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RogerDodger
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Mark of Destiny
I almost went to Equestria right at the beginning, after Kevin scored three perfect rounds in a row.
We were crowded around my Playstation X—me, Kevin, and James, who was staring open-mouthed at the statistics on the screen. I dropped my controller on the coffee table. "You're seriously trying to tell me this is the first time you've played Marevil Vs. Capcom?"
Kevin slapped his hip. "Swear to god. It's all in the ass-tat."
"No. No, it isn't, because they did not let you through a tightly regulated cross-dimensional portal to get a kiddie-mark in video games. Where's the hidden camera?"
Kevin shrugged. "I told you, they're taking the program public soon. The State Department made an offer they couldn't refuse in exchange for this year's foreign aid package. Dad pulled some strings to get me in at the front of the line, before the big public announcement." His smile broadened. "That career on the pro Empirecraft circuit I've talked about? That's peanuts now, man. I can do that in my spare time in between breaking every speedrun record in the book."
I shook my head, stood up, and stomped into the kitchen for a beer. "Dude. Even if that's true, if there's anything we've learned from Equestria, it's that magic doesn't work on Earth. Therefore, getting a kiddie-mark did not just turn you into the world's best gamer. You're pranking us."
"Don't be stupid," James cut in. "Unicorns can't cast spells here, but the tramp stamps work. Otherwise they wouldn't have sent all those soldiers through for them." He turned to Kevin. "How do we sign up?"
"We'll swing by my place after the pizza gets here. I can get you on the short list." Kevin raised his voice and called into the kitchen. "I'm serious, Mark. This is for real. You in?"
Despite my denials, I had to stop and think about it.
"How much did it run you?" I called back, taking a swig from the bottle.
"Thirty mil."
I sprayed beer over half the counter.
"Sweet Jesus, Kevin. Some of us aren't trust-fund kids here."
"So get a finance mark. Or a luck mark, and buy a lottery ticket. You'll make it back in a week."
"No! That's…"
Cheating, I didn't say.
Not what I want for my life, I didn't say.
"…way too much hassle."
"Eh," he said. "Suit yourself."
A few weeks later, James came back with an empty speech bubble on his hip, a girl on each arm, and a triumphant smirk on his face.
"So what's that supposed to mean?" I asked him.
"It's a symbol of how incredible he is in bed," one of his arm-candies said with a giggle, and kissed him on the cheek.
"It's amazing!" James said. "I can convince women of anything. No more negging. No more LMR. I just have to tell them how awesome I am, then tell them to leave once we're done."
"You…buh…what!?" I sputtered, then set my beer down on the table and pointed at the door. "James, that's not funny, and that's not cool. Get out. Now."
"Chill out, man, girls all secretly want it like that."
"Oh!" I lowered my finger, ashamed I hadn't realized that earlier. "Uh…sorry."
"No worries. Hey, they've been trying to jump me all the way across town. Can I use your bedroom for a bit?"
"Sure," I said, chastened. It was the least I could do.
It hit me about five minutes in, around the time I heard my lamp fall off my bedside table amid shrieks and giggles.
I slammed the door open. "You son of a bitch. Out. Now."
"Chrissake, Mark! Let me finish!"
"Oh! Uh…sorry."
I was in the middle of writing out a furious note to James when he staggered out of my room, pulling his pants back on. "Sorry about the lamp. I'll buy you a new one."
My fury instantly dissipated. "Thanks, man." I gritted my teeth, feeling my throat choke up, and almost threw my letter away; his amazing generosity was making what I had to say all the harder. "But, still, James…please. You can't do this, and I can't be your friend while you do. Go get help."
"Aw, c'mon. You don't mean that."
I sobbed, stood up, and threw my arms around him. "No, buddy. I don't."
"It's cool, it's cool. Listen…Mark." He peeled me away, held me at arm's length, and gazed intently into my eyes. "You're right, breaking your lamp wasn't okay. Lemme make it up to you with some advice." He leaned in. "Go to Equestria. Screw the cost—get some loans or something. It'll be the best decision you ever make."
James and his girls left while I was calling the signup hotline number he'd given me. I'd already given them all my personal information and was halfway through the background check when I came to my senses.
I slammed down the phone, unplugged it from the wall, yanked my computer's power cord out, shut all the curtains, and deadbolted the door.
It would be two days before I dared to go outside.
The first ads started running the following week. UNLOCK YOUR POTENTIAL, they said. No details. No success stories. In those early days, it was all about word of mouth.
It exploded all over the news when one of the first Marked came back with a pair of dice on his hip, bought a single lottery ticket in a convenience store, and promptly paid off his trip with his jackpot. Two days later, the stock market spiked, crashed, and staggered to an unexpected recovery; within hours, the Forbes 400 had six new faces.
I realized that James had been right about exactly one thing, and picked up my phone. But overnight, the portal waiting list had stretched into years.
The sports leagues and the Olympics banned Marking. The entertainment industry had no such scruples; within the month, every new musical act was almost literally addictive. The political scandal blew up when a Marked journalist took secret photos of a handshake icon on President Rand's hip. The impeachment vote crumpled when a different newspaper published leaked hip-shots of four opposition leaders.
Harvard, Princeton, and Yale announced deals to supplement their schooling with a Mark upon graduation. The NML was born as Marked teams began to play exhibition games, and the athletic leagues schismed as that crack burst open the dam. A law to ban workplace discrimination based on Marking sputtered out in Congress, as corporations poured money into lobbyists and ad campaigns touting the revolutions in science, medicine, and industry created by their Marked employees.
The waiting lists turned into vague promises.
Two years later, I found an envelope with no return address in my mail. Inside was a picture of a table lamp, a signed and stamped Equestrian processing form with my information filled in, and a two-sentence letter.
You tried to tell me, it said. Make better use of yours than I did.
Equestria was bright. Too bright. The soaring antechamber of the Department of Marks had no skylights, and was lit only by a few strips of fluorescent lights on the distant ceiling, but I wasn't the only one squinting as we stepped down from the portal and shuffled through the maze of barrier ropes toward the rows of clerks.
I reached a red line on the floor with a set of shoeprints painted in front of it. "Next," a horned white pony wearing metal barding intoned, while the human soldier alongside him stood at parade rest. I stepped forward onto the prints, and the human soldier glanced up and down at me and nodded. "Next," the pony said.
Shortly afterward, I reached another line on the floor in front of the row of grey, boxy clerk's booths. I stopped at the line, next to a yellow-coated, orange-maned pony dressed in what I could only describe as a drab full-bodied suit. A green light flashed up above one of the booths far to my right. "Number twenty-one," the pony said without looking at me. "Next."
Number 21 was occupied by a tired-looking mint-green unicorn slouched in a disturbingly human fashion in a padded fabric office chair. Unlike the guard-pony and the line-pony, she was naked save for a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and a green accountant's visor; some sort of golden harp-thing was clearly visible on her flank. "Papers," she said, and an insubstantial golden glow snatched my processing form and photo ID out of my hands before I could even set them down on the counter. I jumped, jerking my hands back, and blinked rapidly, looking at the matching glow of her horn.
I'd watched magic on TV, in the shows that used pony actors and an Equestrian setting as a production gimmick, but that was a very different thing from seeing—feeling—it in person. The brief contact with the weird glow had left my hands tingling, and the aura had a strange depth to it, as if space itself wasn't quite obeying normal rules.
As the shock of the magic faded away, a different sort of unease settled in. I couldn't tear my eyes off of her flanks. What was this unicorn doing here? Shouldn't she be in a concert hall somewhere?
I was belatedly snapped back to reality by my name. "Mumblety-something Mark," she said, flattening my form on her side of the counter and lighting her horn again to wrap its aura around something I couldn't see.
"Yes, ma'am?"
Her eyes narrowed. The flat line of her mouth across her muzzle tugged into a frown. "I said—" and her tone was surprisingly frosty, even given her expression—"type of Mark."
"Oh! Well…" I worked my jaw, but my brain supplied nothing for it to say. "I…don't know?"
She stared at me for a moment before closing her eyes. Her hornglow sputtered and relit, lifting her spectacles off of the bridge of her nose, and she turned her head to the side as she raised a forehoof to massage her temple. "Form T-42, please," she said in a carefully controlled tone.
"I, uh…" I made a doubly pointless show of searching my pockets. "I don't have one."
"Yes, you do. You couldn't have gotten this approved without it."
"My friend handled the paperwork."
She opened her eyes then, staring up at me for a moment before silently shifting her raised hoof to the bridge of her nose.
"Look, I…this was a bad idea." I took a half-step backward. "I'll just go."
"Mis-ter MacKen-zie," she said, voice wavering for a moment before returning to its tight lack of affect, "I've already gotten one writeup this month. An incident would result in not only your arrest, but also the termination of my employment. Please…I am begging you…help me do my job."
I shuffled back up to the counter, glancing back at the line of milling people guiltily. "I'm sorry."
"We can pretend your T-42 got lost, but I need your cooperation so we're not holding up the line. Is this Mark for academic, professional, spiritual, or recreational reasons?"
"I'm really sorry, ma'am, but I've got no idea. This whole trip was somewhat unexpected. I figured the right idea would find me when I was ready. That's how ponies do it, isn't it?"
She stared up at me, teeth clenched in a grimace. "That's…not…how…this…works," she hissed. "How did you get this form?"
"I told you, a friend handled it."
"You still would have had to sign…" Her voice trailed off as she glanced down at the form. She flipped it over. "Oh."
"Oh?"
Her horn lit, and a rubber stamp flew across the counter to leave a circle of red on the front side of my form. "Looks like Destiny's smiling today. You have interesting friends, Mister Mackenzie."
