Aureax Ferri

by Integral Archer

First published 28th of December, 2012

A side-story to Ordo ab Chao: A young inventor takes drastic measures to ensure that the government of the Union sees his machine for the genius it is.

After the total loss of the federal forces at Ghastly Gorge, the threat of the rebellion has suddenly become very real. The gears of the machine of the Union are now spinning solely for the purpose of a civil war—a war that they are now not entirely certain they will be able to win decisively.

Crystal Miner, a young unicorn with a strange iron band around his horn, has spent the last five years of his life working on a machine that he thinks will allow the Union Army to crush the rebellion once and for all; and, on July the second, he casually strolls into the Department of Magic and Defense, eager to show them his work of art.

Of course the Department will buy it; it's genius. Why would they reject genius? If they say no—no, he can't let that happen. He won't allow his gift to the world to be glanced over by ignorant bureaucrats as long as he is still alive. He, and it, needs—deserves to be remembered. They will buy his invention whether they like it or not—even if it means he has to march straight up to the Horseshoe Office with a fully-loaded rifle and confront the president of the Union himself.

This is a side-story to Ordo ab Chao and takes place near the end of the events of Chapter X.

Part I

On July the second, 181 BC, the employees at the headquarters of the Department of Magic and Defense heard a frightful cry from the lobby. Whether they were on the top floor of the building or in the basement, they heard it clearly, for the sound caused the very walls of the building to vibrate. The artificial impediments to such distractions proved impotent against its fury, and it made its way through the building, if not through windows carelessly left open, via the ventilation system. It was a sound unlike anything they had heard before. It was not quite the scream of a wild beast, nor was it the battle cry of a soldier of the Union Army, but the closest comparison they could make was that it was simultaneously a blend of both while being neither. In its tones, it carried insistence, imperativeness, arrogance, and egoism—but, above all, it conveyed malice and anger, like in those of the wails of an impuissant prey thrashing insanely, wantonly, in the jaws of a hungry, powerful animal.

The movement of ponies on the stairs of the building was jammed to a standstill with a flowing mass of curious, slightly unnerved employees; each one of them had heard the sound, and each one of them wanted to know its source. If an employee was aggressive enough and managed to shove aside his coworkers to make it into the lobby, he would have seen a sight perhaps more terrifying than the reports of the destruction caused by the engagements of the Union Army with the Army of the Friendship near the city of Los Pegasus; for this sight was corporeal, immediate, and brought the emotions, the fears, and the apprehensions of the conflict right to the doorstep of those who would rather turn away and help its progress from behind closed shutters.

“You’re idiots! Do you hear me? Do you even want to listen? All of you, complete idiots! Don’t you know what you’re throwing away? You’re going to die, all of your soldiers are going to die—your esteemed army of the Union, wiped out—because of you worthless, wretched bureaucrats! You don’t see genius!”

Across the floor of the spacious lobby of the Department of Magic and Defense, a unicorn with a deep shade of blue-green fur and with limbs and bones as thin as wire, with a leather sash bearing multiple pockets slung across his body, and whose golden-brown mane sprawled messily across his face, had both of his forelegs grasped firmly by two large, muscular gendarmes and was being dragged backwards toward the main doors. The unicorn was thrashing his hindlegs madly, trying in vain to find some sufficient friction on the marble floor in order to slow his advance or trying to plant a kick on the steel face of one of the two gendarmes, who simply leaned their heads slightly away from the crazed animal and walked with unfazed stares as the hindlegs cut past their ears, catching nothing but air. As the unicorn screamed these words, his head twisted from left to right in sharp, intermittent, convulsive jerks—as if trying to propel the words in every single direction in order for more ears to hear his pleas—and every time it turned, the rays of the sun, pouring in from the lobby’s skylight, bounced off an iron band on the base of the unicorn’s horn.

“Where’s the director of this sorry excuse for a department?” the unicorn wailed. “I want to see the director!”

