Consequences and Truth
"What do you mean, I can't use the name 'pony express'?"
"It is quite simple - it is a trademark used by my clients. While it is used less often than 'friendship express', it remains in effect, and any use of it without my client's permission would lead to severe legal consequences."
"And what would it take to get that permission?"
"Something on the order of ownership of the entire operation, I believe."
I sighed. "Fine. We'll come up with another name."
"There is still the matter of your previous unauthorized use of the term, and payments owing therefrom-"
"Don't push your luck."
"Hrmph!"
"As you can see, the typical monster rampage tends to last under one day, and nearly all last under one week; by reducing the shelter food and water requirements from two weeks to one, we can slash the costs, increase the capacity, or both."
"Hm... I still want to have at least some shelters capable of fortnight-level accommodations. Maybe we can set multiple tiers of shelters - bronze star for at least one day, silver for a week, gold for a fortnight. That could also let ponies start building lots of bronze-level shelters at a low cost, and upgrade as they have the funds."
"Are you sure you want to complicate the requirements that way? Perhaps an additional set of studies..."
"Look, when a hydra comes rampaging into town, as long as following the shelter signs gets me to somewhere I won't be eaten, I'm probably not going to be worrying about the complicated details. A one-day minimum seems like a good start, and anything above that is a bonus."
"Yes, ma'am."
"I don't know why you wanted it - but here's your report on the minimal amounts of food and resources required to establish a self-sufficient island colony, capable of creating its own daughter colonies."
"Hm... I don't see anything about minimum population size."
"Is that important?"
"Too small a founding population can lead to inbreeding. If I remember right, the rule-of-th... er, the rough-and-ready rule is fifty individuals for short-term survival, five hundred to prevent inbreeding, and five thousand for long-term survival. Please take this back and try again, with that in mind."
"And here's our logo for the Boogieman Defense Squads!"
"Um... I'm not sure if you've noticed, but it kind of looks like, um... <whisper whisper whisper>"
"Oh. Oh! Ah. Well, that was entirely unintentional, I assure you. Do you think anyone else would notice?"
"Yes. Yes, I'm sure they would."
"Ah. Back to the drawing board, then, I guess."
"So, what's next?"
"Flower appreciation club."
"... Not flower arranging club? Or flower growing club?"
"Nope. They just like looking at pretty flowers."
"Um. That doesn't really give us much to work with. I've heard of flowers bred to bloom in different colors if the soil contains certain substances... but I'm guessing you haven't got those here."
"Can't say I've heard of them."
"Okay. Hm... How about, um, taking long walks to look at flowers, and while they're walking, they keep an eye out for... anything unusual?"
"I haven't got anything better."
"Okay, add 'em to the scout pile. Next?"
"Flour appreciation club."
"You're joking."
"Nope."
I sighed.
"Thank you for coming to see me, Miss Cheerilee."
"It's my pleasure, Miss, er, Missy. And thank you for paying for a Canterlot vacation."
"There is one thing I'd like to ask you while you're here."
"If it's about becoming a personal tutor, I'm afraid that I'm quite dedicated to teaching Ponyville's children full-time."
"That's precisely why I wanted to talk to you - you are the one pony I know on the front-lines of Equestria's educational system... and you get to deal with some of the most, ah, rambunctious colts and fillies. I have the Princess's permission to try to work out some improvements to the curriculum - I'm particularly interested in expanding a unit on first-aid procedures. But I'd also like to present it in a way that doesn't, um, encourage the little ones to take additional risks. So I'm hoping to pick your brain for any ideas you would care to offer..."
"Ah, so it's to be a working vacation..."
"The purpose of guerrilla warfare is to continue resistance in those parts of the land occupied by an hostile force, or to continue the fight after the defeat of the regular Guard. However, guerrilla units require a nucleus of experienced troops, to serve as instructors and leaders..."
"No, we need to have all the towers using the same signal system, to avoid slowdowns from converting from one to another."
"But that semaphore-arm system you rejected is so much more graceful!"
"Grace has its place - but is a secondary concern to cost, speed, reliability, and expandability. Starting with a six-shutter system requires only a fraction of the cost of swing-arms, and can be easily upgraded to eight shutters, or more, once the operators have gotten the hang of the starting system."
"But... the elegance."
"Look, if you want to work on the semaphore system on your own time, and present it as a competing system, go right ahead - but I'm still going to need that list of simplified Equestrian letters sorted by frequency of use, to work out a decent binary encoding system..."
"But green vests with yellow stripes clash with my mane! I'm an autumn, not a spring!"
"I think I've figured out why the Princesses troll so much - it's the only way they can keep sane. I've been at this for less than a month, and I'm already just about off my rocker."
"Mm," Red agreed, tossing a piece of popcorn into her mouth. "You do need to relax more."
"What do you call what I'm doing now?"
"I'd hardly call this relaxing. Good air time with that last pie, though."
"You haven't seen anything yet. Pull!"
“You know, I granted immortality once.” Floaty Goth Chick was sitting in a tree branch high above me, playing with a golden scarab. She looked tired and...old.
I made noises of polite interest.
“It was before your time, before Rome. I was young, and I was in love. I begged the gods to make him forever young, so that we could be together forever. They granted my foolish request, and we were happy. But then he changed, he became cruel, and cynical as the years pressed down. He wasn’t happy being the husband of a goddess, sitting on a small throne in a corner of the Underworld, watching my father conduct his business. He wanted to be like me. I granted him godlike strength and invulnerability, I taught him magic, and he was content with his new powers. But time changes us, and he desired a kingdom of his own.” She trailed off, her eyes growing haunted.
