Psychedelica – Pastel Ponies
A pony story by Joseph Raszagal
As inspired by stuff best kept away from children
Chapter Twenty Three – Techno-Jargon and Frustration

As I sat in the library behind the main desk, I thought back on yesterday's encounter with Twilight upon returning home. Now, I'd pretty much expected some confusion from her in response to my inquiry, but at this point I can't really say why I maintain any sort of expectations at all anymore.

I think I've mentioned that before, but whatever, it bears repeating infinitely. The polls are closed and the votes have been tallied! When Jeremy Robin has an expectation, it should promptly be set ablaze and then catapulted into deep space. Preferably during a combination hurricane-blizzardquake or something.

Hyperbole, hyperbole, you get the point.

My conversation with Lyra just before leaving her workshop had been a disconcerting one to be sure. To recap: Equestria has television but lacks a multitude of inventions that are less advanced in several areas required for the invention of said television. Furthermore, upon asking my green friend exactly when the ol' talking tube had hit the markets, she couldn't answer me.

She just didn't know.

That struck me as really odd. TV was, technologically speaking, kind of a big deal. I refused to believe that when it came out everyone just kind of shrugged their shoulders like, “Cool, motion picture and sound. That’s cute.”

I mean… okay, look, I can’t be the crazy one here, right?

Picture, sound, and a window to the rest of the world, all in one convenient package. Entertainment and your daily news, with updates as the stories progress. But no, against all logic that scenario apparently really was the case. Either nobody knew or nobody cared, the former of the two by far being the most suspicious in my playbook.

And, fuck, even ignoring all of that hot mess, when I bid both Lyra and Bon-Bon goodnight, Lyra gave me a walkie-talkie so I could keep in close contact.

Oh and did I mention it was a walkie-talkie with a functional radius of over five miles, five long miles?

Dayum, son.

Now, while my suspension of disbelief could allow room for the idea that such radio devices very well could have existed in Equestria before the advent of television, a niggling little voice in the back of my head kept me convinced that it was all still a complete load of bullshit.

I’ve honed my bullshit senses greatly over the years, you see.

To imagine that the technology here had reached the point of domestic use, beyond just that of either military or law-enforcement, was too hard for me to swallow, especially if I took into account how fast and widespread such tech had apparently become. And don't get me wrong, I was overjoyed to have a mode of communication to contact my new research partner with, but that fact did little to quell the doubt inside me.

Something was amiss in the land of colorful, talking horses (and yes, aside from the whole colorful, talking horses bit) and I wanted to get to the bottom of it.

When I posed these same questions to Twilight, her face paled enough to make a bottle of bleach blush. I could tell that the gears inside her head were spinning, but despite a valiant effort, I couldn't get her to tell me why she was so worried. All she gave me was a halfhearted "sorry" as she raced out of the library and off to Canterlot, Spike following close behind her; no doubt readying to meet with Celestia about the matter.

Given that the whole thing had been brought to her attention solely because I'd done the legwork in asking the initial questions, I was more than a little miffed at the prospect of not being allowed in on the impending investigation. I spent the entire following night awake asking myself what was going on and exactly how big a thing could this turn out to be? By the time sunrise came back around to kiss the curtains, I had to force myself to give it a rest for a while, groggily deciding that a hot pot of coffee was the ultimate answer to whatever question was on my mind at the time.

Relishing in the caffeinated goodness, I perked up enough to convince myself that a nice day of running the library would get my mind off of things.

A loud, static hiss from my life-line to Lyra, however, protested otherwise.

"I just don't get it," I droned, my head on its side atop the front counter's polished wooden surface. "Color television is a far cry from radio, and beyond that, I haven't been able to find a single thing in any of these books about black and white. That... that should have been the start.”

Taking a hoof, I rubbed at the bridge of my nose and tried my hardest to concentrate through the aggravation.

“As far as I'm aware, there was never any point at which color wasn't the norm here. But back... uhm... back where I'm from, things started out a lot slower, with the worry that transmitting in color would take up too much radio signal bandwidth. Black and white took up three times less, so it stayed the norm until the developers found a way to encode the transmission is such a way as to separate the color from the brightness. It completely killed the resolution quality, but the end result was still color, which still made it a big achievement regardless.”

“Mmmhm,” crackled the receiver sitting next to my head.

“Here though, it's like someone just happened to know everything already and fixed all the problems before they even occurred," I harrumphed. “C’mon, that’s bunk if I’ve ever heard it.”

