The Conversion Bureau: The Coldest Dish

By Silvertie

Part 1 – Actus reus

Gun smoke hung in the frosty air. What was left of the gunshot echoed around the buildings, drowned out by the sounds of diminished, but still thriving, city life that reverberated all around.

I fell backwards, landing on my back in a dirty, shallow puddle with a splash. Was this it? My destiny to die in a filthy alleyway, failing to protect the one I loved?

As I rolled over and onto my knees, hunched over in pain, my girlfriend and would-be wife – she backed off, screaming. The one who put me in this position, standing over me, for I blocked his path to her. He looked down at me, and spat – the globule of spit landed next to me, but I was too weak to flinch; a bullet to the gut saw to that.

He held up the gun, grinning, and pointed it at me. I couldn’t care less – if my life was the price I paid to buy time for Sarah to get away, so be it.

He saw the look in my eyes; I was going to die, and he knew it. He put up the gun, and grinning cruelly, pointed it at the one person I didn’t want to ever see an instrument of death pointed at.

“No...” I grunted, softly, and coughed – a fleck of fluid landed in my own eye, and for a moment, my vision was smeared with red.

I can’t remember what happened next; I’m sure the thug said something, and Sarah just screamed louder; she begged me to get up, to be okay.

I doubted it was possible, but... I had to get up; had to do something. I staggered to my feet, to an amused grin from the thug. I looked up, and my proximity to death seared the image into my eyes forever; the shooter: Caucasian with his brown hair and vivid green eyes. Sarah: Blonde, pretty, smart; she had it all, and could have taken her pick of suitors; and she still chose me.

The gun; dark steel, smoking barrel, and all. The casing from the shot which felled me; sitting idly by in the dirt, also smoking. Nobody else that I could see; no witnesses, no help.

What was I supposed to do? The thug backhanded me to the side, knocking me away and into the wall where I collapsed, and moved towards Sarah, pinning her against the far wall of the alley-way.

So much trouble for one little hand-bag - should I have let him take it? Bags were replaceable; Sarah wasn’t, and here she was, in danger of being taken from me.

The small point of pain in my gut subsided; adrenaline kicked in, giving me one last chance to make it right; one last chance to succeed. I stifled a groan of pain as I got up; Sarah kept screaming for help, her view of me obscured by the shooter himself.

I staggered forward, closing the gap; the shooter was in arm’s reach, and I took the chance, just as he felt my presence, and turned around.

Bang. Another bullet, thudding square into my chest, higher up; I coughed involuntarily, but didn’t let go of him; instead transferring my grip to the gun pressed against my chest. The shooter’s eyes went wide, and I saw myself in his eyes; a blonde-brown young man, with brown eyes and blood trickling out of his mouth.

The gun left my chest, and I forced it up; I was fighting for not my life, but Sarah’s: and that was all the motivation I needed. The gun was pointing into the air between us when it fired another bullet. He flinched, I didn’t.

The gun moved another thirty degrees to the shooter’s direction, my grip forcing his hands to betray himself. The gun shook like a rattle as he put his all into it; this wasn’t a game anymore, it was dead serious; the gun moved back to a vertical position, and Sarah started shouting encouragement for me.

“You can do it! I love you!”

The moment turned to treacle; I had a sixth sense when it came to trouble sometimes, and I got a burning feeling in my heart that wasn’t the bullet.

The gun shook just a little more, and went off, one more time. I watched the small lump of metal alloy fly out of the end of the barrel, and up into the air, towards a metal fire escape.

Bullets don’t bounce off metal things like a super-charged pinball; I think the statistic is that maybe one in some obscenely huge number would bounce like that, in such a cartoony, ridiculous way. You’d have better chances of winning the Lottery’s first prize.

I should have bought a ticket. The bullet hit the railing, and bounced with a metallic, almost amusing spang, and what happened next hit me almost as if like a hammer. The thug shook himself out of my grip, and sucker-punched me in the gut.

I couldn’t believe it. I collapsed, my last reserves of strength failing me. Sarah collapsed next to me; a hole in her shoulder, next to her neck; the clavicle, doctors told me later. I heard a splash as a gun was dropped in the puddle behind me, and loud footsteps as someone ran for it.

And so there we lay; bride and groom-to-be. She looked at me in shock, and I tried a reassuring smile.

“It can’t be that bad. You got hit once,” I complained weakly. That got an equally weak chuckle, a cough, and a gasp for breath.

“I... “ she said, coughing, “love... you...”

Her mouth moved one last time, her final word dying on her lips with her breathing. My eyes teared up.

