Sam and Lilac, Part One
By: Turboencabulator
It was a breezy night, and Sam was collapsed in his office chair after a long day working to install a trail between his and Will’s residence. His arms were covered in scratches from raspberry vines, and he mused over how even after a shower he felt gravel dust in places that shouldn’t have gravel dust. He turned to the monitors, checking the fluffies asleep in their pens.
Well almost. One was awake, the lilac dam, almost ready to burst with foals. The system had logged she’d been awake and making noise for a while, and Sam scrubbed back to the start.
She was patting her engorged stomach, singing a quiet little mummah-song, devoid of tune. “Bestest babbies, bestest babbies, bestest mummah wuv you. Bestest babbies, bestest babbies, make mummah happy an get nyu housie.”
It was almost cute, except for all the bestest crap.
“Bestest babbies gun get big an stwong, gib dummy hoomins fowebba sweepies an poopies an sowwiest hoofies.”
Sam blinked, leaning in, and slipping monitoring headphones on. Over the next few minutes he listened to the dam’s plans, how she wanted to take all the best food, get a better stallion, kill or enslave humans. By the time he had caught up to the present, the fluffy had been asleep for a while, and after a particularly atonal section about making other dams give her the prettiest babies, Sam heard the most damming line.
“Bestest babbies hab smawtest mummah, gun be smawtest babbies, just like smawty mummah!”
He took off his headphones and leaned back in the chair. Extensive smarty syndrome was rare, more so in female fluffies. She must have seen how other smarties are treated and figured out to hide it. Which meant she was actually semi-intelligent, for a fluffy.
Sam was fully awake again, if still physically tired. Mentally however, he was practically dancing a jig. Shrugging on a windbreaker and picking up a fleece blanket, he went out to the fluffy pens and slipped in through the door, careful to be quiet as he rummaged through the cabinets in the vet’s office.
After taking a moment to apply some oil to the wheels on a cart, he pushed it out into the grid of pens, over to Lilac and her partner. He quietly filled a syringe, and administered a shot in the dam’s thigh. She whinnied quietly in her sleep, but quickly settled down again.
He did the same to the stallion, and gently lay them on pads in the cart before covering them with the blanket and wheeling them out again. Outside, along the concrete walk, and into the workshop, until finally he transferred them to empty enclosures in a fresh, clean workroom.
The enclosures were just as large as before, but with opaque plastic walls, and a sash-window style opening in the front. The feeding, watering, and cleaning of the litterbox was all automated, and if need be the front window could be made opaque at the push of a button. Sam left the windows clear, and after quietly securing everything, and positioning the mare so she had access to food and water, and could use the litterbox, he went back to the house, fell face-first onto his bed, and slept.
Sam woke up to a knocking at the front door. Peeling himself off the bed he stumbled to the front hall and answered.
Outside was a refrigerator given human form. Sam leaned back slightly and saw two green eyes behind a curtain of wiry copper hair, and a beard that was tucked into oil-stained coveralls.
“You mus’n be Sam. Ahm Fergus, ah run the junkyard.” Fergus said, extending his hand.
Sam made his introductions. “Of course, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Wanted t’ask you if you handle ex-term-ination of them fluffies. Got 'em all over mah junkyard an they’re shittin up all the land.”
With a grin, Sam replied, “Oh I think I can help. How many do you think you have?”
Fergus thought for a moment, calculating in his head. “Well, from what’n I’ve seen, prolly 'round four hunnert?”
Four hundred. Sam blinked and thought about it, then popped his neck. “I’m going to say yes, but I don’t know how fast or how clean it’s going to be. Do you know if they’ve been getting through the fence, or just breeding inside the yard?”
With a motion, Fergus clomped down the stairs from the front porch. Sam followed, pulling the door shut, and walking with Fergus over to the far edge of the field.
“That’n there fence has a poured concrete footer. Now you’d be right normally to think that’d be all ya need t’keep the lil’ vermin out but round t’other side be a fence gate fer trucks. Reckon that’s where they’re a-comin through. An’ I’ve a-seen people dumpin’ their fluffies over it to boot.”
Fergus was slightly fuming at this point. “Ah’m gawt-damn sick an tired of slippin’ in shit and bein pestered fer food or threatened by these ingrate piglet cottonballs.”
Sam grinned. “Got a welder?”
“Yeah I got a welder, what for?”
After fishing out his phone, Sam pulled up a picture. “Put in one of these. Cow grates. Vehicles and people can get over them but cows can’t. Fluffies wouldn’t be able to either. So that’ll stop ferals from wandering in.”
Fergus examined the picture for a few minutes, nodding. “Right. Gun be doin’ that today. What about the ones already in?”
