Chapter 9

9-18-13, 12:37 P.M.

Jeremy woke up in a pile of papers, glasses still askew on his face. His pencil had slipped to the floor, and he adjusted his glasses and rubbed his eyes. As he looked at what he had been sleeping in, his mouth cracked in a faint smile.

Lunch was served in the castle, which was a short walk from where he lived. Thankfully, Equestrian concept of distance was a lot shorter than the human version – which made sense, considering the average adult pony only came up to his waist. Lunch today was, as usual, a myriad of vegetarian offerings of potatoes, fruits, and grains. Jeremy accepted a pancake without comment, and loaded up on various other things.

He returned to his room to find that all his papers had disappeared - what the hell! He poked around for a while, trying to remember if he had misplaced them. During his search, he tripped over a package, and a brief inspection revealed that it was addressed to him. It was large, perhaps two feet in length by one foot square. Who would send him something, and what on Earth or Equestria was it? He picked it up and walked inside, noticing that his room had been tidied up and his papers had been misplaced. Whatever it was, it was heavy – easily the weight of a shotgun, and about as long. It just then occurred to Jeremy that he could find out what the object was by looking at the label – and that he probably shouldn’t be opening the package if it didn’t have one. After some searching, he found a small square of sticky paper bearing a wax seal with a sun and moon coat of arms on it. “To Jeremy – from Luna and the R&D department” was written in extremely fancy, dark purple ink around the sides of the wax seal. Now less suspicious and more intrigued, Jeremy went and found a kitchen knife, and slit the box down the middle and sides so he could fold it open. He opened the box, and for a moment he could only stare at the object embedded within. It was perfect, down to the sleek black-and-white glossy finish. Grunting, he lifted it out of the box and inspected it. The black was seemingly very heavy, but in all other aspects similar to carbon. The white was obviously thick sheet metal from the texture, although it was in turn very light. Aluminum? He hadn't specified what those parts would be made of in his blueprints, finding no need for any specific material. All in all, the gun was disproportionately heavy, if balanced – then again, he reminded himself, containing a miniature quantum singularity was by no means without its gravitational drawbacks. Smiling at the thought he just had, he examined the handle.

This was the only part of the portal gun that was clearly modified – it had been tailored to actually fit smoothly into his hand. Was that in the blueprints? He wasn’t sure – the worldmodels he had looked at featured a simple rod, bent twice to form a sort of square “U” shape. He’d have to check – maybe Luna noticed something he didn’t. After all, the key to the computer she built was shared by both of them – it stood to reason she had tried her hoof at some of the games. Moving on… There were two triggers where the index finger would be, and a small button below that. Jeremy guessed that these controlled the portals and the levitation, respectively. Finally, on the opposite side in the middle of the face of the tube part, there was a small slide switch. Was this the ‘on’ switch? Again, Jeremy wasn’t sure. Oh well – best to try it out anyway. He carefully pressed the lone switch, and the gun flickered to life, claws sliding out from their inward-bent positions and red lights switching on.

So far, so good. Now, to find a surface… Jeremy walked around the room, looking for a roughly human-sized, blank part of the wall. He found it in his own bedroom, just above his bed – a bit of a tough fit, but he could climb if he had to. He took careful aim, and fired the gun. The kick was amazing – it very nearly flew out of his hands, comparable to a shotgun. Almost too fast to see, a blue ball of energy fired out the front end, and hit the wall. In the split second following, Jeremy found himself desperately hoping that it would work. To his relief, the blue portal spread out, even making the appropriate sound before beginning the standard routine of swirling and glowing. Shakingly, Jeremy reached out and touched it, wondering if he was about to get radiation poisoning. To his surprise, the membrane across the portal entrance gave somewhat – he could press it beyond the confines of his bedroom wall, ever so slightly. Something to mention to the build team, then. Now, to find a second surface…

The apartment, both on the inside and outside, was too decorated with differing surfaces to accommodate a second portal. So, he looked elsewhere. From here, he could see the castle – ponies were going about their business. There was a small patch of marble that was unadorned, just on the outside of the castle wall under a window. That would be perfect – it was right above the ground. Taking aim again, he fired. The portal hit the grass, a good distance away from where he’d intended to place it. It took him a few tries, and a few near-misses of the milling populace, but he finally got a second portal placed. He couldn’t quite make out from here if it had opened, though, so he’d have to go back inside.

