hair, but we pressed on until we finally stepped onto the Dalton Highway.

Concrete and asphalt didn’t last half a minute without maintenance out here, but the Dalton Highway was special. You could feel it. The road was warm underhoof. The road was crackled and flaked, but its core was intact. The broken chunks of road stayed put like iron on a magnet. I tried kicking a small lump of asphalt, but all I did was hurt my leg.

Nature made no attempt to encroach upon it. No plants grew on the highway. It wasn’t like there was poison leaking from the road. There was no slow die-off. On either side the grass thrived, but past a certain point it all just stopped at once like it had been manicured.

As we made our way further south, the spell or whatever that was maintaining the road started to falter. Gaps formed in the highway, and the grass filled them in vindictively. As if trying to make a point the invading grass grew thicker and taller than the grass adjacent to the highway. The road turned into a long line of Morse code laid out in asphalt. Romeo and I made a game of trying to decipher messages in the road fragments.

We descended down a gentle slope into a marshy basin. Unhealthy, discolored reeds stretched into the horizon along the valley to the west and east. The bleached trunks of pine trees stood like tombstones in the mottled carpet of reeds. Impervious to the sinking ground the augmented highway formed a bridge through the soggy wetland.

We kept our eyes on the sky. Marshes were dracula territory. I kept watch ahead, and Romeo followed walking backwards to scan from behind. Any one of those dead trees could hide a dracula nest, and out on open ground we were vulnerable.

We made it out of the marsh and onto the southern slope of the valley, and we both breathed a sigh of relief. But as we made it to the top we realized that we hadn’t gotten out of the valley at all. All we had done was climb over a hill within it. The rest of the marsh extended out in front of us. Even worse, the segment ahead was easily three times longer than the basin we’d just crossed.

But parallel to the road and only a few kilometers to the east there was a gray forest of toppled concrete pillars that ran across the length of the valley. They were the ruins of some sort of massive building complex, I imagined. We decided it would be safer to cross the marsh through the ruins than out on the road.

As we made our way through the ruins the pillars grew in on each other and became crowded and disfigured. It became a struggle to get through them, and soon we were walking through a shadowed forest of concrete thorns. Tiptoeing over stone caltrops, we ducked under warped branches and made passage through the choked fissures in the entanglement. The crumbling concrete was wound around the rebar like it was the bark of a knotted bough.

These weren’t ruins. Tormented faces of screaming and crying ponies were carved in bas relief on each trunk. The rusting metal left streams and pools of sanguine stains on their faces. Marsh birds, with clawed feet and filthy, distended bellies, roosted on the thorns. Their harpy-like cries joined with the dolorous moan of the wind that passed through the forest.

Smaller monuments littered the ground under the thicket. Asymmetric, jagged plaques carried infographics depicting ponies running from the thorns. Messages in every language were written on misshapen columns. The largest legible one read:

THIS PLACE IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR

NO HIGHLY ESTEEMED DEED IS COMMEMORATED HERE

NOTHING VALUED IS HERE

WHAT IS HERE WAS REPULSIVE TO US

SHUN THIS PLACE

I guessed they didn’t see the world getting nuked when they designed the place. The impact is kind of lost when half the cities in the world are ominous lumps of foreboding spikes, too. Romeo suggested we keep moving. I was getting pretty bored as well, so I followed him out and we got back to heading south through the forest. The columns thinned out as we headed south, and somepony had even cleared a path. We made quick progress. From where the forest ended it was just a short sprint up the slope to get out of the valley.

_____

We still walked back-to-back for about an hour after leaving the marsh, but things relaxed from then on out. As the day wound down, we came across a caravan of brightly-colored motorhomes parked at the Gobbler’s Knob rest stop.

Heaps upon heaps of pink, blue, green, and yellow insulation had been glued or stapled onto the outside of each motorhome. Spherical to reduce surface area, the motorhomes looked like giant balls of cotton candy. Behind the homes were newer log cabins, and a modest plot of Hörspen Grass cuttings struggled to grow in the acidic soil.

