Along Softly on the Tongue

by HoofBitingActionOverload

First published 30th of October, 2014

A deranged human journalist is invited to explore the newfound world of Equestria, the land of magic and whimsy and adventure. To the ire of everyone involved, and especially Twilight, he isn't particularly impressed.

A deranged human journalist is invited to explore the newfound world of Equestria, the land of magic and whimsy and adventure. To the ire of everyone involved, and especially Twilight, he isn't particularly impressed.

Things get messy when he decides to become the self-appointed savior of humankind and assassinate one of the princesses.

The Book of Joram - I

You should call me Joram. Everyone else does.

I was in Gary, Indiana when the Harbinger of Death called, in the pedantic form of my editor, to invite me to die in Equestria, the newfound land of whimsy and ponies.

I was in Gary, Indiana to write an article. The article was to be about the accomplishments of the American steel industry in the twentieth century. It was my last chance, my editor had told me. Last chance. The magazine wasn’t a hospice, she told me. She wouldn’t allow the dying and the lost and the alone to suckle at this teat. Not me. If all I wanted was to die a little while longer, I could do it someplace else, she told me. If I wanted to contribute, if I wanted to be a team player, she told me, I would go to Gary, Indiana and write an article about the accomplishments of the American steel industry in the twentieth century.

So that’s where I went. Four hours by plane, huffing deep the smell of leaked jet fuel the whole way.

To Gary, Indiana.

The plane descended into the airport around noon, bounced off of the cracked tarmac like a diabetic off of a strawberry jelly-filled water bed, and then went quiet.

I was the only passenger on the plane.

No one traveled to Gary, Indiana anymore, it seemed.

And so I was the only passenger who got off the plane, too. I walked out of the plane, through the jet bridge, and into an empty airport.

The airport was fifty years old, never renovated, and browning, folded ads for Joseph Schlitz’s snakewater and Lucy Ricardo’s family-safe shenanigans lined the walls. The lights were off, and so the terminals were dark and still and cavernous as the insides of beached sperm whales letting go of their souls on the sands of the New Zealand coast.

I found the Gary, Indiana Welcome Center near the exit. It was the only lit room in the building. Writing an article about the accomplishments of the American steel industry in the twentieth century was my last chance, my editor had told me, and so I went inside.

Inside was a desk. Behind the desk sat a man that looked like he’d hopped right out of a Catholic coloring book. He was all robes, rosaries, original sin, and libido locked up in crucifixes. But no child had ever been kindly enough to color him in, and so his clothes and skin were bleach white, outlined by big, bold, black ink marks.

He nodded to me.

I nodded to him.

It was an acknowledgement of our mutual humanity.

He reached under the desk and pulled out a book. He set the book down on the desktop, and then watched me.

I stepped forward and picked up the book. I read its title. A Brief History of Gary, Indiana and Its People by Charo Cabrero.

“Thank you,” I said.

“May the spirit of Nickephoros Tafadzwa Spears guide you,” he said.

Burning, airplane-prime-rib-scented bile rose up in my throat at the mention of that name, but I said nothing. Instead, I began to read from A Brief History of Gary, Indiana and Its People.

Charo Cabrera told me that in the Year 1905 of Our Lord, the American steel industry decided that little Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, its then center of operations, was an inadequate home for God. So the American steel industry founded Gary, Indiana. The American steel industry’s planners designed Gary, Indiana to be the glorious crown jewel of an international empire, a testament to the present, future, and no doubt everlasting power and grandeur of American steel. At the christening ceremony for the city, then U.S. Steel Corporation Junior Executive of Regulatory Operations Richard Powers proclaimed, “In a hundred years, this will be a city that would have humbled Alexander the Great two thousand years ago.”

Fifty years later, Gary, Indiana had blossomed into a hustling, bustling, proud American city. Men, women, and children walked in confused, excitable throngs on the sidewalks, cars honked and backfired in the streets, trolleys rolled leisurely past wonders of modern architecture, trains click-clacked in and out of the central railway station, never-used yachts floated indulgently in the harbor, and former U.S. Steel Corporation Junior Executive of Regulatory Operations Richard Powers lay in the dirt of the city’s largest cemetery.

Every building in the city had been built with American steel. Every man and woman worked for American steel. In the morning, every man and woman woke for American steel. At the dinner table, every family gave thanks to American steel. American steel became God and Earth as one in Gary, Indiana.

Then, the brief history told me, disaster struck.

Or, more accurately, disaster moseyed along as indifferently as an iceberg in the north Atlantic Ocean on a chilly Sunday evening.

I took a break from the brief history of Gary, Indiana and its people then, because this was my last chance, and a last chance needed a human perspective. To give it edge.

I lowered the book and asked the man behind the desk, “What can you tell me about the accomplishments of the American steel industry in the twentieth century?”

The man cocked his head to the side, and his rosaries jingled and jangled underneath his chin. “I can only tell you this one thing,” he said. “This one thing is the only thing I know about anything, and so it is the only thing I can tell anyone.”

“Fire away,” I said, pulling my notepad and pen out of my pocket.

“For God so loved the world,” he said, and raised his hands up into the air.

“I don’t doubt it.”

“For God so loved the world,” he said again. “So much that he sent us Nickephoros Tafadzwa Spears.”

“Oh,” I said, and began putting away my notepad and pen.

“And Nickephoros Tafadzwa Spears so loved the world that he gave us Equestria.”

I turned and walked out of the Gary, Indiana Welcome Center, and then to the airport exit. But before I left, I decided to finish learning the history of the city.

I sat down on the floor and opened A Brief History of Gary, Indiana and Its People. Charo Cabrero just before finished telling how Gary, Indiana had been gumdrops, lollipops, and rainbows when disaster struck.

After twenty luxuriant years as the world’s number one provider of steel, the American steel industry ran into trouble when foreign competition in steel production increased. Foreign competition was able to offer manufacturers higher quantities at lower prices. U.S. Steel Corporation’s profits dropped. U.S. Steel Corporation laid off workers. Profits still dropped. U.S. Steel Corporation laid off more workers. Profits dropped even more. And so on, Charo Cabrero explained.

When that cycle wore itself out, the American steel industry had withered to a pitiful, shell of its formerly glorious self, like the dried and dusty bones of a once-great king lying in a jumbled heap in a hole in the desert. The American steel industry’s desert hole was Gary, Indiana, the city whose fortunes had risen and fallen in dutiful rhythm with its master’s.

Finding themselves standing alone in a shallow grave dug by their own arrogance, the leaders of the American steel industry fled back to the three rivers of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to die comfortably. They left behind in Gary, Indiana a legacy of poverty, failure, and lost decadence.

Charo Cabrero continued, but I did not.

I stood up, leaving A Brief History of Gary, Indiana and Its People on the floor, and walked our of the airport and into the city.

When people hear of the righteous work I have performed in Equestria, I suspect many will ask themselves and each other, “What was he thinking?”

My answer is this:

Throughout the entirety of the time I have spent in Equestria, I thought about Gary, Indiana and the accomplishments of the American steel industry in the twentieth century.

Editor’s note: This account is an unaltered version of the one found among the author’s, Octavian Wenceslaus's, possessions after his supposed disappearance, which were delivered through the portal by Equestrian authorities to the American government just under three months after the date of the incident, and were released to the public one week ago, on January 7th. The only changes made are clearly marked additions at the end of certain passages, included for the purpose of examining the accuracy of the claims made herein. All else is assumed to be Wenceslaus's original work.

When I arrived in Gary, Indiana to write my article, I found myself in a sad, dirty, hopeless place. The city’s total population had dropped by half in the past forty years, and more people were leaving every day. One in three homes were unoccupied, and most of those had been declared unfit for human habitation. One in two commercial properties were also unoccupied. On Main Street, I walked past rows upon rows of empty shops. I clambered over fences into stadiums that hadn’t seated a soul in twenty years, and I slipped into movie theatres that hadn’t shown a film since John Wayne was still clobbering Commies in Hawaii country clubs. Some parts of the city, the only life I saw were weeds that had slithered up between cracks in the street.