“I’ll handle that. And I doubt this is going to be a permanent solution if people are using your yard to dump fluffies. I’m expecting they’ll try the same with me. I’ll make you a deal though, I’ll handle fluffy control in the junkyard, just let me get some scrap now and again for projects.”
“Deal.” Fergus said, immediately. They shook on the agreement.
“Well,” Sam said, turning back. “I’m going to go figure out how to do this.”
Fergus silently nodded, looking at the junkyard, before getting back in his pickup and driving off to the yard office.
Sam wandered into his workshop, turning on the lights and booting a laptop on a stand, before checking on the fluffies. Both were out from the barbituate shot, which suited Sam just fine. He grabbed a notepad and sat at one of the counters, working over ideas for the junkyard. If there was a continuous source of fluffies in a controlled but wild environment it would be a golden resource. After firing up some mapping and search software, he settled in to look at
the scope of the problem.
Fergus’ yard was easily seventy acres, and only took concrete, metal and machine scrap. There was a lot of overgrowth, but the yard was old, and heavily compacted where it wasn’t covered in concrete pads. Dug out warrens wouldn’t be much of a problem, but dogs wouldn’t be a solution. Too many hiding places they couldn’t get to, and dogs tended to get ill after being shat on too many times.
Sam sat and thought the problem over, mulling things through, when the gate alarm chimed. He got up and went out to greet the FedUP driver, who seemed bemused. Apparently his entire truck was just for Sam.
A hour and a cigarette break later and the driver departed, leaving Sam with a two-car garage stacked with various boxes and shipping envelopes, all postmarked from Chicago.
“Jesus christ dude, what did you buy?”
Will was leaning against the open garage door’s frame, halfway through a particularly resinous smelling joint.
With a grin, Sam began sorting boxes into piles. “This is all stuff from my storage unit. I collected quite a lot of interesting equipment and tools over the years.”
“Ahhhh, I see,” said Will, nodding sagely. “Fluffy abuse equipment.”
Sam rubbed the bridge of his nose lightly. “No, just the boxes with the green sticker. Most of this is lab glass or chemicals.”
Will chuckled, dry and raspy again. “So what did Fergus want? He usually keeps to himself. Unless he’s looking to buy some grass.”
“Fluffy control problem. Right up our alley.”
Will blinked, then grinned, widely. “Perfect. I’m going to go snag that feral smarty you pulled in a few nights ago. I feel like making some art.”
With that, Will turned and wandered towards the barn, pulling on a pair of gloves.
Sam continued sorting boxes, moving them into various rooms in the workshop, until the bays were clear.
He was halfway through organizing the bottles and canisters of chemicals when he heard a tapping sound. Turning, he saw the stallion was awake.
Sam wandered over to the enclosure and opened the sash, too high for a fluffy to jump over, but low enough they could see out. The stallion had eaten his food and not made a mess.
He scritched the stallion behind the ears. “Hey there sleepy-head. You were out pretty good weren’t you?”
The stallion, a pegasus, fluttered and pushed into Sam’s hand, yawning. “Yus mistew Sam. Whewe speciaw fwiend? Whewe dis?”
"Your special friend is here too, she’s in another pen. It’s close to time for the babies to come, so I’ve moved you two here. This is a special place called a ‘chemistry lab’.
The fluffy stood up on his hind legs, peering out into the lab. There were two long central tables, and the walls were all counterspace and cabinets, barring a very large fume hood. Glassware half unpacked from bubblewrap and newspaper was everywhere, and bottles and jars were in open cabinets, or storage bins.
“Wut dat mean?” The fluffy asked, looking around, confused.
Sam sat down on a rolling stool and glanced at the lilac dam, still absolutely unconscious. “Well, chemistry is a thing called a ‘science’. Humans use them to learn how the world works, and how we can make things and learn more stuff.”
The fluffy thought, hard, intensely, until he slowly nodded. “Si-ens is human knowing stuffs.”
“Close enough.” Sam sighed, with a tired, forced smile. “I went to a special place called a University, where smart humans teach other humans a lot of things. I picked learning Chemistry, which is a fancy name for ‘taking apart stuff and using it to make other stuff’, and computer science, which is different.”
The fluffy just stared at him.
“Ok, how about this.” Sam got up and went to a cabinet, pulling out a beaker, and two bottles of liquid. “This is one thing called a chemical. Medicine is made of chemicals, food is chemicals, it’s all just in different shapes.” He shook one bottle. “This is another chemical.” He shook the other bottle. “They’re like water, you can hear them slosh inside, right?”
The fluffy nodded, then gasped as Sam poured the two clear liquids into the beaker, and they turned bright blue.
