Littlepip grabbed her toolbox, the generation II Pip-Buck, and its projections and sat outside the door marked “Spare Parts.” It had been three days since she had started work on the Pip-Buck. She laughed to herself when she saw the meager process she had made in that time span.
The past three days, like every single day of her life, were a blur to her. She could discern no specifics, only the generalities: that is, she had woken up, had eaten, had worked, and had slept. Just like every other day. These were her only constants. And those days had held them constant.
But it’s not my fault, she thought. It’s these damn first-angle projections! “Damn, damn, damn first-angle projections!” she shouted.
She was taken aback by the manner in which she had pronounced those words. Why the outburst? It really wasn’t that big of a deal. She would figure it out eventually. She was a good, diligent worker. Such an inconvenience did not warrant such an outburst. Am I cursing at something else? she thought—then, she shook her head. Useless line of reasoning. I have to get back to work. I’m not fed to think. They expect me to repair Pip-Bucks, and that’s it. And that’s all I want. That’s all that’s desired of me; that’s all that will ever be desired of me; and that’s all I’ll ever do or be good at. Why strive for anything else? I know my place. I’ve always known my place.
She used a forehoof to brush some of the grain-sized pieces of glass out of her mane. They clinked to the floor with a pleasant ring.
The poster of Velvet Remedy was gone. Stable-Tec’s poster was still there. She noticed nothing.
With a very deliberate magic, she held steadily the screwdriver and removed the screws to the Pip-Buck’s casing. She caught the back of the casing as it fell off. Wires spilled out of the body of the Pip-Buck. Carefully, she took the motherboard, untangled the wires, and turned it over.
And then she laughed.
One of the easiest to replace chips was fried. The CPU was fine; the RAM was fine; the fans were fine; it was the one chip, burned out, a chip that nearly every electronic in Stable 2 used. It was a matter of unscrewing the chip, taking a new one from a junk electronic, and using it to replace the old one.
She opened the door to the closet marked “Spare Parts.” On the second shelf, she kept a variety of electronics. Some of them were harder to open than others, and she scanned the items one-by-one, trying to find the one she thought would be the easiest to open: a run-down ceiling fan, an old computer speaker, a dusty alarm clock, a small set of earphones, a fractured oscilloscope, some weird sort of tablet computer, a prewar wireless telephone, an e-reader, a video game controller, the rusted body of an old robot.
She scratched her head. Finally, she decided that the alarm clock would be the easiest to open and pulled it from the shelf.
The rest was routine. With a few flicks of the screwdriver, the case was off, the chip removed and replaced, and the reset button of the Pip-Buck pressed.
The Pip-Buck flared to life.
She was about to leap for joy when she noticed that the text on the screen was blurry. She flipped through the different on-screen menus in a vain attempt to fix it. Resetting it again didn’t help.
It didn’t like the chip. Perhaps it had something to do with varying voltages? she thought. But how would I be able to measure that?
She glanced back into the closet and saw the oscilloscope. It looked as if it would probably have to be repaired before it could be used. She looked back to the Pip-Buck and shrugged. I’ve worked on you long enough, she thought. I’ll get back to you later. I need an oscilloscope anyway.
She thrust her head back into the closet to get a better look. God, she thought, that oscilloscope really is in disarray. What’s that wire doing on top of the casing? How did that get there? That won’t be easy to put back in—wherever the hell it goes.
But she was confident. She had repaired the Pip-Buck that she had thought were irreparable. Why not this oscilloscope? Why can’t I put this wire back where it belongs? All electronics are the same, anyway.
She levitated the oscilloscope out of the closet, balancing the wire on top, and set it on the floor next to the Pip-Buck. “Now, where do you go . . .” she said, extending her hoof to the wire.
It yielded unresistingly to her touch. It floated a few centimeters off the case, hovered in midair for a split second, then fluttered lightly back down.
She laughed. “It’s a wire.”
She picked it up with the bottom of her hoof. It swayed in the air as she pulled it toward her.
“No,” she said, through her teeth, “it’s a wire.”
She brought it close to her face.
“No, it’s a wire!” It quivered as every one of her shallow breaths brushed it. It swayed like a sail to catch the air of her exhalations.
It was a single, thick strand of golden bronze hair.
She dropped it and staggered backward. She was vaguely aware that her mouth was open.
Her feet could not find their places on the floor. She tried to regain her balance as she felt a weight on her spine. She felt as if the ceiling had come down upon her, crushing her, smothering her. Every time a leg slipped, she would shift her weight to another one, and then that one would slip, and she would shift again, and her body sank lower and lower while the ceiling became ever more heavy. Her muscles burned from exhaustion; her head burned with the half-shaped knowledge of what she was doing; and her eyes watered in response. The weight continued to strain her, only augmenting in magnitude as her efforts increased; until the exertion demanded by the task required more oxygen than there was in the air. She collapsed, belly first, feeling her spine broken, completely shattered, destroyed by the unbearable burden of the roof of the stable.
In Stable 2, the door which is marked “Spare Parts” is nearly always left open. It opens upon a very small room on the floor just above the basement, just below the living quarters, two floors below the cafeteria. The room or, to speak more accurately, the closet, is quite small, about one meter by one meter by three meters. One can usually find the Pip-Buck repair technician in front of this door in one of six poses: standing, crouching, sitting, prone, lying on her back, or prostrate. Each one of these poses corresponded to the difficulty of a problem.
She was now prostrate.