I yawn, stretching slightly. I’m laying on what feels like a hammock, and a nearby machine is beeping and clicking.

“Huh... what?” I try to prop myself up with my arms, but it’s been so long since I’ve been in a hammock, I forgot how to position myself, and I end up on my back again.

“Ooh, you’re awake!” I see Pinkie’s head suddenly fill my vision, her face expressing relief. She leans forward and nuzzles my nose with hers, filling my nostrils with the scent of fresh baked goods.

“Heh, good morning to you too... is it morning? How long have I been out? What was my energy output?” I’m feeling really chipper, like I’ve slept a perfect eight hours.

“Silly, you’ve only been out for an hour.” Huh, weird. “but Twilight looked at the clicky-thingy, and it went ‘kwapoing!’ and she said ‘Oh no!’ and I said ‘What’s up?’ and she said ‘it’s off the charts!’ and I asked ‘how far?’ and she said ‘I don’t know, this machine can’t register past eight thousand kilothaums of output!’ and I said ‘over eight thousand? That’s crazy!’ and then she looked at the machine again, and said, ‘wait, no, it goes to fifteen thousand.’ and I whistled and said ‘That’s even more!’ And then-”

Pinkie’s mouth is shut by a violet glow, and I look over to see that Twilight, still in her long labcoat and goggles, had shut Pinkie’s mouth.

“What she means to say is that you put out at least three times as much energy as the system was designed to handle. Youre amperage was measured in mega-amps, and the device measure ohms just broke and caught on fire. You put a handprint in a diamond-matrix casing.”

I grin. “Heh, guess I’m too hot to handle. In all seriousness, though... Dang. This is dangerous...”

“You also produced a spike of cosmic radiation that, if you hadn’t been in the chamber, would’ve scoured the laboratory clean of anything more durable than stone. Theoretically, I’ve never seen that large of a cosmic burst in my life.”

“Wow... I’m not sure if I want to test my fire powers. Who knows what I’d destroy...”

“Well, there is one more test you can do, if you feel up to it, and it’d be pretty safe. We don’t even need a containment chamber.”

I fake a depressed look. “Awww, but unsafe science is the fun science...”

Twilight looks sharply back at me, and I feel a little bad. I basically just gave off a barely-contained gamma radiation burst in her lab, maybe I shouldn’t be pushing the unsafe practices joke right now.

“Er... generally speaking?” I sigh. “I don’t want to see anything damaged, alright? I just like a bit of danger sometimes. What’s the test?”

“I just hand you a testing spike meant for calculating lightning bolt output, and then we see how long you can channel for. Just a little bit, though, you blew out in fourteen seconds with the big jolt.”

“Dang, that’s some quick charge rate... alright.” I take the proffered strip of metal, holding it in my left hand. As I do, I notice that my cast is slightly singed, and my clothes are charred around the edges. Rarity is never going to forgive me for that.

“Guess I’ll have to go in for a new cast at some point. Alright, let’s do this.” I don’t bother charging up any and just push the current into the metal. I wonder how much energy that is, without charging.

“Alright, you’re holding steady at fifteen volts, and the clock is started.” Twilight says. “So, may I ask you some questions?”

“Sure, what do you want to know?”

“Well, you said that there was several billion humans on your planet, and no other sentient species. You also mentioned that you don’t have any magic. Am I on track, so far?” I nod “Alright, what I want to know... Ahem, if there aren’t any competition for the dominant sentient life form, what drives your scientific progress, besides curiosity? Pony, Gryphon, and Minotaur cultures all grow most rapidly in times of war, but if there’s nobody else to make war on...”

While she doesn’t end with an actual question, I get the gist of what she’s asking. “Yeah. We fight each other. On a near-constant basis, actually. We’re a war-like species by nature and violence is in our genetics, despite being a strange form of ‘pack’ species. We’re also kind of a herd species, too, but it’s complicated.”

Twilight scribbled down some notes, checked to make sure I was still outputting a charge, and asked her next question. “What sort of family structure is common amongst humans? Do you tend to follow more of a group-mating, like cows? Or is it more of a pairing system, like with predatory birds? Or something more exotic, like with skinks or cuttlefish?”

“Well, we’re mainly monogamist, and our families stay together until the child is mature, about eighteen or twenty years old. There are a few exceptions, and there are plenty of cases of single parents, but it’s usually two parents and one to two children.”

“Hmm, so you raise your children for an extended period of time. Do the parents usually split up after the children are raised? Or is it more of a life-bonding, like with swans and alicorns?”

“Well... that’s where it gets complicated. It’s technically a life-bond, but sometimes, usually during the raising of the children, one parent might leave, usually because they no longer feel compatible with their chosen partner. So they get a divorce. This is how the single-parent situation normally comes around” I decide to save the possibility of ‘birth from rape’ for another time.