Walking into his bedroom, he noticed that the portal had indeed opened – and the passersby were staring through it. “Don’t mind me, just testing this out,” he called out by way of greeting. Most shrugged and continued on, but a few stayed to watch. Carefully, Jeremy climbed through the portal. The temperature difference was the most striking – that and he seemed to break some sort of invisible barrier, like a giant soap bubble but a bit thicker, when he passed through. His apartment was fairly well cooled, though Jeremy didn’t know how – there was no A/C, so he was inclined to suspect magic. Here, he had stepped outside directly into the heat of the afternoon. Jeremy looked back through the portal. His bedroom was visible. He put an arm through the portal, shivering at the odd sensation of once again breaking that mysterious barrier. He could only tell it was there because of the odd feeling it caused and a slight light distortion whenever something traveled through. He grabbed the candle-light lamp off of his bed and pulled it through. The lamp traveled through without a problem, and he examined it for any kind of obvious visual defects. Finding none, he pulled the box of matches from the space next to where the lamp was, and lit it. Again, nothing presented itself as obviously wrong, so he snuffed the flame and put both the matches and the lamp back where they were.

The final thing he had to do was – wait. Wait. He heard a very familiar voice… and immediately ran around the castle to stay out of sight. Twilight Sparkle and her usual entourage were walking up the steps to the castle doors, animatedly talking. What was she doing here? Shouldn’t she be back in Ponyville, learning stuff about friendship? Jeremy racked his brains for any reason she would be here. He never did ask Luna what the timeline was – maybe she had seen future episodes? The last episode he knew of was the one where Twilight became a princess, which had plainly already happened, considering her new wings. Speaking of which, she was evidently having trouble – crashing all over the place. Jeremy listened in. They were speaking about the Summer Sun Celebration, which Jeremy was confused by. Shouldn’t that occur on the longest day of the year? On his world, the longest day of the year was usually June 21st or something, marked as the summer solstice. Another thing to ask Luna.

Evidently, Twilight was doing something in Canterlot – Jeremy didn’t think she would drag her friends all the way out here just for flying practice. After her most spectacular flop yet, involving three clouds and a furrow a few feet long, the six quickly ended the practice session and went off towards the castle. Jeremy grimaced. Looks like he’d have to wait before entering the castle. Once he was sure they were gone, he stepped out into the open again, hoping the invisible camera that somehow kept track of all relatively important movements within this universe didn’t pick him up. Not that he could tell. He stopped cold when he realized the orange portal was still clearly visible – he had left it open. Jeremy immediately held up the front end of his portal gun and turned it off. The lights on the gun went out, but the portal was still active, and Jeremy frowned. How the hell did he reset the portals? Something else to work on… He took aim back towards his apartment, searching for any available surface to replace the portal. After a moment’s searching, he remembered that he had already scoured his apartment on the inside and outside for portalable surfaces, and found none.

Jeremy had a thought – he did intend to check in to work today, so why not try for a portal there? Unfortunately, from here he was too low to get a good shot – he’d have to go back to his apartment anyway, so he stepped through the orange portal into his bedroom. Jeremy then walked outside and aimed at the office complex. Nope, still too low – he couldn’t get a shot close enough to the ground to land safely, and didn’t want to risk breaking his legs – his suit with all its sorbothane padding was inconveniently located at the very office he was attempting to reach. He stepped outside his door and walked up the stairs to the next suite – the door was closed, so he didn’t have to worry about any awkward conversations about what he was doing. Finding a suitable spot that he could just barely make out, Jeremy took careful aim, lining up the portal gun as though it were a sniper rifle, and fired. To his satisfaction, he hit about where he had aimed at, although the portal was a few feet up from the ground. Oh well – a few feet was tolerable. Jeremy quickly went down the stairs and through to his bedroom, and stepped through the portal.