Amidst the spindly weeds that grew from the concrete, a stout, balding pony was doing laundry under the skeleton of a pavillion.

“Well hey there, fellas,” he said. “Y’all ain’t in a hurry are you? It’s getting late, and I know there ain’t nothing down south for hours. Come keep me company, and y’all can stay here for the night.”

He seemed legit. Would a bad pony own a dolphin duvet cover? Never.

“They call me Swap Meat,” he said. “Who’re you two?”

We introduced ourselves.

“Romeo Bravo? Oscar Charlie? Those are Hörspen names, ain’t they? What are you up to outside the dome?” he said.

“Apparently, there’s breakfast cereal for sale up on the Snowdark,” Romeo said. “We’re supposed to go bring some back.”

“It’s pretty much as dumb as it sounds,” I said. “So, do you live here?”

“Me? A Knob Goblin? I sure hope not!” Swap Meat said and laughed. “Only ponies that live here is the Duggle family.” He gestured over at one of the motorhomes, which was rocking back and forth. From the sound of it, there were at least a dozen ponies in just that one tiny little vehicle.

Swap Meat leaned in close to whisper, “There’s sixty-three ponies living in Gobbler’s Knob. All of them is Duggles. I don’t know how there got to be so many of them just on their own, and frankly I don’t want to know.”

“And by ‘don’t want to know,’ I mean ‘already do know,’” he said. “And it’s a’cause of the fact that they’s in bed with the bread. Know what I mean, jellybean?”

“Yes,” I said.

No, I thought, but I said yes because that’s called being polite.

He said, “But they let me park my truck here, so good on them. I’m here only ‘cause I been trying for months to crack into that damn depot up north, but let me tell you they built that place up something fierce. Sturdy as it is spooky, I tell you what.”

He dragged his pillowcase in circles through the milky suds. “Honestly, I think I’ve have enough of that damn place,” he said. “If I couldn’t get into it by now, I ain’t never getting in there.”

“Aw, don’t say that,” I said. “Never give up on your dreams!

Swap Meat took a break from laundry to think. “Sulddurn it, you’re right! And I got dynamite I been savin’ this whole time, too.” He dropped the little scrubby-brick like it was a mic.

“See?” I said. “There you go!” Breathe new life into a dream, bring sunshine into somepony’s heart. It feels good to make the world a better place.

“‘bout time I used it! Thanks, kiddo,” he said. “You’re all right.”

They should call me the ‘Dream Defibrillator,’ I thought.

Romeo looked nervous. “Why are you trying to break into that place?” he said.

“Cuz that’s where they put all the Mare Do Well merchandise they couldn’t burn,” Swap Meat said. “I collect all sorts of gewgaws and trinkets and other pre-war Equestriana. Then I put ‘em in plastic bags and keep ‘em in my truck so the gypsies can’t get at them. Somepony has to. It just ain’t safe otherwise.”

“Maybe you should leave that place alone. They sure went through a lot of effort to ponies out,” Romeo said. “Are you sure it’s just for merchandise?”

“Kiddo,” Swap Meat said and leaned in close, “looks like you don’t know about Mare Do Well.”

“Well if you’re having so much trouble breaking into it, then don’t you think the merchandise would be safer in the depot than in your truck?” Romeo said.

Swap Meat got up and hung his duvet cover on the line without saying a word. He then paced around the motorhomes for a few minutes. When he came back he scrubbed, and kept scrubbing, his pyjamas into the washboard until most of the water was on the concrete. He didn’t speak to us again until after everything had been put to dry

_____

Swap Meat’s truck had gotten a little wider since the day he had first parked it in Gobbler’s Knob. Swap Meat probably had too, but that was a just a guess. Various tools were strewn around the outside of the truck, and a lean-to was hooked on each side of the trailer. Swap Meat invited us into his truck’s trailer for dinner. Inside the trailer were poorly secured shelves loaded with boxes and tied off grocery bags, and there were various tools strewn around the inside of the truck, too.