"I what now?"
"Continue to your right. Follow the exit arrows. Have a pleasant visit." She shoved the form into my hands, then turned from me and pressed a button to her side. The green light atop her booth lit up.
"Wait, how—"
"Have. A. Pleasant. Visit."
A tingling pressure shoved at my butt, and I was vomited out of the far side of her booth, staggering for several steps and bouncing off of two people before catching my balance. The big linebacker-looking guy I'd collided with glared at me. "Sorry," I said for the too-manyth time that day.
Past the booths, there were no more barrier ropes—only waves of humans flowing toward a long grey hallway with big red arrows on the walls. I let myself get swept up in the tide, shuffling toward the literal light at the end of the tunnel.
Loudspeakers crackled to life in the ceiling. "Salutations, Citizens of Earth," a deep, flat voice said. "On behalf of the Diarchy, We wish to welcome you to Equestria, and express Our wishes that obtaining your Cutie Mark is a personally fulfilling experience. Kindly remember that the Department of Marks offers limited entry passes, not tourism visas. You are allotted one hour of travel time, fifteen minutes for Cutie Mark acquisition, and up to one hour of personal time outside the Department of Marks facility. This message shall repeat."
The pedestrian flow brought me to the door, and my feet stepped into Equestrian sunlight. I squinted against the blinding rays of an unfamiliar star. The sun was too large. Too bright. Oddly, not too hot.
The crowd pushed me forward into the street, and the loudspeaker's droning message faded behind me. "Salutations, Citizens of Earth…"
I worked my way sideways against the dissipating crowd, finding a spot to myself against the poured-concrete foundations of the Department building. I took a few deep breaths, letting my eyes finish adjusting. A tall woman in a candy-blue business suit, about my age, took refuge from the crowd in the same lull. She was glancing animatedly around, her gaze sweeping over the tall concrete buildings and down the promenade toward what looked like a street but was devoid of cars. Every few seconds, she'd glance down at a black-and-white paper map in her hands, and on one of those glances, her eyes slid sideways to meet mine.
"Isn't this amazing?" she said, giving me a bright smile. "Look at this. We're here, actually here, on Equestria. Another world!" She pointed at an ugly purple tree-like crystal growth in the distance. "Oh, that must be the Friendship Palace!"
"Yeah," I said, "pretty exciting. Where'd you get the map?"
She flipped her map over to reveal a form that looked identical to mine. "It's right on the back of your zed-two-twenty-five."
I fished my own form back out of my pocket. Its back side was labeled "For Canterlot Use Only" and had a bunch of incomprehensible departmental codes, some signatures, and a stamped seal similar to the clerk's but with some sort of heart insignia in the center. "Not this one. Is there some sort of tourist welcome center around?"
She consulted her map. "Yeah. Go down to the street and turn left at the McDonald's. The Everfree Welcome Center is right across from the Starbucks."
"Thanks." I stuck out my hand. "I'm Mark, by the way."
"Lisa." She gave me a short but aggressive handshake.
"So … not to cut into your Equestria visiting time, but how does this whole process work?"
Lisa raised an eyebrow. "Your SI didn't explain it to you?" At my blank look, she sighed. "Sponsoring Institution. Oh, you poor guy. Look…it's really simple. Just go do the thing you're here to get a Cutie Mark for, and poof, as long as you're looking for that Mark, it appears within seconds. It's got something to do with how this world sees us as ponies, and since every adult pony has one, it's desperate to 'fix' us not being marked yet."
I nodded. "So what are you here for?"
"Optimization of clean-room processes for quantum transistors. You?"
"I'm…not sure." I glanced down the street at the crystal spire. "Is there actually a Mark for that? I mean, not to be racist, but…"
Lisa laughed. "Ponies are smarter than we give them credit for, but you're right, QTs are human technology. That's why Intel set up a satellite office here for Mark training—it's that office building down the street. When I hit CR eng II, they sponsored me in exchange for a 10-year employment contract." Her watch chirped. "Hey, I gotta go, but good luck."
"Yeah," I mumbled as she vanished back into the sprawling crowd of humanity. "Thanks."
I walked. I walked right past the McDonald's, with its window advertising hamburgers priced in dollars, right past the Intel offices, and kept going. I didn't know what I wanted on my hip for the rest of my life, but I knew it wouldn't be something with a corporate logo.
Two blocks later, the human traffic was thinning out. I walked past a few delivery trucks parked alongside the curbs, and for the first time since the clerk in the DoM office, saw a pony. He was a huge, bright red thing, almost the size of a horse, wearing a giant yoke around his neck that was linked to a rickshaw. He plodded evenly through the street, head down, while the couple in his cart laughed and chatted and took pictures of the surrounding buildings.
I kept going.
Another two blocks later, the pavement came to an abrupt halt just past the end of a three-story brownstone office building. The road continued as a muddy stretch of dirt, lined with grass at the margins, twisting between cream-walled thatch-roofed cottages. I had to stop to rub my eyes, then stepped gingerly over the line, feeling like I was finally walking through the portal I'd allegedly crossed ten minutes ago.
A soft breeze blew up, bringing an earthy scent to my nose.
With one final glance behind me—there was no chance of getting lost; all I had to do was head back to the tall human-style buildings—I walked into the unknown.
The road was slightly squishy beneath my shoes. There was no traffic—pony or otherwise—though I did seem to be following along a pair of wheel-ruts from that red pony's rickshaw. As the whirr of fans and hum of generators faded behind me, I began to hear the hesitant chirps of birds. At one point, the road went over a tiny rise as the bridge underfoot spanned a dry creekbed.
I realized as I walked that the road was heading into what looked like some sort of market square—a large, open area ringed with more of those oddly identical cottages and a number of stranger structures. One in particular caught my eye: it had that same cream-colored siding, but the roof looked like it had been ripped off of a gingerbread house, and there was some sort of tower-like structure plopped on top that resembled a double-decker cupcake. The scent of pastry drifted my way from it, and my stomach rumbled in response. I realized that, in between the plane trip and all the waiting at the portal, I hadn't eaten since breakfast.
The sound of weeping from a table near the windows caught my ears as I opened the door. "…just can't," a thin female voice whispered. "I just can't stay."
"Fluttershy," a second, firmer female voice said, "I don't care what the bank is telling you, they will not make you move."
I very deliberately didn't look at them as I tiptoed forward to the display counter holding racks of neon-colored lollipops and cupcakes. Not my business.
"You don't understand. I can't. Not with the city only a hundred hooves away…and with the stream gone…and Harry, yesterday, he got too close, and…and…they…" The first voice collapsed into incoherent sobbing.
"Fluttershy. Listen to me," the second voice said, gently, pleadingly. "I promise you, as your friend, we will take care of this. Don't leave. Don't."
"I have to. I'm sorry."
"You are the strongest pony I've ever known. Please, be strong for me, just for a little bit, and I will make this right."
I glanced behind the counter, my stomach twisting, trying to block out the conversation without much success. There was a stairwell disappearing around a corner toward the second story, a tall, fancy display case with a number of large sheet cakes, and a doorway into a kitchen. Nobody in sight. The counter had a small service bell off to one side, and I hesitantly reached over and tapped the top button, ringing a clear, high tone that made me flinch with its intrusion.
An angular yellow muzzle popped around the corner of the kitchen door, topped by a shock of orange hair. "Yes? Can I help…" he said with a smile that instantly destabilized as we locked eyes. "Oh."
The sobbing from behind me instantly cut off into a strangled gasp. There were several scrapes of wood on wood—"Fluttershy! Wait!"—a few rapid hoofbeats, and a sharp slam as the door behind me burst open, filling the room with sunlight. I glanced back over my shoulder to see a purple pony, wings flared, standing and reaching a hoof over her table toward the door.
The empty chair across from her, in the process of tipping over, overbalanced and hit the floor with a thump.
"Fewm—" the purple pony snarled, cutting herself off as she realized I was staring. She punctuated the sentence by drawing her outstretched hoof back and slamming it down on the table. She swiveled her head to me, and I realized with a start she also had a horn on her head. "What."
"I," I stammered, memories straining for my attention. A purple winged unicorn…big red-and-white star on her flanks…I'd seen her on TV once or twice, along with the tall white and blue ones. Sweet Jesus, I'd walked in on the Princess of Friendship herself. "Uh, sorry?"
"I'm sure you are," she snapped, then closed her eyes; I could see her forcing in a breath through clenched teeth. "Look," she said, more levelly, "this is really not a good time. What are you even doing here? On Wingsday, all the tour groups are supposed to be in Cloudsdale."
I fumbled in my coat pocket for the form. "I, I'm here for the, for my Mark—"
She cut me off with a humorless laugh. "Oh! Of course you are. Because stars forbid our world is anything more than a source of amazing superhuman powers, right?" A raspberry glow enveloped my hand, yanking it out of my pocket and snatching my form, which leapt through the air toward her. "What magnificently Equestrian specialty are you here for? Subprime lending management? Aquifer extraction? Hunting?"
I shuffled toward the door. "Look, I'm really sorry. I think I should go."
"Stars, no! You've barely been here fifteen minutes and already you've traumatized one of my best friends. Think of how much more you could accomplish with the full two hours." She flipped the form over, and barked a sharp and bitter laugh. "Oh, perfect. No wonder. Just because he gets a royal classification waiver means he thinks he has to make a beeline straight for the nearest princess."
"It's not like that!"
The princess took an ominous step toward me, wings flaring to full extension. "Oh?" she said softly. "What is it like?"
