The familiar silhouette of Canterlot's royal palace had changed drastically. A new tower was reaching for the sky, taller than anything else. The tip of the tower held a large red crystal surrounded by lenses and the area underneath the crystal was a curious mix of a common room and a command center, a workspace for the six unicorns that staffed the tower.
A prominent feature of the room was a huge control panel with a brass transmitter key. Another prominent feature was the system of wires connected to five devices that looked disturbingly like a milking machine.
The six unicorns passed their time playing leisurely card games, but they made sure to keep a careful eye to the clock positioned near the center of the room. It had no numbers on its face, instead a series of predetermined times marked with red lines.
The hand was rapidly approaching one of those set times. At the dot, the five unicorns placed themselves out at station evenly across the room, put the wired device on top of their horns and put one hoof ready on the large button placed on the side of each station. The fifth unicorn positioned himself at the control panel, and spied out towards the horizon with a telescope.
With it he could barely see the contour of another tower with a similar large crystal at the top. It blinked three times and the unicorn hurriedly adjusted the giant lenses surrounding the crystal using a series of switches and levers. Each adjustment echoed through the tower in a series of clunky mechanical sounds.
Once in place, he made a signal to the five unicorns who began transmitting magic through the system of wires. Once done, he responded by tapping the key five times and the Crystal flashed in unison. Then he made one final adjustment using a large brass lever next to the seat.
The other tower in the horizon started flashing, a quick complex pattern, amplified by the lenses and transmitted through the crystal and the series of wires, down to the unicorns. There was no telling which unicorn would get the message, and occasionally it would bounce, hence why all five were connected to the same machine that interpreted the clicks of the unicorn into a pattern of holes on a ticker tape. One of the unicorns perked up and started tapping incessantly on his button.
The message lasted for nearly half an hour, and once it was done, the unicorn looked quite flushed. The pony at the control panel made the tower flash three times once again and returned it to its normal restful state. The gears clanked heartily as they were released from their bounds. Once again the unicorns returned to their card games, but not before rolling the tape up and tossing it down a tube.
Once again, Celestia studied the letter she had received. She tilted her head but it still refused to make sense.
“What do you think, Philomeena ?” she asked the phoenix perched on her shoulder. The bird made a questioning cooing sound in response.
“I already wrote to Spike about it,” Celestia said. “He told me he found the letter on her desk, where she usually put her letters and assumed she was going to send it but forgot to ask him.”
Philomeena cooed again, this time with a curious tone.
“Yes, it's strange, Twilight isn't usually forgetful...” In light of this, Celestia tried deciphering the message and the conclusions she drew made her blush noticeably.
“A “bit trick” is that what I think is...?” she said to herself, “and she mentions something about joints and pipes and fantasy guys, what is she on about? She does have interesting fantasies I'll give her that...”
The phoenix made a complex sound, a sort of raspy squeak with a burp at the end. Celestia responded by taking another glance at the letter.
“Yes, I suppose it does look like that,” she said. “But what are the odds that she spilled ink-vanish all over the letter and forgot about it? She's one of the most analytical ponies I know!” Her eyes once again swepy across the letter.
“Oh Myself,” she exclaimed. “It sounds even worse reading it a secon time. Whatever she's pp to, I certainly didn't send her to Ponyville to teach her THAT. What do you say Philomeena, does she need a stern talking to?”
The bird nodded her head resolutely.
“I thought so.”
She looked towards the contraption on the table. It was a typewriter, but a different model from the one she had given Twilight. That one was a fairly basic unicorn model, with each character on the end of a type-bar that struck down when manipulated by magic. The mechanics was there not to substitute magic as much as aid it, the gears allowed for a light burst of magic to translate into a strong resolute tap by the type-bar, transferring ink to paper.
Her model on the other hand was more complex and was designed for non-unicorns, with elongated keys arranged in two perfect circles and tilted slightly inwards. The inside of each circle had spells written with magic runes that helped amplify even a light touch on the keys until it was strong enough to power the intricate clockwork mechanism that made a brass typing ball dance across the paper.
