Heroes Never Die 3


                                            Ponies were quite a bit more social than humans. When one of them latched on to something, it spread way faster than Twitter would even normally spread it.

                                            A leader of one of the pony communities saw Ari’s tips about typing, opening jars, and the like and decided to share them. She sent it to the leaders of a bunch of other communities and then they all spread it to thousands and thousands of other ponies.

                                            Ari very suddenly had a ton of followers on the Twitter account she created just yesterday! And nearly all of them seemed to be ponies. They were pretty damn efficient when it came to this sort of thing.

                                            It wasn’t something that dawned on Ari until just now, but there were suddenly about a hundred million people in America alone that had more or less the same condition as Ari. That was one of the things that appealed to her originally… that she’d be normal among the ponies.

                                            But her abject defeat and failure made her forget that they were still like her in the end.

                                            And now she was getting about ten thousand questions asking advice from someone who had way more experience with this sort of thing.

                                            She found herself smiling madly at the chance to do something actually useful for once in her life! Sure she’d tried to be useful but… well this was the real thing!

                                            Ari grabbed one of her unsharpened pencils with her teeth and strapped it onto her hand. Then she began furiously typing up answers to their questions, faster than she’d ever written before.

                                            She went through question after question, explaining how to do this and that chore. Recommending accessibility programs and appliances. Explaining how accessibility devices she had worked so the ponies could make their own.

                                            They were further behind than Ari thought. Some of them claimed they hadn’t brushed their teeth since transforming because they just couldn’t figure it out.

                                            It did feel like she was in a bit of a race. Ari was hardly the only person with this type of disability, where she couldn’t use her fingers but still had her motor skills and muscles, giving her perfect overlap for what they were going through. It’d only be a matter of time before they found solutions themselves or elsewhere.

                                            She stayed up way too late that night helping as many of them as possible before finally having to go to sleep. And she spent the whole next day at work with only half her mind, waiting eagerly the whole day to get back on Twitter and answer more questions.

                                            Something she’d been mocked for her whole life now made her ‘cool’ and a ‘genius’.

                                            At least, among the ponies.

                                            The other humans at work didn’t seem to appreciate Ari’s mood flipping and becoming so chipper. Not when all of them were depressed and scared out of their minds. Like Ari, none of them knew if they’d have food or shelter a month from now. And Ari could tell they found her smile to be in poor taste.

                                            It made her feel like she needed to hide the truth. She tried not to smile whenever they looked.

                                            Typically at work, Ari kept her hands in her pockets through lunch. She’d bring in a thermos with a thick smoothy to drink. One she could take out of her bag, unscrew, put a straw in and drink all without taking her hands out at all.

                                            Today, one of her coworkers teased her about ‘acting like a pony’ for doing something they’d seen her do a hundred times. The comment stung deep into Ari’s heart and her smile was gone for the next few hours. But more than anything else, she felt like she was hiding a horrible secret now.

                                            When work finally let out, Ari jogged all the way home, hands deep in her pockets, rushing past the specter of the homeless camp to get back to the safety of her house.

                                            The ponies had more questions and she was eager to help more! They seemed especially interested in the holster Ari used to hold her phone and utensils.

                                            Ari had a special glove made of Velcro straps around her right hand most of the time. On the back of it was a slot to strap in her phone. That was stayed her phone was except when charging, strapped to the back of her right hand so she didn’t have to get it out of her pocket all the time. She even had a little mechanism letting her turn it 90 degrees.

                                            Her ring finger (her only finger) was too weak to type more than a few letters without Ari getting exhausted. So to use the phone she let it hang down and moved her right hand instead. Repeatedly raising and lowering it was enough to type.

                                            On the bottom of her glove were straps that could be loosened or tightened to allow her to grip small utensils. She even had little bits of silk and rubber at the edges of the straps to make it easier and more comfortable to grab them with her mouth.

                                            It also had one more benefit: hiding the worst of the deformities on her right hand. But that last one wouldn’t appeal to the ponies. They had cute little hooves instead of the grotesque lump of flesh and nails Ari did.

                                            Even still, the ponies were immensely interested in this device Ari had invented. She was soon talking to representatives of twelve different pony communities who wanted her help to make a modified version for ponies. One of the big advantages was you could easily make a glove like this yourself, without waiting for some huge company to start mass-producing similar devices.

                                            The part of her desperate for cash told her to try and gatekeep the information, try to monetize this somehow. But Ari always despised that kind of thinking… she couldn’t complain about taking advantage of others for profit while doing it herself. Maybe she’d make a few herself to sell on Etsy, but she wasn’t going to keep information that could help others a secret.

