Naomi's Little Ponies

“They’re at it again,” noted Diana, the head agronomist. She and her team had just finished planting the first of the farm zones in the newest L5 colony and she’d come in from the fields to report they were a week and a half ahead of schedule. “They’re supposed to have the plans for the new colony section completed in less than a month.”

“Why L5 Administration Groundside ever thought that those four would make good design team leads is beyond me,” sighed Vince, the fluid transport team leader. “They waste more time pushing blame than actually working.”

“What are they arguing about this time?”

“Jennifer tried to push a major waste return conduit through the middle of space that Chandi had already drawn in as a fiber optics communication conduit. Jennifer summarily rerouted her teams work without asking.”

“So it’s Jennifer this time?”

“Yah and Billi the time before.”

“I wish Naomi would do something. Her style of management works when everyone is on the same page. Jennifer, Chandi and Billi along with Yolanda aren’t even in the same book.”

Diana, excused herself and knocked on Naomi’s door. A few moments later, she was admitted to report her team’s success. The argument raged outside and soon became more intense as Yolanda joined the scrum. She, it seemed, needed part of the space to house superconductors for the maglev that she wanted to run through the zone as well. Diana, a few minutes later emerged, shook her head and returned to her crews. The infighting between transportation, power, communications, and waste handling was going to cost them more time. It seemed that her teams would idle (again) while another, older mess from a few weeks back was straightened out to let them get back to work. Damn that foursome. Too bad it was so expensive to ship new people up from Luna 3 or the Earth. She was sure the lot of them would be on the next shuttle off the station. Killashandra (L5 Colony 4) had had none of these problems that Diana could remember.

That evening, Naomi contacted her h=family in Luna 4. They’d emigrated to the new lunar colony as soon as it had opened and her husband Yasha and her daughter Tia had soon settled in. After the usual endearments, Yasha could tell that Naomi had had a hard day.

“Your designers are fighting again?” he asked sympathetically.

“As always. Once this project’s done, I’m going to have the O’Neill consortium fire the lot of them.”

“Hi Mommy,” Tia had just turned 5 and had joined the tri-vid conversation from her tablet. She was holding on of the My Little Pony dolls that she’d gotten for Space Exploration Day. Naomi remembered the latest re-release of the ancient series, remastered for the new interactive format. “You look tired.”

“I am dear.”

“Those silly girls at it again?”

“As always. So how are you doing?”

“Pre-school is fun! We got to go on a virtual tour of Paris today. Walked all over the place. School’s new walkers are so much better than the old ones.”

“Glad you had fun.”

“They need to be better friends.”

“Not in my lifetime,” Yasha added from the background.

“Friends like My Little Ponies and use friendship to solve all the problems and all.”

“I wish they could be friends like your ponies, too.”

“Oh!” there was a ping from Tia’s tablet. “Ronnie wants to play. Can I go over to her place?”

“Sure. Be back in an hour though,” Yasha added. “Supper.”

The conversation with Yasha lasted a few minutes more and managed to raise Naomi’s spirits considerably. She wished she could spend more time on Luna 4 but they needed her here on Xanda. She relaxed for the rest of the evening and her headache from the interminable infighting slowly eased. That night her dreams were troubled (as they usually were) and filled with fighting ponies instead of fighting design team leaders. Some time about four in the morning, she awoke. A strange thought filled her head and she quickly wrote it down before falling back to sleep.

Three weeks later, Chandi was awakened by a delivery chime at her doorway. The hovering hoverbot waited until she signed for the package and then dropped a moderately size package into her hand. It’s rotors then picked up speed and it flew towards the ventilation shaft and entered it. Chandi turned the plainly wrapped parcel over but the only indication of source was the stamped symbols the delivery service used. She could look them up easily enough but, since the delivery service scanned everything before delivery, she knew it the parcel would contain nothing dangerous. She returned to her quarters and, sitting on the sofa, unwrapped it.

She was shocked, to say the very least. It was an absolutely exquisite gold and gemstone necklace. The gems looked like topaz. Whoever had sent the gift knew she just loved topaz. Never one to turn down such a fine thing, she quickly put it on. The stones began to glow softly as soon as they warmed to body temperature. Chandi went about her weekend morning’s business, finishing a leisurely breakfast before deciding to head out to see the newly completed commercial district. Of course, there wouldn’t be any active shops there yet. After all, they were the build crew not inhabitants.