It was hard to see unless you had an eye for it, but each tooth of the gears had a shard from a different semi-precious stone grafted to it, and the moments of the typing ball was less guided by the mechanical motion of gears and levers, but rather by the magically significant patterns formed by the charged stones.
Learning how to operate the keys using magic was no easy matter. In theory, it was easier than controlling the motions of a pen, but it was so radically different that you had to rethink the way you used magic. You had to use short, gentle bursts instead of long serpentine motions. For Celestia, it was a habit that had been allowed to develop for over a thousand years, so naturally, she had a harder time re-learning how to write than most.
She nearly bit her tongue forcing her full attention to every keystroke. It was a tedious process, she had to go through each sentence twice in her head before she could even attempt to type it, like a young filly in her first few days of school. Once she was nearly done typing up her letter, an elderly unicorn burst into her chamber.
“Princess!” he shouted. “your majesty...” he added slightly more calmly.
Celestia abandoned her struggles at the typewriter and turned towards the unicorn.
“Yes, what is it, Ampersand?” she asked.
“Telegram from the neighborhood islands, your majesty,” Ampersand said. “It's very urgent.”
“Oh, really?” Celestia said, failing to mask her annoyance at the interruption.
“Yes,” Ampersand continued, ignoring the sarcastic tone o her voice. “The newly elected mayor is aligned with the isolationist movement, and they are demanding sovereignty.”
Ampersand studied Celestias features, but could read nothing from them.
“Princess?” he said. “They are close enough to Canterlot that they could actually cause some real damage to us if they decided to rise up...”
“Not that any violent uprising isn't a tragedy,” he added once he noticed how Celestias blank looked turned to a steely glance. “So what are we gonna do about it?”
Celestia considered this for a while.
“We'll give sovereignty to them,” she said. “Have my associates schedule a meeting for next week and we can discuss the terms.”
This had the same effect on Amperand's thought process as a splinter have on clockwork and his face betrayed his confusion with an almost exaggerated grimace.
“But princess... your majesty,” he said. “They simply aren't self-sustaining, espescially not with this drought, they depend on their trade with Canterlot.”
“I know,” she said. “But it seems that they need to figure this out on their own. It'll be a learning opportunity for them. And for her citizens sake, I do hope the mayor is a fast learner. Was there anything else, Ampersand?”
“Yes princess,” he said. “Today's public schedule...”
“IS there a problem with it?”
“Well, we haven't actually booked any of the meetings that you have on there.”
“Yes, today I'm doing something else.” Celestia said. “And I don't want to be disturbed until this evening, at the earliest. Understood?”
“Yes, princess.” Ampersand said humbly and left the chamber.
Celestia abandoned the typewriter and went up to the mirror at the opposite end of the chamber. She was thinking about her publicly released schedule, which she had filled with things that she knew her subjects would want her to do, but that she didn't see any reason in doing.
Take the first item for example, “Meeting with the weather coordinator”. She knew exactly how that conversation would play out. She'd ask him for a rainstorm and he'd reply that there simply wasn't enough water around to funnel up to the weather factory. She'd leave with nothing resolved whatsoever except for the illusion that she had accomplished something.
The same went for the last item on the schedule “Conference on the prospect of ice-mining.” She canceled that on behind the scenes because all the factions involved needed time to cool off, so to speak. The adventuring guild resented having to drag the scientists along, and the scientists complained that the adventurers kept bullying them. And to top it all off, there was an interest group called “Friends of the ice” that objected to the whole plan in order to protect the glaciers.
The tedium of meetings only increase with age, when you realize how in large part you say the same thing over and over again, and afterward everypony goes on to do what they were going to do anyway. She wasn't planning on being idle the whole day, tough. There was another conference in town that intrigued her, and in order to hear as many unbiased opinions as possible, she had decided to go incognito.
First she shrank down to the size of a normal Pony. It was a tricky magic, every many internal organs that had to be scaled just right or it'd be extremely painful, but she had centuries of experience. By contrast, changing the color of her mane and her coat was easy.
Most magic-users still used commercially available mane- and coat-dye, because magic dye had a somewhat dull tone to it, but mane-dye didn't work on Celestia's hair, even if she found a way to buy it without looking suspicious and her objective was to create a disguise, not give herself a stylish makeover.