Great, rusting steel mills sat quiet and unmoving at the edge of the city. They rose far above the skyline and could be seen from any spot in the city. Those towers reminded me of pictures I had seen of the sphinx statues that guarded the ancient tombs of Egyptian pharaohs, sentinels that watched over the already-ransacked graves of men whose names no one now remembers.

Richard Powers would have cried.

I had the time of my life.

Gary, Indiana was a work of art. It was humanity’s collective magnum opus. The dirt that covered the streets and the buildings and the people was the bronzed finish of a masterpiece sculpture. The black graffiti scrawled on the walls and street signs were gilded runes engraved over the entrances of sacred Hindu temples. The raspy, tired voices of the people were the singing of wandering musicians, telling of tall tales and folk heroes. I held the very tapestry of life in my hands. As Shakespeare would say, the city tripped softly along my tongue this way, and that way, and every other way, and I savored its tastes.

As I walked through a particularly haggard neighborhood, gaping and gawking at the beautifully broken-down city, two young gentleman who smelled strongly of cat urine threatened me with a small knife. I gave them what little I had and wished them a good night, and then continued on my way. After I had walked another block, not ten minutes later, a lovely young woman carrying a frying pan demanded I give her whatever money I had. I apologized, but gleefully said that if she really wanted it, I could point out the cat urine gentlemen that had taken my money, and she could give them a whack with her frying pan. She declined and then took my pants instead.

No one bothered me after that. I was pantless and high on devastation, and the people of Gary, Indiana accepted me as one of their own.

I explored the streets and alleyways and decrepit storefronts like a reincarnated Marco Polo. I chased a pair of wild rabbits I spotted in a park, then got sprayed by a wonderful little skunk. I suspected at the time that the rabbits and skunk might have been friends. How beautiful might that have been? Coming out of the park, I propositioned a man whom I suspected to be a prostitute, just for the adventure of it, as I’d never considered making love to another man before. But my smell and lack of any money and pants must have displeased him, and he refused my offer. I suggested instead that we should go get a beer.

“Hell yeah,” he said.

“Hell is exactly right,” I agreed.

His name was Ralph. I never took the time to really look at him—I was too busy looking at everything else—so I don’t know if he was old or young, black or white, short or tall, but I could tell that our souls were in alignment, if only for that evening.

Instead of leading me to a bar, Ralph picked a nearby house, seemingly at random. We walked in through a side door, found the kitchen, and walked back out with some cans of something that both smelled and tasted awful. I never learned whether it was Ralph’s house or the house of someone he knew or whoever else’s. We sat down on the curb and drank and talked about Ebola. When we finished, Ralph spotted a kid walking by himself a ways down the street and suggested we throw the empty cans at him. So we did.

After the kid ran off, I noticed that the sun had started to fall down behind the old steel mills. Beneath the sunset, I saw a Catholic church. Ralph and I went inside and found a few bums who claimed to be priests. It did my heart good to see men doing God’s work in that fantastic shit hole. Then whatever I drank with Ralph while sitting on the curb kicked in. I lost Ralph somewhere in the church, and eventually I left.

I don’t remember much of what happened the rest of that night. I think I might have killed Ralph. Or maybe I made love to him.

The next thing I knew, the sun had risen back over the other horizon, and I stumbled across my motel. I decided to take a quick break inside and eat some watermelon to recover. Had I known the call that was waiting for me in my room, I would have run screaming in the other direction.

Editor’s note: No homicides or missing person reports matching a man with the first name “Ralph” were filed during or after Wenceslaus’s stay in Gary, Indiana. The priest overseeing the Saint Hubert Catholic Church did remember a man demanding to be called “Joram” visiting the church on the night of April 13, but the Bishop insists that “Joram” was alone. All efforts to identify “Ralph” have proven fruitless.

I found my room, discovered that my keys had been taken along with my pants, and broke in through the window. The room phone was blinking. I picked it up to find that I had three messages from my editor, all demanding that I call her back immediately.

I scratched the inside of my ear for a while, and then I called her.

“Hello?” she asked.

My editor had an old lady’s name, even though she was younger than me.

“Hey, Ethel,” I said.

“Where the hell have you been?” she asked. “I’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”

“In heaven,” I answered. “Or the closest thing to it I’ll ever see.”

“Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

I patted my bare thighs. “I guess it was in my pants.”

“Well, where are they?”

“Probably trolloping down John Pierpont Morgan Avenue on the ass of a narcotized eskimo by now.”

“Oh, God.” Ethel let out a great, haggard sigh that would have staggered a redwood. “Please tell me you haven’t been drinking.”

“Not in the sense that you mean,” I said, and felt pretty smart about that for a while.

“We talked about this, remember?”

“I think I might have killed someone.”

“Don’t tell that to me,” Ethel cried. “Tell that to your lawyer.”

“I have a lawyer?”

“You don’t remember?”

I scratched my ear again. “I chopped him up and ate him, so why am I so damn hungry? I have a watermelon around here somewhere.”

“Whatever,” Ethel said, and sighed again. A more tired sort of sigh this time. I don’t think it would have impressed a fern. “Did you at least get the story?”

“Not in the sense that you mean,” I said, and felt disappointed in myself for recycling old material.

“I hope you die,” Ethel said.

“I don’t.”

A long pause followed. I dropped the phone on the bed and went to the bathroom to pee. I found my watermelon there. It was floating in the toilet, cracked open down the middle. Its insides had turned yellow and smelled so sickly sweet I had to plug my nose with a floor rug. I dug my hand down into the humid crevice of the watermelon and pulled out a fistful of what looked to be spider eggs. I stared at them in my hand for a long time, clenching and unclenching my knuckles. I pondered what it meant for my destiny if that revolting motel toilet could become the cradle for something so miraculous as newborn life.

I didn’t eat any watermelon. Throughout this whole ordeal, I only ever ate one thing (besides the candy bars). And that one thing wasn’t watermelon.

I went back to the bed and picked up the phone.

“Are you still there?” I asked.

And then, without anyone noticing a thing, as quietly as a roomba drowning in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the Harbinger of Death took possession of Ethel’s body.

“You ever hear of a place called Equestria?” the Harbinger of Death asked, through Ethel’s voice.

I had heard of a place called Equestria. Everyone in the world had heard the story of the place called Equestria.

The story went like this:

Two years prior to the events I’ve described here, a theoretical physicist named Nickephoros Tafadzwa Spears (who preferred to be called by his middle name) had an argument with his older brother about the nature of existence. Tafadzwa told his brother that an infinite number of universes might exist beyond our own, and that, if so, travel between universes would one day be possible.

Tafadzwa’s brother laughed.

Tafadzwa became enraged, so enraged that he built an interdimensional portal in a field in Iowa to prove his brother wrong. When he completed the portal’s construction, he turned it on and stepped inside. He emerged on the other side and found himself suffocating in a cartoon world inhabited by ponies. The ponies informed him that he was in Equestria. Tafadzwa was the first human to walk in Equestria.

I would be the seventeenth. But I would be the first to do something else there.

Tafadzwa turned right back around and left to brag to his brother. He found that his brother had died while he was gone, but most the rest of the world still lived. The whole breathing world listened intently to Tafadzwa’s story of the honest to God land of sugar and honey that lay waiting behind his portal.

Tafadzwa’s portal became the final dip of the ladle into Pandora’s box.

The truth of Pandora’s ‘box’ has been twisted and misunderstood by our society, perhaps intentionally, through constant, bogus repetition. In the original myth, Zeus gave Pandora, the first woman, a beautiful jar, not a box at all, as a wedding gift. That jar contained all the evils of the universe, layered from least worst at top to most worst at bottom. Zeus wisely commanded Pandora to never open the jar under any circumstances, because when Pandora reached the most worst at the bottom of the jar, all humanity would be destroyed. But when has any animal that walks on two legs ever done what it’s told?

The truth of Pandora’s ‘box’ is that we’re all crowded around the jar, stooped on our knees, desperately plunging our hands down inside like hungry children grasping at old stew. And we’ve been plunging for a long time. We scooped out paganism, then Protestantism, then nationalism, then capitalism, then imperialism, then socialism, then hallucinogens, then psychiatry, then Disco, then corporatization, then agnosticism, then Eastern philosophy, then New Age Mysticism. Now, dirtied fingernails scraping the bottom of the jar, we claw at Equestria, thick and meaty and cold.