Twenty minutes later, she reached the outskirts of the commercial district and had another compulsion. She followed the urging and found herself outside a shop that was lit instead of being dark like all the others. She walked up to the entrance and was surprised to find that the pressure doors slid aside. Without hesitation, she entered the shop and found herself facing her three nemeses. Jennifer, Billi and Yolanda were all standing quietly beside a door not saying anything. The quiet would normally have been a dead giveaway that something strange was afoot. The three couldn’t be in the same room for more than a few minutes without trying starting their usual recriminations and manoeuvrings. Chandi found herself calmly looking over the other three. For some reason, she felt no reason to restart any previous argument despite having left work yesterday ready to kill Billi for a stupid decision she’d let her team make. Her attention shifted when a familiar voice spoke over the intercom.

“I’m glad you’ve all joined me here today,” Naomi began. “You’ve finally forced my hand this time. Your ridiculous shenanigans have got to stop. We’re behind three weeks now because you fight instead of working together. We can’t ship you groundside, it’s just too expensive. Some other expedient was needed. My daughter back on the moon gave me the solution with a childish comment. Fortunately, body mods now include cybernetics. I talked to the owners of this space and, with a little finagling, they’ve allowed me to use their facility without charge in order to expedite getting into their shop in the first wave instead of waiting nearly a year.” She paused and then, in a different tone of voice, continued. “Each of you is wearing one of the controller necklaces used in all colonies to keep prisoners under control. It is keeping you calm and it was the mind control aspects of the necklaces that brought you all here today. Unfortunately, we can’t just leave them on you indefinitely. You are useless as team leaders in your current state. You will learn to work together and we’re about to make a few changes to make this happen. Once the change has been made, it will not be reversed until you have demonstrated you can work together to get this project back on track. One by one you will enter the next room and strip. Then you will enter the body mod chamber.”

Chandi watched as Jennifer, Billi and Yolanda were admitted, one-by-one, through the pressure doors into the next room (the colony had many such doors to seal of areas in case of puncture). When it was her turn, she docilely approached the door and, when it had unsealed, entered the next room. A very new body mod chamber stood off to one side. The door was open and she entered the chamber then turned to face forward. Naomi stood by a control panel and pressed the screen.

A strange glow bathed her body and, after several minutes, she felt a tickle in her scalp. She caught sight of a strange colour as she turned her head. Reaching up, she brought a strand of hair forward. Instead of her usual lustrous black, it was a strange pastel pink. Pink? Why pink? Chandi’s puzzlement grew. She felt another tickle at the base of her spine and felt something slowly slide down her leg. Turning her head to look, she discovered she now sported a tail. A ridiculous pink horse’s tail. Some compulsion not of her own drove her to try to move the new addition and, oddly pleased, she found herself swishing her new appendage within a few moments.

The tingling now switched to her upper body. She looked down and watched as her skin was covered by a shiny pastel yellow material. This slowly spread across her breasts and down her arms and legs. She was momentarily distracted by a quiet conversation outside. At first, she was confused. Jennifer, Billi and Yolanda were discussing something without fighting. But that couldn’t be. Those three never spoke without fighting. They really needed to learn to cooperate better. A growing weight at her back distracted her from the scene outside. Something was being attached and was pulling her backward. She’d read of the new moody mod processes. They use special 3D printing to literally grow additions to bodies. She wondered what she was growing. At first it didn’t seem like much, just a mass of yellow shiny plastic or rubber. Several minutes went by and the strange growth became more defined. It was clearly becoming a second set of legs but they definitely didn’t look anything like her own legs. Distracted by the strange growth, she lost all interest in proceedings outside the chamber and focussed on the urge to move the new legs. Oddly enough, she soon discovered she could move them. Poorly and lacking in coordination at first but after ten minutes, as they grew in size slowly, she discovered she could move them just by thinking. It was as if they were becoming part of her.

They continued to grow until they reached the floor and expanded into a substantial mass behind her. By the time the growth stopped, she found herself with a ponies body and hind legs. Had she had a horse’s front legs instead of her own, she would have made a perfect centaur. She had no idea body mod technology had progressed this far. The tingle now returned to her own legs. The yellow plastic spread until it covered her down to her feet. The mass began to take on a strange, almost cartoony shape instead of the expected hooves of a real horse.

