A green flash was dying away as I was entering the room spoiled the illusion that my Connie was actually there, but she didn't care, she was just using her form...why? To taunt me? I suppose. Her pale orange coat and light grey mane were spot on. The concertina on her flank accurate in every detail. Her voice, and more importantly, the mind behind it, were exclusively the changeling queen's own. "Chrysalis! For the life of me I can't see what it is you're after. You can't very well expect to fool me and you can't keep me here forever, so what are you after?"

"Your Majesty." She sneered with Connie's visage.

"What?"

"If you're not going to play along with my assumed form, then out of respect you should address me as your majesty, or Queen Chrysalis, or simply my queen, with maybe a humble little bow or a curtsey, or some such thing. Oh! Do curtsey for me, dear Locus!" She clapped her borrowed hooves together in delight.

I ignored her request. I'd been down this path before, and it was a fact that she could make me curtsey with the barest hint of her mind controlling magic, but she wouldn't do such things unless I outright defied her. It had taken me two months to learn that lesson and let it temper my defiant streak. Unlike Commander Victory, she also picked up on my more ironic statements, though her reaction varied wildly according to her mood and if she found me amusing just then or not. That and the fact that anypony I talked to might just as likely be a changeling left me in a state of constant paranoia, but I still tended to spout off when I got frustrated, which was often.

"My question stands...your majesty. Two moons of sitting here idle and I've little enough idea why. I'm at your beck and call, a kept stallion since you won't turn me loose and you keep having me tailed. I swear, everywhere I look I'm like as not to spot one or the other of those twins." Lucy had shed her horn and Bub, his wings, but they were still full grown blank flanks, stark white with manes like spun gold. This is to say that they were not subtle and they appeared to have been assigned as my minders since we came to this strange land, claiming to be half Saddle Arabian to explain their exotic oddness amongst the other ponies. They'd even assumed the names I'd coined for them once they found out about them from my pilfered reports.

"I told you before, I want you." She smiled a toothy grin in which I imagined her true form's fangs. I backpedaled, but the cottage's door swung shut behind me and I was trapped betwixt it and her.

"Now...now that is d-demonstrably not true. You've wasted every opportunity. If you'd wanted to seduce me you could have done it by magic, or...or taken me by force, you're a fairly formidable mare." I stammered, "Now, you've said you want me to come along of my own accord, and that's certainly a cute sentiment, but I can hardly put any stock in it. I'm a happily married stallion who you've abducted away from his wife and foal. If I could ascribe to you the normal emotions of a healthy pony, I couldn't find it in my heart to loathe you more. Even given your unique situation, this is all a bit sociopathic, and frankly frightening."

Chrysalis' laughter rang in the small space she'd sequestered herself within, "Never mind that your happy domestic situation can be credited to me and mine, and would not have come to fruition without our involvement. Tell me, are all you Canterlotians such sniveling cowards?"

"Yes." I stated flatly, "In fact each of us is more cowardly and pathetic than the last. You really should look into a proper Tanisian stallion, or better yet, a pegasus from Cloudsdale. I know just the one, brave as can be, a real live war hero. I could set something up if you like, then you wouldn't need me anymore and I could just be out of your mane and on my way."

"Bah. You ponies are always so inflexible. Yapping on about loyalty and morals when there's so much fun to be had." She approached me closely, her muzzle a hair's breath from mine. I could smell her breath with each exhale. It was akin to sealing wax on a wet scroll, a unique scent to be certain, "What would you think if I told you I wanted you for your other talents, rather than the sadly overrated carnal pursuits?"

"Honestly? It would be a considerable relief, yet I'm a bit light in the way of desirable talents." I huffed. Her proximity and stare vexed me and left me scrambling for more to say as she remained silent, "I mean, I'm not that powerful a unicorn, I barely pulled off that healing spell. Really I'm pretty hopeless as anything but a scholar."

"Precisely." She said, and quickly struck, giving me a light peck on the nose. I had the good taste to blush and look away ashamedly, "In a few days time I will give you the run of my reassembled library and you will do as you've done before, study and report every fact ascertainable about the changeling species. Our culture, our habits, our unique magic..."

"What about anatomy?" I interrupted. The specifics of the changeling's anatomy had interested me from the beginning, even though it was distinctly outside of my usual field of study.

She quirked an eyebrow, "I've been trying this whole time to get you to study just that."