The first meetings between the Equestrians and humans after Tafadzwa publicized his discovery were hailed as the most important development in human history since the apple dropped on Sir Isaac Newton’s head. Countless lies about the nature of the universe have been exchanged and discovered since that day. Well-meaning people, mesmerized by the hoax of Equestrian society, began a movement to alter ourselves and our world to more closely resemble Equestria. The people of this movement call themselves the Equestria on Earth Organization.

Jostled to the front, arms stuck deep down inside, the Equestria on Earth Organization will be the first to lift our doom out of Pandora’s Box.

This is the end of us.

“Yes,” I answered the Harbinger of Death. “I know of Equestria.”

And then the Harbinger of Death explained to me, still in the body of Ethel, that our magazine had acquired the rights to an exclusive story covering the details of Equestrian religious life. Both the American and Equestrian governments had strictly limited civilian travel between dimensions, and no member of the press from either side had been given permission to cross over. Now, one journalist would be given a rare and highly coveted ticket through the portal to Equestria, where he or she would live with the Equestrians for one year, sending back periodic reports on his or her findings to the magazine. It was the opportunity of a lifetime.

“That one journalist,” the Harbinger of Death whispered into the telephone receiver, “is you.”

“Hot dog,” I said.

The Harbinger of Death instructed me to immediately board the next plane to Indianapolis, then board a connecting flight to the field and the portal.

“Roger, roger,” I said. “Loud and clear.”

And then I passed out on the bed.

Editor’s note: Ethel Grears claims that her conversation with Wenceslaus by telephone that morning did not at all resemble the one that appears in this account. In particular, she stresses that Wenceslaus never made any mention of a possible homicide.

Wenceslaus also appears to have been confused as to the nature of his assignment in Equestria. According to Grears, his true responsibility was to aid fellow editor and longtime partner Robert Haverly in conducting a weeklong interview of Princess Twilight Sparkle. Religion in Equestria would be just one of many topics discussed, and no mention was ever made of a yearlong stay in Equestria.

Greers admitted to us that Wenceslaus was neither qualified nor mentally or emotionally fit to make the journey to Equestria. He was only given the position at the insistence of Robert Haverly, who was a close friend. Haverly wielded significant influence within the magazine's editing staff and argued often for Wenceslaus's remaining at the magazine in spite of his ever-increasingly poor job performance.

Strangely, Wenceslaus never makes any mention of Haverly in this account (other than the apparent impersonation), but multiple witnesses have claimed to have seen the two meet in the Indianapolis International Airport later that day. Haverly never boarded their scheduled flight, and has not been seen since his encounter with Wenceslaus. As of the time of this writing, Robert Haverly’s whereabouts remain unknown.

When I woke up, I gathered my things and left the motel, and then left Gary, Indiana altogether on an airplane that looked like a trash can. I cried all the way.

The garbage collectors dropped me off at the Indianapolis International Airport, where I ate human liver for lunch in the back of a closed Thai restaurant with the blinds drawn down over the windows before boarding a second plane. The second plane was a straight shot to Tafadzwa’s portal site, which, I learned then, had become a popular enough tourist spot to warrant its very own airstrip.

The same moment as I stepped onto that airplane, completely unnoticed by the whole world, the Harbinger of Death strapped himself into the pilot’s seat and began preparing for take off.

The second plane was a small, frightening affair. Only twelve seats. I shivered and shook as I sat down into what I supposed must have been my seat, firm in my conviction that humanity had no place in the sky, and even more firm in my belief that the planet Earth shared that conviction. If a freak hurricane had suddenly developed around our plane, I would have calmly accepted that our planet was simply carrying out its sacredly ordained duty. After all, what are a dozen human lives in the face of God’s will?

My seatmate was a man named Gregory. Gregory weighed three hundred pounds and took up two seats all to himself. His arms and legs and chest and the rest of him were all averagely slender, but his gut was so massive that at first I thought he had snuck an entire refrigerator onto the airplane by tucking it underneath his shirt. Unfortunately for Gregory, his gut was all flesh. He had to hold a cane out in front of himself when he walked to keep his body from belly flopping down onto the ground with every step. Whenever he walked, his gut swung back and forth, yanking him one way and then another, so it looked like he was dancing everytime he got up to use the restroom.

About a half hour into the flight, Gregory said to me, nearly frothing at the mouth with excitement, “Do you understand where we’re going?”

“To get a banana split?” I guessed.

“To Equestria,” Gregory said, his eyes lighting up like rocket ships-turned-fireballs. “Our lives will never be the same again.”

“They’ll let you in?” I asked. I had been told that only a relative handful of elite and carefully selected men and women had been allowed through the portal so far. Gregory looked neither elite nor the type to be carefully selected for anything by anyone.

“The government says I can’t.” Gregory smirked, believing himself to know something the whole rest of the world didn’t. “But our government is supposed to be a government of the people, right? Well, we are the people. I hear there’s already ten thousand of us gathered outside the portal, and more coming everyday. They can’t keep us out forever. We have rights.”

I wondered if any of those ten thousand Gregorys were refugees from Gary, Indiana. If so, Shakespeare himself could not have written a greater tragedy.

“Pursuit of happiness,” Gregory continued. “Jefferson said so right in the Declaration of Independence. Each of us has the right to find happiness, and that’s our happiness waiting right on the other side of that portal. They can’t keep us out. If they try, do you know what’ll happen?”

“The Storming of the Bastille?”

Gregory smiled at me, for he mistook me for one of his own. At that moment, he honestly believed we would march straight out of the plane together, arm in arm, gut swinging by gut, and form the Legion of the Ten Thousand and Two Gregorys.

“Exactly,” he said.

“What do you know about Equestria?” I asked.

“Clean air, fresh water, good people.” Gregory’s eyes glazed over. “An honest to God land of sugar and honey, that’s what they say.”

“The Equestrians have God?”

“They don’t even need God.”

I shuddered. “Sounds awful.”

Gregory frowned. “How’s that?”

“If they don’t have God, how can they understand the value of a human life?”

Gregory immediately soured on me, like a bowl of mayonnaise left on the sidewalk on a summer afternoon. “What do you think God knows about the value of a human life?”

“Everything, of course.”

Gregory turned to face me, and his monster of a gut turned with him, so they could stare me down together. “Then you tell me, smart guy, what’s the value of a human life?”

“One hundred twenty-nine dollars,” I answered promptly.

“Where the hell did you get that number from?”

“The Cobra CA380 is the cheapest handgun in America,” I explained. “It costs on average about one hundred twenty-nine dollars. Since the only pertinent purpose of a handgun is to destroy human life, it stands to reason that a human life is worth one hundred twenty-nine dollars.”

Gregory gawked at me. His gut swooned. “And you think that’s a good thing?”

“I don’t think anything bad of it.”

Gregory shook his head sadly. “That’s why I’m going to Equestria.”

“No,” I said. “You’re going because you’re fat and lonely, and you think running away from life is a cure for fatness and loneliness.”

Gregory didn’t seem to hear, and he didn’t say much for a while.

I picked my nose.

“Why are you going?” Gregory finally asked.

“I’m on assignment. I’ll be living with the Equestrians for a year, writing down everything I see and hear and smell and taste and touch.”

“You’re a journalist?”

I nodded.

“Are you going to write the truth?”

“I’ve never done anything of the sort before,” I said. “I don’t see any reason to start now.”

Gregory’s gut rubbernecked all over the seat. “What kind of journalist are you?”

“I’m a Gospel writer,” I explained. “Gospels don’t tell facts, they tell principles.”

Gregory didn’t understand. When I tried to enlighten him, Gregory patted his stomach and blew his nose.

“You’re ignorant,” he said.

“You don’t know anymore than I do,” I said.

Gregory nodded. “That’s true. We all know it, deep down inside, even if we never realize it.”

“What is it that we all know that you’ve realized and I haven’t?”

Gregory stared stonily out the window. “You wouldn’t listen.”

“I’m listening now.”

“Well…” Gregory let out a long breath through his nose. “The first thing I realized was that I don’t matter. I’m not the star of my very own movie. Most people don’t know who I am, and in a hundred years, no one will know who I was. Nothing I say or do now will matter in a hundred, a thousand, a million years from now on this planet.”