“It sounds like something other than his immortality might have been the problem there.”
“Humans are meant to change, to evolve. The roots of his corruption were buried deep in his soul, it is true, but the same could be said of any mortal. Humans were not born when Zeus breathed life into a clay figurine, they were spawned out from the Sea of Chaos alongside the gods. There is Good and there is Evil in even the most pure heart, and time will eventually wear away until only one remains.”
“Assuming that by ‘Sea of Chaos’ you mean the randomness of mutation filtered by the process of evolution through natural selection...” I smiled up at her, but then turned back to being serious as I continued with my main point, “Going only by what you have told me so far... this fellow sitting in a throne in the underworld... did he have any opportunity to actually make positive changes, to improve things for the people around him - to make a positive difference in his life and actually be Good?”
“Good is a matter of perspective.” I snorted but remained silent. She continued, “But if you mean that was he allowed to participate in the dealings of the Court, then the answer is yes. He was my husband, my love, and he was wise. My father listened to him, but the abode of the Dead is no place for the living. You speak as if we gods do nothing for the world, but you are wrong. We defend you humans from the monsters, the hydra, the Minotaur, the demons of the Pit, they are real and they are contained by us.”
“Are we to eternally be children then? Or will there ever be a time when we start defending ourselves?”
“You truly are blind. There have been countless mortal heroes: Jason, Theseus, Perseus, sons of Man all that stood against the darkness to bring forth a brighter dawn.”
“Precisely my point. Single individuals, granted gifts by the gods - when they weren’t being played with by them - who the rest of individuals surrounding them depended on. What about the carpenter who repaired the hammers that built the Argo, or Perseus’ cup-holder? Their names are forgotten by humanity - but if they had been granted the same gifts, the same opportunities, who is to say that the brighter dawn might not have been brighter still?”
“Do you not have that already? A child with a handgun is mightier than the most vicious, battle-hardened lion.”
“And the knowledge that allows such weapons has also led to penicillin, to a dozen men having walked on the Moon, and many more improvements to ordinary life... improvements that could have eased much suffering had they been known even earlier.”
“There is truth in what you say, but you are forgetting something. Do you think this did not occur to us? You will recall that it was Prometheus who taught the use of fire to your kind, and saved you when you would have been devoured by the wilderness.”
“And was punished with having his liver eternally plucked out by Zeus for doing so - at least until a poisoned Chiron gave up his immortality to ease that sentence. If the idea of improving humanity’s lot occurred to the Olympians, it wasn’t a well-received idea.”
“And when has it ever been said that the gods were faultless? We are capable of making mistakes, but the burden we bear is that those mistakes might doom an entire species! What would you do if so much as a sneeze caused a star to explode?”
“Besides invent antihistamines - one of the basic principles to managing existential risks is to spread out any vital resources, such as a single planet holding the entirety of sapient life - so that any single mistake does not cause total and utter devastation. And to arrange matters so that each vital resources is capable of protecting and managing its own affairs without your help, so that they can concentrate on what’s important for them, managing their problems to the best of your ability; freeing yourself to manage your own issues.”
“In one breath you condemn us for not helping you more, and in the next you argue that you should be left alone to your own devices.”
“The same problem faces any parent trying to raise a child who can be self-reliant. The only difference is that you don’t seem to see yourselves as parents, just... game-players, and us as toys rather than having the potential of becoming something in our own right.”
“You are not wrong, but you are not right either. Some see the lives of mortals as nothing but strings to be pulled, a game to be played, but remember Prometheus. Remember the punishment he endured to save you. If that is not love, than what is?”
“I have nothing but respect for Prometheus - in the times I believe that the supernatural might exist, I’ve considered his acts as a model to aspire to. But there seem to be all too few Prometheii, and all too many Zeuses and eagles.” I gave a quick glance upwards, at the possible gods who it had turned out might be up there after all. “No offense.”
“Zeus is a young god, granted not as young as me, but you will recall he was the last child sired by Kronos. A boy king thrust upon a throne and called to war on the day of his birth, it tends to skew one’s perceptions a bit.”
“Which brings us all the way to the present - should I simply allow the Zeuses of the world to arrange things the way they wish... or shall I work to make the lot of humanity - and ponies, and cows, and all other sapience - as great as I possibly can manage?”
“Even gods need heroes.” With that cryptic statement, she disappeared with a hollow boom. It was only then that I'd realized she’d been missing an arm.
I gave a parting statement to the vanished goddess, in case she, or anyone else, was listening: “But what happens when the heroes no longer need gods?”
(Author's Note: This is another crossover with Forevermore's Skeleton Jack.)
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874989
That's certainly an answer.
Another is that when there aren't any self-proclaimed wise and powerful beings watching over you, then not only do you have to figure out what the possible answers are on your own, but you also have to figure out how to figure out which of those possible answers are true, and which ones are false.
Ack, stupid Envi-Sci classes. Making me think about the book Ishmael. All of humanities progress is within this entire chapter, and sparsed throughout your story. It gave me too many flashbacks and analysis for my liking, though I'm trying to rationalize it away by saying the ponies are better at living.
Prometheii? Really? Really.
Also, I'm fairly certain that it was Prometheus who crafted man from clay, not Zeus.
Please tell me where you learned this and if there is any truth to this idea. I'm not sure if it's good or bad that it didn't immediately occur to me how familiar that sounded. *grins*
1344520
I wish I actually did remember; while Wikipedia's numbers seem to come reasonably close, I can't actually seem to find any actual online reference for the 50/500/5000 rule-of-thumb.