At precisely ten in the morning, Mayor Mare stood in her office on the top floor of Town Hall, staring at the "telephone" and waiting for it to ring.
Coils of black wires snaked around a grey metal armature tall enough for the wide cone of its speaker (“receiver”, the instructions said) to look her in the eye. One other like it existed, in Twilight Sparkle's laboratory in Canterlot. The pair had been constructed there at great expense. (Fortunately, the princess had agreed that the castle would pay for it.) Four earth ponies had pulled the cart that carried this one from the train station in a wooden crate as large as an altar. Its mouthpiece and speaker gaped at her from behind a tangle of wires, like an ancient one-eyed, open-mouthed idol half-hidden in vines.
The princess said that it would allow Ponyville to call on the castle for assistance or advice as quick as dragonfire. It would eliminate the confusion and inefficiency of administrating by correspondence. It didn't seem to have occurred to her that a local administrator might be uneasy having a princess—a goddess?—looking over her shoulder, checklist in hoof, ready with a helpful, infallible suggestion.
Still, the mayor was determined to see this as an honor, not a trial. She’d climbed the steps to her office in darkness early that morning, carrying in her teeth the oil lamp that now hung from a hook over the desk, to have time to go over all the latest news and figures before this—test. She'd carefully arranged the most-relevant papers on her desk for ready reference. She would be the model of efficiency and professionalism. No box would go unchecked today, not on her watch.
She looked at the device again, and wondered if it would hurt.
Just then the big brass bell mounted below the mouthpiece rang, startling her into a little jump. Its wires began to glow a faint violet. She squeezed her head in between the twin cones of the mouthpiece and speaker, trying not to touch any of the twitching wires which dangled around her.
"HELLO? HELLO?" she shouted into the mouthpiece.
"Ow! You don't have to shout!" somepony said into her left ear.
Mayor Mare shied back and bumped her head on a bracket, then twisted her head to the side, looking for the other pony, before recognizing that the voice was Princess Twilight Sparkle's and it was coming from the machine. "Oh! Sorry, Your Majesty!" She rubbed the back of her head. "Goodness. I really heard you."
"Isn't it amazing?" the voice gushed, and the mayor thought she heard a clop of hooves. For a moment she imagined the eager young filly who had showed up in Ponyville just a few years ago, and had to shake her head to clear it. "It's like being in the same room together!" Twilight went on.
But it was not merely like being in the same room together; it was like the other mare was whispering into her ear. The mayor remembered with a chill an earth pony stallion, not much over twenty, whom she’d signed over to Canterlot’s psychiatric ward because he said he heard the voices of gods in his head.
"So!" she said. "It works."
"Yes!" the princess agreed.
"Yes."
Silence.
"Congratulations. I was certain that it would."
"Oh, well, the principles are straightforward, I can't take credit for that. Just a simple modulation of induced ley lines. The demodulator was the sticking point, you know—"
"Really?"
"Oh, yes! Of course there's more noise on the receiving end, but more importantly the power available is lower, so you can't simply drive the speaker with a transducer. You need a—well, a kind of gate that lets you use a small magical current to switch a larger one on and off."
"Oh."
"Yes."
Silence.
"So how is everyone in Ponyville? Are they getting the harvest in at Sweet Apple Acres?"
"I have all their paperwork here… just one minute, Princess!" The mayor stepped away from the phone and opened a filing cabinet, running her hoof over the yellow manila folders until she found the one she wanted and set it down on her desk. She glanced over it and then stepped back to the phone.
"They haven't filed their estimated taxes yet for the quarter, but they have submitted a permit application for a new outbuilding, 40 by 50 hooves, which I would assume is for increased storage capacity. Barn sanitary inspection passed last sugar moon. Cider permit applied for, fee paid, not yet issued but I foresee no problems..."
"No," the princess interrupted, "I just meant... How are they doing?"
The mayor hurried back to her desk and scanned through the folder again, scratching her chin, then ran back to the telephone. "Well... they are undertaking new construction, so I would assume they are expanding?"
"No, I mean... Are you getting ready for the Running of the Leaves?"
"Everything is on schedule!" the mayor said. "The safety inspector has already gone over the course and marked every hole or irregularity that needs regrading." She peered over at one of the notes on her desk. "The contract was up for bid again this year, went to... Clyde and Dale's Hauling. Estimated cost, one-hundred thirty-five bits, based on..."
"That's fine. I'm sure they'll do a wonderful job. I... I just want to know what's happening."
"I sent out the last moon's report by airmail this morning. It has probably already arrived in the Canterlot post office. That contains a cost/benefit analysis for five proposed infrastructure projects, a compilation of the weekly crime and Everfree-event reports, a complete breakdown of amendments to the yearly budget projections, and this year's standardized test scores from the school by quartiles."
"That's all potentially fascinating," Twilight’s voice said. "But... how are you?"
The mayor blinked. "How am I?"
"Yes."
The question took her so much by surprise that she nearly tried to actually answer it before she remembered her manners. "I'm fine, thank you. How are you?"
"Fine!"
"Good."
"Yes."
Silence.