Swap Meat lived the truck’s cab, so we all sat on saran wrapped pachinko machines. Mine had pictures of bears, bees, and honey on it. Romeo’s was chocolate cake themed.

Swap Meat’s, however, was really weird. It just had a boring picture of a generic-looking blue pony on it, but there was something vaguely creepy about her. The more I looked at her, the more uncomfortable I got.

He laid out the meal on a life-size laminated cardboard cutout of a ridiculously broad-shouldered stallion wearing one of those ruffly pirate shirts that exposed his whole chest. Swap Meat told us that that was Candlelight Ecstasy, a protagonist from a popular series of romance novels.

I inspected the stallion. Candlelight as a character had all the depth of a cardboard cutout. He was he perfect provider and protector built to inspire the fantasies of disappointed and unfilled mares everywhere.

His rock-hard abs would be the sexual bedrock of the relationship, and the confident and nurturing eyes let you know he was the kind of boyfriend who would accept you even after you confessed that you lost your virginity to your old ex-boyfriend, whom you actually didn’t really like, because you weren’t over your last ex-boyfriend and you went with the sure thing because you needed to feel less vulnerable.

But Candlelight looked like the kind of pony who waxed, so I had trouble taking him seriously. Maybe it would be an important plot point in the book where he’s a werewolf or something, I thought. Still he was charming in his own campy way. It’d be fun to hang him up in the control room.

“You know,” Swap Meat said, “the best thing about living all the way out here is that it gives me plenty of time for... mastication.”

He chuckled to himself and looked at us expectantly.

Romeo looked at the green pieces of tree bark on the makeshift table. “So, what are we eating tonight?” he said.

“This right here is some World-Famous Duggle Family Drymeat,” Swap Meat said. He seemed serious.

We were both treated to a rancid-tasting serving of World-Famous Duggle Family Drymeat. Romeo tried to be polite by finishing it off. I try not eat foods I don’t have macronutrient data for, and I didn’t have anything on green meat. I went for my dried hominy.

I scrabbled at the drawstring on the bag for about a minute, but it just wouldn’t open. I lost control of the bag and the thing went flying. Hominy scattered everywhere!

It keeps happening, I thought. It took a while to pick up all the hominy, but it was still pretty good even if some of it had mud and lint on it. Also I was pretty sure mud counted as at least a couple grams of fiber.

“Hominy, eh?” Swap Meat said. “I like hominy myself, especially when I… masticate.”

He waggled his brow in anticipation.

I looked around the trailer to avoid making eye contact. I noticed a cork board titled “Swap Meet’s Greatest Finds” that had a bunch of pictures of Swap Meat holding various kinds of worthless junk. I figured now was a good of a time as any to ask him.

“Hey, so you’re a collector right?” I said.

“Yeah, you could say I’m a collector,” he said. “But you know, my favorite thing is... masticating.”

He hung on that last word with an exaggerated smile.

“You don’t happen to have a RuPony Kenshin wall scroll, do you?” I fished out the bitcoins. “I’m supposed to give you this.”

He gaped in amusement. “Bitcoins? Oh wow, really? Well, that’s a first.” He took a close look at the bitcoins. “Wow, a hundred and fifty-two bitcoins? Somepony really must have bet the farm on this. Hell, the world ending probably did them a favor.”

“What are they?” I said.

“Well, you ever heard of Tulip Mania?”

“No.”

“How about the Cupcake Bubble?”

“No.”

“Friendship Explosion?”

“No.”

Swap Meat paused to recollect his thoughts. Clearly he didn’t get the answers he was looking for.

“Well, uh, bitcoins were supposed to be an alternative currency to bits, for some reason,” Swap Meat said. “Ain’t like the bit wuddn’t already a coin. Don’t know how it was supposed to work, don’t think it really matters now.

“Well, one day bitcoins suddenly became worth a lot of money. Hell, you could buy a helicopter with a hundred and fifty-two bitcoins, and a real one, not just one of those pedal-copters, either.

