"INVOLUNTARY CASES."
The phrase was stenciled in thick black letters upon the double doors that led to the east wing. Octavia squinted in the fluorescent light and wrinkled her snout at the pervasive smell of disinfectant. The hallways and few rooms she had seen in passing were nearly featureless, their only colors shades of beige. Windows were few and small.
How do they expect anypony to get well here? she thought.
The orderly who the lead doctor had sent with her locked the doors behind them and led Octavia to the far end of the hall. The journey only took a moment, but felt far too long. She knew what she would find there. The doctor's words again ran through her mind: "...Total psychotic break..."
They stopped just once, when a bout of raucous, barking laughter echoed out from a door on the right as they passed by. The orderly hammered on the door, and the laughter halted as abruptly as it had begun.
Room 101 was divided across the middle by an inch-thick wall of plexiglass, through which eight small holes, in two vertical lines of four, had been drilled. The only furnishing was a single plastic chair on the near side. The far side's walls and floor were thoroughly padded with mattress foam whose colour made Octavia think of jaundice.
Behind the glass, Vinyl paced back and forth. Her tail hung listlessly, and instead of trotting with the usual beat in her step, she stumped around one leg at a time, as though having trouble coordinating them. She was clothed in a white hospital gown and, more disturbingly, in a magic nullification collar.
The orderly led Octavia in and indicated the chair. Though his manner remained calm, he kept one steady eye on Vinyl. "Knock on the door when you're ready to go," he said. He walked back out the door and closed it.
Taking care not to make sudden movements, Octavia perched on the chair, hooves curled up beneath her. Vinyl stood still and followed her visitor with her eyes.
For a moment, nopony spoke. In the hours since receiving the news, Octavia had tried to plan what she would say when they finally let her see Vinyl. If she had come up with anything, none of it came to mind now.
"Hello, Vinyl." she said tenderly.
''Are you a friend of Vinyl's?" The tone was businesslike, with none of its usual warmth and laughter.
Octavia's heart sank. The doctor had hoped allowing visits would restore some memory—some fragments of Vinyl's true identity. Octavia took a deep breath to fortify herself against the tears now threatening to well up. "Vinyl, you're not well."
"Nopony is well," Vinyl said. "That is, they are, but only for the time being. It will not last, I'm afraid."
"What do you mean, Vinyl?" Octavia said this for lack of a better response. She knew it wouldn't mean anything—not really.
"I'm sure that my being put in here means I've already failed," Vinyl said. "But listen: Do you have any connections to anypony in the aristocracy? Or perhaps the military?"
"Vinyl... it's just me. Octavia."
Vinyl snorted and stared at the ground, a sour expression on her face. "I suppose you will not listen, in any case. Neither will the warden. It was careless of me to have gone to the nearest authorities and more so to have let them capture me."
"You don't remember me at all?" Octavia said.
"I am not your friend," Vinyl said bluntly. "Before anything else, it is crucial you realize that. Rest assured, I have no intention of harming your friend's body. But I am not her."
Octavia resisted an impulse to run away. Despite physical appearances, she almost did not recognize the pony before her.
Vinyl took Octavia's silence as permission to continue. "There is not much time left. The only hope depends on whether you choose to listen. For the sake of all you hold dear, I must take this chance." Vinyl took a deep breath and looked Octavia directly in the eye. "You are receiving this message from two hundred and fifty-six years in the future. We have developed a spell that allows me to project mental impulses backward through time and into your friend's brain."
But for the unbreakable glass between them, Octavia might have taken Vinyl by the shoulders, shaken her, and screamed at her to come to her senses. But all she could manage was a single word, spoken falteringly: "Why?"
"I am... we are attempting to alter the events that make this visitation necessary," Vinyl said.
Something occurred to Octavia. "Is Vinyl in there? Can I talk to her?"
"When I leave, your friend's mind will return to normal."
Octavia gasped under her breath as a faint hope flashed in her heart. "And... will you go away and never come back?"
"If this attempt fails utterly, I will have to make another," Vinyl said. "Farther back, and with a different host body. That is, if I am able to make another at all. I say again: Listen carefully."
Given the choice, Octavia would not have listened to one more word from this thing that looked like Vinyl. But she knew Vinyl better than anypony, and if she could get to the bottom of what had brought this insanity on, then maybe, just maybe...