I swallowed. "I–I'm…" I looked around the room for help, but the only other being in sight was the stallion in the kitchen, staring at us in frozen open-mouthed unease. "My friend set this up. I didn't think it was going to be like this. I'm not sure what I came for."
She tossed her head back and let out a strangled, incoherent scream. "You don't even know—" She slammed her hoof down onto the floor, cracking the wood and making both the shopkeeper and I wince. Her body began to heave, somewhere in between laughter and a sob, and she continued more softly as I backed toward the door. "You came to ask for help."
"No, I—"
"It's the easiest bucking thing in the world!" she screamed, flinging my paper back in my face. I stumbled and fell to the floor, desperately wrestling the smothering form out of its raspberry-colored grip. "As long as you're looking for a Cutie Mark, literally anything you do here will rip a superpower out of the beating heart of Harmony! You want a suggestion?" As I jammed the crumpled form in my pocket and crab-scrambled backward, she glanced around the room and picked up a salt shaker from the nearby table. I yelped and dodged as it rocketed in my direction, shattering on the floor behind me. "Eat some salt! Become the world's leading salt expert! Learn fun and exciting facts like how to use it as a broad-spectrum herbicide, raising soil salinity levels so that nothing can ever grow there again! Or how about this one: The acute lethal oral dose of salt for an average equine is 440 grams!" She grabbed another salt shaker, and I bolted for the door. "Learn how to kill us all at once because it's a damn sight kinder than how you're killing us now!"
I dove through the door as the second shaker exploded against it, glass shrapnel slashing across the backs of my hands and neck, a cloud of salt billowing out and raining to the ground.
I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the intense stinging from the lines and dots of red that were rising from my exposed flesh, and sprinted away. Behind me, anguished sobbing echoed from the open door.
I finally risked a glance behind me a few minutes later, after I'd run clean past the last of the cottages and into some sort of forest. Nothing but empty road. Thank goodness the village streets had been so deserted—if anyone had seen me running away from the Princess of Friendship, I probably would have had police closing in on me within moments.
I slowed to a walk, then stopped to lean on a tree, gasping for breath. A tiny part of my brain reminded me that some of the ponies had wings, and my heart froze—but I scanned the skies, and there wasn't anything following me there, either. I sank to the ground with a sob of relief, the heaving of my chest gradually slowing.
There was a thin trickle of muddy water running down a ditch at the side of the road—not enough to drink, but I fished a Kleenex out of my pocket and did what I could to wash the blood scabbing the back of my hands. I took a second Kleenex and cleaned my face and neck. The jacket over my arms was shredded in a few places, but that was the least of my problems.
As I cleaned up, I became gradually aware of a distant, rhythmic thumping noise. I looked up and glanced around the forest. No—the farm. The trees were planted in an evenly spaced grid, and a profusion of plump, red apples hung low from the branches.
Thump.
I stood up on shaky legs and walked toward the source of the noise. Half of me screamed that every pony I'd met had resented my presence and that the princess herself had attacked me, and that I was only inviting more trouble. The other half was too tired to care. If I was in as much trouble as it seemed, wasn't it better to find a pony who wouldn't try to kill me on sight, and turn myself in quietly in hopes calmer heads would intervene? Or maybe, if I was lucky, she'd lend me a phone and I could call the embassy. Wasn't that what embassies existed for?
Thump.
I crested a low rise, and a few rows away, a wooden cart was piled high with empty barrel-slat baskets. Just beyond it, an orange pony whose blond mane was covered by a Stetson hat was staring over her shoulder at a tree. She arched her back, rearing her hind hooves up, and then lashed out at the trunk—
Thump.
—sending a rain of apples plummeting into the buckets around her. She drew in a deep breath, clamped her teeth around a full basket's grip, hoisted it up onto her back, and walked over to load it on the cart.
Midway through the process, she caught a glimpse of me out of the corner of her eye. She froze, swiveled her head, and locked eyes with me for a silent moment. I swallowed and nodded in greeting. She stared for another few seconds, then turned away with a wordless frown and went back to her work.
Full basket to the cart. Empty basket to the next tree in line. I was deliberating the gentlest way to interrupt her when she finally broke the silence: "I'd consider it a kindness if ya bucked your tree rather'n stand there starin'."
"Sorry," I said automatically and shuffled toward her. Thump. Apples rained down, and she began loading the cart.
I watched her walk back and forth for another few seconds, then set my jaw and grabbed a stack of empty baskets, setting them down under the tree across the row from her. I looked up at the clusters of fruit, trying to align the baskets with the thickest concentrations. Thump. I walked over to the trunk, and gave it a toe-first kick, which did nothing but send pain stabbing up my leg. I hopped back, biting back curses, and paused to think about it—then angled myself sideways to the trunk, lifted one leg, and shot it out sideways with a heel strike. The tree shuddered, and a modest torrent of apples spilled downward, scattering fruit all over the buckets, ground, and one or two off my head.
I looked at the mess, winced, and crouched down to start pitching apples into the baskets. Thump. When I was finished, the ground was mostly clear, and most of my baskets were between quarter- and half-full. Thump. I sighed, stood up, and reached up into the head-level branches, grabbing apples one by one; they yielded easily to my touch, and soon I was tossing them down into the baskets at a rapid-fire pace. Thump, thump, from increasingly further up the hill, and then quiet hoof-falls approaching from behind me.
"Gotta move up the cart," she said. "Couldja load on what you got?"
"Sure," I said, heaving a mostly-full basket up with each arm and carrying them over to the cart as she walked alongside me with a basket of her own. Between the two of us, it only took two trips, and then she hitched herself in to the cart-yoke, kicked off the wheel-brake, and began pulling it uphill with a heavy grunt. After a moment's thought, I got behind the cart and pushed. I heard her hoofbeats stagger as she adjusted to the extra momentum, then settle back down.
"My name's Mark," I said as the cart trundled along.
"Mm-hm," she responded.
She set her handbrake again, grabbed a stack of empty baskets, and headed toward the nearest tree. She halted at the scrape of wood on wood as I took the next stack and began to walk toward the tree beside her.
"Mark," she said, "stop."
I froze. "Sorry."
"If you ain't got your Cutie Mark from kickin' that last tree, you are beyond my help. And if you did, no offense, but I need a row of half-bucked trees like I need root rot."
"I, uh…" The surreality of the situation finally crystallized, and I fumbled to give her an explanation I didn't have myself. "That's not why I'm here, ma'am."
She regarded me dubiously, one eyebrow drifting upward. "You're on a Z-225, ain'tcha? You've gotta be. Young man alone on a Wingsday."
"I am, but I'm not here for a Cutie Mark in tree-kicking."
"Then what are you doing here?"
"To be honest," I said, "I've been asking myself that a lot today."
The pony's mouth opened and moved, but no words came out. The harsh lines of her expression drifted. The corner of her mouth twitched. I winced inwardly, hoping I wasn't about to have to start dodging apple baskets.
Then she hung her head. "I'm sorry."
"I'm s—" I said automatically before her words caught up with me. "Wait, what?"
She trotted toward me and lifted a forehoof. I reflexively flinched, but she just stood there with the hoof hanging toward me. "Can't say as you're much of an applebucker, but your heart's in the right place, and I'm afraid I wasn't too friendly in return. Name's Applejack."
"It's nice to meet you." I gingerly took the offered hoof in both hands, and she gave my arms an intimidatingly strong shake. "Do you, uh, mind if I stick around? Is there a better way I can help?"
"After how I treated you, you're still askin' to do me a good turn?" She glanced around, and tapped her chin with a hoof. "Well, with those arms of yours, you seem to have a way with those baskets. Willin' to haul some apples to the cart?"
"I'd love to," I said, and meant it.
An hour later—sweaty, exhausted, and hungry—I slung the last basket onto Applejack's second cartload, wiped my brow with a sleeve, and let out a breath. "I probably ought to get back to the portal," I said regretfully. "I don't want to get into any more trouble than I already might be in."
"Right—you're on a Z-225. I'd plumb forgot." Guilt flitted across Applejack's muzzle, to be quickly replaced with curiosity. "Don't sweat a few minutes—the worst they'll do is fine ya, and I can make sure it don't come to that. But, if you don't mind me askin'…what kind of trouble is a human gonna find that don't involve the Royal Guard on their tail?"
I winced. "I upset the Princess of Friendship. I'm not sure why there aren't guards involved, actually. She threw some things at me."
"Twilight what?" Applejack's eyes flew open, and she reached up to rest a hoof firmly on my arm. "Listen, sugarcube. Something ain't right. You stay right here, and I'm gonna get this straightened out."
"You can do that?"
"I can and I will—I swear to you on Papa's hat. Just gonna run up to the farmhouse. Sit tight, and eat all the apples you like."
I clenched her hoof in my hand. "You seriously have no idea how much that means. Thank you."
I watched her gallop off, feeling like I could sob in relief, and felt a smile creep onto my face for the first time that day. Things were looking up.
My stomach rumbled. I reached toward the cart behind me for an apple, only to feel my hand thump into something solid and fuzzy.
"Gaah!" I shouted, whirling around, and almost wet myself at the sight. Looming over me was some sort of…golem-thing…that looked like it was stitched together from a grab bag of mixed animal parts. I backpedaled as fast as my legs would take me, slammed into an apple tree, fell over, and balled up, whimpering, as the monstrosity strolled toward me on one goat hoof and one dragon claw.
"You're a very lucky man, you know," he said in a high, smooth voice, standing over me and offering me a lion's-paw.
"Please don't kill me."