“I love you too, Sarah...” I whispered, and the two bullets finally took their toll; my vision faded to black.

Did she hear my last words to her? I’d like to think so.

======

White light. Correction, white lights – fluorescent tubes. They whooshed by in a blur; my chest was on fire, noise filling the air. Paramedics were everywhere, running into uniformed policemen and onlookers.

A concerned face, covered by a medical mask, leaned over me, asking me questions I couldn’t answer – I just wanted to sleep.

The face gave up, making a note as I blacked out once again.

======

Hospital gowns – horrible things, even if you are lucky enough to get one that buttons up on the side, and not the back. Hospital was warm enough, though; a stark contrast to 90% of the homes out on the other side of the window I was looking through.

Other nations and cities, they got warmer because of global warming. We froze a little more; go figure.

“Sir? How are you feeling today?”

I turned, carefully, and minded my IV drip this time, using the stand as a support. I was up, but not in any shape to be leaving at any time before a fortnight from now. If I was lucky. A bullet had torn through my guts, perforating my intestine and liver before coming to rest in a kidney, I’d been told; the other bullet had punched a hole in my right lung, after clipping a rib and breaking that; all in all, I could make a mostly full recovery – my lung would never be quite the same, but I’d live.

More than I could say for Sarah, though – I’d been lucky as anything with my two bullets; her one had killed her; it passed clean through her clavicle, and punched a vertical shaft into her lung and heart, lodging in the middle; she’d bled to death long before the paramedics arrived for me, three minutes after the shooting.

“I’m doing better, thanks,” I replied to the intern, struggling to keep my voice level; he was new, he’d told me the other day, and he was in charge of checking up on all the long-term patients – that was me.

“That’s great,” he said, cheerfully. “How’s the rib coming along?”

“Tender. But getting better.” I winced as I sat down in a nearby chair. I was thoroughly sick of the damn bed; too high to get into without exerting myself, and it still couldn’t go any lower than it was. Who thought beds that sat that high off the ground were a good idea?

“Absolutely grand. Uh, you asked me to get some information on the... murder.”

“You got something?” I brightened up – the cops hadn’t found the spare manpower to come in and tell me what was going down with the case, so I’d sent the intern to go and ask around on my behalf.

“Ah, it’s... it’s not good news,” broke the Intern.

“Lay it on me; I don’t think things can get any worse.”

“Let’s see...” the Intern reached inside his jacket for a folded bit of paper, “In the case of the Murder of Sarah-“

“Get to the point,” I stated, irritable.

“Okay, okay – hup doo de doo... here we go. The suspect has evaded all capture, and nobody has seen him in the two weeks since the shooting.”

“Not one witness?” I was disbelieving; there had to have been somebody.

“The police had witnesses and such all the way up to third street,” the Intern reported, leafing back through the folder, “and after that, it’s like he vanished off the face of the earth.”

“Third street... that’s impossible. CCTV cameras are everywhere; it’s a hot-spot for surveillance...”

“Well,” the Intern reasoned, “it’s not like the government’s bothering to maintain them nowadays – everyone’s getting out of town, and it’s only picking up.”

“Yeah... okay, thanks for doing that; I owe you one.”

“No problem, sir. You take it easy, now.”

=====

The chill outside breeze made my breath catch in my throat a little; losing half a lung didn’t seem like much, but...

“Fantastic,” stated the Intern, making a small note as I stood outside the hospital that had been a second home for me for about a month now; I was wearing my old clothes again, albeit with a new t-shirt. A slim, leather jacket, jeans, and sneakers; the ensemble brought back memories, both good and bad. The familiar itch of a loose seam in the back of the collar irritated me, and I was glad it did; two months ago, I would have been surprised to know I’d live to be irritated by something so trivial.

“Am I free to go, now?”

“Yup, that’s everything; now, remember; if it plays up again, you tell us pronto, got it?”

“Sure thing; and I still owe you for looking into the investigation for me.”

“Yeah, well; no offense intended, but you can pay me back by never coming back here. There’s a lot of better places to spend one’s days, like Equestria.”

I looked at him skeptically. “You buy into what those Princesses are selling? Ponification?”

“Why not? I mean, what do you have to lose?”

“Hands, for one thing.”

“Yeah, but you gain so much more...” the Intern said, wistfully, “You can leave your old life behind, start a new one; be a new person!”

“Then tell me this: Why are you still here?” I gestured at the city around us; these days, it was close to a ghost town. Only those who were indecisive or absolutely opposed to becoming ponies remained... like me.

