Grand Mal (Ed)

Grand Mal

    Rarity peeked out from behind the curtains.  There were stars in her eyes.  It was only minutes before the big show.  Everybody who was anybody was here.  The biggest names were right there in the front row.  Hoity Toity was here, so was Photo Finish.  And there was Clip Klop, Hoi Polloi, Jean Paul Halterey, Liz Hayborne...  She had done a lot of favors to get them here tonight.  They had all decided to give her a second chance.  This show would go perfectly, without the slightest hitch.
    Her fashions were perfect.  Her models were hoof-picked.  The music and DJs were the best that money could buy.  She had even arranged matters personally with the ponies handling the lighting.  No strobes.  No flashy lasers.  Just simple, old-fashioned, elegant use of spotlights.  Effects provided with smoke machines.  It would all match perfectly with her retro-nouveau fashions.
    The thumping music started.  Already?  Rarity got a sudden flush of stage-fright, and then she managed to push down the butterflies.  It wasn’t her that was going out there on the catwalk, it was the clothing.  And the models, of course.  They were the ones going out.  She turned around and the first model was already approaching.  They smiled at each other, and then the model’s face dropped into an oh-so-serious frown as she walked out from behind the curtain.  Rarity watched her strut down the catwalk.
    Then Rarity turned her attention to the faces in the crowd.  It wasn’t the models that she wanted to watch, but the reaction to them.  Everything about this night had been planned in every detail.  Not just the clothing, not just the models, but the order they appeared – the mood.  The reactions on the faces of the fashion moguls would tell Rarity everything she needed to know.
    She watched.  It worked!  All of their reactions were exactly as she had planned.  They smiled when they were supposed to.  Their mouths dropped open when they were supposed to.  Their eyes glared with skepticism when they were supposed to.  Then they opened wide with awe when they were supposed to.
    Rarity knew she finally had her long awaited hit even before it was over.  Ponies were coming up to her behind the curtain and patting her on the back while the show was still going on.  She didn’t react though.  She didn’t react until the last model was down the runaway and back again, back behind the curtain.  Only then did she turn to the others and smile.  Her eyes filled with tears.  She had finally done it.  A successful show pulled off without a hitch.  Everyone knew it had been a hit.
    The applause was loud, even from behind the curtain.  It only grew louder and louder.  “Rarity!” they started to shout.  “Rarity!”  She blushed and all the ponies around her told her to step out and take a bow.
    So that’s what Rarity did.  She stepped out and the crowd went wild.  One of Hoity Toity’s assistants lifted up a bouquet and she gracefully accepted it.  Rarity started to walk down the catwalk.
    That was when the cameras started snapping pictures.  The press was all here.  They had been told they could take video of her fashions, but please, no flash photography.  Nobody had told them they couldn’t take pictures of Rarity herself: she wasn’t really a part of the show.  But now she was a story.  She was going to be in the magazines.  She was going to be in the papers.
    A dozen flashes flared.  A hundred.  All around her, cameras were filling Rarity’s vision with a thousand flashing stars.  Then Rarity began to smell smoke.  It wasn’t the nearly odorless mist of a smoke machine, Rarity thought, but something was actually burning.  Then she started feeling an odd sensation, like the prickly, needling sensation you get when your leg falls asleep.  Only the sensation was all over her body, and inside her mind.  Oh no, Rarity thought.  Not again.  Not now.  Not ag-
    Then all conscious thought slipped out of Rarity’s mind.
    Hundreds of ponies were watching Rarity when she fell forward onto the catwalk.  There was an enormous collective gasp that filled the air and hundreds of ponies leapt up onto their hooves.  All of them felt a surge of adrenaline that occurs in an emergency.  Almost all of them knew what was happening, almost right away.