In a moment of playful jest I stuck out my tongue foalishly and scrunched up my eyes, "No way. I'd rather eat a bug."

"That also would be acceptable." She said with a nod and it occurred to me what I'd just said. My back pressed against the door, standing on two legs so as to press myself all the tighter against it, she leaned in slowly...

...and turned the doorknob, whereupon the door suddenly ceased to support my weight and spilled me flank over teakettle into the muddy, rutted street of a rough hewn little villiage in the heart of the jungle. Chrysalis roared with delight and pulled the door shut behind her with a thud.

A white hoof reached down to help me up, "Mare trouble?" Bub asked.

"Oh, you just have no idea." I admitted and he too laughed at my expense. It was at this point that I'd decided a large mug of ale would be the best thing for my current woes, and since I had no bits I informed Bub that it would be his treat.

"Suits me," He shrugged, "I haven't anything else to with my cash. Money can't buy me love, after all. Should we go to the new place or the old place?"

Since the new place was still just a tent, I indicated that we should go to the old one instead. At least it had walls to keep the flies out, though it was not much progressed beyond it's competition. The whole place had been haphazardly assembled in a hurry and it would be years before it was a presentable town, centuries before it would be an upstart rival to the hastily abandoned Tanis. I'd accidentally been given the honor of naming it, and seeing as I am a smart flank erudite type, I named it Janus, because there seemed to be a number of changelings crawling about in the shadows. Everypony liked it because it rhymed (when mispronounced) with their former city, so it stuck for the wrong reasons.

Thanks to a certain evil queen I might mention, I'd been out of my head for a time after the Tanisian raid on the hive. When I'd come to myself we were all camped in rude communal tents. Thousands of us sprawled across a broad and ever expanding clearing. Musty Scroll was nearby, curled up with his wife. Given my last memories, I assumed that the changelings were nearby, so I coolly begged his pardon, explaining that a spell I had cast had deprived me of a bit of my memory and asked if he could fill me in on what had happened after the raid. It's an old unicorn tactic to blame magic when lying to earth ponies and I brushed aside his insistence that I see a healer of some sort on those grounds.

The tale he told was that Tanis had been taken whilst we were attacking an empty hive. We'd sent scouts as a precaution against just such a thing, and when they reported back they'd said that their numbers were far greater than we'd imagined and they were on the march, intent on exterminating our kind. We all fled to the south, three days hard march, where the bugs wouldn't find us. Here we would found a new town.

"Who's asinine idea was that?" I asked.

"Commander Victory's, and say what you like, but I think it's progress. At least it's a peaceful solution from him for once. I would have suspected something a bit more suicidal than that, but it seems that Lightning Strike was amongst the scouts and was quite adamant about the hopelessness of the situation." He said and his wife nodded and snuggled herself tighter in his arms. Geriatric love is nearly as cute as the young sort, but it was making me uncomfortable knowing how these two had been at each other's throats for the past few years. I guess all it takes is the prospect of rebuilding your whole life together to make all the little grievances of the past just seem petty, and rebuilding was just what we had in store.

Our new land was a lush jungle which we were jointly clear cutting for lumber to make a start on the town, though it was slow work with our limited tools and few unicorns. Blacksmiths had rapidly set up forges and had them blasting twenty four hours a day, but there was only so much that could be accomplished.

To the west a new port would be constructed, though just now it was too swampy for the task and it would take considerable dredging and filling to get it ship shape, so to speak. We had the bounties of the jungle to sustain us until proper fields could be planted. It was an exciting thing to be a part of for most, but I wanted nothing to do with it.

After all the weirdness that had happened to me recently I just wanted to get back to my wife and foal as quickly as possible and skip out with them for Canterlot. I still had hope that Connie had the good sense to stay well away from Tanis after all I'd told her about the changelings. Let them have Tanis, it was no great loss to me. I just wanted out, so I built up a simple cart, loaded it with basic supplies and readied myself to retrace our steps. With the number of ponies in our little band the trodden path beat across the land might have been paved in flagstone for it's clarity, so I figured on no trouble getting back.

The next morning I woke early, planning to leave, and was stopped by my own wife and foal, standing by the cart and smiling. I was three steps into running towards them before I stopped abruptly, "How did you get here?"

She looked shocked and a bit hurt, and my wobbly little colt looked up at her wonderingly, "We walked."