I was one of the indecisive, along with Sarah. We’d been talking about it, and planned to have a good talk about it after the marriage. Well, at least, that’s what she said – I was sure she’d always wanted to be a pony, right from the get-go – it was just me that she was waiting for. Another way I failed her in life.

“Why am I still here? So I can put this damn medical degree to use,” the Intern complained. “I’m not going until I become a real doctor here, or I’ll have wasted those years in med school for nothing.”

I chuckled. Holding off on a supposed life of sunshine and rainbows, just to put a piece of paper to use.

“Good luck with that, man. See you around, I guess.” I turned away, and waved a hand, carefully descending the steps as a brisk wind whipped around me and my jacket.

“You too,” The Intern replied, waving and retreating to within the warmth of the hospital.

I stopped at the curb, and reached into my jacket; a packet of cigarettes welcomed me, and I pulled them out to look at them.

I threw them at the nearest bin to me – they bounced off the rim, and landed in. I only had one and a half lungs left, I didn’t need to fill them with any more tar.

I put out my hand, and a yellow taxi pulled up next to me; at least finding one of these things was simpler these days, and the drivers were Artificial Intelligences, so no chance of these ever leaving.

[Where to, Sir?]

I thought about it.

“Take me to Third Street,” I declared, sitting back. I needed closure; I needed to find out what happened myself.

=======

Third Street – one of the main streets in town, home to countless business institutions and white-collar workplaces - a place where if it didn’t stretch thirty stories up into the sky, it was in the wrong neighborhood.

It was practically covered in CCTV cameras, although if the police reports were anything to go by, most of these things were off-line due to vandalism, and the government wasn’t forking out for replacements, what with the severely reduced human population.

And so, this was how Sarah’s murderer had escaped not only custody, but the world. How? How could you simply walk into a place, and vanish for a month without a single witness?

My eyes roved over the buildings. Perhaps he was hiding in one of these? No, the police would have found him. A clue the police missed? Not likely, month old clues wouldn’t be much help, anyway.

Then my eye settled on a relatively small, black building – a Conversion Bureau. The embassies of Equestria, where a human could walk in one day, and a pastel pony emerge the next, through the magic of ponification.

Something sparked in my mind.

You can leave your old life behind, start a new one; be a new person!

The Intern’s words reverberated around my head. The Conversion Bureau was on third street. Was it possible... no. The cops wouldn’t be that incompetent, could they?

I adjusted my coat, coughed, and began the walk to the precinct. It was question time.

======

“Hello,” drawled the female desk officer, filing her nails with a nail-board, “how may the police department help you today?”

“I’m here to ask a few questions about a case a month ago,” I said. The desk lady didn’t so much as blink, she just kept rubbing.

“Which case?”

“A murder, with Sarah-“

“Oh, that one? Ooh, who are you?” The nail-board stopped rubbing.

“I am... was Sarah’s boyfriend.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the officer said, her bored demeanor melting away in sympathy, “I didn’t realize. I was the case officer for that, so ask away.”

“Oh, right. Okay, uh, you guys did look for the shooter, right?”

“Of course, we tracked him down to Third street,” recited the officer, slipping back into boredom a little.

“And... where after that?”

“Don’t know; no witnesses have come forward, and hardly any of the cameras work,” the officer explained, gesturing at the ceiling, “there’s about seventy cameras along the entire street, and only like six or eight actually still work. Do the math.”

“Well, what about the Conversion Bureau?”

“What about it?”

“Did you check there?”

“...no,” the officer admitted, looking like she’d been slapped in the face with a frozen trout.

“Why not?”

“Well... I didn’t think of it straight away... but when I did, the chief told me I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Well, technically, they’re an embassy – and we have no authority in Equestria. Therefore, it’s practically a safe-house.”

“So he could still be there?”

“Could be, could be. Is this really that important to you?”

I thought about it... for about five seconds. The one who had taken Sarah from me had escaped justice for two months too long.

“Yes. Yes it is.”

“Well... I’ll file a request to investigate, how about that? Make it all legal and such with the Equestrians.”

A sinking feeling in my gut. “How long would that take, roughly?”

“Best guess? About two weeks.” The officer shrugged, a what-can-you-do expression on her face. “Politics.”

“I see,” I said, choking back a scream of frustration, “please put the request in, I guess. I’ll be back.”

“Okay, sure,” the officer said, making a note on a piece of paper, “I’ll file it ASAP. Was there anything else?”

“No, that was it. Thank you, you’ve been very helpful,” I lied.

“Okay; stay safe, citizen,” the officer said with false enthusiasm, returning to her nail-filing.