“So, when you put them together, you get something new. Each chemical is joining the other, and they re-arrange, and make a new thing.”
Sam poured the solution through a coffee filter into a bowl, and showed the powdery, damp remains. “If you learn a lot of things like this, you can figure out how to build chemicals that you want. These can be used to help people not be sick, or make better toys, or help food grow better.”
By now the fluffy stallion was watching Sam in amazement.
“But it takes a lot of space, and special things to do it in. Which is what this room is for, but we’re going to be using it to help your babies come out when it’s time. I don’t have the normal room for fluffy medicine ready, but this place is clean, and it will work for now.”
The fluff nodded, thinking. Then he yawned again.
“Now, I’m going to let you in on a little secret.”
Ears twitched, and the stallion looked up at Sam again. “Secwet?”
Sam nodded, and turned the laptop screen to the stallion, with the video of his mate already queued up, starting where she began singing. “I want to make sure fluffies are ok when they’re here, so I have little things in the pens to watch and listen, just in case a fluffy needs me. This was your special friend last night.”
He played the video, watching the stallion get confused, then when he heard he was going to be replaced, Sam could see the fluffy’s little heart break. It was delicious.
After putting the laptop aside, Sam gave the stallion a light pat. “I know it hurts, but this is just how some mares are. Some stallions too.”
The little fluff was sniffling, teared up. “Speciaw fwiend… no wub fwuffy?”
Sam gave a little mock sigh. “No, I don’t think so. I listened to the recording carefully. She was going to raise the babies to try and give you forever sleepies.” After a moment, Sam booped the stallion. “I won’t make you stay here if you don’t want to. Do you want to go back with the other fluffies?”
Sniffling, a lil hurking sob sound, and the stallion nodded. Sam picked him up and carried him back to the other shelter fluffs, setting him next to one of the particularly upbeat pillowfluffs.
When he returned to the workshop, he continued setting up, grinning and plotting steps in his head. Sam finally got down to the last group of packages, in sleek grey and black boxes instead of the normal brown cardboard, with the green-and-silver double helix logo of Alenix on the side.
A groaning sound made Sam pause with the box-cutter. The dam was up, groggy. He walked over and moved her food closer, giving her a pat. “Hey there girl. You’re a heavy sleeper.”
She muttered some happy nonsense sounds and ate her food, looking around. “Whewe speciaw fwiend?”
“Well, you’re going to have your babies any day now, so I moved you in here to be ready. When I told your special friend, he wanted to make sure that when you came back, you had a big new place to stay with him, so he’s making sure everything’s nice and comfy for you and the foals.”
She smiled, and went back to eating, without saying a thing.
Sam unpacked equipment from the box, carefully handling it and setting it in place. It had taken several weeks of organizing funds, contacting sales representatives, and minor bribery to acquire the new tools. Foal incubators and indoctrinators, a fluffy-oriented genetic analyzer, and most importantly, a large series of Alenix laboratory manuals, describing how to prepare a wide variety of useful chemicals used in fluffy research.
He glanced over at the dam, who was looking far more uncomfortable than before, and was wincing.
“I think you need a name. To celebrate being a mother. What do you think?”
The fluffy brightened up, suppressing a wince and groan. “Nyu name? Fankoo mistew Sam!”
He grinned, and gently pat her side. “I think Lilac would be a good name for you. You feeling ok?”
“Wiwac wub name, but feew owwies an… ooooooh feew wike hab biggest poopies.”
“That means it’s time for babies, Lilac!” He grinned, and put the remaining food aside. A mixture of eggplant, papaya, pineapple, and others over the previous day had tipped her over the edge. “Now I’m going to turn you around, and get you ready. You just lay there and do what you feel you need to. I’ll get the babies cleaned up and you can have them to feed, ok?”
“OtaaYYYY BIGGEST POOPIES!”
Sam turned Lilac around. She trusted him completely, which made exploiting her condition even easier. Over the next twenty minutes, Sam helped her give birth to a litter of six, and during the pain of contractions he managed to slip a needle in her inner thigh, filling a trio of vacutainers with blood samples.
First out was a lilac earthy, followed in turn by a black unicorn, a black earthy, a magenta pegasus, and a dirty moss green unicorn. The last came out into Sam’s hand, and he did a double take. At first glance, it looked like a muddy mess, but there was a zebra-like pattern to the pegasus’ fluff.
Sam carefully washed, weighed, and took a small blood sample from each, before turning Lilac around and setting the chirping foals in front of her. She nuzzled through, murmuring about how pretty they were, before putting the lilac and magenta chirpies on her teats first. The streaked chirpy she sniffed, and grimaced at.