“Sounds bleak.”

“It gets bleaker, because after that, I realized that our planet doesn’t matter, either. It’s not the center of the universe. It’s not the center of anything. It’s one of eight planets, circling one of three hundred billion stars in a galaxy, that’s just one galaxy out of a hundred billion in the observable universe, and those with their own stars, and those with their own planets, and those with their own cats and dogs. And our planet and everyone and everything on it doesn’t matter to any of them. Never will. And that’s just the observable universe. It’s impossible to know how much more we can’t see yet. So nothing that happens here matters to anything.”

“That is bleaker.”

“Get ready for bleakest,” Gregory warned. “The universe doesn’t matter, either. It might just be one of an infinite number of universes in a neverending cycle of expansion and collapse. It might be one of an infinite number of universes in a multiverse. And even if it is the only one, there isn’t anything meaningful or special about it. It’s just something that happened, that’s happening now, and will eventually stop happening, just like you and me. Nothing that happens anywhere at anytime will ever matter to anything or anyone.”

“Bleakest, indeed.”

“And that’s when I realized it,” Gregory said.

“It?”

“There were people in my life who mattered to me,” Gregory said, his voice rumbling off his gut, making him sound like a Gallic warrior howling over the bodies of trampled Roman legionnaires. “I cared about what happened to them, about what they had to say, about they thought of me and the world. Their lives, what they did, mattered to me. Maybe not to the rest of time or the universe, but they mattered then and to me. They really did, regardless of anything else.”

“And now?”

“And now I realize that the only thing we matter is what we matter to each other.”

I corrected him, “And now you’re running away from all that matters to you.”

Gregory glared at me over his gut. “And now I’m going where the people understand what matters and when.”

I didn’t say anything then. I looked past Gregory and out the window at the rows of golden Iowa cornstalks, going by, going by, going by all the while and none of us noticing.

I pulled out my new wallet and laid it on Gregory’s gut.

“Listen close to this,” I said. “You think too much. A YMCA membership is the cure to fatness. A puppy is the cure to loneliness. Money’ll buy both. Get a ticket back to wherever you came from, then get the membership and get the puppy, all on me. How’s that sound?”

Gregory didn’t speak to me again for the rest of the trip.

Editor’s note: Gregory Falsgraf refused to read this account past Wenceslaus’s initial description of him, and so the accuracy of this conversation as written here is suspect. Other passengers on the plane have confirmed that Falsgraf and Wenceslaus sat next to each other, and also that the two engaged in a shouting match nearly the entire flight. Unfortunately, none of the other passengers remember exactly what was said between them. One passenger does, however, distinctly remember Wenceslaus repeatedly shouting the phrase “Liver, liver, chicken dinner!” A phrase tellingly absent from this account.

Gregory also claims that Wenceslaus stole his luggage.

When the plane touched down the tragically, hilariously fat Gregory flopped out of his seat and rolled down the aisle. I considered yelling after him to let him know that he’d forgotten his carry on luggage, but I didn’t want to spoil his mood.

The last I ever smelled of Gregory, he was falling out the open airplane doorway.

I took some time to look out the window and examine the interdimensional portal. What I saw nearly made me vomit, though I didn’t understand why right away.

Gregory had claimed that ten thousand of his kind had gathered outside the portal. The number appeared closer to a hundred thousand.

A hundred thousand Gregorys! It astounds the mind even now.

At first, I didn’t realize that what I was seeing was people at all. It looked to me like some wretched marine biologist had rounded up every sea slug and starfish living in the Great Barrier Reef and dumped them all in a great pile in a field in Iowa. The beasts slithered and slid over and under each other, in and out of cars and trailers and makeshift tents, and wriggling around campfires. Every now and then, I saw some aquatic gorillas wearing military uniforms march among the camps, looking mean as hell.

And glowering over it all was the portal. Prior descriptions had led me to believe I would witness mankind’s all time greatest technological achievement, the result of the most advanced engineering our civilization was yet capable of.

What I found looked like a dirty shanty. About the size of a house, its sides were already turning red-brown with rust. A web of whatchamacallit gears and thingamajigger cylinders stuck out at odd, unseemly, possibly-dangerous angles, and a torrent of steam perpetually rolled off its sides and into the air above. A big, toothy gap had been blown through its middle, as if some patriot had driven a truck straight through and out the other side to shift neutral into the Iowa sunset.

The gorillas, or peacekeepers as I later learned they called themselves, had erected a barrier all the way around the portal. The seas slugs and starfish crowded right up to the barrier at all times, always pushing closer. The gorillas shoved them back, and the invertebrates shoved forward again in kind, yelling and chanting and jeering, and the armed gorillas fired warning shots over their heads. It was clear to anyone and everyone that the situation would soon explode. The air and the ground felt hot, like somebody had lit blow torches beneath the surface of the earth, and the ground itself would transform into molten lava at any moment.

Watching all those sea slugs and starfish heave desperately up against the barrier, I finally realized what it was about the sight that made me so sick.

That portal was an escape from accepting responsibility, freedom to flee from humanity’s collective alimony. It was a hundred thousand Gregorys diving for the lifeboat instead of patching the leaks.

When I finished vomiting up my shame, I apologized to the stewardess and grabbed Gregory’s carry on luggage. His luggage consisted only of a single satchel. Inside, I found Snickers bars and philosophy textbooks. I put his satchel over my shoulder and got off the plane. As soon as I set foot on the ground, I saw a pair of the armed, uniformed gorillas marching towards me. They were already on me before I had the chance to decide between bolting and ending my own life right then and there.

One grabbed me by the shoulder while the other stuck his jaw so close to my face that I could feel his breath on my forehead.

“Are you Robert Haverly?” he growled, voice like sandpaper.

“Of course,” I said.

He looked me hard in the eyes. “Identification?”

I produced the necessary materials. I had vigorously washed those materials of human substances in the airplane’s restroom. They sparkled as I took them out of my pocket.

The first gorilla swiped them from my hand without looking, and then the second began pushing me forward from behind.

“We need to go, Mr. Haverly,” one of them said.

“Go where?”

“You’ll be placed in custody for your own safety until the portal is finished charging,” the gorilla said, walking forward. “You’ll be sent through as soon as it is.”

I tried to open my mouth to protest, but the gorilla behind me jammed my face into the back of the gorilla in front, so we were all pressed tightly together like a trio of Big and Tall men riding a too-small Scrambler. We immediately rushed into the slobbering horde of marine life. Bodies squeezed closely around us, all sweating and shouting and jostling, breathing fire out of their nostrils. Something hard clipped my forehead, and one of the gorillas picked me up and carried me away.

Moments later, we were in open air again. I was on the other side of the barrier—gorilla turf. One of them dragged me across the dirt in front of the steaming doomsday device towards a little shack off to the side. He opened the shack door and slung me inside.

“Wait here,” he said, walking back out. “Someone will come for you when the portal is ready.”

The door closed behind him.

I blinked around. I appeared to be in a makeshift holding cell, though luckily on the outside of the cell itself. Behind the bars of the cell, I saw a handful of bloody and beaten starfish. Something red had been spilled all over the floor. The starfish weren’t moving.

I stood up and promptly walked back outside. I observed the portal for a moment, then jumped through and over a gap in the nearest barrier. I elbowed in and out of the crowd and made my way towards the camps further out.

Editor’s note: Security forces present at the Tafadzwa portal site vehemently deny any assertions that violence occurred in or around the camps prior to the Manson Riots.

The camps were as despicable and pathetic as the Gregorys living in them. While exploring, I waded through mud, trash, vomit, excrement, and blood. The animals huddled in the flaps and seats of the raggedy tents and broken-down cars were dirty and sad and hopeless. The difference between those camps and Gary, Indiana was the difference between giving up and putting up.

I passed by a car with a rusted metal pole sticking through its windshield. When I got closer, I realized that it wasn’t rust on its metal, but dried blood. The blood had turned speckled and brown. That pole had been used to kill before, and it would be used to kill again. I could tell, because it’s my job to find the connections.

I moved quickly away.

As I walked, a woman sitting on a tree stump in front of a fire that had long since died out called out to me. She said, “Do you know where you are?”