With her size reduced and her hair dyed, she released a burst of magic that engulfed her completely in a green liquid smoke. Inside the protective cocoon of magic, her wings started to shrivel like dying leaves. She couldn't get rid off them completely, her magic allowed for radical transformation, but she was no changeling. The best she could do was reduce them to a pair of nondescript bumps the size of pegasus-wings. Nothing you couldn’t conceal with a saddle, tough.
The horn was a mite trickier. She couldn’t retract it, magic didn't have mass per se, but it still need to be “stored” in a vague sense of the word. Instead, she made the tip of it invisible and made it appear like a normal unicorn horn.
The invisibility spell wasn't perfect and left an unclear distortion above her head. It gave her sort of a stressed-out look, since the slight distortion around the horn was reminiscent of the magical sparks that can appear whenever a unicorn is over-tired or anxious.
The cutie mark was a problem, she had no power to change it, but she could simply conceal it. She chose the most frumpy skirt she could find, and as a final touch she let her long mane curl up into something resembling a clowns wig.
Looking back into her mirror was a neurotic engineering student, no different than a thousand other young ponies around Canterlots newly founded university. Her acting stunned even herself, the traits she could not conceal by magical means such as her narrow face and cat-like eyes was all but invisible underneath this neatly crafted persona. She would be willing to bet that not even her sister would recognize her, but she wasn't gonna risk it.
Celestia made her way trough the streets of Canterlot. She managed to blend in well, even tough some passer-byes seemed to wonder why this particular student trotted with such heavy steps and why she gazed at every display of famine as tough she felt personally responsible. The deperate way a pair of colts gathered the corn that fell of a wagon that passed her by and the unnaturally thin waistline of some of the ponies did not go unnoticed.
Normally the class difference in Canterlot was no big deal, it was kinda quaint to have a noble class and a working class, equally convinced that their way of life, be it sophisticated or folksy, made them instantly superior to the other, It amused her. In times like these however, it became painfully obvious who got to eat and who had to work.
Her natural humbleness served her well, it was a change of phase to be almost completely invisible, and to a degree it was quite liberating. The things that would be scandalous for her to do as a princess could only help to perfect her disguise. After the conference was done, she planned on finding the best bakery she could still visit without suspicion and buy a large, tasty cake...
“Watch it, ruffian!” a voice sounded from behind her. She noticed the vague outlines of a wagon and had about 3.14 seconds less to react than she needed. The wagon had to swerve and nearly tipped as it came to an all too sudden stop.
“Hey, I'm walking here!” Celestia exclaimed before she could stop herself. The draft horse looked at her with eyes that would've obliterated a weak engineering student of the kind Celestia was supposed to portrait.
“Missy, do you have any idea who you are talking to?” he growled to her.
“Somepony who ought to know the traffic rules,” Celestia snapped back with all the force of an ancient alicorn, and it ended up sounding painfully out of place coming from the body of a frumpy grease-pony.
“Could you please get moving, Pulley?” the voice from inside the wagon said. “I do have an appointment to keep.” The draft horse grunted and started to trot towards Celestia. When she refused to move, she simply pushed her aside and she fell onto the dirt and dust.
“You need to learn your place, missy!” he shouted to her as the wagon disappeared around a corner.
Celestia brushed herself off and tried to ignore the wall of eyes that was fixed on her from each side of the road. Once it became clear that she wasn't going to pick a fight with anypony else, the spectators got tired of gawking. Her wounded pride refused to heal easily, and she looked around for something to distract her mind with.
She listened to the rambling conversations between friends strolling down the street. She could only catch snippets, and her mind struggled to put all the pieces together into a coherent whole. One word kept popping up more often than it should: “revolution.”
She tasted the word in her mouth, and it repulsed her. She's heard it several times before, as regular as clockwork. Every time the country went through tough times , the poor and downtrodden ponies would shout about overthrowing the system, and so far the only thing it's ever accomplished was to create an even bigger mess for her to clean up.
She had been through droughts before, through floods and through fires, trough cold wars and trough actual wars. There was something cold about her dismissal of the fear she felt in the air, but there was nothing cruel about it. She would at least like to think she just saw a bigger picture than anypony else.