Twilight ‘hmm’d and scribbled more down, checking my output once more. “Alright, I suppose that’s enough from that subject. What sort of power, of any kind, develop naturally in humans?”

“If you mean like magic, or mine, or anything aside from just muscle growth over time or by exercise, absolutely none.”

Twilight hrmm’d once more, and scribbled down more notes. “You stated you have no magic where you came from, but you recognized it on sight. How so?”

“Well, we have magic and such, but it’s all in our fiction. I’ve been an avid reader of various forms of fiction, and so I can understand magic, even if I’ve never been physically introduced to it. In fact, the excuse most of us humans use for things we can’t explain is that it’s caused by magic. At least until a scientific resolution is found, that is.”

“Odd. Why would you assume it’s something you can’t experience? That seems kind of pointless. Any pony would agree that something should be able to be experienced to be believable, even if only one pony can ever experience it.”

“That’s the way I see it, but everyone is entitled to their beliefs, and boy do we have impressive imaginations as a species. We just don’t understand something, and since we don’t understand magic, we assume that it’s related. We explain it by connecting it to something we can’t explain. I find it very lazy and rather obnoxious, personally, but it’s normal for humanity.”

“Strange. Also, your output has been almost perfectly steady this whole time, are you still fine?”

“Yeah, I’m good, I can't even feel if there is a drain at the moment. Got any other questions?”

“Hmm, yes. I suppose this is more directed at you, and less your culture, though. If anything upsets you, or makes you feel uncomfortable, just say so, and I’ll move on, okay?”

“No problem, what do ya wanna know?”

“Well, first off, would you say you’re an average member of your species, powers aside?”

“If you don’t count the three levels of mental ‘retardation’ I ‘suffer’ from, I’d say yes.”

“You’re considered mentally retarded for your species? That’s... incredible! The rest must be absolute genius-”

I fall over laughing, accidentally taking my hand off the metal. “Oh boy, heck no! I’m one of the straight thinkers.” I wait until my laughter subsides. “No. It’s only called retardation because it’s different. Our species has the bad habit of equating abnormality with deficiency. I have ADHD, Autism, all that fun stuff, and our culture usually depicts that as very bad. According to them, I should be a brain-dead vegetable!”

Twilight looked at me with concern, no mirth in her eyes. “What’s ADHD and Autism?”

Whoo boy. Big topic.

“Well, ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. It means I have a lot of energy, and have problems focusing. This means that, according to the descriptive words used, I am impossible to keep a coherent conversation with.”

“Well, I think that’s an incorrect prognosis. And many pegasi and earth ponies exhibit similar symptoms, though that’s just considered being a thaumically strong member of those species. Pinkie, for example, practically radiates thaumic energy, but I have no idea what effect this has on anything beyond being a very basic structure for an explanation behind her mild precognition.”

“Well...” I pick up Pinkie and rest her on my lap. “That’s where ponies and humans differ. Since it’s mainly showed in emotion and such, and we don’t have magic, we decide it’s all mental. And because, as I said, humans see difference as a bad thing, they’d treat Pinkie as if she were insane and unstable.”

Pinkie looks up at me, eyes gone gigantic and a huge pouty face in the making. I could almost see the edges of her eyes waver, like a cartoon character.

“I on the other hand, fully understand that it doesn’t affect her and know that she’s just as smart as the rest of us. And because of that, I’m different from most humans as I’m a bit more accepting.”

Pinkie smiles again, almost literally brightening the room. Stupid Cadence, now I have to shift her off my lap again. I’m starting to dislike Cadence, as nice as she is.

“Autism is a general term for a group of complex disorders of brain development. These disorders are characterized by difficulties in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviors.” I take a deep breath before continuing.

“Autism can be associated with intellectual disability, difficulties in motor coordination and attention and physical health issues such as sleep. Although some people with autism excel in visual skills, music, math and art like me, aside from the art. I can’t draw worth crap.. Unfortunately, since we see difference as bad, whenever autism is referred to, humans assume that the 'affected' fall into the former category. This is why technically, I would be considered completely useless as a person.”

Twilight looks at me curiously. “So, wait, you’re telling me these traits occur naturally, and humans try to repress them? Unicorns take decades of careful work to cultivate traits like that!” She looks almost scared for me, like she’s wishing she could just pull me in and mother me ‘till I’m better.

“Yeah, humans are jerks. We’re mentally set to hate each other for some reason, so we always see anything or anyone who doesn’t fit their idea of ‘the normality’ as something to be ostracized. I of course don’t because I’m affected with this, and my brain works differently. I wouldn’t say I’m smarter, but I definitely have a very different viewpoint.” I sigh. “No, I’m not a normal human, and I am very very glad for that.”