I stopped and shrugged. “I’d rather be anywhere else.”

She beckoned me closer. “Come here and I’ll tell you the secret.”

I came and sat down beside her, and she nodded approvingly. She had crazed, terrified eyes. She smelled of rabies.

I leaned away from her.

“I can tell,” she said. “You’re not like the rest of them.”

“I like to think that I’m an embodiment of everyone.”

“Do you know where you are?” she asked again.

I shrugged again.

“This,” she whispered, leaning close, touching her mouth to my ear, “is where God killed the dinosaurs.”

“Excuse me?”

She laughed hysterically, and the sound rang through my ears and bounced about in my head. “Not much to look at, is it?”

“It’s a lot less than that. What’s this about dinosaurs?”

“The asteroid!” she cried. “The one God sent to kill the dinosaurs. You’re standing right smack dab on the spot it hit!”

I glanced nervously down at the ground beneath my feet.

She nodded wisely. “That’s right. Sixty million years ago, the asteroid impacted here. Boom! Dust and ash! Earthquakes! Volcanoes! Tsunamis! Death! This is the impact crater. We’re standing on it.”

I looked around the camp. The ground was gently level for as far as I could see.

“You can’t see it now because glaciers ran down here from Canada later, stomped it flat,” she explained. “But if you dig a little ways down, you’ll find it. Geologists used to come here in droves, before they all shoved off to the Yucatan.”

“Huh,” I said.

“Isn’t it incredible how He prepares the earth for us? How He knows?”

“It is something.”
,
She eyed me warily. “Don’t you dare doubt Him. This is where God destroyed three quarters of all life on the planet.”

“Why do you think He did that?”

“Life displeased Him,” she said, sounding tired and sniffing her armpits. “Ignored Him. Maybe even despised Him, like now. Just like now. And so He’s sent another vehicle of life’s destruction. To the exact same spot! There it stands. Isn’t it incredible how He works? The parallelism of time and destruction?”

I nodded. I knew.

“And do you see it?” she asked, nearly shouting now, rising up from her seat. “Do you see what God has sent to punish us? To destroy us all?”

I glanced up at the interdimensional portal, the doomsday machine, and the crowds throwing themselves at its feet.

“Yes,” I said. “I see it.”

She sat back down, pleased. “And what are you doing here if you aren’t one of them? Come to witness the machinery of the undoing of humanity?”

“I’m a journalist, a writer. I’m being sent through the portal today.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you going to write the truth?”

“I don’t know how to write anything else.”

“You might be able to stop it,” she said, eyes widening. “You could make these people understand what’s really happening, the fate that really awaits them on the other side of that portal.”

“It’s what I’d planned all along.”

“Don’t you remember? God’s angels needed to find only ten righteous men in Sodom, and the whole city and everyone in it would be saved. Only ten righteous men.”

“I understand.”

She took a deep breath. “Are you him?”

“I am the One of Ten,” I confirmed.

“Praise the Lord!” she cried.

I nodded.

“You must not allow yourself to be deceived,” she warned. “Demons, wicked, scheming, cunning demons wait for you on the other side of the portal. They will do all they can to lead humanity astray. It is in their nature to poison souls.”

“I’ve actually heard that the Equestrians are very pleasant creatures.”

She laughed and shook her head. “Who could a demon deceive if it slithered on the ground or if it ate human flesh or if its eyes burned red?”

I looked up and saw the Harbinger of Death himself, dressed in an aquatic gorilla suit, stampeding towards me through the camps from the direction of the portal. No doubt, the other gorillas had finally stopped breaking heads open long enough to notice my absence.

More steam than ever was pouring off the portal. A humming throb had suffused the air of the camps. I took in ozone with every breath.

The portal was ready.

“No,” she continued, “they’ll come to you smiling and offering tea and biscuits and operating charity drives. They’ll appear innocent and friendly, but they’ll hide wickedness in their hearts. Don’t let them deceive you.”

That woman turned out to be right. When I entered Equestria, I found nothing but demons.

The Harbinger of Death was only a few feet away, and barreling in fast.

“Don’t let yourself be consumed,” she said.

“I won’t,” I promised.

And I didn’t.

“I know,” she said.

The Harbinger of Death arrived. He wordlessly stooped down and picked me up, then began carrying me back to the portal. We passed by the car with the bloody pole. I grabbed it. It felt weighty and heavy in my hand, weighty and heavy enough to scatter a man’s skull like a hammer would a toasted PopTart. Or maybe even a horse’s. I slipped it inside Gregory’s satchel.

I called back to the woman, “I will save humanity!”

And I will.

I promise you all that I will.

The Harbinger of Death easily carried me back through the crowds and over the barriers and up to the portal.

The portal was different than when I had left it. The toothy gap in its middle had been filled.

The gap had been filled with a storm of neon, glowing snakes. They swirled together, red and green and blue and purple, buzzing and humming, biting each other’s tails and faces, up and down and around and to the side. More steam than ever poured off the portal’s rusting metallic sides. The machine and the ground beneath it shook and rattled violently.

Someone kicked me from behind and I fell into the snakes.

Editor’s note: The identity of the woman Wenceslaus claims to have spoken to remains unknown. Security forces at the portal site assert that Wenceslaus remained in their custody from the time he disembarked his plane until the time he entered the Tafadzwa portal. They also deny that Wenceslaus was kicked into the portal. According to their spokesperson, he enthusiastically walked inside of his own accord.

The pole Wencelsaus describes was confiscated by Equestrian authorities after his arrest, and later delivered to the American government along with this document. Careful forensics testing has found blood of multiple subjects on the surface of the pole, both Equestrian and human. One of those subjects is believed, but not yet confirmed, to be that of Robert Haverly.

My journey between dimensions was unextraordinary. What was extraordinary was the discovery of my life’s purpose.

The purpose of my life is to save humanity—from ourselves, from what we might do with the opportunity to flee, from the monsters waiting for us on this side of the portal.

Therefore:

The purpose of my life is to kill Princess Twilight Sparkle of Equestria.

The Book of Joram - II

I was standing in a field, but I wasn’t standing in a field in Iowa. Behind me, something glowed and hummed, becoming steadily quieter, but it wasn’t neon snakes. I breathed, but I didn’t breathe in the smell of sweat and anger and violence. This air smelled like tulips, but it was, of course, all lies. The brain can be tricked into believing anything is anything else if you have a little knowledge of the workings of electrochemical stimuli. Luckily for me, the soul is not so easily deceived.

The field was green, lowly cut, spotted with trees and gentle hills. The sky was blue and the occasional cloud drifted happily by. A yellow sun shone brightly overhead. Past the field, a ways off, I saw a clutter of buildings. I glanced back and saw a cleaner, simpler variant of the Tafadzwa portal behind me, all of its glow lost. It was dead, for now. It would take the portal at least a week to charge the necessary energy to catapult another body across the dimensional divide.

I was trapped.

I saw a few of the Equestrians milling about in little colorful groups near the portal, all of them looking at me.

I had seen pictures of them before, so I wasn’t surprised by their similarity in appearance to horses or ponies found on Earth, or by their similarity to popular children’s toys. But I was surprised by their eyes, and what I saw behind them.

In every pair of vibrantly discolored eyes I saw the starkest avarice, the most willing devotion to malefaction, and the most absolute hatred. It took only a moment to confirm the evil into which I had delivered myself.

All I had to defend myself was Gregory’s satchel, and the pole and Snickers bars and philosophy textbooks inside.

Directly before me, a purple Equestrian with wings and a horn, flanked on either side by two other larger Equestrians who both wore some archaic form of armor, stepped forward.

I took a step back.

“Hello,” she said. “My name is Twilight, and I’m here to welcome you to Equestria.”

I nearly fainted. I hunched down to catch my breath,

“Are you all right?” she asked quickly. “Do you need help?”

I shook my head and held up a hand to keep her back. “I’m just surprised by the Lord’s providence, is all.”

She looked confused. “You are Robert Haverly, right? The journalist scheduled to conduct the interviews with me?”

I stood up straight and smiled. “The one and only.”