Celestia found herself staring for longer than she intended at an apple cart parked on the side of the road. The skin of the fruits had the shine that had been missing from Canterlot in the last few years.
There was nothing that required her to eat, but she had become quite addicted to flavours. There was something magical about how a few basic tastes, along with texture, temperature and aroma could combine into a unique experience.
The old mare who owned the car must’ve noticed the hungry but inscure look in Celestias eyes and she smiled reassuringly at her.
“See anything you like, dear?” she said to her.
“Uhm... yes actually...” Celestia said, trying to navigate trough the conversation. “I'd really like an apple, uhm, how much do they cost?”
“How much do you have?” she said and laughed. She stopped herself when Celestia responded with only silence and a blink.
“It was just a joke, dear,” the old mare said to her. “But I can't but a fixed prize on them. Some of the apples are better than others. Some of the ponies too.” She added the last part in a lower voice as she glared at a couple of young Modernist ponies that passed by, young ponies with their eyes outlined and their cutie marks concealed under cosmetics.
“I don’t have a problem with that style,” Celestia said to her. “I think it’s cute.” The old mare just snortled at this. “But five bits for the apples, is that enough?” The apple vendor suddenly got very wide eyes.
“Five bits!” she exclaimed. “Sweeite, wouldn't you rather use your money to buy a nice dinner for yourself?”
Celestia ended up paying two bits for the apple, and that was still too much. She couldn't see it, but behind her back, half a dozen street vendors looked towards her with looks like that of a bloodhound who had just caught a new scent.
The apple was just as delicious as she hoped, each bite released a moist explosion of sugar and esters that tickled her tounge. The slighty sour but pleasant taste of the apple distracted her from the fact that she had a trail of oppertunistic vendors talking her all the way to the university.
The lecture hall were slowly filling up with ponies. Celestia was relived to see many bright-eyed young ponies with faces mirroring her own disguise. The stage was taken up by a long draped table. The area in front of each space on the table was glowing faintly with magic and Celestia could recognize the unmisakeable shimmer of a sound amplification spell. The college still stuck to the tradition of using pure magic rather than magitek microphones, even tough amplification spells were notoriously unreliable.
The amplification worked on the level of thoughts rather than sound, and desynchronisation was inevitable during more rambling speeches. The amplification spell had been all but banned from political rallies due to its tendency to transmit what ponies mean rather than what they said.
The stage was more suited for theatrical performances than panel discussion. It was twice the size it needed to be and the pony in charge of the mise-en-scene had apparently decided to make the most out of it. Not only did it have four colourful banners reaching from floor to ceiling re resenting the earth ponies, the pegasi, the unicorns and finally the unity of all three, it also had the letters EqU, each carved in what appeared to be a block of marble the size of an alicorn and comically enlarged prop versions of an alchemy set, a chrystal ball, a crocodile skin and other assorted items you'd find in a magicians laboratory.
Celestia was early to the show, only one of the five professors attending was present: a black-maned unicorn engaged in a lively debate with a stage-hoof about the height of his pillow. She put herself in the kind of passive pre-meeting trance any royal was well familiar with. She reduced herself to an observer, took in the sense of the hall and its people without analyzing any of it. She let everything around her just happen until around fifteen minutes after the scheduled time, were finally all professors were in place and the debate could begin.
“Perhaps it might be useful to explain some of the difficulties the study of magitek faces,” a black-maned unicorn said from behind his beard and moon-shaped glasses. He had a sign in front of him with the name “liquorice Wand” written in thick gothic letters.
“Picture this, you have a large concrete wall and you want to paint a picture on the side of it that is so realistic that a pony could sprint towards it, thinking it is a real tunnel right to the point where their snout slams into the wall.
“Now imagine you do that, and then you hide in the bushes waiting for an unsuspecting victim to come along, a pegasus on a training run, let's say, and the pegasus fly right towards the tunnel... and then fly right trough it, as if the painting was real. Confused, you emerge from the bush and you study your mural.
“As you do so, you hear a whistle from the other side of the wall and a train comes out of your painted tunnel, crushing you instantly. Magitek is somewhat like that, you understand?”
A confused mumble emitted from the crowd.