"I almost did. That's why you're lucky." He bent down, grabbed my arm, and hauled me to my feet. "When I heard whispers around town that a human had attacked Princess Sparkle and very nearly injured my dear Fluttershy? I've put up with your kind's intrusion for this long because the Princesses told me it was necessary—that friendship would redeem you the way it did me. But if she truly had been hurt? All bets, as they say, would be off." He held up his other arm—an eagle's claw, with a thick iron bracelet around the wrist, inscribed with gemstones and runes—and in a single smooth motion deformed the claw and pulled the bracelet off. "I'm going to tell you a secret, Mr. Son of Kenzie, to show you how serious I am. They think they have me tamed—that my magic is neutralized. I've let them think that, because it makes everybody feel safer." He grabbed my wrist, turned my hand upright, and dropped the bracelet in it. Then he snapped his fingers, and I was suddenly holding a child-sized blanket.
"Who—"
"Discord, at my service." He stepped back and gave me an exaggerated bow.
"Why—"
"Purely because Applejack wouldn't have liked me killing you in front of her."
"Er," I said, feeling the blood drain from my cheeks. That hadn't been the question on my mind, though. "But why—"
"But then," he continued, as if I hadn't spoken, "after I watched you helping her, I stopped to think long enough to realize you were genuinely out to do some good. And, more importantly: despite all your adventures here, you still haven't obtained a Cutie Mark. Which means that you present a unique opportunity."
"What—"
"I take it, from your reluctance to complete your two-point-two-five-hour mission before the secretary disavows all knowledge of your existence, that your experience with human Cutie Marks has been as loathsome as my own?"
"Listen, if you'll just—"
Discord snapped his fingers. I was suddenly sitting in a comfortable throne-like chair in front of the apple cart, with my mouth sealed shut with some sort of jagged metallic device. He leaned in to me, putting his lion-arm around my shoulders. "Work with me here, Mr. Ironic First Name, we're on a deadline. This is the part where you answer my question." He reached up and unzipped my mouth.
I gasped for breath, then decided cooperation was the better part of valor. "I've seen some scary things, yes."
"That's because Marks were designed to turn ponies into stewards of their planet, with powers far beyond the capabilities of their race," Discord said. "Equestria never anticipated that any beings would walk in that would qualify for Marks while already being sapient enough to master their environment." He pulled down a projector screen from out of midair; on it there was a Mark-flanked pony side by side with a human icon. Beneath the pony was an unmarked pony with an arrow pointing up; above the human was a similar arrow leading to a question mark. "Too long, didn't listen: You're not supposed to have Cutie Marks, kid—they were designed to lift ponies onto an equal level with you."
"So what does this mean for me?"
"Simple. Just say the word and I can help you earn a spellbreaker Cutie Mark—interfering with any magic use in your vicinity. I'd add in my own special boost to the effect, of course. Then you walk back to the portal—" he grabbed two apples in his lion-paw and eagle-claw, and a shimmering rainbow appeared linking them—"and presto, permanent destabilization." The rainbow flickered, made a wheeze like an engine running out of gas, and disappeared. "I send all the humans back to your own world while the portal is still collapsing, and then bing, bam, boom—once the link between our worlds is severed, no more human Marks." He reached behind his wing for an asterisk, and stuck it into space next to my head. "Unless that's your name. No more superpowers, no more colonization…and no more hurt Fluttershy."
I shifted in the chair uneasily. "No offense, but you're apparently some super-powerful villain trying to tempt me into a bad idea. What's the catch?"
Discord stared at me for a moment, then snapped his fingers. A small palm tree instantly grew alongside him, and in a single fluid motion he peeled off his facial features and stuck them onto the tree. "I cannot believe that you've never even heard of me, and yet my reputation precedes me," the tree said.
"Gah!"
He snapped his fingers again, and was standing in front of me whole and un-treed. "The catch is that, for once in my life, there is no catch!" he roared. "I hate you, I hate everything you stand for, I hate everything you've done to my world…but I am doing this to protect my friends, without their knowledge or consent. When I beg for forgiveness afterward, if I've harmed so much as a single hair on some pink fleshy monkey's head, I guarantee you that it's right back to being a bird-perch for me. If all I do is hit the big reset button, then everypony—and everyhuman—will see it was for the best." He stood up straight, breathing through clenched teeth, and then lifted his lion-paw to his chest—extending it forward as he let out a long sigh. "Make of your world what you will. So long as you never soil my sandbox again, I couldn't care less. So…what do you say?"
I stood up and studied the monster. I had to admit, as creepy as he was being, he did sound sincere, and everything he told me squared with what I'd overheard or experienced. I thought of James, and bit my lip. His regret…his mysterious gift…was this what he had sent me through the portal to do?
A ding like a microwave timer's echoed from behind my head. Discord's expression fell and flattened. "I'm afraid the Funky Bunch has arrived," he muttered. "Sorry, Marky Mark, we're out of time for now—but if you decide to take me up on my offer, find somewhere quiet. I'll be watching." With one final snap of his fingers, he—and the throne, and the blanket, and every other sign of his presence—disappeared.
"And no telling," an ethereal voice whispered in my ear.
"Wait, I…" I started, then trailed off as I heard hooves in the distance.
Soon, the form of Applejack resolved through the trees, with a familiar purple pony on her tail. My gut knotted up, but I forced myself to calm down. She had said she'd take care of things.
Applejack slowed to a trot as she approached the cart, not even breathing hard despite her coat being sprinkled with sweat. The princess behind her was panting as she came to a stop. "Thanks for waitin', Mark. Now…I think Twilight has something she'd like to say."
The princess glanced up at the trepidation in my eyes, then lowered her head, taking a deep breath and letting it out. "I…I'm sorry, Mr. MacKenzie. I was upset about something that had nothing to do with you, and I took it out on you." She swallowed. "Applejack told me how helpful you were being, and I realized that I was judging you only based on your race."
The way Discord almost did? I couldn't help but think, and unease at his offer gnawed at my gut.
"It's alright. We all have bad days," I said, glancing over at Applejack for support. She nodded at me, placing a hoof on the princess' shoulder.
"But I should be better than that. I have a responsibility to set an example." The princess looked up, meeting my eyes. "Contact with Earth is the biggest challenge we've ever faced. There's so many of you! It's easy to lose sight of how powerful friendship is, when you're dealing with impersonal bureaucracies and negotiating politics. But change only ever starts one person at a time…and you were looking to make things better, and I failed you."
I nodded uneasily. "Well…uh…what if we…"
"What if we what?"
"Nothing." I didn't know if Discord would be able to do anything to me if I defied him and told the others his plan, but I didn't want to find out.
The princess stepped forward, gingerly resting a hoof on my knee. "No, really, Mr. Macken…Mark. I'd like to know what you have to say. Which reminds me—you remember when you asked me for Cutie Mark suggestions? I do have one, a genuine one."
I never did, but I let it slide. "What?"
"You're here because you care about us…and you could give Equestria something unique. Let me help you earn a Cutie Mark in diplomacy. Live with us here as an attaché, and represent Equestrian interests for us on Earth. A human with a Mark can out-think, out-talk, out-fight a pony a dozen times over…we need that on our side. Need you, to help negotiate a new partnership with your world that helps us both achieve the best we're capable of."
"She, and the other princesses, have tried to bring through folks that will use their Marks to everypony's benefit," Applejack said. "We've all seen how sometimes that don't work out. We don't know human society like you do. You must have ideas."
"Or ideas on how to make our ideas work out. Every time we try to reform the Marking process, it creates new unintended consequences."
"Like Everfree City, and its banks an' technology companies."
And super-soldiers, I mentally added. That wasn't a comfortable idea. Could one human really make a difference against that?
One perfectly prepared, magically enhanced human.
Against other similarly augmented humans, with a head start on plundering this world for all it's worth.
…Plus however many others I could recruit.
Which would take time. How many more Fluttershys would get their lives ruined in the meantime?
It was a Marked doctor who came up with the cancer cure they're testing. How many people—and ponies—will die if they can't cure the next epidemic?
"Mark?" Applejack asked, prodding my arm. "You've gone awful quiet."
I glanced back and forth between the ponies, and said the only thing I could say:
"Can I have some time to think about this?"
I pause for a moment as I take a lengthy sip of cider.
"So."
"Mmm?" I grunt.
"You went with Twilight Sparkle's offer, right?"
I loose a bitter laugh. "You think I made a choice? Have you even been listening to my story? I'm not exactly a profile in heroism. I didn't have the stones to tell either one of them no."
"Well, the portal's still open…wait. You mean you walked away?"
"No, I never said that. I got a Mark. I just…" I smile wryly. "Punted the decision."
"What do you mean?"
"Remember the clerk mentioning Destiny smiling? That's a thing, with them. A pony doesn't 'choose' their Cutie Marks like we do. To them—and presumably, their magic—they get the Mark they're meant to have. Destiny's a real force." I drain the last of the cider from my bottle. "So I figured, given that it's been demonstrated that someone could walk into Equestria and get a Mark in manipulating a force like luck…"
"Wait. Wait…are you telling me what I think you're telling me?"
I glance around the restaurant, shift a bit in my seat, and pull the side of my pants down to reveal the flesh of one hip. There's an image of the bust of Alec Guinness, white-bearded and cowled, staring pensively into space. Star Wars' Obi-Wan Kenobi.
"I'm telling you," I say, "that for six months I've been searching Earth for the one who can walk in there and make the decision I didn't make—make it right. And I know, sure as I know my name, that you're the best hope of two worlds."
I set down the bottle, reach into my jacket, and toss onto the table a signed and stamped form with "Z-225" in block letters across the top. Then I reach across the table, clasp your hands, and stare earnestly into your eyes.