"The whole way?"

"Yes, the whole way, we heard what happened and we had to find you as fast as we could. I...We missed you." She sniffled and looked back to my son.

"Connie has bad knees from all that gypsy dancing. She does alright, and I expect you wouldn't notice it, but there's no chance she walked across miles of wilderness with a baby on her back. It's too risky and it's just not her. You're not her." I stood tall and puffed my chest out, ready for a fight.

"So we took a wagon part way, what's it matter, we're here aren't we?" She barked back.

"No, I mean that's just the trouble, you're not here, and unless I miss my guess, you're that scarred changeling who turned out to be their queen, am I right? I don't have the slightest idea what you want."

"What...what are you even talking about? I don't want anything, I only...I just want you." She looked baffled, "After all this you're never going to let all that paranoia about the changelings go, are you?"

I sighed and considered my options, "Look, I'm taking that cart and heading back to find my wife. Squeaky? If that's you under there, you can come with me and be my filly. I expect me and mine can keep you fed without having to steal."

In a green flash the changeling filly was revealed and she hopped merrily. Her companion brought her hoof to her face and shook her head in annoyance. Then she turned to the little one and growled, "Turn back! Disguises don't work if you go dropping them in public!"

"You ready to go?" I asked the filly as she turned back into my own colt and shook her...or his head in the affirmative. The queen showed her displeasure by shattering my cart's wheel with a neat kick, then she turned over my water barrel, leapt up and trampled my food stores. It was an extremely petulant display for supposed royalty. I looked around and found that several members of the self defense force were nearby and had taken notice of her antics, chief among them Lightning Strike, and she looked quite confused by my supposed wife's actions, "Hey, Strike, that's not my wife. She's the changeling queen and she's causing me all sorts of trouble."

"Yeah, changelings will do that." She admitted and wandered off, taking her subordinates with her. She hadn't believed me, and it would be hard to prove. I just sounded like an angry husband making bombastic accusations. I would have shouted it to the rooftops, but I didn't think it would help. She was so brazenly confident, but I was certain that I only had to stay free long enough to escape and it wouldn't matter anymore. I could report the situation to...I don't know. Whoever one reports such things to. Princess Celestia herself if it came to it. It was a nice plan, if a bit ambiguous.

I had tried to slip out that night, crawling out the back of my tent and into the cover of the tall brush. I crawled low to the ground for half a mile, keeping my head down and the rustling to a minimum. It was excruciating, and I cannot tell what a relief it was to stand upright once I finally crossed into the woods. Unfortunately I was greeted by a stately white pegasus.

"Hi, Mr. Locus! It's me, Lucy, or well, I know that's what you'd been calling me, so I adopted it, I hope you don't mind. Anyway, I know we need more latrines dug closer in, but you shouldn't go in the woods, it's just not safe." She put a hoof on my shoulder and turned me back towards town, "I'll see you home if you like."

I indicated that I would much rather go it alone, but she gently returned me to town, talking politely the entire way and ignoring anything untoward I happened to say. Further excursions of this sort led to very similar ends, and I encountered at least a half dozen disguised changelings under the darkened skies. They were invariably polite, to the point of obsequiousness, and refused to lite upon the particular terms of my confinement nor their interest in me, but by their actions made it clear that I was, in fact, a prisoner.

Though I avoided her as best I might, the changeling queen herself visited me often during my trivial labors about town, lightly chatting, trying to entice me with her feminine charms. Flirting is rather creepy when it's the undisguised voice of an alien queen coming from your wife's mouth. I suppose it was meant to foster an honest familiarity between us, or something. In a rare moment of privacy, in the dim guts of a freshly constructed granary, she even showed me her true form again for but a moment and introduced herself properly as Chrysalis, queen of the changelings.

She was truly a regal and beautiful creature, sleek, graceful, confident. A match in bearing for either of Equestria's own princesses, but her jagged horn, perforated hooves and hungry looking fangs marked the corruption of her aspect. In that dark shell of beehived mud brick, shaft of light playing across her turquoise mane, I nearly wept in frustration. I would not be disloyal to my wife, and yet this creature's charms were considerable, even though I knew better. It's unconscionable to tease and taunt a stallion in that manner, simply ghastly. I couldn't tell what her plans for me were, aside from the obvious and immediate lustful prattle, and the uncertainty frightened me. I felt that she knew that, even as she pressed on, delighting in making me squirm.