"How's everypony else?"
"Um... fine?"
"Oh. Well. That's good."
"Yes."
Silence.
"If you ever want to talk, you know," Twilight said, "now you can just call me!"
"You must be very busy," the mayor said.
"Not too busy for you! Or anypony else from Ponyville who wants to talk. I'm right here."
Mayor Mare stared at the speaker and wondered how she was supposed to interpret that, but its smooth metallic surface gave nothing away. She said similar things herself about her "open-door policy," but everypony knew they weren't supposed to take it literally. "Thank you," she finally said. "We are all aware of and appreciate your concern for Ponyville. It's enough for us to know you haven't forgotten us."
"But, no, no, it isn't!" the princess insisted. "It... I..."
Silence again.
The mayor's ears drooped. Something was going wrong, and she had no idea what. There was something the princess wasn’t telling her. Something she was supposed to figure out.
Had she omitted some crucial element of protocol or piece of information? She pawed through the papers on her desk that she had so neatly organized that morning, sending half of them sailing toward the floor, hoping some clue would leap out at her, but none did.
Well, she had to say something. She scurried back to the telephone. "Princess? Are you there?"
"Yes! Yes, I'm still here!"
She took a deep breath. "I've got some other news for you. We've, we've, I'm not supposed to tell you yet, but, we've done some fundraising—all private donations, no public funds at all—to put a statue of you in the town square!"
More silence.
"A statue of me?" The princess’ voice went flat and pulled away, as if the mayor had asked her about her back-taxes.
"Yes! Of course, it will be very dignified, very tasteful. Something inspirational. I mean it's all in the preliminary stages, but definitely inspirational."
This time the silence went on much longer.
"Can you please... not?"
The mayor leaned her ear up closer against the speaker. "Sorry, Princess. Did you say, 'not'?"
"Yes."
"As in, not build a statue?"
"Yes, that's right."
“Oh.”
Silence.
"I mean, there are already a couple of statues of me in Canterlot. And now that sculptor from Prance, Cold Chisel, is doing one."
"Cold Chisel is making a statue of you? The... that pony from the Academy of Prance? The one who carves marble?"
"Yes. He made me sit in one position for over an hour. It was awful."
The mayor stepped over to the table, grabbed a pencil in her teeth, and slashed three lines through “Order concrete for statue” on one of the checklists.
“No statue,” she told the princess.
“Oh, thank you. It would have been, um... awkward?"
Mayor Mare wrinkled her brow. What made an association with Ponyville awkward now? Upcoming trade negotiations? Court intrigue?
Or was it just… Ponyville itself?
She realized that she had never heard the names of any of the other princess’ hometowns, or even whether they still existed. And of course Ponyville wasn’t really Twilight’s hometown at all. It just filled in the gap between her offices in Canterlot, like a menial job on an otherwise-sterling resume that you explained by saying you’d been “finding yourself.”
Still, the mayor couldn’t shake the feeling that not wanting a statue of her in Ponyville had something to do with whatever it was the princess didn’t want to say directly. The secret reason for this conversation.
"Was there... something more you wanted to talk about, Princess?"
Another few seconds of silence.
"No. I guess not."
"If there's anything else you want, just say so! We’re all at your service."
"Please," the princess said, "don't worry. It's fine."
Fine. The word had never sounded so gentle and damning. The room felt hot and humid, and too small for her, the desk, and this wired monstrosity. She stepped away from the telephone and opened a window, which fell open with a bang.
"What was that?"
"Nothing," the mayor called out, returning to the phone and putting her face up to the mouthpiece again. "Nothing. I opened a window." She wondered how a telephone conversation ended, particularly one with a princess.
"Wait!" the princess’ voice said. "Maybe… maybe there is one thing you could do for me."
"Yes?"
"Could you... hang the mouthpiece, that thing you're speaking into, out the window?"
"Out the window?"
"Yes. Out the window. I want to... check its reception."
The mayor grasped the mouthpiece between her teeth and pulled it to the window, carefully unwinding from around a spool the rope-like cord connecting it to the machine. She dropped the mouthpiece out the window and it fell, dangling loosely a few hooves below.
There was nothing to hear. The creak of a cart rolling by down below. The saloon doors clapping back together after somepony. A rooster crowing far away. A salespony's voice from the market, rising and falling as the wind shifted, saying something about cherries. Nothing that could possibly interest somepony from Canterlot.
A few earth ponies trudging slowly through the dusty streets below, dried mud caked on their shoes, sometimes pausing to nip at a fly or flick at it with their tails. At least the princess couldn’t see that.
The thing's reception must have been thoroughly checked, but the speaker remained silent. Rather than disturb the princess, the mayor quietly shut the window as best she could, leaving the mouthpiece hanging down below.
The clock on the wall said it was a quarter past ten. She sighed, returned to her desk, and began to re-organize her papers. But after every tap of her hooves or scratch of her pencil she glanced over her shoulder towards the window. She needed air but was afraid to breathe too loudly. So she laid her pencil down gently and tiptoed out of the room, leaving Equestria’s newest goddess to her own inscrutable thoughts.