There was another unicorn on the floor as well: A tall, auburn unicorn with a pince-nez sitting on her short nose, the tails of her coat twirling behind her as she made her exaggerated strides, and a silver necklace dangling a small diamond over her chest. She was walking behind the two gendarmes, cool, calm, collected despite the insults being thrown at her by the pony with the iron band. The smug smirk and the pompous march that the auburn pony assumed made those who were observing the scene instantly recognize her as Vice Director June Ripples; and the way she walked mere feet behind the convoy, the way she maintained eye contact and looked down on the pony being dragged helplessly, embarrassingly, backwards out of the building, made those that were watching realize that she was in one of her moods again—that mood, caused by various, unknown sources and triggered by the absence of her only superior, the diffident director, which compels her to humiliate one of her subordinates while in the Department’s hallways for her own amusement; and now that the director was gone, inexplicably vanished, this mood became more pervasive, the norm; for this was now her territory, her domain, the only place where she had any real power; and she glanced dogmatically at those who were watching, a supercilious smile creeping onto her lips, a smile that is only given when one knows that there is nopony above her, nopony who could contest or patronize her—and when she took a deep breath of satisfaction, the employees of the Department of Magic and Defense turned away and muttered silent prayers, begging some unknown, unseeable force to bring their director safely home to save them from this officious substitute.

The onlookers could see Vice Director Ripple’s horn glowing with light and a strange-looking rifle, surrounded by the same color of light, hovering slightly to the side of her. The vice director, yawning, twirled the odd rifle—a rifle that had no ramrod seated under its muzzle, a short barrel, and a peculiar-looking latch under its stock—in the air like a baton, and the more it spun, the louder and angrier the blue-green unicorn became.

As soon as the front door was opened, the blue-green unicorn was thrown, by the muscular forelegs of the gendarmes, several feet into the air; and he landed, chin-first, on the concrete sidewalk in front of the building. The impact of his body on the ground broke the buckle on one of the pockets on his sash, and from the pocket erupted a flow of bright conical tubes tipped with lead, their bodies made of brass. One after the other, they clattered to the ground, scattering, as if they were the physical manifestations of the pieces of the blue-green unicorn’s ego, and rolled slowly, unhurriedly, down the slightly sloped incline of the sidewalk. Two of them banked off the curb and fell into the narrow cracks of a street gutter, winking out of existence with two, almost silent, splashes.

The unicorn sat up, turned around, and clasped a forehoof to his mouth, trying to catch the stream of blood that was now flowing freely from his bottom gums. As he sat on the concrete, looking up at the gendarmes who had thrown him, their expressions unchanged, as if they had just performed a task menially equivalent to taking out the trash, he saw the auburn unicorn emerge from behind them.

Vice Director Ripples yawned again. Her horn stopped glowing, and her magic released the rifle and allowed it to crash with a loud noise to the ground. The blue-green unicorn, on the concrete, unable to hide the blood coming from his mouth, let out a stifled cry and held his other hoof out, as if to stop the vice director, as if to ask her to spare him from something.

This caused the vice director to laugh derisively. “You know, Mr. Miner,” she said, her horn starting to glow again, “I could easily have you arrested for this.” The pince-nez that had been sitting on her nose began to levitate, and from out of her coat’s breast pocket flew an off-white rag. As the rag began to wipe the rims of the glasses, she added: “And no pony would ever hear from you again. I must say, although I disagree with the president on many things, I could not agree more with his suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. It allows us to be more efficient, and no time is wasted in those petty, unstimulating trials, while hooligans such as you are left running around on the street and stirring up ruckus.”

The blue-green pony’s brow furrowed, and he removed his hoof from his mouth, showing his bared teeth and the blood that was coming from them.

“But,” continued the vice director, “your performance was absolutely remarkable! Never have I, nor my employees, gotten a better laugh! You know, with all the hardship we’ve had lately, with all the killing and destruction and whatnot, we really did need a jester like you to come and lighten up our day. Bravo, Mr. Miner, bravo! Please come back sometime and entertain us with your inanities and absurdities! But I must ask you not to put on this performance again; when you come back, come up with a new routine, something that’s a bit more realistic and plausible.” She laughed one more time before putting her glasses back on and the rag back in her pocket; and, motioning to the gendarmes, she turned back toward the building, the tails of her coat flipping around with an audible gust of air.

The vice director heard a whimper from behind her and turned back. The pony was gesturing to something on the concrete. The vice director looked down and saw the rifle, battered and scratched, lying near her feet, and she smirked as her horn began to levitate the rifle again. “Oh, and take your stupid toy with you. I don’t want to see your scrapyard waste again. If you want to help the Union, stop trying to waste our time and money, and go get killed in a volunteer infantry regiment instead.” With a nod of her horn, the vice director thrust the rifle rapidly toward the pony on the ground; it hit him in the chest, and he fell backwards, writhing on the ground and wheezing in pain.

He heard the gendarmes laughing as he rolled on the ground, as he tried desperately to inhale while pleading with his body to allow him his breath back. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the vice director walking away, and he opened his mouth to say something in protest, but no words formed in his breathless throat.

