Trouble in the Special Collections
Shortly after the visit to the hospital, the two were back at work. Whirlie was in her workshop, machining, hammering, cutting, and drilling. Following Twilight’s idea, she began building what she was calling the “siphon throttle.”
Meanwhile, Twilight was back at the Royal Canterlot Library. She was poring over the dark texts she had found, looking at the interface between the siphon the buffer that prevented one imprisoned by the device from simply being drained of all energy. Whirlie was correct, the device was never intended to kill, only to soak up a constant amount of power, rendering a unicorn incapable of performing magic.
The device Whirlie assembled looked like a small metal cylinder with slots cut through it, longways. Inside of it, an array of springs, small gears, and rods held the two rings at an adjustable distance from one another. The closer they were together, the less the effect of the siphon, the less energy pulled from the user, and the less power output. If she could manipulate it, she would be able to fly further, have control over her speed, and, most importantly, stay alive!
The real question, at this point, was how she was going to manipulate it. She had not thought that far ahead. With the cylinder on her horn, preventing her from employing telekinesis, she could not move the throttle. Further, if she saw the rest of the design through, there would be rocket pods on her hooves, preventing her from using them to manipulate anything.
Then she had an idea.
Then she thought she might test that idea.
And then she stopped herself because Twilight was no where nearby and would not be able to assist if her idea went horribly wrong. And, besides, Twilight’s theoretical approach to their problems probably meant that she knew the answer without Whirlie endangering herself by putting on the siphon. Though just putting it on would be faster. Luckily she stopped herself from random, dangerous self-experimentation. This time.
She paced back and forth in the workshop, now stuck without Twilight around. Waiting could take a week or more, she realized. “Naturally, she took Spike with her, so I can’t get him to write a letter,” she grumbled to herself. She could work on the rocket pods, but she had been attending to those off-and-on and was not really worried about them.
“Oh well...nothing for it, Whirlie,” she said, tossing the throttle into its box, and the box into a saddle bag, along with another few sundries (primarily tools and notebooks). She set out for Ponyville Station to take the sleeper train to Canterlot.
-/-
The next morning, Whirlie arrived at Canterlot Central Station. She spent some time wandering up and down the platform, marveling at the trains. Steam engines had always held some appeal, and when she’d been asked to on one as a filly, she seemed to have a knack for making them work. After a few hours of pacing up and down the platforms, she was directed out of the station by an irritated security guard complaining something about her not getting on the tracks.
She soon found herself on the streets of Canterlot, wondering where to go next. Asking directions, she found herself rebuffed or ignored by the locals, who were considerably more stuck up than those in Ponyville. She had not realized how friendly everyone was until she left. It did not help that it had not occurred to her to clean all the grease off before leaving home. Finding even the local guards impossible to talk to, she eventually found a signpost, and made her way to the library.
The glass and stone structure was immense, and Whirlie realized she had her work cut out for her if she was going to find Twilight Sparkle. Recalling that most of the basic research had come from the special collections, Whirlie used the building’s directory, and made her way through its maze of corridors and side passages. After what felt like hours, she found the special collections and discovered it was gated and guarded by a pair of unicorns. When she asked if she could go in, she was rebuked and told that she needed the princess’s permission to enter.
Whirlie settled in to wait across from the entrance. “What’s a few more hours?” she asked herself. “Besides, Twilight will surely come out soon.” The guards gave her an odd look when she spoke to herself. She began by pacing and running through her ideas in her head, jotting down a few in a notebook. Eventually she grew tired, and slumped against the wall. As the sun set, she fell asleep on the floor.
She woke when Twilight nudged her. “Morning, sleepyhead!” she said, smiling. It was still dark outside the window. “We aren’t supposed to sleep in the library, Whirlie, why don’t you come back with me to my apartment in the castle?”
“Huh? Oh...uhh...sure,” she replied, still half asleep. The two trotted off out of the library, Spike asleep on Twilight’s back.
“So what are you doing here? I thought you were still working on the throttle back at the workshop,” Twilight inquired.
“I was working on it, and I finished it, more or less,” she explained, “but I realized that there would be no real way to manipulate it when it was equipped. It occurred to me that, if I built a block into to prevent the anti-ring from being pushed too far from the siphon ring, that I might be able to manipulate it using my magic, even when it is on. But, umm...rather than just trying it out, I thought it might be a good idea to talk to you about it.”
“Hmm...” Twilight had now gone off into her own thoughts, walking the route back to the castle by memory, rather than paying attention to where she was going. “It should work, as long as you have the concentration to use it and, like you said, build in a failsafe. I think it will take some practice. Just to be sure, before we try anything else, let’s go to the special collections and do the math tomorrow. And I’m glad you didn’t just try it yourself. That thing is dangerous.”
-/-
The following morning the two were back at the library. Escorted by Twilight (and having showered), Whirlie had no trouble getting in to the special collections. Using Twilight’s notes, Whirlie’s design, and a number of (double-checked) measurements of the throttle device, the two began their calculations.