The little purple goblin smiled back, and then began walking closer, blabbering indiscriminately at me. “I’m so glad to finally meet you! I’ve been extremely excited for this ever since the arrangements were made. I’ve hardly been able to get any other work done. It’s a shame the portal’s charge time is so long, or we could have begun much sooner, or at least exchanged some correspondence more often. I’ve actually devised some methods with which I think we can drastically improve the energy efficiency of the device. And I have so many questions! We should—”

She stopped abruptly and let out an imitation of a child’s embarrassed laugh. “Oh, I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?”

“You’re certainly getting somewhere,” I agreed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Like I said, I’ve been very excited for this. All of the visitations so far have been conducted by either Princess Celestia or Princess Luna.”

I glanced around. Most of the other Equestrians had already begun moving off, towards the cluster of buildings. They didn’t seem particularly interested in me. I certainly wasn’t the first human any of them had ever seen. Maybe they had hoped for an entrance with more pomp and dazzle, or to see yet another Gregory roll out of the portal and down the hill. The two guards still stood slightly behind the purple one, eyeing me impassively.

They would be a problem.

“But if you don’t mind,” the hobgoblin princess continued, “I’d like to get started right away. We have so much ground to cover and so little time. We should schedule a second meeting as soon as possible, too.”

I shrugged. “I came here to do only one thing, Princess.”

“You can call me Twilight.”

“I will call you Princess.”

“It’s really not necessary. I actually prefer for pon—people to call me by my name, not my title.”

“I insist,” I said. “I will feel much more comfortable doing what I have to do here if I know you only by your title.”

She frowned. “Well… okay, then. But my friends all call me Twilight.”

I didn’t remind her of the obvious.

“I had planned to begin with the tour of Ponyville as soon as you arrived,” she said. “Is that all right with you? Or would you prefer if I show you where you’ll be staying first, so you’ll have some time to rest before we start?”

“Will your guards accompany us either way?”

“Oh, sorry.” She glanced at her armored jocks. “They’ll have to stay with us for the entire duration of the interviews. I’d prefer to conduct them in private, but Princess Celestia advised me to be as careful as possible, as much for your safety as my own. It’s not that I expect you’ll do anything to me or anypony else, or that anypony will do anything to you, but I’m sure you’d agree that it’s best to anticipate every possible variable when dealing with the complexity and unpredictability of interdimensional travel. We haven’t had any incidents yet, and I’d very much like to keep it that way. I do apologize, but you understand, right?”

The purple bogeypony was smarter than she looked.

The guards kept silent.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s probably for the best, anyway.”

“So what would you prefer to do first?” she asked.

“I would prefer to do whatever you prefer to do.”

“Wonderful!” Princess clapped her hooves like an excited toddler. “Then let’s begin the tour.”

She started marching forward, and I followed her, and the two guards followed us.

She stopped abruptly. “Oh, do you have any questions before we begin? About me or Ponyville or anything else?”

I thought seriously for a moment before asking, “Do you know of His Holiness, Sir Elton John?”

“Um,” Princess said. “I don’t think so. Is he a religious leader?”

“The most sacred of them all.”

“I’ve been studying the many variations of human religion.” Princess beamed at me. “I’ve found religion to be one of the most intriguing aspects of your culture. That name hasn’t appeared in any of the books I’ve read, but I would love to learn more about him.”

“And what have you learned about the names that did appear in your books?”

She coughed and cleared her throat, looking away. “Let’s save that discussion for later. I know personal religious beliefs are a matter of contention for humans. Would you like to begin the tour now?”

“I only want to do one thing.”

“Wonderful!” Princess smiled and started walking away. “If you’ll follow me, I wanted to start by showing you Ponyville’s weather office.”

I shrugged and followed.

The two guards stepped in line behind me. They watched me carefully.

They knew.

And I knew that they knew.

I held Gregory’s satchel close, feeling the shape of the pole inside.

Editor’s note: Equestrian authorities have refused to cooperate with our staff—in fact have outright refused to communicate with our publication at all—and therefore the veracity of this and all following sections of Wenceslaus’s account cannot be confirmed.

Considering that prior to this incident, Equestrian authorities eagerly agreed to work with us, in this respect, if in no other, Wenceslaus’s unstated mission appears to have been successful.

I trudged through stupidly well-manicured fields, following Princess while she babbled like a runaway brook. We walked parallel to buildings of the nearby town, neither coming closer nor getting further away from them.

The guards walked behind me.

I could hear their footsteps, heavy and calculating. They were like hounds, dogging my every step. They could strike at any moment, at their master's any whim. At a single unseen signal, they could cave in the back of my head, and I wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop it. I was theirs to do with as they pleased.

I took as many opportunities to surreptitiously glance over my shoulders as I could.

Each and every time, they glared coldly back at me.

Princess abruptly stopped.

“Here we are!” she said, turning around and smiling at me. She gestured up into the air.

I looked up and saw, past some trees, a building floating on a cloud in the sky. It looked like a cheap imitation of a bad artist’s worst depiction of heaven. Two winged Equestrians jumped off the side of the cloud and flew towards the town.

“Here we are,” I said, pretending to scratch my neck while really looking over at one of the guards.

He was circling around me.

“This is Ponyville’s weather office,” Princess said. “It’s from this building that the pegasus ponies plan, organize, and execute all weather in Ponyville and the surrounding area. They control when, where, and how much it rains, cloud coverage and density, the strength and frequency of storms, the arrival of new seasons, and even the temperature. Every major settlement in Equestria has a similar office, many of them much larger than Ponyville’s. All of them are coordinated by the Central Weather Office in Cloudsdale, to organize the overall climate and prevent conflicts between individual offices.”

I yawned.

Princess looked at me like I was supposed to be impressed by something.

So I asked, “Am I supposed to be impressed by something?”

“I—well...” She squinted at me. “No, I just thought you might be interested to know how weather works here in Equestria. It’s very different than what you’re used to.”

“Different how?”

“Well, in a lot of ways. The simplest being that we’ve developed methods of controlling the weather, but all of our basic weather patterns are the same as Earth’s. We still have rain and snow and thunderstorms, but we’re able to decide when and where those rains, snows, and thunderstorms occur, and at what intensity.”

“So?”

She frowned. “From what I understand, humans have always been at the mercy of their climate. They can only react to its effects, never make the climate act for their benefit. On Earth, precipitation is completely unregulated, leading to floods and droughts. Crops can only be grown when and where the weather permits. Lack of control has resulted in shortages and famines.”

“I don’t have any problem with weather,” I said. “Without it, we wouldn’t have anything to talk with strangers about. It’s the only thing we all have in common.”

“I—how is that relevant?”

“We need something to talk about with strangers, don’t we?”

She gaped at me.

I shrugged.

“But what about the thousands of people who are killed by natural disasters every year?” she asked. “If you could prevent those somehow, wouldn’t you do so even if it meant having one less thing to talk about?”

I considered her very seriously before asking, “Do you have predator drones?”

“What?”

“And what about the thousands of people killed by predator drones every year?”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

And of course she couldn’t. How could she?

“You have weather control offices, we have predator drones,” I said. “Are you impressed yet?”

She bit her lip. “Well, I am impressed by the technology itself. You’re right that it isn’t like anything here in Equestria. That you were able to create something so sophisticated without magic is an achievement in and of itself. However, I’m not at all impressed by what they’re used for.”

“You’re jealous.”

“We really wouldn’t have any use for them.”

“And why not?”

“Oh.” She smirked up at me, just barely. And so did her guards. “I think you will be impressed by this. Equestria hasn’t been involved in a single large scale armed conflict in over three centuries. War, as you know it on Earth, doesn’t exist here.”

I staggered back and clutched my chest. I was so affected that I dropped Gregory’s satchel and I fell onto the soft grass. I understood now. I understood more fully than ever the evil that I faced. More than that, I understood the cause, the root, and the origin of our enemy.

“Are you all right?” Princess asked.

“Yes,” I managed. “But you aren’t.”

“What?”

“None of you are,” I said. “Not without war.”

“Um.”

I stood back up. “That’s why you’re all empty except for sin. It’s been too long since any of you killed anybody else.”

Princess stared at me, then shook her head. “How could warfare ever be a good thing?”

“Because it’s only through warfare that we can understand who we are.”