“Well, neither do I,” said the unicorn. “And that's kind of the point. We know what magic can accomplish when it is performed by a fallible unicorn as opposed to a reliable machine and we know what machines can accomplish within the three dimensions, five fundamental forces and three laws of motion that make up the natural world as opposed to a hypothetical machine free of such restrictions.
Getting rid of either of these restrictions would be revolutionary on its own, but magitek offers us a way to do both, and that goes beyond revolutionary. Once magitek becomes reliable enough to integrate with ponies, we approach a point where it is literally impossible to predict what will happen beyond that. Even time-travel fails us, the few brave ponies who have tried have just gotten lost in a labyrinth of pararell universes and pararell sub-universes.”
“Y'know, Liquorice,” the unicorn next to him said. It was a gray and purple mare with the demeanour of somepony who may have looked a little too deep down a pint of cider or two before the debate. Her sign said Caramel Fudge, written in a way that made it look like the text was made out of one long continuous black rope.
“They say that a politican is somepone that can talk for hours without saying anything, and if that's the case, then you could probably become emperor of the universe at this point. What my colleague is trying to say is that we have no idea whatsoever if magitek will even work, but that won't stop the neckbeards from speculating, isn't that right, dr. Wand?”
Her smile was wide and nasty, but Liqourice Wand just growled to himself and said something, but it was muffled by his beard.
“My friend mr. Wand is right,” A honey-colored unicorn with a horn that was slightly crooked said. The sign in front of him spelled out “Agape” in a messy hoofwriting, each letter placed slightly above the next. “All elements of magitek ARE possible in isolation, it is just that, so far, nopony has put them all together in one device yet.”
“...and it's not for lack of trying,” said a brown earth pony, the only non-unicorn of the panelists, or indeed in the entire hall. The sign said simply “Mike” in letters indistinguishable from that of a typewriter. “The boys down at the lab have tried to make enhanced gears to work for months now, but even the tiniest differences in magic flux and the whole thing blows sky-high! Frankly, I think you need to send me some better unicorns, all I get are those zit-infested grad-students...”
“The grad students are not the problem,” Liqourice replied.
“Yes,” Caramel concurred. “It simply isn't possible for a unicorn to concentrate on that many gears at once, and we can't use several unicorns either, because each pony has a different magical frequency.”
“That's why we have to use clones!” a white and cyan unicorn said. His sign said “Salt Flats in a very geometrical font that seemed printed rather than written.
“It is a known fact that identical twins have the same magical frequency, all we need is an army of identical twins, at least...” He made a few calculations in the margins of the debate schedule. “twenty thousand of them.”
“And how do you propose we create twenty thousand identical ponies? That would require an enormous ammount of resourches, not to mention the fact that soul-splitting is ILLEGAL!”
“Hey, this is all hypothetical, right?” Salt Flats replied, leering across the table.
“Speaking of hypothetical arguments,” Vanilla Wand said from his corner. “Consider this, technology works by external forces, whatever you do it can never be part of you. But magic is an internal force.
“This is why every attempt to create true magitek have so far failed, but SHOULD we get it to work, the difference between the external natural forces and the internal force of magic would disappear, consider what consequences this will have for the Soul Theory, we could potentially be able to translate whatever force it is that holds our personality and consciousness into the mind of a machine.
“But, I know that prospect bothers some ponies,” he added and looked towards Caramel Fudge. She grinded her teeth and growled quietly at the glance. The amplification spell picked up on her toughts and broadcasted it as a word that wasn’t terribly. The moment went by too quickly for most ponies to notice, but a few stray giggles could be heard from those who did.
“That is not what bothers me,” Caramel Fudge said, her voice rising into a roar. “What if there IS a force that holds all our personality traits and memories, but not our consciousness. For the rest of the world it'd be like you were still there, but you, personally would be gone.” Caramel Fudge fell silent for a second and the air in the hall felt painfully charged.
“How to explain?” she said, a bit calmer. “There is this fungi that takes over the mind of an ant, and it changes its mind so that it climbs up a blade of grass to be devoured.
“Are you saying that magitek is some kind of mushroom?” Mike asked and scratched his scalp. “What kind of mushrooms are YOU on?”