“Dis babbeh dummy. Nu get miwkie, miwkies onwy fow good babbies.”
Sam leaned in, and gently touched the rejected newborn. “This one?”
Lilac nodded, making a yuck face at it. “Nu wan dummy babbeh.”
Sam sighed, and patted Lilac’s head. “Alright, I’ll get it out of here. If you need more milk I have some from a mummah who lost her babies to a birdie-munsta.”
Lilac looked up at Sam. “Dat so sad! Wewe dey pwetty babbies?”
Already a little flicker of hate was crossing Sam’s mind, but he kept it hidden. “They were the prettiest babies I ever saw. Shiny and vibrant, and with bright gold manes. Which makes sense, their mummah is one of the prettiest fluffies I know.”
He scooted out of eyesight of Lilac, gently setting the rejected chirpy in a incubator, putting it on a nipple. He loaded the tank with a special high-grade foal formula, and started playing a recording of carefully curated and modified mummah-songs and educational lectures.
“Pwettiest babbies? Dey nu pwettiew dan… hm…”
Sam stopped, listening, slightly amused at the mare’s lack of object permanence.
“If dey pwettiest babbies, an dey mummah pwettiest, an hab miwk, mebeh can make not-pwetty babbies pwetty. Den dey aww be pwetty bestest babbies. Su onwy pwetty babbies get mummah miwk.”
Stunning. She was going to forbid three of her children from getting her milk, in a bid to try and make them prettier.
Sam wheeled back over and checked in, watching as Lilac kept her two favored children plastered against her teats, until they were drained. The chirpies peeped and belched uncomfortably, one burping up a load of milk.
“Mistew Sam, dese vewwy hungwy babbies. Can u gib not-pwe… i mean odder babbies miwkies?”
Sam nodded, fishing a bottle of supermarket standard fluffy formula out of a warming bath. He carefully fed the remaining foals, one at a time, setting them on Lilac’s side when he was finished. The five chirpies, now full and contented, made little cooing and burp noises, snuggling together in a fluff pile.
“Congratulations, Lilac, they all look like good babies.”
She ignored Sam, cooing and singing a little mummah-song. This one without plans of murder and conquest.
Sam set up a feeding station in the front of the pen, with three nipples on lines to a bottle of formula. “This is if you need to feed them again. Just put the little one on the nipple and they’ll feed from the bottle. I’ll check in often and make sure it stays full. Hopefully the mummah will produce long enough but if not then we’ll need to look at other milk sources.”
Lilac’s thoughts, such as they were, started to rattle around in her head. Pretty babies get mummah’s milkies, and she could make plenty for the two pretty babies. The other three got the milk from what the dummy human thought was a pretty mare, so they would become pretty too. But if the mare stopped making milk for her babies, they might not get the pretty-making-milk. Did that mean they wouldn’t get any prettier? Would they go back to being dull and not as good
babies? Maybe she could teach them they weren’t as pretty and they could be her toughies. What if one was a filly?
Sam could tell she was planning. Her cheeks puffed just a little bit as she concentrated. “Well I’ll let you get some sleep. I think there might be a milkbag who makes good milk too.”
Lilac looked up at him. “What a miwkbag?”
“A milkbag is a mare that had an accident. She can’t move or talk, but she can make milk for babies.”
Lilac stared at Sam, then flatly said, “Dat su sad.”
Sam quietly closed up the pen and rolled over to the analyzer, gently petting the chirpie with a finger in its incubator, now full and curled up, sucking on one hoof.
After loading the sample tubes in the analyser, he kicked off the automatic processing cycle, and went about sorting and
cleaning his lab glass.
Lilac stared out of the enclosure, watching the dummy human work with his weird not-see toys and shiny boxes. Getting water all over them and then taking the water off. How silly. But he told her about milkbags, mares that can’t do anything but give milk.
Ideas were coming together in her head, but that was hard, and made her head feel all stuffy and full. Thinking in words was much easier.
“Miwkbags. If aww mawes but smawty awe miwkbags, den smawty get to pick which babbehs get which miwk. Den aww de bestest babbies get de bestest miwk, an de dummy babbies get dummy-mawe miwk.”
She thought out loud more, turning over ideas. She could pick the stallions too, and make strong babies, and clever babies, and even babies big enough to give a human forever-sleepies! So strong babies got milk with strong mothers, and the best poopie-nummers could get poopie-mare-milk, and the biggest babies got biggest-mare milk. She just had to make sure that the smarty mares never gave milk, they were just for enfies. She was the only smarty mare, and only her bestest babies could have her milk.
Sam would later clip this monologue, and upload it to an abuse video sharing site, with the title Eugenics for retarded craphorses.
Part 2 coming soon.