By the late afternoon, they had commandeered approximately a quarter of the special collections by covering it with notes, papers, and a few blackboards that Twilight had managed to conjure. Whirlie had raided the nearby university for tools and supplies and was modifying the device on the floor, according to Twilight’s specifications. The pair had gotten into a reverie about the work.
Their reverie was broken when a sharp voice demanded Twilight’s attention. “Twilight Sparkle! What are you doing?!” The two ponies’ heads snapped around at once to see a tall, white alicorn with a flowing rainbow mane, clad in gold and gems.
“Princess Celestia!” Twilight said, with some alarm in her voice, and promptly bowed. A moment later, she popped the stunned Whirlie with a hoof, and she bowed as well. “I...err...we were just undertaking some magic research, or research and engineering really,” she explained, the faintest tremor in her voice.
“You seem to be making a mess of the special collections. Word reached me that my star apprentice had taken over the place. Is there some reason you are not doing this work in one of the workshops? There’s...grease? all over the place!”
“Well...umm...we kind of needed some of the books in here, and they’re not supposed to leave the collection, and we just kind of got lost in what we were doing, I guess,” Twilight explained, giving a nervous chuckle. The princess’s demeanor seemed to soften at this explanation.
“In the future, try to keep your hands-on work in the labs or the workshops. What are you working on, anyway?” the princess inquired, becoming interested. She looked about at the blackboards covered in diagrams and equations.
“We’re figuring out how to fly,” Whirlie interjected. “I mean, not like you or the pegasi, but using a high-pressure plasma-based hoof-mounted rocket system powered by a magic siphon linked with a phase coil pack. We’ve managed to assemble the siphon but after I almost killed myself with it, we’re working on making it safer and controllable” At the mention of a siphon, Princess Celestia started to frown. Whirlie finally processed this and decided it was time to go back to bowing and not babbling. The princess looked back and forth between the two of them, then cast her gaze over to the center of where they had been working -- a desk with an open book on it. She walked past them, then flipped the book shut to look at its cover.
When she spun back to look at Twilight and Whirlie, her gaze was fierce. “This book is one of the Chronicles of Y’mar Darkmane, one of the most dangerous and feared unicorns I ever had the misfortune to face.” Her voice was trembling with anger, “My most faithful student,” she continued, her teeth clenched in anger, “please tell me you have not been neglecting your writing to me to reproduce his most terrible work.”
Twilight and Whrilie gulped in unison, now cowering before their princess. Almost in-audibly, Twilight squeaked, “Umm...I have?” The princess’s gaze turned withering, and the two started to back away, Whrilie absently grabbing the siphon throttle with her teeth when she spotted it on the ground nearby.
“Have you any idea what pain and suffering that sorcerer wrought on unicorn-kind?! And your friend here tested it on herself? Or you put it on her?” she asked, accusingly.
“I put it on myself,” Whirlie responded, dropping the throttle, but remembering to catch it by telekinesis at the last moment. “If it weren’t for Twilight, the mistake might have been fatal, but she didn’t force me to do it,” she went on. “The whole thing was my idea, not Twilight’s. She was helping me with my dream the best she knew how. And we learned a valuable lesson about friendship in the process,” she finished.
“That is why you wrote me from the hospital,” the princess replied, looking slightly less terrifying. “My dear ponies, you do realize the danger that artifact represents? Do you understand the untold suffering caused by its use in Darkmane’s dungeons? As a student of history, this could not possibly be lost on you.”
Becoming more confident, now that she believed she would not be banished to the moon in the next few moments, Twilight spoke up, “I...was aware, teacher, but I studied that book because Whirlie thought that we might be able to harness our magic and use it for good, to help ponykind. Just because that knowledge was put to nefarious purposes doesn’t mean it’s inherently evil. Whirlie needed something more efficient than channeling directly and I thought it might be a solution,” she said, starting to stand up. “I...we...were not meaning any harm by it, and we’ve learned to be more careful,” she finished, bowing her head.
“May I examine what you’ve built?” the princess inquired. In response, Whirlie caused the siphon throttle to drift nearer the princess, who took over levitating it. “Show me how it works,” she directed, then amended, “without putting it on anyone.”
Whirlie showed her how the mechanism held the two rings apart, and how minute adjustments could be made using telekinesis. By now, they had built in failsafes to prevent the rings from even separating enough to cause a “full burn” as Whirlie had taken to calling it. “We think it’s completely safe, teacher,” Twilight concluded.
Whirlie picked up with, “If you look here,” she indicated, through a slot in the casing where the rings were held in place, “I used an unbreakable weld spell. If you were to try to remove it, you’d shatter the ring. So it would be hard to put it to...dark uses,” she explained.
“It seems,” the Princess admitted, “that you have been thorough and careful in your work. My dear Twilight, as your advisor, I feel it is important to remind you that the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is a wonderful thing, but we must be careful with what we learn. With something this dangerous, you really should have come to me first. Please do not make this mistake again.”
“Yes, Princess Celestia,” Twilight replied.
“I never should have doubted you,” she said, and started to leave. “But you will both still need to clean all this mess up. And I would prefer it if you filed your notes in the special collection when you are finished.”