“All I'm saying,” Caramel said, ”is that we shouldn't trust a force that by its very nature we can't understand...”
Celestia tried to listen, but the discussion turned to very tedious technical details and her notes morphed from messy but marginally useful scribbles into a sketch of her and Luna on the moon in a style that resembled that of a little child.
It was her sister who was the artist of the family, not her. She's seen Luna paint; the way she made hot red run like wildfire across the canvas before cooling it down with blue, then letting the two colors play with each other, like two siblings who could barely get along. And somewhere in this storm of hot and cool, bright and dark, of colors blending and clashing, an image appeared, each square inch with its own somber poetry to it.
As for Celestia, she drew a squiggle, gave it legs and a head and called it a pony. If she felt really fancy, she'd make one hoof slightly shorter than the rest to indicate perspective. Her stick-figure ponies lived in a two-dimensional world with buildings only twice the size of themselves and where everything more complex than ponies and houses had little helpful labels on them, indicating what they where supposed to represent.
Right now, the stick-ponies here all engaged in conflict, little cartoony skirmishes that took place on the streets and rooftops of her fictional village. Only her and Luna remained serene in their hiding place on top of a wobbly narrow moon.
A word jumped out to her in all the tedium, “immortality”. The prospect to live forever, with your soul in a machine (“Trapped” or “released” is a matter of opinion) was a hot topic in the debate.
The panelists all seemed at once fascinated and scared by this prospect, but nothing could match the invisible shiver that travelled trough Celestias spine. When she recovered, she noticed that she was alone in her row of seats.
“I'm glad some younger pony finds this sort of thing interesting....” an elderly professor remarked to her from a few rows behind.
Celestia looked around and noticed that the lecture hall were next to empty. All the bright young students were gone, except for her, leaving only a handful of grayed mares and stallions. By this point the conversation was mostly about esoteric theories and insider bickering, so Celestia saw no point in staying further as well. The professor looked slightly disappointed as she collected her pencil, ink and notebook and hurried towards the door.
It was as if the street vendors had been waiting for Celestia and they swarmed around her as soon as she exited the university. She ignored them expertly, however, even if a bit of her regal attitude shone through in how forcefully she dismissed them. As she made her way back towards the castle, she once again turned her ears towards the banter on the streets. A pair of revolutionaries where shouting from a street corner and Celestia observed them with a sly smile.
“Down with Celestia!” one of them shouted. “Let the ponies rule!” the other filled in.
In spite of herself, Celestia inched closer. One of the revolutionaries noticed her and trotted up to her, brandishing a pamphlet.
“Are you interested in the revolution, friend?” the pony said to her. Celestia was cornered and had no choice but to pick up the conversation.
“Uhm no... actually,” she said, stumbling on her words. “I was just wondering, when you bring down Celestia, what will happen then?” The revolutionary pony blinked a few times.
“What do you mean 'what will happen then?'” he asked. “A democratic rule-” Celestia interrupted him.
“Yes, but the princess isn't the only one with power around,” she explained. “Some of the noble families have more than enough resources for a private army. Enough to make them think they have a shot at the throne, should Celestias power be weakened.
“You could try to take her down, but all you would accomplish is giving some other, more powerful faction a chance to seize the power. So, tell me, which of the noble families would you most want to see as an usurper?”
While speaking, every trace of her dweeby college girl facade disappeared, she was still in her disguise, but the thousand year old flame in her eyes betrayed more than her spells could conceal. When she reached thee end, she had to quickly remind herself of her idenity.
The revolutionary pony didn't seem to notice this, he was too focused with trying to form a rebuttal in his head.
“Well,” he began. “I suppose she may be necessary for the balance of power at the moment, but we still do not like her or the way she rules!”
“You don't have to,” Celestia said coldly and left.
The journey back to the palace would otherwise be a straightforward one, but Celestia really wanted to avoid the revolutionaries after this, and it sent her slightly off course and she found herself looking down into dark alley she hadn't noticed before.
“Dark alley” is a bit of an exagurration, since Canterlot was still a shining city, at least the upper part of it was, but this alley was clearly painted with the invisible tar of poverty and decay.