I turned and walked out of the building; I had a thread, and it was time to start pulling.

======

The Conversion Bureau; compared to its neighbors, it was a squat, charcoal-black, thirteen-story building. Back when Equestria had first built the place, it had seen its fair share of action; crowds of people waiting to be ponified that blocked the whole street, and mobs of Human Liberation Front supporters, intent on causing trouble for the ponies to preserve the humanity left in town.

I still wasn’t sure what side of the table I sat on; sure, Equestria literally gave you a new equine life, but on the other... I’d heard stories. People went in, and came out... different. Past the obvious physical changes, they were just more... cheerful. Upbeat. Honest. Perhaps too much so, it was unnerving talking to a pony that you knew as a human, sometimes.

I pushed open the door, and was hit by a wave of warmth. The building foyer was furnished with soft-looking fabric couches and chairs, low tables, and a generic aqua-blue carpet; it was largely deserted, save for a single, dozing pony at the desk; a vivid lime-green Unicorn with a black mane, he seemed to be wearing a suit of some sort – which was strange, not many ponies wore clothes, from what I knew.

I approached the desk, and stood there. The pony continued to nap. I cleared my throat. He didn’t move. I looked around, and saw a traditional metal bell, the kind you can hit to vent frustration and get attention.

Dingdingdingdingdingdingding

Still nothing; this pony must be absolutely de- wait, what was that? I leaned over the desk, to look at the pony’s ears. Nestled within his ears were two...

“Headphones?” I itched my head, and it clicked. The headphones’ cords were a shade of green that matched his coat, which explained why I hadn’t noticed them; and his dozing... he was listening to a radio! There!

I reached over, and with a brief hesitation, turned it off. He jolted awake, seeing me leaning over his counter with a hand on his radio.

“Whoa, you scared me. Speak up next time!”

“I did.” That was a pseudo-lie. I hadn’t said a thing, but I’d definitely ding’d that bell enough.

“Yeah, well...” the horn on the pony’s head glowed, and the headphones were popped out. “Never mind. What can I do for you, human?”

“Do you keep records of who gets admitted here to be ponified?”

“Ooh, you a cop?”

“...maybe,” I lied again.

“Well, it ain’t gonna work on me, bub. I used to be human, I know how human law works,” stated the pony, jabbing the desk with a hoof, “and I know that you don’t got a single bit of jurisdiction here.”

Great, an ex-human; I suppose that explained his attachment to the radio and the suit, then. Old habits died hard.

“Okay, fine. I’m not a cop. But seriously, I do need to look someone up.”

“Look, humie – I just told you. You can’t boss me about on Equestrian soil, so you’re going to have to give me a reason to search it.”

I racked my brain; Ponies didn’t do things like “revenge”, and even if they were ex-human, like this one, their newly-wired brains might not accept that as a motive. But there was one thing they all did quite well...

“I’m looking for a friend,” I said casually. “He went missing about two months ago around here, I want to see if he maybe got ponified without telling anyone.”

“Really, now?” The pony swiveled his chair around to a small computer; his horn lit up, and he began to type. “So why weren’t you here earlier, then?”

“I got shot up,” I informed, “I just got out of hospital a couple of hours ago.”

“Ouch, sucks, man.” The pony blinked at the logs. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a time, yeah? We cleared about... two dozen humans that day.”

I mentally calculated the time it took to run here from where I’d been shot.

“I’d guess, around 11:30 pm.”

“And... here we go, one registrant, 11:34 pm.”

“That’s great... what happened to him?”

“He got processed and shipped out after four days, off to mainland Equestria,” informed the pony, “Not a lot of ponies hang about for long here, seeing as we have no real training facilities for the newfoals. Enough to get you on your hooves, but beyond that? Sketchy.”

“You hang around,” I remarked.

“That’s because I gave up my old life, not Internet and ‘ritos,” reasoned the pony. “So – what are you going to do, human? Chase him? Or find a new friend?”

Chase him – that was possible, I could do that. But... I’d have to become a pony – Humans could not physically enter Equestria; the shield saw to that. Not to mention the ambient magic in the air would kill most before they got close enough to touch.

Damn it, this was the sort of choice I wanted to make with Sarah, not on my own in an empty building, chasing a murderer.

Just follow your heart, hon’. I know you’ll make the right choice, a memory of Sarah said. She’d said that when I’d admitted my indecision over being a pony.

I’m sure that when you make the choice, it’ll be for all the right reasons.

I looked the desk-pony in the eye, and swallowed. No going back.

“I’m in – where do I sign?”