"What do you say?" I ask. "Are you in?"
We were crowded around my Playstation X—me, Kevin, and James, who was staring open-mouthed at the statistics on the screen. I dropped my controller on the coffee table. "You're seriously trying to tell me this is the first time you've played Marevil Vs. Capcom?"
Kevin slapped his hip. "Swear to god. It's all in the ass-tat."
"No. No, it isn't, because they did not let you through a tightly regulated cross-dimensional portal to get a kiddie-mark in video games. Where's the hidden camera?"
Kevin shrugged. "I told you, they're taking the program public soon. The State Department made an offer they couldn't refuse in exchange for this year's foreign aid package. Dad pulled some strings to get me in at the front of the line, before the big public announcement." His smile broadened. "That career on the pro Empirecraft circuit I've talked about? That's peanuts now, man. I can do that in my spare time in between breaking every speedrun record in the book."
I shook my head, stood up, and stomped into the kitchen for a beer. "Dude. Even if that's true, if there's anything we've learned from Equestria, it's that magic doesn't work on Earth. Therefore, getting a kiddie-mark did not just turn you into the world's best gamer. You're pranking us."
"Don't be stupid," James cut in. "Unicorns can't cast spells here, but the tramp stamps work. Otherwise they wouldn't have sent all those soldiers through for them." He turned to Kevin. "How do we sign up?"
"We'll swing by my place after the pizza gets here. I can get you on the short list." Kevin raised his voice and called into the kitchen. "I'm serious, Mark. This is for real. You in?"
Despite my denials, I had to stop and think about it.
"How much did it run you?" I called back, taking a swig from the bottle.
"Thirty mil."
I sprayed beer over half the counter.
"Sweet Jesus, Kevin. Some of us aren't trust-fund kids here."
"So get a finance mark. Or a luck mark, and buy a lottery ticket. You'll make it back in a week."
"No! That's…"
Cheating, I didn't say.
Not what I want for my life, I didn't say.
"…way too much hassle."
"Eh," he said. "Suit yourself."
A few weeks later, James came back with an empty speech bubble on his hip, a girl on each arm, and a triumphant smirk on his face.
"So what's that supposed to mean?" I asked him.
"It's a symbol of how incredible he is in bed," one of his arm-candies said with a giggle, and kissed him on the cheek.
"It's amazing!" James said. "I can convince women of anything. No more negging. No more LMR. I just have to tell them how awesome I am, then tell them to leave once we're done."
"You…buh…what!?" I sputtered, then set my beer down on the table and pointed at the door. "James, that's not funny, and that's not cool. Get out. Now."
"Chill out, man, girls all secretly want it like that."
"Oh!" I lowered my finger, ashamed I hadn't realized that earlier. "Uh…sorry."
"No worries. Hey, they've been trying to jump me all the way across town. Can I use your bedroom for a bit?"
"Sure," I said, chastened. It was the least I could do.
It hit me about five minutes in, around the time I heard my lamp fall off my bedside table amid shrieks and giggles.
I slammed the door open. "You son of a bitch. Out. Now."
"Chrissake, Mark! Let me finish!"
"Oh! Uh…sorry."
I was in the middle of writing out a furious note to James when he staggered out of my room, pulling his pants back on. "Sorry about the lamp. I'll buy you a new one."
My fury instantly dissipated. "Thanks, man." I gritted my teeth, feeling my throat choke up, and almost threw my letter away; his amazing generosity was making what I had to say all the harder. "But, still, James…please. You can't do this, and I can't be your friend while you do. Go get help."
"Aw, c'mon. You don't mean that."
I sobbed, stood up, and threw my arms around him. "No, buddy. I don't."
"It's cool, it's cool. Listen…Mark." He peeled me away, held me at arm's length, and gazed intently into my eyes. "You're right, breaking your lamp wasn't okay. Lemme make it up to you with some advice." He leaned in. "Go to Equestria. Screw the cost—get some loans or something. It'll be the best decision you ever make."
James and his girls left while I was calling the signup hotline number he'd given me. I'd already given them all my personal information and was halfway through the background check when I came to my senses.
I slammed down the phone, unplugged it from the wall, yanked my computer's power cord out, shut all the curtains, and deadbolted the door.
It would be two days before I dared to go outside.
The first ads started running the following week. UNLOCK YOUR POTENTIAL, they said. No details. No success stories. In those early days, it was all about word of mouth.
It exploded all over the news when one of the first Marked came back with a pair of dice on his hip, bought a single lottery ticket in a convenience store, and promptly paid off his trip with his jackpot. Two days later, the stock market spiked, crashed, and staggered to an unexpected recovery; within hours, the Forbes 400 had six new faces.
I realized that James had been right about exactly one thing, and picked up my phone. But overnight, the portal waiting list had stretched into years.
The sports leagues and the Olympics banned Marking. The entertainment industry had no such scruples; within the month, every new musical act was almost literally addictive. The political scandal blew up when a Marked journalist took secret photos of a handshake icon on President Rand's hip. The impeachment vote crumpled when a different newspaper published leaked hip-shots of four opposition leaders.
Harvard, Princeton, and Yale announced deals to supplement their schooling with a Mark upon graduation. The NML was born as Marked teams began to play exhibition games, and the athletic leagues schismed as that crack burst open the dam. A law to ban workplace discrimination based on Marking sputtered out in Congress, as corporations poured money into lobbyists and ad campaigns touting the revolutions in science, medicine, and industry created by their Marked employees.
The waiting lists turned into vague promises.
Two years later, I found an envelope with no return address in my mail. Inside was a picture of a table lamp, a signed and stamped Equestrian processing form with my information filled in, and a two-sentence letter.
You tried to tell me, it said. Make better use of yours than I did.
Equestria was bright. Too bright. The soaring antechamber of the Department of Marks had no skylights, and was lit only by a few strips of fluorescent lights on the distant ceiling, but I wasn't the only one squinting as we stepped down from the portal and shuffled through the maze of barrier ropes toward the rows of clerks.
I reached a red line on the floor with a set of shoeprints painted in front of it. "Next," a horned white pony wearing metal barding intoned, while the human soldier alongside him stood at parade rest. I stepped forward onto the prints, and the human soldier glanced up and down at me and nodded. "Next," the pony said.
Shortly afterward, I reached another line on the floor in front of the row of grey, boxy clerk's booths. I stopped at the line, next to a yellow-coated, orange-maned pony dressed in what I could only describe as a drab full-bodied suit. A green light flashed up above one of the booths far to my right. "Number twenty-one," the pony said without looking at me. "Next."
Number 21 was occupied by a tired-looking mint-green unicorn slouched in a disturbingly human fashion in a padded fabric office chair. Unlike the guard-pony and the line-pony, she was naked save for a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and a green accountant's visor; some sort of golden harp-thing was clearly visible on her flank. "Papers," she said, and an insubstantial golden glow snatched my processing form and photo ID out of my hands before I could even set them down on the counter. I jumped, jerking my hands back, and blinked rapidly, looking at the matching glow of her horn.
I'd watched magic on TV, in the shows that used pony actors and an Equestrian setting as a production gimmick, but that was a very different thing from seeing—feeling—it in person. The brief contact with the weird glow had left my hands tingling, and the aura had a strange depth to it, as if space itself wasn't quite obeying normal rules.
As the shock of the magic faded away, a different sort of unease settled in. I couldn't tear my eyes off of her flanks. What was this unicorn doing here? Shouldn't she be in a concert hall somewhere?
I was belatedly snapped back to reality by my name. "Mumblety-something Mark," she said, flattening my form on her side of the counter and lighting her horn again to wrap its aura around something I couldn't see.
"Yes, ma'am?"
Her eyes narrowed. The flat line of her mouth across her muzzle tugged into a frown. "I said—" and her tone was surprisingly frosty, even given her expression—"type of Mark."
"Oh! Well…" I worked my jaw, but my brain supplied nothing for it to say. "I…don't know?"
She stared at me for a moment before closing her eyes. Her hornglow sputtered and relit, lifting her spectacles off of the bridge of her nose, and she turned her head to the side as she raised a forehoof to massage her temple. "Form T-42, please," she said in a carefully controlled tone.
"I, uh…" I made a doubly pointless show of searching my pockets. "I don't have one."
"Yes, you do. You couldn't have gotten this approved without it."
"My friend handled the paperwork."
She opened her eyes then, staring up at me for a moment before silently shifting her raised hoof to the bridge of her nose.
"Look, I…this was a bad idea." I took a half-step backward. "I'll just go."
"Mis-ter MacKen-zie," she said, voice wavering for a moment before returning to its tight lack of affect, "I've already gotten one writeup this month. An incident would result in not only your arrest, but also the termination of my employment. Please…I am begging you…help me do my job."
I shuffled back up to the counter, glancing back at the line of milling people guiltily. "I'm sorry."
"We can pretend your T-42 got lost, but I need your cooperation so we're not holding up the line. Is this Mark for academic, professional, spiritual, or recreational reasons?"
"I'm really sorry, ma'am, but I've got no idea. This whole trip was somewhat unexpected. I figured the right idea would find me when I was ready. That's how ponies do it, isn't it?"
She stared up at me, teeth clenched in a grimace. "That's…not…how…this…works," she hissed. "How did you get this form?"
"I told you, a friend handled it."
"You still would have had to sign…" Her voice trailed off as she glanced down at the form. She flipped it over. "Oh."
"Oh?"
Her horn lit, and a rubber stamp flew across the counter to leave a circle of red on the front side of my form. "Looks like Destiny's smiling today. You have interesting friends, Mister Mackenzie."
