“I hear the FIAA is hiring toxicologists for their research program now”
I roll my eyes as Robert takes another bite of his sandwich. We were sitting together in the employee cafeteria on our noon lunch break. “Yeah, that’s definitely what I need in my life: more work with fluffies” I scoff in response.
“Hey, it’s just an idea” he says. “I mean, the government’s always hiring. You could probably get a job at the EPA or Department of Agriculture, although I imagine the pay won’t be as good.”
“I suppose. I think I have a cousin who works for APHIS; maybe I’ll ask him if they have any openings”
“Is there a reason you’re thinking about changing jobs? Do you not like working at Towhee?”
I shrug my shoulders. “Well, it’s alright here, I guess. It just feels like management is giving me a lot of bullshit assignments. I’d like to sink my teeth into something meatier, that’s all.”
"They give everyone bullshit assignments when they’re new. " Rob replies. “If you want my advice, I’d stick with it for another six months. In my experience, you’ll get to do more in-depth projects and less grunt work once you’ve been with the company for a year. Plus, even if you still decide to leave, at least you’ll be in a better financial position.”
“And you’re not just telling me this 'cuz you’d miss me if I left town, right?” I ask with a playful smirk.
Rob chuckles. “You know I would never admit to that” he says, and we both laugh. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to be free this evening, would you?”
“Nah, I told my supervisor I’d work overtime tonight to get him off my back about being late again.”
“That’s alright. Another time, maybe.” Rob finishes his lunch and stands up to leave. “See you around, Alice.”
I roll my eyes again after he leaves the cafeteria. He’s got some balls trying to ask me out at work, that’s for sure. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little interested in a date, though.
1:00 PM. The duty roster directs me to Lab D4 to conduct pyrogenicity testing on several batches of parenteral products. For each test, I take a group of test subject fluffies, shove a rectal temperature probe into each of them, inject them with a small amount of product, and then monitor their body temp to see if a reaction occurs. Most of the batches pass this test without incident, but one batch sends the fluffies into 104°F fevers and ferbile seizures after being injected.
I send a sample upstairs for further analysis; sure enough, the lab results indicate that the product is contaminated with bacterial toxins. After sending a report to the company so they can recall the affected batch, I toss the surviving fluffies back into their cages for a brief recovery period before the next set of scheduled tests.
3:00 PM. I get called in to assist with an unfamiliar experiment. Dr. Stephen Hyatt, one of the senior researchers at Towhee, is running a preclinical study of an experimental antidepressant sent in by a pharma company. He’s got about three dozen fluffies in his lab, all secluded inside dark, soundproof boxes. Each box has an automated feeding & cleaning system to ensure the test subjects have zero human contact, and microphones are rigged up inside so that researchers can record their speech - although mostly, they just hear crying.
I watch Dr. Hyatt and his assistants remove the current generation of fluffies from their boxes, euthanize them, and then bring in a tray of three week-old weaned foals as the new test group. He directs me to draw a blood sample from each of the foals for peak-and-trough testing before they are sealed into those cramped, cubical dungeons for the rest of their miserable lives.
Dr. Hyatt is apparently enthusiastic about the results of the study. “Fluffies who receive this drug”, he declares triumphantly, “are 43% less likely to enter the ‘wan-die’ loop after 16 weeks of isolation compared to those in the control group.” I don’t usually feel much sympathy for shitrats, but something about how he says that last bit leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
4:30 PM. I head up to a conference room on the fourth floor alongside a team of other researchers for a meeting with the Engineering Department. The issue on the table regards a contract from a tobacco company to test a new “reduced carcinogen” cigarette they’ve developed. In order to perform the experiment, we need to design some sort of apparatus that can effectively force a fluffy pony to inhale cigarette smoke. The engineers float us several ideas for this. One proposal is to place the fluffy inside a sealed box and circulate the smoke inside; another is to build a special mask that would be strapped over the fluffy’s snout; a third is to insert a tracheotomy tube into their throats so smoke can be pumped directly into their lungs.
As the conversation drones on, my mind starts to drift and I begin gazing out the window. Looking outside, I am distracted by the sight of a fluffy and her foals wandering through the vacant lot next door. For ferals, they’ve got quite good colors - the mare is pink with a purple mane, while the foals walking aside her are all pastel shades of yellow, cyan, and green. From up here, the way they explore and frolic around almost makes them seem cute. Almost.
6:00 PM. I am assigned to work with Dr. Mary Cohen, a senior scientist who specializes in teratology. Her lab is filled with pregnant fluffies, which usually means a din of elated babbling and mummah songs. When I open the door today however, I’m greeted with silence, occasionally broken up by bouts of sobbing. Mary soon explains why: she’s been testing a new azo dye that has demonstrated profound fetal toxicity. Most litters so far have been stillborn, with the few surviving foals suffering twisted, deformed legs, missing eyes, and other birth defects. The mares here have been impregnated repeatedly, and their dreams of babbehs have been replaced by the anguish of losing their offspring over and over.
Dr. Cohen asks me to dissect some of the living foals to look for any internal defects. I go from cage to cage in the lab, collecting the malformed fillies and colts in a bin while ignoring pleas from the mares to spare their “wastest babbeh”. I take the bin over to a workstation and get to work with a scalpel, methodically removing the organs and dropping them in small tubs of formalin to preserve for further study, then tossing the hollowed-out bodies into a biohazard bin. The tiny foals chirp frantically for their mothers from the bin, but one by one they are silenced by the blade.