He spent five minutes in that pathetic pose on the ground before he felt his diaphragm begin to move again. He felt his breath returning, his muscles regaining their peremptory will to move forward, and his mind becoming cold, calculating—clear. Finally, he rose onto all four of his hooves—shaky at first, but steadying as his thoughts became more lucid—and looked at the front entrance of the Department of Magic and Defense.

He shook the dust off his hooves and looked around. A few meters behind him, a smooth iron band was lying on a leaf on the concrete, shuddering as the leaf attempted to rise in the wind filling it. The leaf blew into the street as soon as the band was lifted by an aura of light, cast from the unicorn’s horn. It rose to his mouth, and he gently blew the dust off of it. He had no water to clean it with; instead, he allowed a tear to fall onto it, and he rubbed it vigorously against his fur—pausing the motion at times, holding it still against his chest, as if trying to use the cold iron to suppress his sobs. When he saw it begin to shine again, when he could see his warped face in its gleam, he raised it over his horn and allowed to fall.

As soon as he felt the iron settle onto the base of his horn, the tears in his eyes vanished, and he turned back to face the doors of the Department of Magic and Defense. His horn began to glow again, and the rifle lifted off the ground, smoothly, comfortably, with the expert twirls of one who had maneuvered the machine many times before; and he held it, its barrel pointing toward the sky, crossed in front of his face in a revolutionary stance, as he shouted, his voice clear and imperious: “You’ve thrown a patriot onto the street today like a worthless pile of trash, a pony who was only so eager to devote his life and his effort to defending his country. With him, you threw out his intellect, his life’s work, and you told him that you rejected his innovations in favor of stagnation. But I’m not done. You can’t squander my patriotism so easily, nor will I stand by and allow the soldiers who defend this great nation—and who, despite your drooling, sniveling pretension and arrogance, still take up arms to protect you against those who wish to see your destruction—fall while holding their rusting, outdated rifles, because you were too ignorant, too elitist to see the superiority, the efficiency, and the genius of my invention. I brought you a gift, a consummate machine, as consummate as my life and the effort that I put into it over the course of five years, and you’ll accept it. You’ll buy my rifle, make it standard-issue to the ranks of the Union Army, if I have to shove it down your throats! Do you hear me? Nopony rejects the genius of Crystal Miner!”

Part II

The Presidential Mansion stands on a road that normally sees very little traffic by regular commuters, the road being used almost exclusively for the visitors of the Mansion’s illustrious resident. This location had been the subject of a furious debate between the government of the Union and the architect who had designed the iconic building. When the architect had learned that his work was going to be located on what was essentially a side street, with the egoism peculiar to architects, engineers, and every other artist, he complained; he had said something about Doric colonnades and the long line of windows needing to be oriented a certain way relative to all the other buildings of the city, or else the fastidious design intended to maximize the majesty of the building would be lost, for he said that the sun would not hit it on the right angle and the Mansion’s proper side was to be hidden while its inferior side displayed openly. It was for this reason that the Mansion had almost not been built and the head of state almost sentenced to live in whatever house he could find in Canterlot, until the architect finally got the government of the Union to agree to install a sidewalk near the front of the building—a privilege not afforded to many buildings in the city.

It was on this sidewalk, near the front gate of the Presidential Mansion, that a blue-green unicorn with a golden-brown mane and a shiny iron band fixed on the base of his horn was pulling at leather straps around his body with his teeth. A leather sash with many pockets was draped across his shoulders, and across his body was a large fabric satchel. On the grass bordering the sidewalk next to him, the same rifle that had been seen earlier at the Department of Magic and Defense was lying concealed, invisible to anypony passing by, and lying beside the rifle was a long black rod. There was a hole in the cavity of the rod, in which could be a seen a spring.