“Princess Celestia showed me how ponies used to live in times of war,” she said. “It was awful. Warfare causes nothing but destruction of lives and homes. Nothing good comes from war.”

“Good only comes from war,” I said, and laughed. “It’s only in battle that you’ll ever find true courage. It’s only when a man is pushed to his absolute limits that he knows what his absolute limits are. Only then can he find what he is truly capable of and what he truly cannot bring himself to do. It’s only after a man places his life in danger for a cause that he can know which causes are worth placing his life in danger for.”

“I suppose…”

“It’s been so long since any of you killed for something that you don’t know anymore what’s worth killing for. And because you don’t know what’s worth killing for, you can’t know what’s worth living for.”

Princess glanced at her guards, signaling something with her eyes before turning back to me. “That’s, um, a very interesting idea, and I’d love to discuss it with you further. But I think we should finish the tour first, before it gets dark.”

“After you,” I said.

I knew the end was in sight. I could feel the Harbinger of Death’s breath on my neck.

“I thought we’d head into town now,” she said, already walking away. “If you don’t mind.”

I didn’t mind, so I followed her.

I picked up Gregory’s satchel before I left.

As we walked towards the town, the Harbinger of Death devoured my soul and turned my head to the side just so. Through my eyes, He saw a forest on the horizon, and through my voice He asked, “What’s that over there?”

And then the Harbinger of Death reach a hand out to and into the Princess and then came back out through her mouth as a voice saying, “That’s the Everfree Forest.”

The Harbinger of Death vomited me up, and flew, flew, flew away.

But my head was still turned to the forest. It looked wild and storm-ridden. Its trees leaned against each other’s trunks, their limbs twisted together, strangled by vines. It was dark, and storm clouds lingered overhead. An alien howl rose up from somewhere deep within.

I shivered. That forest reminded me of Gary, Indiana.

It was beautiful.

“Will it be on the tour?” I asked.

“No,” she said, still walking towards the town. She never noticed His touch. No one ever does. “The Everfree Forest is one of the few places in Equestria where we’re unable control the climate. There’s too much primitive, disordered magic present in the Forest to ever organize it all.”

I stopped walking. “I’d very much like to visit it at least once.”

“It isn’t safe,” she said. “The Everfree Forest is home to too many predators. We don’t even know how many, or understand the hunting and feeding behaviors of most of them.”

“I would very much like to visit it before I leave.”

She sighed. “I’ll try to arrange something.”

I nodded and continued following her.

Of course, I will walk among the crooked boughs of the Everfree Forest at least once before I die.

But not with her.

We arrived in what might have been the center of town. Houses stood around me in a wide circle, their designs quaint and primitive, like children’s toys. Had I not known better, I would have thought I stood in a sized-up Lego block playpen. In the center of the circle was a tall, egg-shaped building. It was grotesque, too wide then stooped over then too skinny, like a male model getting too far along in his years and growing overfond of sweets.

It was nearing evening, and the sun had lowered. Only a few of the Equestrians milled about, all keeping a safe distance away. They pretended not to take significant notice of our party, but I could tell they were watching me from the corners of their eyes.

The Princess stopped in front of me, and her guards stopped behind me.

I stopped, too, and held Gregory’s satchel close.

“This is Ponyville’s Town Hall,” Princess said. “Town Hall is the center of Ponyville’s local government, and also where you will be staying.”

“Aren’t you the center of the government?” I asked.

The little shit laughed at me, then said, “Not exactly. I actually thought this stop might be a good opportunity to explain our system of government. I know there’s been a lot confusion on your side.”

“If you feel so compelled.”

Apparently, she did feel so compelled, because she immediately began, “Our government isn’t quite like anything you’ll find on Earth. You’ll find that it is much less strictly organized than any form of government you’re familiar with. The closest term might be diarchy, because Princess Celestia and Princess Luna can be considered joint heads of state, but both Princess Cadence and I technically share that position as well, and that’s not even considering the nobility or their authority. The lines of power and succession aren’t very clearly defined. Furthermore, every organized body within Equestria has varying levels of autonomy outside of the central government, and some are almost separate entities unto themselves. Cloudsdale, for example, is almost completely independent of Royal authority.”

“How absurd.”

She frowned. “It isn’t, really. It’s also worth mentioning that Equestria’s system has resulted in a much lower crime and poverty rate than in your country. If anything, I think I’d be justified in calling your government absurd.”

And that did it.

I took a step back, and cleared my throat. “Do you believe we, meaning humankind, should adopt your way of life?”

Ever the slithering, tongue-flicking politician, she answered, “Well, no, I believe we should all do what works best for us.”

“Does your way work for you and your… mammals?”

“Yes. Very well.”

“If it works for you, couldn’t it work just as well for some other mammal? Say, for example, the kind of mammal that walks on two or fewer legs and often four wheels?”

“I suppose so.”

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all just”—I pressed both my hands meekly together in an earnest gesture—“get along?”

She frowned some more. “We do get along, don’t we?”

“And it’s so much easier for everyone to ‘get along’ when everyone is alike, isn’t it?”

“Um, I guess.”

“We, meaning us, meaning humankind, would be so much better off if we could ‘get along’ with you, meaning the whole of your… mammalian kingdom, wouldn’t we?”

“I think so. Equestria would benefit, too, of course.”

“Of course,” I said. “So considering all this, it’s really in our, meaning us, meaning humankind’s, best interest to make ourselves more like you. To accept your ways and your lives and your sins and your rule. It would be only expected of you as morally minded mammals to nudge-nuzzle us onto the more sacred path.”

She looked down and frowned ever more, until her whole face was one big frown and nothing else.

“Ah!” I cried, grinning stupidly. “And would you look at that! That’s exactly what’s happening right now. Your worms have crawled belly-wise right through that portal and burrowed into the heads of people all over the world. Now they’ll all try to be just like you! Isn’t that swell?”

She paused before looking back up at me. “You’re talking about the Equestria on Earth Organization?”

The Equestria on Earth Organization.

Yes. I was talking about the Equestria on Earth Organization.

Every now and then, a man, or a woman, or a group of men and women, come along who can usurp humanity’s natural God-given talents and tendencies and drive those towards hatred and discord instead of peace and innovation, such as our love of order, esteem for the greater good, and infatuation with ourselves. They come in the trappings of reason and wisdom and benevolence, and they call themselves Martin Luther and Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Karl Marx.

Nowadays, they call themselves the Equestria on Earth Organization.

Those sorts of men and women are only ever halted when other just and righteous sorts of men and women rise up out of Gary, Indiana-style squalor and stand against them. It has happened again and again throughout the course of history, from the Thirty Years’ War to the end of the New Deal Coalition to the fall of the Soviet Union.

And one is happening now.

“And,” Princess continued, “you’re implying that we’re somehow purposefully influencing the Equestria on Earth Organization for our own benefit?”

“No,” I said, “I’m implying that you are somehow personally influencing the Equestria on Earth Organization.”

Princess scowled at me, then opened her mouth, then glanced at her guards, then glanced at the other ponies walking about, then looked at the Town Hall, then looked back at me, then closed her mouth.

Then she opened her mouth again.

“I’ll show you your room in Town Hall now,” she said quickly, already turning and walking away.

The guards pushed me forward, and we all set off towards Fate together.

The guards shoved me into the room. Gregory’s satchel swung away from my chest and then back into me, the pole inside cracking hard on my ribs.

“Here it is!” Princess said overly pleasantly, walking in behind me. “This is where you’ll be staying.”

I looked around. The room had a toy bed and a toy desk and a few various other toy pleasantries, but all of it was one size too small, designed for gremlins a third my height. Everything except for the window. The window was amply tall and wide enough that a grown man could have easily burst through its glass and went tumbling down to the street below without so much as clipping his head on the window frame. My room was on the third floor. It would be a hell of a drop.

I should have realized it then.

But I didn’t.

I turned and looked at Princess.

She smiled back at me. “How do you like it?”

“‘Like’ certainly isn’t the word I would use,” I said.

“Wonderful,” she said, still smiling.

I shrugged.

She turned to the guards and said, all smiles, “Could you please give us some privacy? I need to speak with Mr. Haverly alone.”

My breath caught.

I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe.