Twilight nods, then writes down more notes. She’s already about ten pages in. “Well, I suppose my next question is pretty simple: What are the other subspecies of humanity like? I assume they’re probably pretty isolated from each other, given what you’ve said of their xenophobic traits, but I’m interested on anything you know.” her quill is dipped intot eh inkpot, and then hoveres in anticipation over the papers.

“Well... human isn’t an umbrella term. If you are human, you’re a human. We all have the same general shape. No difference. Sure body shape such as muscle tone or skin color may differ, but that’s all genetic. If you are human, you are just human.”

“Huh. Well... uhm, that kind of dries up several of the other questions I had, one moment.” Twilight pulls out a few loose notecards, flicking through them quickly while Pinkie and I had a boop-war, trying to poke each other’s nose without being booped in return.

We stopped when Twilight snorted in derision and rolled her eyes, smiling the whole while. “And you wonder why the townsponies thought you might be interested in them. Anyways, another I find interesting is, why do you always wear clothes? Even though Rarity makes wonderful clothes, I know, why do you have them on all the time?”

“Well Twilight, how about I shave off your entire coat, and see how you stay warm?”

Twilight looked indignant for a moment, and opened her mouth to retort. Then, her mouth closed, and a contemplative look fell over her face. “Well, why not take them off once you’re inside? It’s plenty warm enough in here, and it can’t be comfortable to sleep in them all the time.”

“You’d be surprised, actually, though that may just be my being human. We wear clothes not only to keep warm, but cover ourselves. It’s sort of like... we wish we had fur, but we don’t, so we substitute. Plus, we can’t exactly hide our reproductive organs the way most animals do, so not wearing anything at all would... let it all hang out, if you understand.”

She looked confused for a moment, until Pinkie began to giggle in naughty amusement. Twilight’s eyes crossed and her cheeks went aflame as she realized what I meant. “Oh, that’s, uhm... oh.” Her eyes uncrossed, but her blush didn’t subside.

I get a naughty grin. “But if you’re fine with me not wearing pants...”

Her blush went even redder, and Pinkie held up a hoof, which I obligingly bumped.

“Anyways. Since you let go of the electrode, I suppose there’s only one more test to try.”

“A wet tee-shirt contest?”

“What?”

“Apparently you’ve never seen clothes get wet, especially white clothes. Oh well.”

“Actually, I have. cloth, when wet, clings terribly. It also chafes. It can also stain, if not dried promptly or left to dry. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, think about it. If it’s clingy, and all of our ‘unmentionables’ are on the front...”

“Then wouldn’t it just make the clothes miserable to wear?” I swear, Cadence could not have been her foalsitter, Twilight is just too innocent.

“Just... just nevermind. What’s the test?”

“I’ll use a spell I learned recently, which allows somepony to be turned temporarily into another species. It only lasts a few hours, but it needs a template other than the caster to work from. so, I want to see-”

“If you turn me into a pony, I swear you will not sleep without one eye open for the rest of your life.”

“I was going to ask if you’d volunteer for it. I wanted to see if you’d retain your powers as a pony, meaning the powers are tied to your Essentia, or if it’s tied to your form. It’d be a huge step towards trying to identify how you got your powers.”

“But... you’re ponies! I like myself the way I am! How do you know me being human or my powers won’t mess it up somehow! If I end up stuck like a pony, I will throttle you!”

Twilight backed up a bit, looking worried at my threat. “Anthony, any damages to the spell matrix would simply crumble it! You can’t change how a spell works just by tearing it up. It can’t last more than a few hours without me renewing every now and then.” Her words actually were rather comforting.

“...fine. Two hours, and what I look like or anything related to appearance does not leave this library.”

“Well, I don’t know a counterspell for it yet, but it’ll only last, at most, four hours. We’ll also get to see what kind of pony you’d be!”

“Ugh, fine. But I will not leave the library or go near any windows until it wears off... and we do it here in the basement.”

Twilight sighs. “Fine, you can keep your foalish requirements, we just need to see if your powers work as a pony or not. Now, I’ll be using Pinkie as the template, so you two just separate a little and I’ll cast the spell.”

Pinkie nodded, chirping out a happy ‘okie-dokie-lokie!’ and pronking over a few feet to one side.

Twilight begins charging her horn, the violet glow turning white and beginning to spray purple sparks. None of them make it to the ground, flickering out about halfway down, but it still makes me nervous, a little. Right as Twilight gets ready to cast her spell, we all jump slightly as Spike slams the door open, calling out, “Twilight, Rainbow Dash wants to know where all the copies of the new Daring Do are!”

A bright beam, almost painful to look at, lances out and strikes me, forming an orbiting shell of tiny wisps. The beam splits like from a prism, striking Pinkie and knocking her into the inside of the containment tube from earlier with a muffled thump.

Twilight’s horn goes dark, and the lights all go out at once.

“Uh, was that supposed to happen?”

Next Chapter: Chapter 50 Estimated time remaining: 28 Hours, 29 Minutes