                                            Honestly, her friendship with the ponies she met was likely way more valuable. The nearest pony was off in Manhattan and Ari wanted to speak with them badly.

                                            They really were incredibly friendly! And seemed to appreciate her help.

                                            She felt bad there was no way she could talk to them all!

                                            Her favorite quickly became a pony named Spring Breeze. The pegasus was a strong idealist who seemed to agree with all of Ari’s political takes. But more than anything else, Spring Breeze was active and hopeful. It just felt so incredibly refreshing. Everyone in real life, all the humans she saw on this news or anywhere else, just had this aura of doom on them.

                                            Ari knew she was no different. Everything was beyond hopeless and was only going to get worse and worse from here. None of them seemed to have any hope of pulling themselves out of the mud. It was almost in poor taste to point out something wasn’t [i]too[/i] bad, like any optimism was crossing a line.

                                            But to Spring Breeze?

                                            SB<A disaster? This is the greatest moment in the history of Earth! Magic is real now. How can you not be excited about that?

                                            Maybe it was easier for her to be excited. Spring Breeze lived in a pony community.

                                            A>I can’t even get a jar of peanut butter over here. Nobody knows if we’re going to be able to live inside much longer. ETS is a disaster over here.

                                            SB<Oh, I know. But is that because of ETS? Or because of capitalism and our brutally ‘libertarian’ government?

                                            SB<Think about it. In a disaster like an earthquake, the epicenter is where the most destruction is. If a hurricane demolishes Puerto Rico, it’s Puerto Rico that’s in dire straights, not New York. And yet the opposite is true in this case. Everything is fine where ETS hit the worse and the mostly-human areas are the trouble places.

                                            Ari never thought of that before. It was a good point.

                                            SB<I’m telling you, we have way more food than we’ve ever had on this planet before! Nothing [i]actually[/i] got destroyed. All the houses are still there. The amount of wealth we can generate is a hundred times higher than it was a year ago. The [i]only[/i] reason you guys are struggling is because of political policy. Because they’re so desperate to keep everything the way that it was.

                                            Goddamit!

                                            She was right, wasn’t she? They really should be better off than before. Sure, there’d be a transition period but it didn’t have to be like this. The government didn’t have to stop the ponies from using their magic to help.

                                            A>You know…

                                            A>I think you’re right about that. The government is being stupid, aren’t they? There are so many people over here that can barely feed themselves while we’re sitting on this massive pile of food.

                                            A>The number of houses is the same as before ETS, but everyone’s homeless or one step away from it. We have ten times as much food but people are starving. We suddenly have access to literal magic and everyone’s acting like that somehow makes us less capable.

                                            A>They’re just trying to prop up some stupid corporation, aren’t they? As if some stock price is more important than getting stuff we need.

                                            SB<Yeah. If they believed in the free market, they’d just let whatever corporations are in trouble collapse if they can’t compete. But we don’t even live in a free market capitalist society, but some kind of brutal parody of it where the billionaires are propped up to everypony else’s detriment.

                                            A>It’s always like this! Any time there’s a disaster they bail out all the banks and corporations and barely spare a thought for the rest of us. It’s just going to keep getting worse, isn’t it?

                                            SB<There’s really no way they can keep propping them up forever. I know it’s hard now, but soon enough food will be free for everyone! Even super-expensive stuff will be a hundred times cheaper, meaning you can have anything you want anytime.

                                            SB<Farming will take up a fraction of the land. Brazil won’t be tempted to burn down any more rainforests for farmland. Food can be grown much closer to cities, meaning it's fresher and more environmentally friendly. How can you not be excited about that?

                                            Someone who thought things could get better? It was such a rare sight… well at least among humans. All the ponies seemed to feel like things were straight up from here…

                                            It was almost like…

                                            A>Thanks a lot! Talking to you like… well a cool breeze on a burning day. It’s so refreshing to see any positivity at all.

                                            SB<I help you and you help me, friendo. That’s the world we’ll live in one day!

                                            At least, Ari hoped Spring Breeze was right. It was a little hard to believe when the people around her were only more desperate and at each other’s throats by the day.

                                            If only they could act more like the ponies did.

                                            If only Ari could have [i]been[/i] a pony! She had gotten so damn close! If she’d been a pony she wouldn’t be stuck in this hellhole that New York had become, stuck doing a useless job for what might not even be subsistence wages anymore.