    Rarity’s five closest friends pushed through the front row and leaped up on stage to be with her.  A few of the well-intentioned journalists jumped up too, hoping they could help.  Others called for paramedics.  Dozens of ponies all called the same number at the same time.  Even a few of the models rushed back on stage when they heard the shouting and saw that Rarity had gone down.  They were still in their elaborate outfits.  Oddly enough, one of the models had some limited amount of medical training.  She had been going to nursing school when she had been discovered by a talent scout.  She pushed her way through the crowd and knelt down by Rarity’s side.  She knew, perhaps better than any pony in the room, there wasn’t very much she could do for Rarity at this point.  They would have to sit by and let her ride through it.  Let the paramedics come.  They had to make sure she didn’t bite her tongue, or repeatedly strike her head against the floor.  Other than that the only thing to do was comfort her when she woke up again.  So much of nursing involved simply comforting people, when nothing else was possible.
    While her conscious mind had slipped away, Rarity's brain itself was very active indeed.  Rarity’s brain, like the brains of all living, thinking beings, was composed of millions of tiny cells called neurons.  Each neuron reached out to many of its neighboring neurons, and was separated by a tiny gap known as a synapses.  Across each gap there was an electrochemical gradient, a voltage.  Channels close, the voltage grows.  Channels open, and a tiny electrical current races across that gap.
    Now in all thinking things, all thoughts and nerve impulses are a series of electric currents going every which way throughout the brain.  Most of the time, there are millions of synapses firing any given second.  On a large enough scale, all of that firing seems to occur randomly.  It’s like white noise.  Static on a television that’s on, but not receiving a signal.  Waves crashing against rocks.  Wind rattling dried leaves.
    For some reason, however, something different was happening in Rarity’s brain.  Scientists didn’t fully understand why.  Even Princess Celestia, in all of her wisdom, didn’t really understand why.  Two neighboring neurons started to fire their synapses together, simultaneously.  Then, neighboring neurons started to fire along with them.  Hundreds.  Thousands.  Millions.  Within seconds, all across vast portions of Rarity’s brain, trillions of synapses were all firing at once.  Over and over.  There was a kind of strange, cosmic beat to it, not unlike the thumping of the electronic music the ponies had just been listening to.  On a biophysical level, there was almost a rhythmic beauty to the neurological beat.  On a physical level, it was a catastrophe.  It made conscious thought impossible.  Worse, those neurons weren’t just responsible for thought, but they were all connected, quite literally, to every muscle in Rarity’s body.  Her muscles started to dance to the beat.  Rarity had entered what the almost-was-a-nurse would have called a grand mal seizure.
    Rarity didn’t speak French.  She often spoke French phrases.  Some of them were closely associated with her career, like haute coiture.  Others were commonly heard compliments like c’est magnifique!  Other snippets of French she simply liked to speak.  She liked the way it sounded.  So did her friend Applejack, who said it made her sound fancy.  There were phrases like c’est la vie.  And even individual words, like the classic moi.  Rarity knew what all of these words meant.  There were a lot of French words that Rarity didn’t understand.  But if they were simple enough, and if they were common enough, then there was a good chance that Rarity would understand what they meant.  For example, if you were to ask Rarity what the words grand mal meant, then she would tell you that, yes, that was really quite simple, darling.
    Grand meant big; mal meant bad.
    The muscles in Rarity’s thighs flexed.  They pulled her legs in, and they kicked them back out again.  The muscles in at her knees kicked out her shins, the muscles in her calves pulled at her hooves.  The muscles in her shoulders and hips sent her legs every which way.  The muscles in her neck sent her head tossing backwards, sending her normally perfect mane every which way.  Nearly every muscle in her body twitched and flexed.  All of the little muscles all up and down her spine.  The muscles in her rump.  The muscles that controlled her ears.  The muscles that controlled her tail.  The muscles that controlled her bowels.  Her bladder.
    The muscles that controlled her eyes rolled them back up into her head.  The muscles that controlled her eyelids flicked them up and down.  Her jaw clenched, gritting her teeth together.
    The initial reaction of the audience was one of fear.  They were afraid for Rarity’s health.  As the minutes wore on, it gradually turned to sympathy.  Most simply felt sorry for her.  A few got up and left the room, for no other reason than to clear space.  They knew there was nothing they could do to help.  Some remained.  Some stayed behind and watched.  Their sympathy, perhaps understandably, gradually drifted over into a natural, if morbid, curiosity.  They had heard about epilepsy, of course.  They had read about it.  They had never seen it, though.  They wondered if it hurt (it didn’t).  They wondered what she was thinking (she wasn’t).