"Let me get this straight," Lyra replied, her voice taking on an analytical tone. "You're saying we're broadcasting beyond our means? How can you be sure that it wasn't within the realm of possibility? Maybe the inventors just tested with black and white first and refused to release it until they had a more polished final product on their hooves."

Rage Level: 40 % (Rant Mode Bonus – Immediate Rage Level increase beyond 20 %)

Rolling my baggy eyes, I sighed, "Granted, an arguable point, but how does that explain the crisp resolution? Or the sound quality? Sure, both could also be explained along the same vein as what you're saying, but within this kind of limited time frame? Appearing right the fuck out of nowhere? Really? These things take years and years to develop, especially when comparing them to the existing technology I've already seen.”

“Okay.”

Rage Level: 60 %

“But here, that just doesn't seem to be the case. Things like light bulbs, vinyl record players, or transistor radios; that kind of stuff I can buy into just fine and dandy. Like you just said, yeah, all of that crap is still within the realm of possibility. But to go from any of those things to such a huge step up like high-definition quality television? That's... that's just fucking nuts.”

“Granted, as you said. It does seem a little unlikely, but maybe~

“And no, I can't fall back on the notion of sheer, blind coincidence; that some mega-genius just so happened to have a single moment of scientific enlightenment in his sleep or something, because some of the necessary steps to reach this kind of shit requires a lot of other developments to happen first; a lot of big and important things that wouldn’t slide right under the radar unnoticed! And I haven’t been able to find fucking any of it!”

“Well, maybe~

I was on a roll, I didn’t give her any more time to interject.

Rage Level: 80 % - Warning, Jeremy is reaching critical batshit.

“I mean, for fuck’s sake, it'd be easier to say that somebody just accidentally stumbled upon an ancient, super-advanced civilization that had this sort of tech already, then the guys that dug it up just reverse-engineered it into what we're seeing today! AND THAT'S THE SORT OF CRAP THAT THE FUCKING CONSPIRACY THEORISTS BELIEVE IN!"

Rage Level: 100 % - Warning, Jeremy Presley has left the building.

“I’VE GOT FUCKING STACKED SHELVES OVER HERE, BOOKS FOR FUCKING DAYS, AND THERE’S FUCK-ALL ABOUT ANY OF THIS IN ANY OF THEM! ANY OF THE FUCKING ANY, ALRIGHT?! HERE’S THE BREAKDOWN: TV JUST ALWAYS WAS, FUCKING BLACK AND WHITE NEVER EXISTED BECAUSE WHY THE FUCK NOT, AND ANY KID COULD JUST GO DOWN TO THE FUCKING PONY K-MART OR FUCKING HOOF-GRENES OR WHATEVER AND BUY A GODDAMN PAIR OF PARAMILITARY POLICE WALKIE-TALKIES THAT CAN CATCH A SIGNAL FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF A FUCKING MOUNTAIN! THAT’S THE STATUS QUO WE’RE UP AGAINST HERE AND NO, IT DOES NOT MAKE ANY GODDAMN SENSE! WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?!”

…

Oh man.

Catching my breath, it quickly dawned on me just what I’d done. Placing the walkie-talkie down on the counter, I seated myself next to it and bit my lip. The stark silence felt like an eternity.

I knew damn well who I was arguing with and here I was being the one to jump off the deep end towards random conclusions that I couldn’t remotely prove.

And only a day after swearing to Bon-Bon that I would be on my best behavior too.

Dammit.

“I’m sorry,” I eventually forced myself to say. “I shouldn’t have taken all of that out on you. I’m… I’m frustrated. And I can be kind of an asshole sometimes.”

Her tone cheerier than she likely felt, Lyra nonetheless crackled back through the receiver, “It happens to the best of us sometimes. Don’t worry about it.”

Chewing my lip for a moment, I searched my brain for a clever segue of some kind with which to flee into another topic, but the angry adrenaline rush had already started fading. In the way of that momentary surge of energy, a sluggish weight quickly spread throughout my whole body.

Beating me to the punch, my green partner suddenly announced, “Anyway, I’ve kept myself glued to the news like you asked.”

“Um, th-that’s great,” I responded clumsily, wading back into the conversation with embarrassed caution. “Find anything interesting? I sure didn’t.”

“Nope, notta thing happening in the entire world. Nothing weird anyway. Let’s see… the griffins reelected their Prime Minister for a second term after his big economic project successfully opened up a ton of jobs. Cupcake sales remain in the skyrocketing regions due in no small part to Pinkie Pie’s huge bake sale in Canterlot last month. Oh, and those flash floods that happened in Hoofington turned out to have all been caused accidentally by a little colt named Flash Flood.”