In small matters she used the force of her magic to make me compliant. Forcing me to accompany her as she walked, to cease my screaming when I lashed out at her, to embrace her when she departed as a good husband might do. She could have forced me to do anything she wanted.

Daily she sought me out to press her agenda, whatsoever it may have been. All I knew was that she desired that I come to her of my own free will and assured me that it was only a matter of time before I did.

Truly she was a monster.

That pompous old ass of my long acquaintance finally had a chance to redeem himself in my eyes, not that he cared about that, but my problem fell squarely into his jurisdiction. Since we'd all fled with nothing but that which we'd carried into battle, few of us had any bits and I had to barter away half a day's magical labor thatching the roof of the reed walled hut that served as a pub for the dubious pleasure of inviting Commander Victory for a drink. The old place's walls had just been put up that morning and it was thanks to me it had a roof for my outing with Bub several weeks later.

The beverage of choice was a weakly alcoholic homebrew made from fermented fruit. Ale or proper spirits could be had, but at a high cost as there was only so much that had been brought along from the self defense force's stores and most of it had been consumed at the short lived victory party before the loss of the city was known and the long march that brought us here. None of this greatly concerned the Commander, as he swigged down his and my share both, almost before we got to the nut of the conversation.

"When you invited me here, I kind of thought this was what you were getting at." He'd said after I told him my whole story from my capture at the hive onward. He sipped at his drink in distracted contemplation, "Without knowing for sure how many of them there are it's risky to let this out yet. I'll have to talk it over with Strike, see what she thinks on the subject."

I nodded to the suddenly taciturn pegasus, "Thanks, Commander, I expect I owe you one."

"Naw, this sort of thing is what I'm here for," He chuckled, "This is why everypony puts up with a fatheaded lout like me. Thanks for the drinks." He swigged down the rest and sauntered out, saying he'd be in touch.

The next day I was taken from piling rocks for a foundation by a pair of the Commander's soldiers. I went along, expecting him to brief me on his plan, but instead they took me to the hut of a healer and, ignoring my repeated questions, thrust me inside. The healer sat on a round, tasseled cushion and pointed to one before her, indicating that I should seat myself as well. Though as new as any structure in town, the hut looked ancient thanks to the multitudes of dried herbs hung in great strands from every conceivable place. There were dark wooden cases which I took to be full of the sharp and frightening tools of the trade.

The healer herself adopted the look of a shamaness in the Tanisian tradition, which is to say she was a dark, squat mare who knew as much about the hokum of presentation as the actual treatment of disease. Her copper coat was concealed under a gold brocaded red dashiki that left only her hooves and head exposed. She wore a headdress of braided brass wire that hid her mane and half covered her eyes, giving her a look of placid contentment.

She spoke in a falsely accented monotone, "I suppose you wonder what you're doing here instead of mounting an assault against the changelings in our midst? Well, it has been determined by the Commander and his immediate staff that these are nothing but a paranoid delusion. Something brought on by the injury you sustained when a changeling holdout struck you whilst you were exploring their abandoned hive. Certainly one cannot expect to take such an injury as would leave you incapacitated for nearly a week and suffer no ill effects long term?"

I grunted in disgust, "Is that what they told you? That I'm crazy? I assure you, there are changelings amongst us right now and we need to act before they can...do whatever it is they intend to do."

"No, of course you're not crazy. In fact, there are more changelings around than you might expect, but for our purposes here today, you have a head injury and perhaps a pathological need to blurt out senseless accusations resulting from it." She leveled a stare at me, making sure her meaning was perfectly clear, "Now, I can 'treat' you, or I can treat you. Your choice."

I gulped, "The, um, one where you don't scramble my brain, please."

"Good good," She said distractedly, "I'm going to give you some holistic remedies. Don't worry, they don't do anything, those sort never do, then you can be on your way. Now, my husband is old and this climate is doing nothing but making it worse, so I'll need you to gather a cord of firewood for my kettle by way of payment for my services so that he can rest."

"A..a cord of wood? But...you just as much as told me this was all fake and I was forced to come here, why should I pay you anything?" I demanded.

"That sounds like a very unhealthy response. Perhaps my course of herbal treatments needs to be supplemented by something more substantial?" She gave me a meaningful look, and I told her she'd have her firewood by the end of the week. No small feat for one who wasn't allowed into the forest proper, but what did she care?