The unicorn’s horn glowed as he moved the latches on the belts into place while holding the straps with his teeth, wincing; and he murmured, through his teeth, as he fastened the last strap: “I devoted my life, my effort, and my energy for my country; and, in return, they humiliate me, ridicule me, and tell me that I shouldn’t have bothered. Well, they will see. They will all see. They thought that they could trod on me with impunity—but I’ll get the last laugh. They will experience my genius personally. I tried the nice way; I tried presenting it to them as a disinterested bystander; and, as I should have expected, the intricacy of the design and the existence of the knowledge that it took to conceive of something as beautiful as this was completely lost on the barbarians. I should have known better: When dealing with barbarians, one needs to speak the language of barbarians; one cannot use arguments of reason—one has to shout; one has to be imposing. So, that’s what I’ll do. It’s not enough for them to see the invention; they have to see the brain and the will behind the invention. They will accept, in one form or another, the gift to the Union that Crystal Miner has created, if it’s the last thing I do!” And, with the last strap of the harness in place, he pointed his horn toward the rifle. The rifle quivered hesitantly for a second, before finally lifting, slowly, off the ground. The rod rose and inserted itself firmly into a hole in the rifle’s breech, locked into place with a snapping sound, before the rifle flew toward the unicorn standing near it. The unicorn had a firm gaze and a brow furrowed in concentration as the rifle attached itself to a small hook on the leather harness around his body.

Crystal Miner stuck his hoof into the latch on the rifle’s underside and pulled it straight. He noted with a grin full of satisfaction, of raw pleasure, the metallic clink in the interior of the rifle, and he brought the latch slowly back into position while watching eagerly what could be seen of a golden-brown case, as golden and as firm as his hair, slide slowly into place in the chamber, until it disappeared under the cover that moved into place over it. He rattled with a forehoof a pouch around his neck, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the pleasant sound of seventy brass tubes full of lead jingling against each other.

Then, he shouldered the rifle and began to march toward the front gate, trying, awkwardly, to emulate the stance and posture of a soldier of the Union Army. The finished tip of the barrel flashed in the sunlight; the iron band on the unicorn’s horn flashed back in answer.

The sentry at the front entrance, a corpulent, aged earth-pony had absentmindedly left the gate open, and he had his hind legs up on the small table in his little shack. Covering a yawn with a hoof, he was fondling the antennae of a shortwave radio receiver on the ground with the other. One could hear “The Good Fight for the Union” emerge tentatively into earshot and then fizzle away into static as the earth pony continued to grope at the antennae. The sentry was staring at the ground, at the radio; he did not immediately notice a blue-green unicorn, his head held high, a rifle harnessed and slung over his shoulders, march right through the front gate, his eye level with the ground, his face expressionless, his pace unhurried and consistent.

When the sentry finally did look up, the unicorn was already thirty yards past the shack and on the threshold of the doorstep of the mansion. “Oi!” the sentry shouted after him. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Shut up!” the unicorn yelled back. “This doesn’t concern you!”

The sentry pushed his cap aside and scratched his head with a forehoof. He squinted after the stranger, and when he saw the gleam of the barrel of the rifle, he scrambled to his feet and threw open the door to his shack. “Stop,” the sentry yelled after the unicorn, “in the name of the Union!” He took off as fast as his stubby legs would carry his obese body toward the visitor.

The visitor’s brisk, determined walking pace was faster than the sprinting speed of the sentry, who, barely three yards out of his gate, panting, out of breath, saw the unicorn disappear through the door to the building. The sentry swore under his breath and kicked up his speed to a yard a second.

Crystal Miner had reached the main atrium of the Presidential Mansion long before the sentry had managed to travel half the distance of the strip of land between the gate and the entrance, but the unicorn was in no hurry. As he walked, he noticed with pleasure, a sense of superiority, the incredulous stares cast in his direction from the ponies scattered around the corridors. The hallways were not deserted by any stretch of the word, but he saw no authoritative figures and no stances of confidence in the bodies he walked by. They looked mostly like curators, secretaries, and low-level office clerks—and the bags under their eyes and their slouched postures told Crystal Miner that they were noponies. They were worthless, he thought to himself, wastes of carbon and oxygen, conglomerates of elements that do absolutely nothing but stand in the way of the heroes and the geniuses, such as himself. But these ones seemed innocuous enough, fully aware of their uselessness, and he could understand why the Union felt the need to keep them around: Unlike many of their colleagues, who bear delusions of grandeur and require a bit more persuasion in order to be molded to the purposes that are required of them, these ones knew they were nothing, strove for nothing, and conceded to their malleability to hooves that knew better for them. As such, he did not deign to make eye contact with them or to smile, nor did he believe they were worthy of his rifle. He simply walked forward, his head held high, his stare immoveable, his pace inexorable. And the sapped onlookers, in accordance with their training and their job descriptions, did nothing to attempt to impede the progress of the implacable soldier walking past with a dangerous-looking rifle slung over his shoulders, a fabric satchel around his body with contents that they knew better than to inquire of, wearing a leather sash with pockets that made an ominous metallic clinking sound as he walked past, and an iron band upon his horn that looked as cold as the rifle he was carrying. They stared at him as he passed in front of them, whispered silently and nervously to each other when he was out of earshot, and shuddered with fear when they saw him ascend the carpeted stairs in the direction of the Horseshoe Office.