The Princess of Inhumanity was personally asking permission to deliver herself into my arms.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” one of the guards said, “but for your safety, I must insist that we remain with you at all times.”

“It’ll be fine,” Princess said, smiling away. “It’ll only take a minute, I promise. You can wait right outside the door.”

The guards looked from me to her.

Princess smiled, smiled, smiled.

And then, incredibly, gracefully, preciously, the Harbinger of Death intervened on my behalf one final time. He busted down the front door, trampled up the stairs, thundered over the guards, and through their voices cried, “As you wish, Your Highness.”

Through those words, the Harbinger of Death declared the time and place of the final breath of Princess Twilight Sparkle of Equestria.

“Thank you so much,” Princess said to them and Him.

They left the room.

Princess turned back to me. Her smile fell and she let out a long, tired sigh.

I unlatched Gregory’s satchel.

“Mr. Haverly,” she said, and looked up at me like a child who has dropped her ice cream cone on the sidewalk during summer and is just about to beg her parents for another. “Robert, please forgive me, because I understand that this must be a hard situation for you. I know culture shock and stress can make us act in ways we normally wouldn’t. However, I’ve made every possible effort to make you feel comfortable here. I’ve been friendly. I’ve been courteous. I’ve been beyond patient. I’ve given you as cordial a welcome to Ponyville as anypony possibly could. Yet you’ve been nothing but rude and insulting to me all day. I can’t understand why. You never acted condescending or patronizing in any of your letters. You said you were excited to come here. What happened? Why are you acting like this?”

I jabbed my hand down into Gregory’s satchel. “People change.”

“I just don’t understand. Did I do something wrong? Did I offend you somehow?”

“Yes,” I said, and wrapped my fingers around the end of the pole. Its metal was warm and coarse on my skin.

“What did I do? When? Whatever it was, I apologize. I promise, I swear it wasn’t done on purpose.”

“What did you do?” I repeated. I gripped the pole tight and looked down at her. “You’ve offended me. You’ve offended my thoughts, my body, my soul, my very nature. You insult me. Everything you do is an affront to my truth and the truth of my family and my country. When you speak, when you walk, when you breathe, I feel my heart torn open, claws scrape along the inside of my skull, blood spill down my throat and into my lungs. You are absolutely, utterly inhuman. You are everything I am not, everything I will never be, everything I desire not to be. When you speak across that portal and when others speak of you, I hear the foundations of all and everyone I care for cracking under the weight of your lies. You are snake venom, already in our bloodstream, rushing towards our heart. And I am the antivenom.”

I pulled the blood-rusted pole out of Gregory’s satchel.

“What is that?” she asked.

I raised the pole high into the air, knowing then just how King Arthur felt after pulling Excalibur from the stone.

I swung the pole swiftly down into Princess’s eye. She screeched hysterically and her eye made a squishing sound, like rain boots stomping on a caterpillar in wet grass. The pole ricocheted off her head and my arm fell backwards.

I moved to swing again, but a great light burst from Princess’s horn and knocked me off my feet. It flung me backwards until my back collided with something hard. That something gave way and shattered with a great crash, and I was suddenly outside, in the air, in a cloud of broken glass, and falling down.

I hit the ground, shoulder first.

Airy, delicate bits of glass rained on my side.

I didn’t move at first. Everything hurt. I tasted blood, and my shoulder was on fire.

“Oh my gosh!” a concerned, sweet-sounding voice said. “Are you all right?”

I looked up, slowly, painfully, and saw a blue Equestrian looking down at me.

The pole was still in my hand.

I pushed myself up off the ground.

“Are you all right?” the Equestrian asked again. “What happened?”

I stood up, wobbled for a moment as the whole world twisted underneath my legs, then planted my feet. I lifted the pole up and struck the Equestrian in the head.

She shrieked just as Princess had, but no guarding light came out of this one, only yelping and shrilling.

I hit her with the pole again, in the mouth this time, and she shut up.

She staggered backwards, trying to get away, crying and blubbering.

I lurched drunkenly after her, and hit her again and again and again, in her head, in her head, in her shoulder.

She fell to the ground, and I went down with her. I fell to my knees, paused for a moment to catch my breath and listen to her whimper and shiver beneath me. Pain wracked my whole body, starting at my heart and burning through my bloodstream. I grabbed the pole in both hands, then swung it down at the Equestrian again, then over and over. I battered the side of her head, her ear, her eye, her leg, and felt her warm, milky blood on my face, tasted it on my tongue, stinging in my eyes.

Something big struck me in the side and knocked me over. I lost my grip on the pole, and it bounced away. The something big pressed me down against the ground, and I no longer had the energy to resist. Everything hurt, my body and my mind.

I heard voices shouting, some angry, others panicked.

I looked around and saw a large Equestrian on top of me, a small group of them around me, and more coming towards me. A couple of them huddled over the blue Equestrian lying on the ground. She was still moving some, occasionally, but her head looked like a bowl of scattered chips and salsa.

A glowing swirl surrounded my body and lifted me up into the air. I floated off the ground, frozen stiff. Incredibly, I noticed, Gregory’s satchel was still on my shoulder. The Snickers bars inside probably got squished when I fell out of the window, though.

I saw Princess and her guards approaching me. She had more guards with her now, at least a dozen of them. Her eye was black, bloodied, and misshapen, but she didn’t stumble or falter. She marched forward with purpose, looking as angry as a horde of fire ants swarming atop a kicked-over anthill. Her horn glowed the same color as the swirl surrounding me.

She looked down at the blue Equestrian and spoke quickly to the ponies nearby. Princess’s horn glowed brighter, and the blue Equestrian disappeared in another hellish burst of her light.

She walked towards me, and the other Equestrians backed away.

She looked up at me with the hurt, confused eyes of a dog being kicked in the stomach by its angry-drunk master and asked, “Why?”

“Well,” I said, still floating. A bit of blood drooled out of my mouth and onto my chin. “Isn’t it obvious why the gazelle bites the lion back?”

“You’re insane,” she said.

I considered that for a moment, then said, “I promise I will kill you. I will not stop. I will not give up. Only when I am dead will you have any moment of true rest. And if it isn’t me who kills you, it will be someone else, another human. I promise we will kill you, and we will never stop, never give up, until we are all dead. When the rest of us discover what you are and what you mean to do, as I have, every human who comes through that portal will come swinging straight for you. As long as that portal is open, you and your kind will never be safe from me and mine.”

Princess Twilight Sparkle of Equestria watched me for a long time after that, one eye open and one eye broken.

Finally, she turned to one of her guards. “Lock him in the basement of Town Hall until we decide what to do with him. Don’t let him near anypony else and don’t let anypony near him. Keep him under guard and within your sight at all times. I need to speak with Princess Celestia.”

Princess turned and walked away.

The glow surrounding me disappeared and I fell into the waiting forelegs of five guards. They dragged me back towards Town Hall. I allowed myself a tired, satisfied, sad smile.

The job was nearly done.

I decided then that in the basement of Town Hall, I would eat Gregory’s squished Snickers bars and write down my story into the pages of his philosophy books. I will write our philosophy, my Gospel, my discovery, our salvation, so humankind will know what I have done and what must be done after. When I finish, I will escape, find my way to the Everfree Forest, and, in the name of all humanity, find a manticore to administer deserved justice unto me and tear open my throat.

And I will be the first ever person to do that.

Editor’s note: The methods and circumstances of Wenceslaus's escape from Equestrian authorities are unknown, as Equestrian authorities refuse to communicate the details of the case. However, Equestrian authorities do claim that Wenceslaus is no longer in their custody, and that a thorough search of the area known as the Everfree Forest has proven fruitless. Wenceslaus's whereabouts are currently unknown.

The portal’s functions have been largely ceased since the incident, apart from the delivery of these documents to the American government, blocked from the Equestria side of the portal. American diplomats are engaging in talks with Equestrian leaders, and are confident that the damage done to the relationship between our cultures by Wenceslaus’s actions can be repaired.

As of the time of this writing, Princess Twilight Sparkle of Equestria is assumed to be, thankfully, alive and in good health.

Author's Notes:

Many thanks to Silvernis, Grenader, First_Down, and pterrorgrine for proofreading. And thank you, for reading all the way to the end.