    Time wore on, but the bystanders remained to gawk.  They saw her twitch on the floor.  They saw her relieve herself, and then continue to twitch in that.  Soon they could all smell it.  Eventually, unfortunately, the curiosity slowly turned over into disgust.  This was not a pretty thing to witness.  It reminded them of their own mortality.  They were flesh and blood, and they could become sick too.  They had all come here today to witness something beautiful.  Instead, they were being presented with this...thing.  This thing flopping around on the catwalk before them.  It was as if they were being mocked.  Even the poor, unfortunate mentally handicapped,  those kept away in homes, out of sight where they had to be spoon-fed their entire lives, even they weren’t this ugly.  This thing...this thing shouldn’t even exist.
    They got up and walked away, shaking their heads.  They went to their expensive restaurants, where they had dinner reservations.  They talked about the sight they had just witnessed, then moved on to more polite dinner conversation.  They talked about up and coming fashioned trends, like the ones that they had seen at that show last week.
    Rarity’s seizure was starting to subside.  Her muscles no longer twitched.  Her eyes rolled back down.  The paramedics were only now pulling up to the building.  Consciousness slowly started to re-establish itself in her brain.  It was like being at the bottom of a very deep well, then slowly coming up towards the light.
    “Wwww,” Rarity murmured.
    “Rarity?” Twilight asked.
    “Www.  Wwwuuuu.  Wwwuuuubbb.”
    “Rarity?” Twilight asked again.
    “Wwwuuubbb.  Wub.  Wut.  What?”
    “Rarity, you’ve had a seizure,” Twilight explained.
    “What?”
    “Another, seizure, Rarity.  You’ve had another seizure.”
    “Oh.  I... what?”
    “You’re going to be just fine, sugarcube,” Applejack said to her.  “You can trust me on that.”
    “Oh.”
    “Are you feeling OK?” Pinkie asked.  Big tears were welling from her eyes, but she had a bigger smile on her face.
    “What?” Rarity asked.
    “I think she’s still confused, girls,” the pretty model wearing the very pretty outfit said.  “It might take a while.”
    “How come you didn’t take your pills?” Dash asked.
    “What pills?” Rarity asked.
    Some strange ponies that Rarity couldn’t recognize came.  They hoisted her over on a gurney, then they lifted the gurney up on its metal frame and started wheeling her away.
    “Twilight?” Rarity asked, scared.  “What’s happened?”
    “You’ve had a seizure, Rarity,” Twilight explained.
    “Oh,” Rarity said.  She watched the ceiling as she was being wheeled down the hall.  “What?”
    “It’s OK,” Fluttershy comforted her softly.  “You’re going to be just fine.”

    “Merde!” Rarity cursed.  Then she looked around to remind herself that Sweetie Belle was back at mom and dad’s.  She was, thank god.  She hated it when they left her alone with her kid sister.
    Rarity levitated over a pair of scissors and cleared the thread that had jammed her sewing machine.  Then she set it all up again.  She would have to start all over from scratch.  She glanced over at the clock.  One in the morning.  There simply was not enough time.
    Rarity threw herself once more back into the work.  There was so much to do.  So many new outfits to create.  It wasn’t a simple matter to make a new dress, whole lines of fashion had to be invented.  Things that ponies had never seen before.
    And then there was the matter of getting a new show together.  That would simply be a nightmare.  There were so many ponies to call.  So many favors to call in.  She hoped they would give her a second chance after the last disaster.
    This time she was really going to wow them.  It would go flawlessly, not a single hitch.  Rarity had stars in her eyes.  Soon she would be a star herself, a great big shining star.  And if it happened again?  Well, then she would start all over.  After all, it wasn’t her fault.  She wasn’t bad.  There wasn’t anything wrong.
    This is life.  C’est la vie.