The strange feeling spread to her ears and she reached up to feel them move up the sides of her head and lengthen into horse ears. In the middle of her new back, she felt something grow. Twisting her head back, she discovered ridiculously small plastic wings were sprouting from the centre of her new centaur body. Outside, the quiet was becoming increasing disturbed by startled and angry words. Chandi looked out to see Billi grasping a strange horn that had grown in the centre of her forehead. Yolanda and Jennifer were looking at their reflections in the glass of the body mod chamber. Neither looked terribly pleased.

Eventually, the lights in the chamber went out and the door slid aside. Chandi took a tentative step forward. It took several steps before she began to get even the slightest coordination with her new body. She joined the others at the control station.

“Dammit Naomi, you can’t do this to us. We’re team leads!!” Jennifer growled.

“Who’s idea of leading is to disrupt work throughout the station to make things easier for your teams regardless of cost to the project.”

“But My Little Ponies?”

“I thought those had gone out of fashion decades ago,” Billi noted.

“Back in fashion now,” Naomi stated. “And you are them until you can work together to get this project back on track.”

“But I have a boyfriend,” insisted Yolanda.

“You have all your equipment,” Naomi smirked. “He’ll just have to get used to new placement.”

“That’s not fair,” Chandi added. “You can’t do this to people. There’s got to be some kind of law.”

“The only law out here is the contract you all signed to become team leaders. You are stuck here unless you resign. The return fare would have to be reimbursed, of course.”

“That’ll wipe out everything I’ve saved,” protested Chandi.

“Then learn to work together. Dismissed.” Naomi simply walked from the room. The four stared at her retreating back until it was cut off by the closing of the pressure door.

“This is all your fault!” accused Yolanda. “If you hadn’t …”

“My fault!” retorted Billi. “You’re team is always routing through critical areas my team needs.”

“Stop!” shouted Chandi. “This is what got us into this mess in the first place. Naomi has the password for this station and won’t change us back until we work together.”

“She can’t do this!” Yoland protested.

“She has done this. We’re stuck this way until we can get things straight between us.”

“But she can’t …”

“Has. What is, is. Now what do we do about it?”

“Well, I’m not staying here a moment longer. I’ll leak this to the press. They’ll be very interested in this little development.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Billi frowned. “She has the key. You want to be stuck this way for the rest of your life?”

“No. They’d make her change us back.”

“Perhaps. She has a point, though.”

“What point?” demanded Yolanda.

“We’ve cost the colony construction project four weeks already.  Have you any idea what that has cost?”

“So? She can’t do this.”

“I suspect that the world would find our predicament amusing. Nothing more.”

“But a lawyer …”

“No lawyer would take the case. Looking at it from her viewpoint, she could argue that we were deliberately sabotaging the effort. You know how hard the world government is pushing this project.”

“But …”

“No buts. So how do we fix things?”

After three hours, they had hashed out a rough plan. Then they realized that they were still in the body mod shop. They’d have to walk home like this! Everyone would see them! Likely they’d be all over the news feeds no matter what. They opened the outer door to the shop and Yolanda poked her head out to take a quick peek. Since this was a finished section, there was no one around. The four made their way quietly from the shop to the edge of the commercial district. This is where it would get interesting. Hopefully, this late in the evening, there would be few about. The only crews that were still on 24 hour shifts were the external crews.

The four clip-clopped along one of the walkways towards their quarters. It almost seemed like they were going to make it undetected when a security bot hovered into view on its round. The four found themselves bathed in the light of its spotlight. They new this would be all over the colony as soon as the bot reported its findings. They were well and truly stuck. Bowing to the inevitable, the picked up the pace and headed for home. It mattered little now. Soon the whole project would know the lengths Naomi had had to take to get them to work together. Likely, it would get out and their discomfort would become a brief internet sensation. The last any of them needed if they were to get any future postings on the construction teams.

Chandi finally made it home and then realized she had another problem. She was tired. Body mod took a lot out of you. Adrenaline had gotten her home but now that was failing. She needed to sleep. How did a My Little Pony sleep? Then another thought. Which one was she? There were hundreds of them from various series and movies. She pushed the chair aside that stood before her console and activated it. It obligingly presented the airscreen at her new height. She deftly punched in a query. “Fluttershy?” she murmured. “Animal caretaker? Element of Kindness?” She sighed inwardly. Guess she’d best learn some kindness then if she were ever going to get her own body back.