"Incidentally," she said as I was leaving, "You should at least visit your wife and foal, it's unseemly to turn your back on them in these tumultuous times."

For a moment I didn't pick up her meaning since I wasn't allowed to leave, but then I caught on. I realized that that bug had kept her disguise up and was living somewhere in town. I walked through the sprawling array of construction and squalor trying to determine where she might be. In the end it was obvious. There was one mundane, timber frame stone cottage in a town full of tents, huts and lean tos, a veritable castle in comparison and that's where the queen would be, no doubt.

I passed it by.

Commander Victory either thought I was insane or he was, himself, a changeling, I couldn't make a guess as to which it was, or who else was against me for whichever reason, so I kept my mouth shut. It was several weeks later and several minor interactions a day with her agents before my presence was requested, and by requested, I mean ordered. That's when I finally visited her cottage, was teased and turned out on my plot in that muddy road after being given warning I'd be taking up her fairly ambiguous research project.

I felt it a considerable victory on my part that she'd finally had to coerce me into coming to her.

How I ended up in a bar with a changeling who's job seemed to be keeping an eye on me, I couldn't especially explain, but somehow Bub seemed like an old friend more than a warden. The devil you know, or in this case, the one in plain sight, is a lot less of a threat than the one skulking in the shadows.

"I think she's just messing with you," He explained after I'd had enough liquor to loosen my lips and I told him about my recent experience, "Being the queen, she might be a little different than us rank and file drones, but there's one thing that's universal about all us changelings, we don't feel love. Nor lust. I mean we can play at it, in fact we're better at faking it than ponies are at feeling the real emotions themselves. That's a good part of what we learn in our youths, pony psychology. Really that's our ultimate weapon."

I thought on it for a bit, downing the dregs of the cloyingly sweet fruit wine. It hadn't gotten any better tasting over the past month and some, but they'd figured out how to up the alcohol levels to an almost frightening degree. The whole pub was improved and, in fact, looked like the one back in Tanis that I used to frequent, largely because my bartered labor had done most of the work. Before Chrysalis had finally called on me I'd thought I was forever going to be relegated to maintaining and improving this little bar until it was a two story inn. I had plans for that contingency should it have come to that. "So, if that's the case, why the salacious mare act? She's got to know I'm not going to go for it."

"Of course she knows, she can read your emotions, not just feed on them, after all. Probably she just wants to keep you uncomfortable, at a disadvantage, so that she has the upper hoof." He took another sip from the ale he'd been nursing, "She probably thinks it's funny besides."

"Really? I thought you lot didn't have a sense of humor or emotions or anything?"

"I never said any such thing. We're not zomponies, we feel everything a normal pony would, except love, and of course you don't get our jokes, you don't even speak the language. Really, half of what we say to each other is some kind of barb or another, it makes hive living more tolerable. It's a bit dull otherwise. But, yes, our queen fancies herself to be quite a wit." He gestured to the barmare to bring me another drink, which she did with a wink.

Half buzzed and full on paranoid as I was, I read it as, 'Hi changeling! I'm a changeling too! Look at that silly pony, let's ply him with alcohol and then we'll suck his brains out, okay?' The fact that the Queen had claimed me for her own gave me a shallow sense of safety at best, "So what does she want with me? Do you know, or can't you tell me?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't tell you if I did, honestly, it's not my place to be spilling the Queen's secrets, but you said she wanted you as a researcher, so why don't you think that's the case?" He swirled his mug thoughtfully, "She's brought in a considerable number of books, some from our last hive, but most are from an older hive and the bunch she calls the 'Moochik Collection'. Nopony's gone through most of those in centuries, I've been told. I doubt she'd do that unless she earnestly had something she wanted looked into. Rumor has it that you're going to be writing a compendium of the changeling race, or some such thing, but it might just be scuttlebutt."

"So she's kidnapped me for a vanity project?"

"Maybe." He shrugged.

"And you're sure she's not trying to seduce me?" That would be simpler, I thought.

"There's one really easy way to tell." He grinned, "You've been rebuffing her advances, right? Well if you want to know for sure you could always just try and take her up on them."