"I what now?"
"Continue to your right. Follow the exit arrows. Have a pleasant visit." She shoved the form into my hands, then turned from me and pressed a button to her side. The green light atop her booth lit up.
"Wait, how—"
"Have. A. Pleasant. Visit."
A tingling pressure shoved at my butt, and I was vomited out of the far side of her booth, staggering for several steps and bouncing off of two people before catching my balance. The big linebacker-looking guy I'd collided with glared at me. "Sorry," I said for the too-manyth time that day.
Past the booths, there were no more barrier ropes—only waves of humans flowing toward a long grey hallway with big red arrows on the walls. I let myself get swept up in the tide, shuffling toward the literal light at the end of the tunnel.
Loudspeakers crackled to life in the ceiling. "Salutations, Citizens of Earth," a deep, flat voice said. "On behalf of the Diarchy, We wish to welcome you to Equestria, and express Our wishes that obtaining your Cutie Mark is a personally fulfilling experience. Kindly remember that the Department of Marks offers limited entry passes, not tourism visas. You are allotted one hour of travel time, fifteen minutes for Cutie Mark acquisition, and up to one hour of personal time outside the Department of Marks facility. This message shall repeat."
The pedestrian flow brought me to the door, and my feet stepped into Equestrian sunlight. I squinted against the blinding rays of an unfamiliar star. The sun was too large. Too bright. Oddly, not too hot.
The crowd pushed me forward into the street, and the loudspeaker's droning message faded behind me. "Salutations, Citizens of Earth…"
I worked my way sideways against the dissipating crowd, finding a spot to myself against the poured-concrete foundations of the Department building. I took a few deep breaths, letting my eyes finish adjusting. A tall woman in a candy-blue business suit, about my age, took refuge from the crowd in the same lull. She was glancing animatedly around, her gaze sweeping over the tall concrete buildings and down the promenade toward what looked like a street but was devoid of cars. Every few seconds, she'd glance down at a black-and-white paper map in her hands, and on one of those glances, her eyes slid sideways to meet mine.
"Isn't this amazing?" she said, giving me a bright smile. "Look at this. We're here, actually here, on Equestria. Another world!" She pointed at an ugly purple tree-like crystal growth in the distance. "Oh, that must be the Friendship Palace!"
"Yeah," I said, "pretty exciting. Where'd you get the map?"
She flipped her map over to reveal a form that looked identical to mine. "It's right on the back of your zed-two-twenty-five."
I fished my own form back out of my pocket. Its back side was labeled "For Canterlot Use Only" and had a bunch of incomprehensible departmental codes, some signatures, and a stamped seal similar to the clerk's but with some sort of heart insignia in the center. "Not this one. Is there some sort of tourist welcome center around?"
She consulted her map. "Yeah. Go down to the street and turn left at the McDonald's. The Everfree Welcome Center is right across from the Starbucks."
"Thanks." I stuck out my hand. "I'm Mark, by the way."
"Lisa." She gave me a short but aggressive handshake.
"So … not to cut into your Equestria visiting time, but how does this whole process work?"
Lisa raised an eyebrow. "Your SI didn't explain it to you?" At my blank look, she sighed. "Sponsoring Institution. Oh, you poor guy. Look…it's really simple. Just go do the thing you're here to get a Cutie Mark for, and poof, as long as you're looking for that Mark, it appears within seconds. It's got something to do with how this world sees us as ponies, and since every adult pony has one, it's desperate to 'fix' us not being marked yet."
I nodded. "So what are you here for?"
"Optimization of clean-room processes for quantum transistors. You?"
"I'm…not sure." I glanced down the street at the crystal spire. "Is there actually a Mark for that? I mean, not to be racist, but…"
Lisa laughed. "Ponies are smarter than we give them credit for, but you're right, QTs are human technology. That's why Intel set up a satellite office here for Mark training—it's that office building down the street. When I hit CR eng II, they sponsored me in exchange for a 10-year employment contract." Her watch chirped. "Hey, I gotta go, but good luck."
"Yeah," I mumbled as she vanished back into the sprawling crowd of humanity. "Thanks."
I walked. I walked right past the McDonald's, with its window advertising hamburgers priced in dollars, right past the Intel offices, and kept going. I didn't know what I wanted on my hip for the rest of my life, but I knew it wouldn't be something with a corporate logo.
Two blocks later, the human traffic was thinning out. I walked past a few delivery trucks parked alongside the curbs, and for the first time since the clerk in the DoM office, saw a pony. He was a huge, bright red thing, almost the size of a horse, wearing a giant yoke around his neck that was linked to a rickshaw. He plodded evenly through the street, head down, while the couple in his cart laughed and chatted and took pictures of the surrounding buildings.
I kept going.
Another two blocks later, the pavement came to an abrupt halt just past the end of a three-story brownstone office building. The road continued as a muddy stretch of dirt, lined with grass at the margins, twisting between cream-walled thatch-roofed cottages. I had to stop to rub my eyes, then stepped gingerly over the line, feeling like I was finally walking through the portal I'd allegedly crossed ten minutes ago.
A soft breeze blew up, bringing an earthy scent to my nose.
With one final glance behind me—there was no chance of getting lost; all I had to do was head back to the tall human-style buildings—I walked into the unknown.
The road was slightly squishy beneath my shoes. There was no traffic—pony or otherwise—though I did seem to be following along a pair of wheel-ruts from that red pony's rickshaw. As the whirr of fans and hum of generators faded behind me, I began to hear the hesitant chirps of birds. At one point, the road went over a tiny rise as the bridge underfoot spanned a dry creekbed.
I realized as I walked that the road was heading into what looked like some sort of market square—a large, open area ringed with more of those oddly identical cottages and a number of stranger structures. One in particular caught my eye: it had that same cream-colored siding, but the roof looked like it had been ripped off of a gingerbread house, and there was some sort of tower-like structure plopped on top that resembled a double-decker cupcake. The scent of pastry drifted my way from it, and my stomach rumbled in response. I realized that, in between the plane trip and all the waiting at the portal, I hadn't eaten since breakfast.
The sound of weeping from a table near the windows caught my ears as I opened the door. "…just can't," a thin female voice whispered. "I just can't stay."
"Fluttershy," a second, firmer female voice said, "I don't care what the bank is telling you, they will not make you move."
I very deliberately didn't look at them as I tiptoed forward to the display counter holding racks of neon-colored lollipops and cupcakes. Not my business.
"You don't understand. I can't. Not with the city only a hundred hooves away…and with the stream gone…and Harry, yesterday, he got too close, and…and…they…" The first voice collapsed into incoherent sobbing.
"Fluttershy. Listen to me," the second voice said, gently, pleadingly. "I promise you, as your friend, we will take care of this. Don't leave. Don't."
"I have to. I'm sorry."
"You are the strongest pony I've ever known. Please, be strong for me, just for a little bit, and I will make this right."
I glanced behind the counter, my stomach twisting, trying to block out the conversation without much success. There was a stairwell disappearing around a corner toward the second story, a tall, fancy display case with a number of large sheet cakes, and a doorway into a kitchen. Nobody in sight. The counter had a small service bell off to one side, and I hesitantly reached over and tapped the top button, ringing a clear, high tone that made me flinch with its intrusion.
An angular yellow muzzle popped around the corner of the kitchen door, topped by a shock of orange hair. "Yes? Can I help…" he said with a smile that instantly destabilized as we locked eyes. "Oh."
The sobbing from behind me instantly cut off into a strangled gasp. There were several scrapes of wood on wood—"Fluttershy! Wait!"—a few rapid hoofbeats, and a sharp slam as the door behind me burst open, filling the room with sunlight. I glanced back over my shoulder to see a purple pony, wings flared, standing and reaching a hoof over her table toward the door.
The empty chair across from her, in the process of tipping over, overbalanced and hit the floor with a thump.
"Fewm—" the purple pony snarled, cutting herself off as she realized I was staring. She punctuated the sentence by drawing her outstretched hoof back and slamming it down on the table. She swiveled her head to me, and I realized with a start she also had a horn on her head. "What."
"I," I stammered, memories straining for my attention. A purple winged unicorn…big red-and-white star on her flanks…I'd seen her on TV once or twice, along with the tall white and blue ones. Sweet Jesus, I'd walked in on the Princess of Friendship herself. "Uh, sorry?"
"I'm sure you are," she snapped, then closed her eyes; I could see her forcing in a breath through clenched teeth. "Look," she said, more levelly, "this is really not a good time. What are you even doing here? On Wingsday, all the tour groups are supposed to be in Cloudsdale."
I fumbled in my coat pocket for the form. "I, I'm here for the, for my Mark—"
She cut me off with a humorless laugh. "Oh! Of course you are. Because stars forbid our world is anything more than a source of amazing superhuman powers, right?" A raspberry glow enveloped my hand, yanking it out of my pocket and snatching my form, which leapt through the air toward her. "What magnificently Equestrian specialty are you here for? Subprime lending management? Aquifer extraction? Hunting?"
I shuffled toward the door. "Look, I'm really sorry. I think I should go."
"Stars, no! You've barely been here fifteen minutes and already you've traumatized one of my best friends. Think of how much more you could accomplish with the full two hours." She flipped the form over, and barked a sharp and bitter laugh. "Oh, perfect. No wonder. Just because he gets a royal classification waiver means he thinks he has to make a beeline straight for the nearest princess."
"It's not like that!"
The princess took an ominous step toward me, wings flaring to full extension. "Oh?" she said softly. "What is it like?"