She felt eyes upon her, and even tough she couldn’t see anypony, she could sense something in the air. It felt like the sort of deep tone that only the largest pipe organ can take that only the most sharp-eared pony can actually hear, but which affects you regardless. Celestia turned around to leave and...
“BOH!”
She darted into the alley, not thinking about the direction. She bumped straight into a stallion that looked like the worst part of the city had taken the form of a pony. He was joined by another stallion, who appeared grinning behind her.
“I got to admit,” he said. “I didn't think that would ever work.”
“You need to have faith, my friend,” said the other pony to him, then turned towards Celestia.
“We happened to notice that you where carrying around an unnecessary load of cash, and that's really bad for your posture, y'know?” he said, still using the same insincere tone as before. “I promise you, your back will thank you once we lighten your bit bag a bit.. .or a lot....”
“Like hay I will!” Celestia yelled, putting herself in a battle-ready position.
“Suit yourself,” the pony said. He gave a signal to the other and they both charged towards her.
Celestias eyes was glowing slightly, and the veins across her body popped up one after another until she was covered with a spider-web of bulges and grooves. Then it was like her entire body exploded back to her normal size, every organ, bone and nerve rushed to their rightful place.
The shriveled wings perked up as the skeletal structure underneath regenerated itself and the feathers unravelled all at once with a raspy sound that sounded like a weapon. The two robbers froze in their tracks, even before she revealed her horn, there was no mistaking who she was
Foals! Is this the way to treat a princess? Or anypony for that matter!” Celestias voice boomed. She was’t used to using the Royal Canterlot Voice, and if her sister had heard here, she’dve grimached at how badly it sounded. But next to nopony had ever heard it in at least a hundred years, and to untrained ears, even a bad facismile commanded respect.
“w-w—wer didn't know”, the two robbers stuttered, nearly in unison.
“That’s no excuse!” the princess continuied. “What would your mothers think if she knew you where assaulting random ponies? Have you even talked to your mothers, lately?”
“Uhm... no?”
“Then go talk to your mothers!” she demanded. “I’m sure they have some well-chosen words they’d like to say to you...”
“Yes princess!” the two ponies exclaimed and disappeared out of the alley. Celestia trotted the rest of the way to the castle in her true form, entirely unmolested.
Ampersand greeted her outside the palace door. She replied politely, but her greeting had an unusually heavy undertone that the eldery unicorn picked up on. He smiled at her reassuringly.
“Don't feel bad,” he said. “Everypony needs a day off now and then, especially in times like this. Don't worry, we will overcome the drought, we just need time.”
“I suppose so,” Celestia said and trotted past him. Ampersand turned around and sprinted alongside her.
“By the way princess,” he said. “Your magazines have arrived, I put them on the table outside your chamber.”
“Thank you, Ampersand,” she said, and her voice still sounded slightly hollow.
“To be honest, I was surprised to see your choice of reading material, princess... your majesty,” Ampersand said. “I didn't know you had an interest in this whole 'magitek' fad. Really, I don't understand what the big deal is, enhancing technology Is hardly a new thing.”
Celestia stopped in the middle of the corridor and turned around to face the old blue unicorn.
“I'll try to explain to the best of my understanding,” she said. “Some ponies call any magically enhanced technology “Magitek”, but it's the wrong use of the word. True magitek isn't just a magically enhanced machine, but a machine that can cast its own spells, to put it in blunt terms.”
The princess could pinpoint the exact moment where the full extent of this idea hit Ampersand like a horseshoe to the face.
“Wait, did you just say what I think you said?” he said. “And ponies are actually trying to make this?”
“Yes.”
“But, if, and it's a pretty big 'if', they succeed, what will happen?”
“I don't know,” Celestia said. “And that is what bothers me. When you've lived as long as I have done, you start noticing patterns most ponies fail to notice. So, whenever there's a new idea that captures ponies imagination, I can usually predict what will come from it before it's even caught on.
“But this... is different, If the full extent of this is realized, everything we know about magic will stop applying.”
Celestia fell silent and Ampersand didn't know what to respond to this. The silence echoed across the corridor, just long enough to be unbearable.
“But I suppose you're right,” she said. “We just need time. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a letter to finish.” The unicorn looked confused.