The balance of power visibly shifted when I took Bub's advice. After the mother of all magical slaps across my face, that is. What did I do to warrant that? I'd rather not say. She'd approached me finishing up a foundation, flecks of mortar in my coat and started in with her usual come ons, then I leaned forward and whispered something in her ear that I believe would have made her blush even if she were wearing her own skin. That was when she rang my bell.

I came to later in a heap of collapsed stones that had once been a foundation, the future owner of which was kicking me and screaming about me being drunk on the job. I got up, smiled, tipped an imaginary hat to her and was on my way to visit Chrysalis at home, again.

Having called her on it, her most powerful weapon for making me uncomfortable and thus subservient, was gone. Our conversation was of a more mundane sort, like two ponies talking as equals,  only the advantage was mine in that she still wanted something from me and she didn't enjoy it. I probed her about the supposed library, because there was no place in town large enough to house such a thing, and she was unwillingly forced to reveal it early.

Beneath her cottage's cellar, a set of broad, stone stairs wound their way down into the earth. I was wary, and her smirk showed she was aware of it. We wound our way down only a few yards before we reached a landing that held an ancient, arched wooden door in a black frame that could only have been made of the changeling's unique building material. She swung it open and we found ourselves on top of a well of black bookshelves fifty yards wide and another fifty deep below us, lined with ladders and balconies.

On and around a massive oak table were piles of books and heaps of scrolls being worked over by half a dozen undisguised drones. In the blank spaces between books that were slowly being shelved to cover the whole interior space, venous networks of slick black could be seen, and the gemstones that they serviced. Around the perimeter of the floor, four large openings were sealed off and likewise covered over with books. Enough of the floor was exposed to see that it was black and dully polished. I raised a hoof an pointed down towards it and was about to make some declaration about the impossibility of the thing itself, but managed not to. Rather I accepted that it had been done and questioned her as to how, "Even if half the town were changelings, there's no way they could move this much earth without somepony noticing, and the books, there's got to be..." I did some quick math in my head, "Thirty or forty thousand books? How could you get all of them in here surreptitiously? As many ponies as it would take going in and out everypony would assume you were running a brothel, so how?"

"Very clever questions." She purred, "How about you guess?"

"Guess?"

"Guess."

Apparently we still weren't beyond games, so I decided to take my best shot at it, "There'd be too much of a dirt pile somewhere if this was dug, so...either it was a cave or...this isn't new. In fact, those four arched openings that are covered over, this used to be an underground hive?"

"Correct, and what does that imply?"

"It means you've been pulling the strings and we settled here for it's proximity to this place, but, outfitting it as a library? A hidden one that the town's folk aren't likely to be allowed in? What's that about? It seems like you'd need a proper hive far more than a library, or do you have another hive? Is that it? There's another hive hidden near here and you're using the townsfolk as fodder for your armies?"

"Maybe, that's not your concern just now. More specifically, what does this mean?" She gestured to the assembled heaps of literature.

"That you place a great deal of importance on knowledge, I suppose. To sacrifice such a perfect hive space, you must." This was a hot land. Likely the hive was below ground so as to keep it cool, rather than to keep it hidden, did she build this, or were there more changelings? Was the world honeycombed with such colonies and they'd simply remained undiscovered, how many of these creatures walked amongst us unnoticed? All these things I wanted answers too, but first, "Is it true that you mean to have me write a history of the changelings?"

"Not just a history. A distillation of all that is known about us. An authoritative work."

"Does that mean I get to interview your drones?" I thought if I were to have permission to do that I might, at least, ascertain their numbers.

"Certainly, but you will find they know little but what they need to know for their immediate duties and no history save rumors and persistent superstitions. Their lives are so brief, half a century, three quarters at best."

"Well, are you an immortal alicorn like Princess Celestia? You could give me a hoof up by giving me some background."

"Eventually, but I think it's too early yet for that. You don't know enough to ask the clever questions I've come to expect of you just yet, and neither of us will profit by the experience. That's what the books are for." She gestured.

"So all of this..." I started. All of this was for me, or more realistically, for the project I'd been assigned. She nodded that this was true without me even finishing. Daunting as it was, I secretly relished the idea. In the beginning I'd tried to avoid the changelings all together, and now I simply couldn't think of anything I'd rather do than research them simply for the pleasure of knowing things nopony else did. For the first time since I'd gotten here I'd forgotten the paranoia, the aching fear, the longing for my wife and foal, "When can I start?"