Jeremy made his way to his office, and entered. The worktables were strewn with what appeared to be trial experiments for the portal gun – Luna and the rest of the development had evidently been busy. Jeremy looked over these in fascination, reluctant to touch any of them. He went to his desk, where the computer had been moved to. There was nobody present, for some reason - just where was the build team that had supposedly made this sweet gift? Logging in, he supposed he might as well attempt to get some better drawings for some of the game models. Picking a game at random, he found a spot in the map with decent lighting and began to draw…

9-18-13, 9:07 P.M.

It was night when he looked up again. To his surprise, no one had come and gone while he was preoccupied – the lab was exactly as he left it. He left his copious drawings by the computer, logged out, and placed the portal gun next to the computer before locking the door. Things had been looking up for him – by all rights, he should be depressed and suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder given recent events. However, he was in Equestria, had the best girlfriend, a steady job with more pay than he'd ever need, and people thought he was a hero. Oh, and the magical devices certainly helped too. Life literally couldn’t get much better for him. That being said, Jeremy still wondered if there were things he could’ve done better.

One of the things he wondered about was if there was a way to help the changelings. He was sick of them being treated as villains - they were just trying to survive, by all accounts. Plus, he had to admire Queen Chrysalis' way of doing things: Using guns against Equestrians worked very well, considering they’d never seen a firearm before. Where’d she even get a gun, anyway? And turret-mounted helicopters – what? Where did those even come from? Jeremy suspected he should have a chat with her. Having nothing better to do, he made his way over to do just that.

Jeremy heard she was in the dungeons, but had no idea where to look – the only listing he could find was “High Security Prisoners”, in the west wing. There was no one at the desk to help him – where was everypony? The door to the cell blocks was open, and he hesitantly entered, feeling as though he wasn't supposed to be here. So, assuming that Chrysalis was important enough to deserve such a classification, he went that way.

It took him a few minutes of searching, but he finally found her cell. She was spacing out, staring at the wall until he arrived – she snapped to attention the moment she saw him. “Come to kill me?” she plainly asked. Jeremy just shook his head.

“I was just curious to know,” he started, adopting a bored tone. “Where did you get all of those guns and helicopters and stuff?” Chrysalis, for a moment, looked unsure how to answer.

Then she gave a truly devilish grin. “From you, of course – or more specifically, your kind.”

Jeremy rolled his eyes. “Of… course. Why did I expect any different.”

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. “Is your kind exceptionally warlike?”

Jeremy thought about it. "...Sort of? Hard to explain."

“Well, give it a try, moron,” Chrysalis retorted.

Jeremy raised an eyebrow, grinning - banter was always his favorite part of any conversation. “Violence is pretty normalized in our culture, but no one does any sanctioned killing except for the military. Really, the populace is pretty tame,” Jeremy explained.

“What about you?” Chrysalis asked, her voice dripping with contempt on the you.

Jeremy shrugged, a capricious smile coming to his face. “Mm, I don’t know… magic?” he replied, much to Chrysalis’ infuriation.

She growled for a few seconds, before giving over to muttering darkly. “Have you heard? I’m scheduled to have a trial tomorrow,” she bitterly informed him.

“Good – I’m sure the punishment will be fair,” Jeremy said offhandedly. This was partially on purpose – if she thought he was uncaring, he would be. To his consternation, Chrysalis laughed.

“You don’t understand how things work here, do you?” Jeremy raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I won’t spoil the surprise – but I know what they have in store for me, and it isn’t pleasant.” Jeremy attempted to think of any possible punishment the Equestrian government could give that Queen Chrysalis would dread.

“…Death?” he guessed. Chrysalis shook her head. “Community service?” he half-joked. Chrysalis’ mouth twitched up in an attempt at a smile, but she quickly suppressed it.

“No. Now run along, human… I have eternity to think about,” Chrysalis sullenly replied, dismissing him. Jeremy frowned, and left, finding he had nothing else to say.

As he opened his door, got into his pajamas (which had been freshly washed), and climbed into bed, Jeremy couldn’t help but feel that something was wrong. Before he could process what it was, he fell fast asleep.

Next Chapter: Chapter 10 Estimated time remaining: 11 Hours, 23 Minutes