I swallowed. "I–I'm…" I looked around the room for help, but the only other being in sight was the stallion in the kitchen, staring at us in frozen open-mouthed unease. "My friend set this up. I didn't think it was going to be like this. I'm not sure what I came for."
She tossed her head back and let out a strangled, incoherent scream. "You don't even know—" She slammed her hoof down onto the floor, cracking the wood and making both the shopkeeper and I wince. Her body began to heave, somewhere in between laughter and a sob, and she continued more softly as I backed toward the door. "You came to ask for help."
"No, I—"
"It's the easiest bucking thing in the world!" she screamed, flinging my paper back in my face. I stumbled and fell to the floor, desperately wrestling the smothering form out of its raspberry-colored grip. "As long as you're looking for a Cutie Mark, literally anything you do here will rip a superpower out of the beating heart of Harmony! You want a suggestion?" As I jammed the crumpled form in my pocket and crab-scrambled backward, she glanced around the room and picked up a salt shaker from the nearby table. I yelped and dodged as it rocketed in my direction, shattering on the floor behind me. "Eat some salt! Become the world's leading salt expert! Learn fun and exciting facts like how to use it as a broad-spectrum herbicide, raising soil salinity levels so that nothing can ever grow there again! Or how about this one: The acute lethal oral dose of salt for an average equine is 440 grams!" She grabbed another salt shaker, and I bolted for the door. "Learn how to kill us all at once because it's a damn sight kinder than how you're killing us now!"
I dove through the door as the second shaker exploded against it, glass shrapnel slashing across the backs of my hands and neck, a cloud of salt billowing out and raining to the ground.
I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the intense stinging from the lines and dots of red that were rising from my exposed flesh, and sprinted away. Behind me, anguished sobbing echoed from the open door.
I finally risked a glance behind me a few minutes later, after I'd run clean past the last of the cottages and into some sort of forest. Nothing but empty road. Thank goodness the village streets had been so deserted—if anyone had seen me running away from the Princess of Friendship, I probably would have had police closing in on me within moments.
I slowed to a walk, then stopped to lean on a tree, gasping for breath. A tiny part of my brain reminded me that some of the ponies had wings, and my heart froze—but I scanned the skies, and there wasn't anything following me there, either. I sank to the ground with a sob of relief, the heaving of my chest gradually slowing.
There was a thin trickle of muddy water running down a ditch at the side of the road—not enough to drink, but I fished a Kleenex out of my pocket and did what I could to wash the blood scabbing the back of my hands. I took a second Kleenex and cleaned my face and neck. The jacket over my arms was shredded in a few places, but that was the least of my problems.
As I cleaned up, I became gradually aware of a distant, rhythmic thumping noise. I looked up and glanced around the forest. No—the farm. The trees were planted in an evenly spaced grid, and a profusion of plump, red apples hung low from the branches.
Thump.
I stood up on shaky legs and walked toward the source of the noise. Half of me screamed that every pony I'd met had resented my presence and that the princess herself had attacked me, and that I was only inviting more trouble. The other half was too tired to care. If I was in as much trouble as it seemed, wasn't it better to find a pony who wouldn't try to kill me on sight, and turn myself in quietly in hopes calmer heads would intervene? Or maybe, if I was lucky, she'd lend me a phone and I could call the embassy. Wasn't that what embassies existed for?
Thump.
I crested a low rise, and a few rows away, a wooden cart was piled high with empty barrel-slat baskets. Just beyond it, an orange pony whose blond mane was covered by a Stetson hat was staring over her shoulder at a tree. She arched her back, rearing her hind hooves up, and then lashed out at the trunk—
Thump.
—sending a rain of apples plummeting into the buckets around her. She drew in a deep breath, clamped her teeth around a full basket's grip, hoisted it up onto her back, and walked over to load it on the cart.
Midway through the process, she caught a glimpse of me out of the corner of her eye. She froze, swiveled her head, and locked eyes with me for a silent moment. I swallowed and nodded in greeting. She stared for another few seconds, then turned away with a wordless frown and went back to her work.
Full basket to the cart. Empty basket to the next tree in line. I was deliberating the gentlest way to interrupt her when she finally broke the silence: "I'd consider it a kindness if ya bucked your tree rather'n stand there starin'."
"Sorry," I said automatically and shuffled toward her. Thump. Apples rained down, and she began loading the cart.
I watched her walk back and forth for another few seconds, then set my jaw and grabbed a stack of empty baskets, setting them down under the tree across the row from her. I looked up at the clusters of fruit, trying to align the baskets with the thickest concentrations. Thump. I walked over to the trunk, and gave it a toe-first kick, which did nothing but send pain stabbing up my leg. I hopped back, biting back curses, and paused to think about it—then angled myself sideways to the trunk, lifted one leg, and shot it out sideways with a heel strike. The tree shuddered, and a modest torrent of apples spilled downward, scattering fruit all over the buckets, ground, and one or two off my head.
I looked at the mess, winced, and crouched down to start pitching apples into the baskets. Thump. When I was finished, the ground was mostly clear, and most of my baskets were between quarter- and half-full. Thump. I sighed, stood up, and reached up into the head-level branches, grabbing apples one by one; they yielded easily to my touch, and soon I was tossing them down into the baskets at a rapid-fire pace. Thump, thump, from increasingly further up the hill, and then quiet hoof-falls approaching from behind me.
"Gotta move up the cart," she said. "Couldja load on what you got?"
"Sure," I said, heaving a mostly-full basket up with each arm and carrying them over to the cart as she walked alongside me with a basket of her own. Between the two of us, it only took two trips, and then she hitched herself in to the cart-yoke, kicked off the wheel-brake, and began pulling it uphill with a heavy grunt. After a moment's thought, I got behind the cart and pushed. I heard her hoofbeats stagger as she adjusted to the extra momentum, then settle back down.
"My name's Mark," I said as the cart trundled along.
"Mm-hm," she responded.
She set her handbrake again, grabbed a stack of empty baskets, and headed toward the nearest tree. She halted at the scrape of wood on wood as I took the next stack and began to walk toward the tree beside her.
"Mark," she said, "stop."
I froze. "Sorry."
"If you ain't got your Cutie Mark from kickin' that last tree, you are beyond my help. And if you did, no offense, but I need a row of half-bucked trees like I need root rot."
"I, uh…" The surreality of the situation finally crystallized, and I fumbled to give her an explanation I didn't have myself. "That's not why I'm here, ma'am."
She regarded me dubiously, one eyebrow drifting upward. "You're on a Z-225, ain'tcha? You've gotta be. Young man alone on a Wingsday."
"I am, but I'm not here for a Cutie Mark in tree-kicking."
"Then what are you doing here?"
"To be honest," I said, "I've been asking myself that a lot today."
The pony's mouth opened and moved, but no words came out. The harsh lines of her expression drifted. The corner of her mouth twitched. I winced inwardly, hoping I wasn't about to have to start dodging apple baskets.
Then she hung her head. "I'm sorry."
"I'm s—" I said automatically before her words caught up with me. "Wait, what?"
She trotted toward me and lifted a forehoof. I reflexively flinched, but she just stood there with the hoof hanging toward me. "Can't say as you're much of an applebucker, but your heart's in the right place, and I'm afraid I wasn't too friendly in return. Name's Applejack."
"It's nice to meet you." I gingerly took the offered hoof in both hands, and she gave my arms an intimidatingly strong shake. "Do you, uh, mind if I stick around? Is there a better way I can help?"
"After how I treated you, you're still askin' to do me a good turn?" She glanced around, and tapped her chin with a hoof. "Well, with those arms of yours, you seem to have a way with those baskets. Willin' to haul some apples to the cart?"
"I'd love to," I said, and meant it.
An hour later—sweaty, exhausted, and hungry—I slung the last basket onto Applejack's second cartload, wiped my brow with a sleeve, and let out a breath. "I probably ought to get back to the portal," I said regretfully. "I don't want to get into any more trouble than I already might be in."
"Right—you're on a Z-225. I'd plumb forgot." Guilt flitted across Applejack's muzzle, to be quickly replaced with curiosity. "Don't sweat a few minutes—the worst they'll do is fine ya, and I can make sure it don't come to that. But, if you don't mind me askin'…what kind of trouble is a human gonna find that don't involve the Royal Guard on their tail?"
I winced. "I upset the Princess of Friendship. I'm not sure why there aren't guards involved, actually. She threw some things at me."
"Twilight what?" Applejack's eyes flew open, and she reached up to rest a hoof firmly on my arm. "Listen, sugarcube. Something ain't right. You stay right here, and I'm gonna get this straightened out."
"You can do that?"
"I can and I will—I swear to you on Papa's hat. Just gonna run up to the farmhouse. Sit tight, and eat all the apples you like."
I clenched her hoof in my hand. "You seriously have no idea how much that means. Thank you."
I watched her gallop off, feeling like I could sob in relief, and felt a smile creep onto my face for the first time that day. Things were looking up.
My stomach rumbled. I reached toward the cart behind me for an apple, only to feel my hand thump into something solid and fuzzy.
"Gaah!" I shouted, whirling around, and almost wet myself at the sight. Looming over me was some sort of…golem-thing…that looked like it was stitched together from a grab bag of mixed animal parts. I backpedaled as fast as my legs would take me, slammed into an apple tree, fell over, and balled up, whimpering, as the monstrosity strolled toward me on one goat hoof and one dragon claw.
"You're a very lucky man, you know," he said in a high, smooth voice, standing over me and offering me a lion's-paw.
"Please don't kill me."