“So a bunch of ponies bought bitcoins thinkin’ they could sell the bitcoins later for even more money and get rich. Those ponies was called speculators, ‘cause they tried to get a good look at what was in the future with a tool called a speculum.

“But then one day, quick as they came, all the bitcoins became worthless, and anypony left holding the bag ended up in the poorhouse.

“That’s what we in the business like to call a bubble, in honor of the first speculators, the brave pioneer ponies who lost their livelihoods speculating on soap, and whose sacrifice we will never forget.

“Like I mentioned earlier, the same thing later happened with tulips, cupcakes, and friendship. And bitcoins.

“Anywhoozle, the moral of the story is ‘Buy low, sell high.’”

“So are the bitcoins worth anything now?” I said.

“Well, normally, no,” he said. “But these are crazy times we’re living in. Some ponies—” he narrowed his eyes hatefully “—out there would use these bitcoins for evil. And normally I don’t do trades, but maybe I can swap this out with you for something a little less dangerous. Meet you in the middle. After all, heh-heh, that’s my name.”

Sure, dude, I thought, whatever you say.

Swap Meat rummaged around his truck for about twenty minutes. He had to go over each box at least twice. Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but stare at that blue pony on the pachinko machine. She was weirding me out. Fuck.

"Okay! Here’s what I got!” Swap Meat said finally. “Here’s your RuPony Kenshin wallscroll. For thoroughness’s sake I also have to mention I found this RuPony Kenshin body pillow too, but that’s not for sale. Body pillows is powerful stuff, and honestly, kiddo, I don’t think you’re ready to handle it.”

I was about to trade for the wallscroll. Then I saw a thing. “What’s that?” I said. “I want that.”

Swap Meat climbed up to grab the package off the shelf. “This is a Gyrobowl. Trust me, kiddo, you don’t want a Gyrobowl.”

“Yes I do. Give it to me,” I said. “No. Give me two.”

“I thought you wanted the wallscroll? Are you sure you don’t want that? You can’t have all three.”

“Are kidding? It comes with a lid!”

He shrugged. “Well okay, if it means that much to you….”

I cradled my new Gyrobowls.

Yes, I thought. Yes!

Swap Meat looked us over. “Say, while we’re trading,” he said. “You boys don’t happen to have any rope, do you?”

“Rope?” Romeo said. “No. Do you need some?”

“Me? It’s you who needs rope!” Swap Meat said. “Two ponies out in the wilderness with no rope? What is the world coming to?”

“I don’t think we need rope,” I said.

“You don’t need rope?” Swap Meat said. “You always need rope. It’s one of the basics. Brush your teeth. Wear deodorant. Carry rope. This is kindergarten stuff! What if you ran into mountain ponies or the Hill Witch? For goodnessakes, what if you needed to hang somepony?”

Romeo was aghast. “Why would we ever need to hang somepony?” he said.

“Well, clearly, you’ve never been in a survival situation,” Swap Meat said. “Y’all probably pour the milk in before the cereal, don’t you?”

“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll throw in some rope for free. You two tie any knots?”

Romeo and I looked at each other and blinked.

“Well, I’ll teach you. Let’s start now,” Swap Meat said. “Romeo, you come over here. I’ll demonstrate on you, and then you two can practice on each other.”

_____

After an increasingly uncomfortable evening under Swap Meat’s tutelage, Swap Meat let us sleep in the cab of his truck while he slept in the trailer. I don’t know if he was just being polite or if he didn’t trust us around his collectables, but either way we were thankful.

He’d even cleaned out the cab, too. Swap Meat had make like four trips to get out all of his teddy bears and beanbag pets. Romeo offered to help, but Swap Meat insisted that we didn’t touch anything. Swap Meat slept with a lot of stuffed animals.

He did a decent job, but he forgot some stuff. The stuff he left behind was mostly just junk, but there was also this brown unicorn plushie on the dash. I even didn’t realize it was there until we caught him trying to sneak into the truck cab to come back for in the middle of the night.

_____