“Shocker,” I snorted, a weak grin slowly forming. "Anything else of note?"

"Hmm," Lyra hummed to herself, the sounds of papers shuffling back and forth joining her. "A gemstone boom in the Badlands turned the little nopony town of Sizzling Sands into a major mining city. Um, let's see here, Agatha Westwind's Biggest Little Shop of Curiosities had a sale on exotic potion ingredients that over a thousand customers attended. Aaaaaaaand, um, it looks like we're expecting a balmy weekend with temperatures in the high 70s and not a cloud to be seen."

"Just watch, there’s totally something funky-fishy going on here and our problem is we just really suck at doing our research," I said with a irate flick of my tail. "That'd be Hell."

"Hell?" she asked.

Huh, alright. That's the second random segue to pop up out of nowhere and save me today. Good on ya, Lyra.

"Think Tartarus, hun, a merry little world of everlasting lamentation and woe."

I can only imagine the look on my green friend's face as she laughed, "Of course."

Smiling, I leaned forward onto the counter and rambled, "To me, my own personal Hell would be... hmm, maybe being trapped inside of a tiny room with elevator music playing constantly and nothing to read except two or three wrinkled copies of Family Circus. Oh, oh, and you do get someone to talk to, but your only two options are Robin Williams doing an obnoxious Jim Carry impression or Jim Carry doing an obnoxious Robin Williams impression!”

"I don't think I know what literally any of that meant."

"Eh, it's an abstract kind of Hell. Trust me, it’d be the worst."

"You tell 'em, brother!" immediately boomed Pinkie Pie's typically excessive level of volume. "I mean elevator music?!”

"Augh!" Lyra and I both screamed in unison, the loud “thud” of my falling echoed by Lyra’s own.

“I’d try to take that one back to court,” Pinkie continued. “If I may approach the bench, your honor, this is cruel and unusual punishment! This whole trial is out of order, I say, a kangaroo court throwing me to the boring elevator wolves!"

Fumbling for my voice, I stammered, “Um, Pinkie?”

"Anywhoozles, I just took a trot around Ponyville and it looks like Zecora's on her way for another magic studying sesh! Tell her I said hi and good luck with the couch! Oh, and nice catching you too, Lyra! Toodles!"

…

…

…

After she departed the conversation~

No, you know what? I won't say it.

You already know, don’t you? You don't need me to say it.

But do you know what? I’m going to anyway.

She just left the conversation like that, as cheery as ever, and then both Lyra and I were treated to that oh so wonderful sound of the telephone dial tone.

Because why not?

"But... no, no... there’s, like, established rules and stuff," I gasped, trying to steady myself and rediscover some trace of logic inside the depths of my violated sanity. "Universal laws, man."

"With Pinkie Pie?" Lyra responded, sounding more or less as shocked as I did. "Sorta. They're more like guidelines. And she only skimmed them lightly."

"Fucking... we're arguing about hard science over here and she just takes science and kicks it right in the groin."

"That's deep."

Rubbing my forehead with a hoof, I sighed, "If I get any deeper today I'll need a shovel."

"I can head out to the toolshed. Wanna borrow one?"

"Dunno, which do you think would work better?" I groused, tapping my chin as if in true contemplation. "You swinging it at my head or me trying to take the swing myself?"

"And we're back to the grumpiness again."

"Look here, we can't all be glimmering rays of sunshine. That's our benevolent ruler's job. Literally."

"Not to mention mine!” the green mare chirped, her grin showing through her tone. “Bonnie helps a lot there, admittedly."

“Baby, I’m in the sunshine business. And business is good.”

The few seconds of laughter that we shared were unfortunately cut short as a series of sharp knocks sounded from the front door.

Shaking my head, I eyed the door and sighed, “Just as prophesized.”

“Let me guess,” Lyra giggled, “Zecora just showed up, didn’t she?”

Trotting into view on cue, my zebra mentor shrugged off a pair of overstocked saddlebags next to one of the many tables and met my tired stare with a warm smile.

“Yup,” I answered, “looks like I’m needed. Over and out, partner.”

Still suppressing laughter, the mint mare concluded with the audible thump of a mock salute against her forehead and a dutiful, “Roger that.”

Setting the walkie-talkie aside, I stood up and stretched. Every single joint in my body, from the ankles up to the small of my back, popped loudly in protest to the prospect of work of any kind.

This would prove interesting.

To be continued in Chapter Twenty Four – Still in the Dark…

Author's Notes:

I've been gone a long time, yo. Here's hoping I can make up for that absence. My sincerest apologies.

But for now... ponies!