"I almost did. That's why you're lucky." He bent down, grabbed my arm, and hauled me to my feet. "When I heard whispers around town that a human had attacked Princess Sparkle and very nearly injured my dear Fluttershy? I've put up with your kind's intrusion for this long because the Princesses told me it was necessary—that friendship would redeem you the way it did me. But if she truly had been hurt? All bets, as they say, would be off." He held up his other arm—an eagle's claw, with a thick iron bracelet around the wrist, inscribed with gemstones and runes—and in a single smooth motion deformed the claw and pulled the bracelet off. "I'm going to tell you a secret, Mr. Son of Kenzie, to show you how serious I am. They think they have me tamed—that my magic is neutralized. I've let them think that, because it makes everybody feel safer." He grabbed my wrist, turned my hand upright, and dropped the bracelet in it. Then he snapped his fingers, and I was suddenly holding a child-sized blanket.
"Who—"
"Discord, at my service." He stepped back and gave me an exaggerated bow.
"Why—"
"Purely because Applejack wouldn't have liked me killing you in front of her."
"Er," I said, feeling the blood drain from my cheeks. That hadn't been the question on my mind, though. "But why—"
"But then," he continued, as if I hadn't spoken, "after I watched you helping her, I stopped to think long enough to realize you were genuinely out to do some good. And, more importantly: despite all your adventures here, you still haven't obtained a Cutie Mark. Which means that you present a unique opportunity."
"What—"
"I take it, from your reluctance to complete your two-point-two-five-hour mission before the secretary disavows all knowledge of your existence, that your experience with human Cutie Marks has been as loathsome as my own?"
"Listen, if you'll just—"
Discord snapped his fingers. I was suddenly sitting in a comfortable throne-like chair in front of the apple cart, with my mouth sealed shut with some sort of jagged metallic device. He leaned in to me, putting his lion-arm around my shoulders. "Work with me here, Mr. Ironic First Name, we're on a deadline. This is the part where you answer my question." He reached up and unzipped my mouth.
I gasped for breath, then decided cooperation was the better part of valor. "I've seen some scary things, yes."
"That's because Marks were designed to turn ponies into stewards of their planet, with powers far beyond the capabilities of their race," Discord said. "Equestria never anticipated that any beings would walk in that would qualify for Marks while already being sapient enough to master their environment." He pulled down a projector screen from out of midair; on it there was a Mark-flanked pony side by side with a human icon. Beneath the pony was an unmarked pony with an arrow pointing up; above the human was a similar arrow leading to a question mark. "Too long, didn't listen: You're not supposed to have Cutie Marks, kid—they were designed to lift ponies onto an equal level with you."
"So what does this mean for me?"
"Simple. Just say the word and I can help you earn a spellbreaker Cutie Mark—interfering with any magic use in your vicinity. I'd add in my own special boost to the effect, of course. Then you walk back to the portal—" he grabbed two apples in his lion-paw and eagle-claw, and a shimmering rainbow appeared linking them—"and presto, permanent destabilization." The rainbow flickered, made a wheeze like an engine running out of gas, and disappeared. "I send all the humans back to your own world while the portal is still collapsing, and then bing, bam, boom—once the link between our worlds is severed, no more human Marks." He reached behind his wing for an asterisk, and stuck it into space next to my head. "Unless that's your name. No more superpowers, no more colonization…and no more hurt Fluttershy."
I shifted in the chair uneasily. "No offense, but you're apparently some super-powerful villain trying to tempt me into a bad idea. What's the catch?"
Discord stared at me for a moment, then snapped his fingers. A small palm tree instantly grew alongside him, and in a single fluid motion he peeled off his facial features and stuck them onto the tree. "I cannot believe that you've never even heard of me, and yet my reputation precedes me," the tree said.
"Gah!"
He snapped his fingers again, and was standing in front of me whole and un-treed. "The catch is that, for once in my life, there is no catch!" he roared. "I hate you, I hate everything you stand for, I hate everything you've done to my world…but I am doing this to protect my friends, without their knowledge or consent. When I beg for forgiveness afterward, if I've harmed so much as a single hair on some pink fleshy monkey's head, I guarantee you that it's right back to being a bird-perch for me. If all I do is hit the big reset button, then everypony—and everyhuman—will see it was for the best." He stood up straight, breathing through clenched teeth, and then lifted his lion-paw to his chest—extending it forward as he let out a long sigh. "Make of your world what you will. So long as you never soil my sandbox again, I couldn't care less. So…what do you say?"
I stood up and studied the monster. I had to admit, as creepy as he was being, he did sound sincere, and everything he told me squared with what I'd overheard or experienced. I thought of James, and bit my lip. His regret…his mysterious gift…was this what he had sent me through the portal to do?
A ding like a microwave timer's echoed from behind my head. Discord's expression fell and flattened. "I'm afraid the Funky Bunch has arrived," he muttered. "Sorry, Marky Mark, we're out of time for now—but if you decide to take me up on my offer, find somewhere quiet. I'll be watching." With one final snap of his fingers, he—and the throne, and the blanket, and every other sign of his presence—disappeared.
"And no telling," an ethereal voice whispered in my ear.
"Wait, I…" I started, then trailed off as I heard hooves in the distance.
Soon, the form of Applejack resolved through the trees, with a familiar purple pony on her tail. My gut knotted up, but I forced myself to calm down. She had said she'd take care of things.
Applejack slowed to a trot as she approached the cart, not even breathing hard despite her coat being sprinkled with sweat. The princess behind her was panting as she came to a stop. "Thanks for waitin', Mark. Now…I think Twilight has something she'd like to say."
The princess glanced up at the trepidation in my eyes, then lowered her head, taking a deep breath and letting it out. "I…I'm sorry, Mr. MacKenzie. I was upset about something that had nothing to do with you, and I took it out on you." She swallowed. "Applejack told me how helpful you were being, and I realized that I was judging you only based on your race."
The way Discord almost did? I couldn't help but think, and unease at his offer gnawed at my gut.
"It's alright. We all have bad days," I said, glancing over at Applejack for support. She nodded at me, placing a hoof on the princess' shoulder.
"But I should be better than that. I have a responsibility to set an example." The princess looked up, meeting my eyes. "Contact with Earth is the biggest challenge we've ever faced. There's so many of you! It's easy to lose sight of how powerful friendship is, when you're dealing with impersonal bureaucracies and negotiating politics. But change only ever starts one person at a time…and you were looking to make things better, and I failed you."
I nodded uneasily. "Well…uh…what if we…"
"What if we what?"
"Nothing." I didn't know if Discord would be able to do anything to me if I defied him and told the others his plan, but I didn't want to find out.
The princess stepped forward, gingerly resting a hoof on my knee. "No, really, Mr. Macken…Mark. I'd like to know what you have to say. Which reminds me—you remember when you asked me for Cutie Mark suggestions? I do have one, a genuine one."
I never did, but I let it slide. "What?"
"You're here because you care about us…and you could give Equestria something unique. Let me help you earn a Cutie Mark in diplomacy. Live with us here as an attaché, and represent Equestrian interests for us on Earth. A human with a Mark can out-think, out-talk, out-fight a pony a dozen times over…we need that on our side. Need you, to help negotiate a new partnership with your world that helps us both achieve the best we're capable of."
"She, and the other princesses, have tried to bring through folks that will use their Marks to everypony's benefit," Applejack said. "We've all seen how sometimes that don't work out. We don't know human society like you do. You must have ideas."
"Or ideas on how to make our ideas work out. Every time we try to reform the Marking process, it creates new unintended consequences."
"Like Everfree City, and its banks an' technology companies."
And super-soldiers, I mentally added. That wasn't a comfortable idea. Could one human really make a difference against that?
One perfectly prepared, magically enhanced human.
Against other similarly augmented humans, with a head start on plundering this world for all it's worth.
…Plus however many others I could recruit.
Which would take time. How many more Fluttershys would get their lives ruined in the meantime?
It was a Marked doctor who came up with the cancer cure they're testing. How many people—and ponies—will die if they can't cure the next epidemic?
"Mark?" Applejack asked, prodding my arm. "You've gone awful quiet."
I glanced back and forth between the ponies, and said the only thing I could say:
"Can I have some time to think about this?"
I pause for a moment as I take a lengthy sip of cider.
"So."
"Mmm?" I grunt.
"You went with Twilight Sparkle's offer, right?"
I loose a bitter laugh. "You think I made a choice? Have you even been listening to my story? I'm not exactly a profile in heroism. I didn't have the stones to tell either one of them no."
"Well, the portal's still open…wait. You mean you walked away?"
"No, I never said that. I got a Mark. I just…" I smile wryly. "Punted the decision."
"What do you mean?"
"Remember the clerk mentioning Destiny smiling? That's a thing, with them. A pony doesn't 'choose' their Cutie Marks like we do. To them—and presumably, their magic—they get the Mark they're meant to have. Destiny's a real force." I drain the last of the cider from my bottle. "So I figured, given that it's been demonstrated that someone could walk into Equestria and get a Mark in manipulating a force like luck…"
"Wait. Wait…are you telling me what I think you're telling me?"
I glance around the restaurant, shift a bit in my seat, and pull the side of my pants down to reveal the flesh of one hip. There's an image of the bust of Alec Guinness, white-bearded and cowled, staring pensively into space. Star Wars' Obi-Wan Kenobi.
"I'm telling you," I say, "that for six months I've been searching Earth for the one who can walk in there and make the decision I didn't make—make it right. And I know, sure as I know my name, that you're the best hope of two worlds."
I set down the bottle, reach into my jacket, and toss onto the table a signed and stamped form with "Z-225" in block letters across the top. Then I reach across the table, clasp your hands, and stare earnestly into your eyes.
"What do you say?" I ask. "Are you in?"