“The letter?” he said. “I have already sent it away.” Celestia raised an eyebrow.
“I’m sorry where you not done with that one?” Amperand asked.
“It was a little rough around the edges, but nevermind. I have one final task I need to accomplish, may I speak with Shining Armor?”
“I’ll patch him in on the Wireless, wait just a minute.” Ampersand went to a room at the end of the corridor and Celestia could hear the buzz of magic sparks coming from a loudspeaker. Once the static stopped, he returned.
“There you go,” he said. “He’s on the line.”
The Wireless was to Canterlot what the optical telegraph was to Equestria. A way to send information quickly trough a few important nodes. It worked by creating a wave in the field of background magic that could then be translated into sound by a loudspeaker.
It was clunky, hard to tune and only worked short distances, but Celestia remembered reading that over at the university they had discovered a new kind of wave they had chosen to call “radio waves”, and those was much more reliable and could broadcast things over longer distances.
The Wireless was just barely a year old, the optical telegraph barely three, but already they where becoming obsolete.
“Hello? hello?” Shining armors voice pleaded on the other end of the line, each word punctuated by a burst of static.
“I’m here, Shining.” Celestia said. “Have you done what I asked you to, yet?”
a sharp puff of noise from the other end, Shining was having trouble with the microphone.
“I can’t say I’m terribly fond of the idea, but yes. I’ve selected a group of ponies to monitor the most important magic frequencies, but since you never officially ordered me to do it, I’ll cease all surveillance the moment you use it for anything other than matters of security.”
“Celestia chuckled. “and if I should make it an order?”
“then you’d make it to some other captain of the royal guards.” he said and even the distorting power of the loudspeakers couldn’t mask the steely tone in his voice.
“I’m glad I wasn’t gonna make it an order then” Celestia said goodnaturedly. “Hiring a new captain would be such a pain, I’d have to find somepony as qualified for the job as you, and I’m not convinced there are another pony in Canterlot -or Equestria for that matter- that could match your talents.”
“Please Celestia,” Shining armour said. “Tell me you didn’t call me away just to flatter me?”
“No, I had another matter I wanted to deal with, I trust you had that special line I requested put up?”
“The one to the hotel? Yes, but I honestly don’t-”
“Could you patch me over to it? I assure that this is either very important or highly irrelevant, but I’m not sure which yet.”
There was another burst of static on the line, sounding suspiciously like a sigh.Then a harsh metallic noise that slowly rose until it resembled nothing but a series of clicks. The clicks joined together into a short square-wave tone that dissolved back into static.
As the static faded out, she could her Octavia’s voice, somewhat muffled, talking into what sounded like another speakerphone.
“Does the word ‘Cellist’ mean anything to you?” she asked to somepony Celestia could jsut barely hear.
“Well, in case you didn’t know,” Octavia continued. “It means that I play the Luna-cursed CELLO, do I have to break one over your head before you get it into your skull?”
The voice rasped out a sentence.
“Why yes, I CAN play the violin,” she informed him. “In much the same way as I can play blindfolded. I am able to do it, but I am a musician, not a circus act and... no, that was NOT an invitation to do the concert blindfolded, I don’t care how ‘cool’ that would be... Oh, Celestia ,when I’m done with this bucking contract, I will shove this violin SO FAR up your-”
Celestia took the opportunity to switch back to Shining.
“Well, I hope THAT was informative,” he said with sarcasm that no amount of static could mask.
“Informative? Maybe. Entertaining? Definitely.” Celestia said. “I pity the event organizers tough.”
“Yes, should we tell her that you where the one requesting the violin?”
“Let’s not, at least not until she’s... ahem... calmed down somewhat.”
“Will you ever tell me WHY spying on Octavia is so important?” Shining asked.
“Probably not.” Celestia said. “Besides, I’m old, aren’t I entitled to a little eccentricity?”
there where silence on the other end or a moment.
“Some ponies thought you where eccentric enough when you decided to take my little sister under your wings. He said.
“So I supposed I’ve learned to trust your instincts. I’ll teach Ampersand how to access that line so you won’t have to call on me every time you wish to be eccentric, tough.”