9:15 PM. I finally finish up Mary’s dissections and begin my last task for the day - returning to Lab B17 to check on the fluffies from the Draize test I started this morning. Most of them are effectively blind at this point, their opaque corneas blocking them from seeing anything but blurry shadows. The exception is the lone control group fluffy, who immediately shouts “MUNSTAH!” the second I walk into view. The other fluffies begin screaming & shitting themselves when they hear this, although there isn’t much they can do to resist while still confined in the restraint boxes.
I closely examine each fluffy’s eyes, noting the milky-white scar tissue and weeping, ulcerated sores in my assessment. One of them complains to me about being thirsty, apparently unaware of the water bottle mere inches away (or maybe it was just too stupid to remember; it’s hard to tell with fluffies). The brown pegasus stallion seems to recognize me by scent and screams loudest of all, thrashing so hard that he breaks one of his wings after bashing it against the box lid. Once finished, I file my report and leave the room as quickly as possible, the voices of the fluffies still ringing in my ears.
I finally clock out around 10:00 PM and head outside to my car. I yawn a bit as I pull out of the employee parking lot and onto the main road, drowsiness tugging at my eyelids. It’s been a long day, but at least now I can go home and rela-
THUMP
A loud noise and heavy vibration from underneath the car shocks me back to alertness. My wheels skid a bit as I slam on the brakes, prompting me to pull over to the side of the road. When I open the door, I get a whiff of the stench of burning hair.
It doesn’t take a mechanic to diagnose the issue: I’ve hit a fluffy. It looks to have been torn in two on impact. The front half has landed a few paces away in the road shoulder, while the back half has somehow managed to get itself wedged between the front tire and wheel well, spraying the undercarriage of my car with blood & shit in the process.
Oh, fuck me! It was going to be absolutely miserable to wash that crap off!
I’m just about ready to tear my hair out when I hear several voices behind me. “Mummah! Pweeze wake up, mummah!” I spin around and see three foals gathered around the head of the fluffy’s corpse. One is lemon yellow, one is grass green, and one is baby blue. It’s only then that I realize that the feral family I had watched from that fourth-storey window - the one that had looked so picturesque from afar - has now literally been ripped apart in front of me.
“Nu time fow sweepies, Mummah! Nee’ tu get back tu nestie!” says the little blue colt, who appears to be the youngest. The pink mare’s face is frozen in an expression of wide-eyed shock as he taps his tiny hooves against her snout, desperately trying to wake her up.
“HUUUU-HUUUUUUUU! Mummah hab WOWSTEST OWWIES!” cries the green filly. “Nee’ bestest huggies fwom babbehs!”. She sinks her arms into her mother’s bloodied fluff in a futile attempt to revive them, and her blue brother soon does the same.
The yellow unicorn filly doesn’t join the cadaver-hugging party, however. Instead, she turns and looks at me. “Why wady huwt mummah? Pweeze hewp babbehs! Babbeh wan’ mummah!”
It’s hard to explain what happens next.
I genuinely see red. I have no clue why, but something about this squeaky request from this pathetic creature sends me into a fit of unbridled rage. “YOU WANT YOUR MOMMY? YOU WANT YOUR FUCKIN’ MOMMY, HUH?!” I holler at the top of my lungs, causing the three foals to cower in fear. “HERE, YOU PIECE OF SHIT, TAKE HER!”
I grab the legs of the rear end of the mare, which is still wedged inside my wheel well. Paying no mind to the blood running down my hands, I yank it free with a single mighty heave, then send it flying towards the yellow foal. It scores a direct hit. Guts splatter everywhere as the filly is knocked a good three feet down the road.
“SCREEEEEE! WHY HUWT FWUFFY?!” it shrieks. The foal’s pastel fluff is now completely soaked with crimson blood. It starts to cry loudly as it tries to stand up in the welter of its mother’s gore. Her two orphaned siblings start to cry and chirp as well, but I can’t hear them. I was already halfway inside my car by the time the mare’s body hit the ground. Before they could even grasp what the hell just happened, I floored the gas pedal and sped down the road, leaving them alone to their fate.
For the first few minutes, I drive in near total silence, the only sound coming from the engine and my own panting breath. Then - and I swear to God, I’m not crazy - I start to laugh. It begins as a quiet chuckle, but by the time I finally get back home, I’m practically wheezing. I stumble out of my car and fall onto the lawn, cackling uncontrollably as I roll around in the grass. My hands are crusted with dried blood, which has soiled the steering wheel, door handle, and my shirt. If the neighbors saw me right now, they’d probably think I murdered someone.
And why was I laughing? To tell the truth, I don’t really know. It wasn’t schadenfreude from killing a defenseless creature and then screaming at the resulting orphans for having the gall to ask for help. It wasn’t really nervous laughter, either. If I had to take a guess, I’d say I was laughing at the sheer absurdity of it all.
The absurdity of having not one but two fluffy-related traffic accidents in a single day.
Of idealizing that family from afar, thinking that this group of flea-bitten ferals would be any better than the others on the basis that they had “better colors”.
Of having a career that essentially consisted of tormenting a bunch of sentient children’s toys so that some tobacco company somewhere can make 5% extra profit this year.
Of living in a world that was so permeated by these things - these tiny, baby talking, horse-like synthetic organisms - that I could probably run ten of them over every day for the rest of my life, and it wouldn’t even make a dent in the population.
And so I lay here, getting grass stains on my clothes, shitrat guts caked under the front bumper of my car. And I know that the most absurd thing of all is, I’ll still be living in that world when I wake up for work the next morning.
It will just be another day in the lab.
Author’s note: Yeah, this took way too long to finish.
I originally said this would be a three-part series, but honestly I’m feeling pretty burnt out after two. Maybe I’ll pick this up again someday, when I’m feeling more creative. Anyway, lemme know what you guys think in the replies.