"In a short period of time," Vinyl said, "Equestrian civilization as you know it will be destroyed by a tremendous cataclysm. It will manifest at first as a harmless natural phenomenon, and the truth will not be apparent until it is too late. The alicorns will perish, and the scattered pockets of mortal survivors will be insufficient to restore the land's carrying capacity. Their populations will dwindle rapidly.
"When extinction appears inevitable, the Strangers will come from the stars. They will tell us that they wish to preserve our species. And we will indeed be preserved..." Vinyl's expression grew darker. "... as livestock."
Madness. Octavia had not wanted to leap to conclusions, but she was sure she knew the source of Vinyl's delusion. She opened her mouth to protest, but Vinyl cut her off.
"There is now little doubt that the Strangers were responsible for the initial cataclysm. They are beings of pure energy—invisible to the naked eye—and can only be detected and fought with magic. Our surviving literature suggests we had always expected visitors from the stars to arrive in flying machines, but the Strangers have no need for them."
A faint hope occurred to Octavia. If she could reason with Vinyl and find some contradiction in this impossible story, a crack might appear in the delusion. "But... if they're so powerful, why bother ponies?"
Vinyl glanced away, her brow furrowing in anger. "They find our mitochondria useful. It took us many years to discover even this and longer still to create the spell I used to get here. You see, we are not allowed to live past thirty."
"Who are you?" The words were halfway out of Octavia's mouth before she realized that giving the answer might make Vinyl regress further into insanity.
"My name is unimportant," Vinyl said. "But listen—while my mind is here, my body is helpless. I have a few friends guarding it, but if the Strangers discover them—discover us—I do not think they could move my body to safety fast enough. And if I die in this state, the shock may be too much for your friend's body."
This was too much for Octavia. She decided to try the direct approach, come what may. "Vinyl... please... we both read the same pulps. This is just like a story from one of them."
"No!" Vinyl reared up a bit, her expression horrified and a note of panic entering her voice. "It's the truth, I tell you!"
Octavia took a deep breath, gathered her courage, and met Vinyl's gaze through the glass. "You're even talking like a character from one. The aliens and the soul thing could be out of H.P. Lovecolt, or..."
Octavia's words caught in her throat as Vinyl's body twitched, then froze. In a moment, Vinyl's eyes rolled back, her jaw hung open, and a sickly rasping-gagging noise issued forth as she struggled to leaped forward reflexively and planted her hooves against the glass, but could only watch in horror as Vinyl's legs gave way and she crumpled to the mat.
Almost as one, the doors behind and before Octavia flew open, and burly figures in white coats rushed in to seize Vinyl and pin her to the floor. The orderly from before appeared at Octavia's side, glaring down at her. Octavia vaguely heard him ask what had happened.
She ignored his question. "What are they doing?" she said, a note of panic in her voice.
"Your friend appears to be having a seizure. They're moving her into a position where she can breathe."
It felt as if the bottom had dropped out of Octavia's stomach. Had she done that—pushed Vinyl's mind too far back against itself?
The orderly said, "I think it would be best if you..."
Octavia was already halfway out the door. Her own uselessness in the face of the horror before her and the idea that she might be responsible together sent a shock of primitive flight instinct down her spine. Her heart wanted to stay, but her body had to escape. At nearly a full gallop, she bolted back the way she had come, bursting out the hospital's main double doors just as it seemed the walls would close in around her.
She slowed to a trot. The cool twilight air brought immediate relief from the stifling confines she had just left, but Octavia felt an immediate twinge of guilt for even this minor comfort. I shouldn't be here, she thought. I ought to be back there, at her side.
But she resisted the urge to go back through those doors, resolving instead to visit again as soon as she could. She knew they would not let her in right after what had happened.
It occurred to her that this evening looked no different from any other. The sun had just been put down and the moon brought out, and the stars twinkled sharply in the clear sky. Nearby, yellow light glowed warmly from the town's windows. The wind carried a hint of somepony's distant laughter.
Octavia turned her eyes to the ground, disgusted.
The things she wanted to do were impossible, but out of all the possible things, standing near that hospital was the least appealing. She started walking into town. Night was falling quickly, and though she now resented the town's normalcy, Octavia made for it, if only so she could see to walk.
Out of habit, she headed for the high street, though she had missed market day. If she had cared to look around, she would have seen far more ponies than one usually found outdoors in the evening. They didn't bother her, or even move much; their attention was elsewhere. It was not until Octavia stopped short of bumping into Daisy that anypony spoke to her.
"Hey Octavia, you're missing it." Daisy said.
"What?"
Daisy pointed upward with her snout. "The meteor shower, of course."