He had been here once before, as a young colt, on a family vacation. Unlike his younger brother and his older sister, he had not yawned when their father had taken them to the museum exhibits. He did not yearn for the family room’s worn-leather couch, back in Fillydelphia. In the solemn silence of the National Archives, he had whinnied with delight when he had seen the COMTOIS seated in its glass case, the pen-strokes of the founders still as bold and as fresh as the day on which they were written. Staring through the glass case that ensconced it, his sister had admired President Platinum’s penmanship; but he had admired the words that were penned. In the courtyard to the presidential mansion, his brother had remarked on the coolness of the guns and the bayonets in the hooves of the three soldiers of the Union Army underneath the flag of the United Republic of Equestria, the statue commemorating the Changeling War; Crystal Miner had stood completely still in its presence, looking at the statue almost half-an-hour after the tour group had moved on, hypnotized by the expressions of the warriors’ faces, the bends in the steel that supported and gave life to their muscles, the physical integrity of the structure which represented the integrity of the ideals it supported. Near the end of the tour of the presidential mansion, he was the only one who had gestured inquiringly with a hoof up a long stretch of carpeted stairs, sectioned off by a thread rope. “That’s goes to the president’s office,” the tour guide had said, bending down to look face-to-face at the small blue-green unicorn with a short golden-brown mane, and she had barely said these words before the colt had taken off up the stairs. He had only mounted the first five steps before he had found himself enveloped in a warm aura of magic; his body had been lifted off the steps and pulled back to the bottom. As he fought, his horn blinking impotently, trying to dispel his prison, as he kicked, bit, and twisted helplessly in the bubble, he saw the horn of the tour guide glowing, and he had heard her whiny voice say: “We can’t go up that way! The president is very busy, and she needs her peace and quiet to concentrate. She doesn’t take too fondly to foals.” His dad had grabbed him by the mane and pulled him firmly along with the rest of the tour group. His siblings had teased him. But that had not stopped him from turning around and looking up the steps—and he felt in his bosom a small seed of antipathy being planted in the young soil of his heart.

And now here he was, twenty years later, a stallion, an inventor, a genius; and there was no force powerful enough in Equestria, on Earth, that would stop him from approaching the Horseshoe Office.

The president had better learn to tolerate noise, he thought, as he stood at the slightly ajar door of the Horseshoe Office—because it’s about to get very loud, very quickly.

He turned, raised a hind hoof, and hit it against the wooden door, which was painted an impeccable shade of white. The door swung open, smashed into the wall next to it with a sharp bang, and caused the glass chandelier on the roof the office to rattle with a clear tinkling noise, almost like a shriek. Before he turned to face the occupants of the room, he heard two voices, one male and one female, yell with surprise.

He stepped over a few splinters of white wood into the Horseshoe Office. He perceived three entities in the room, as he unbuckled the rifle. Two were standing on either side of the large mahogany desk, backed by a large window seven feet high and ten across, and he glanced over both figures—their mouths open in surprise, shock, and fear—immediately without a second thought; on the right of the desk was a tall, navy blue alicorn who Crystal Miner recognized immediately as Princess Luna; the other was an old pegasus pony with a gray mane, which fell in thin strands on fur which was a bright shade of teal, and he was adorned with a black tailcoat and a necktie. For all the unicorn cared, these two figures were two pieces of the same type of alloy, equal in structural magnitude, and they meant nothing to him. He cocked the hammer on his rifle and raised a hoof to take a step forward—and his foot was frozen in place, locked with a power he could not see or describe, and he stumbled hesitatingly as he stared into the eyes of the third.

The third entity was a being unlike the other two. Although Crystal Miner could see him right there, sitting behind the desk with a coy smile on his face, he could feel the presence of this being in every cube millimeter of the room. The creature’s imposition smothered the two insignificant specks that stood on either side of its projection point; and, for the first time in his life, Crystal Miner felt his body, his ego, absorbed by this all-powerful, all-reaching force, such that, despite the rifle in his hooves, he felt powerless, weak, like a small, impudent colt who had lost his way up the stairs in the Presidential Mansion after the tour guide had told him not to go wandering off.

The draconequus had not recoiled. He had not shifted his posture or made any gesture of surprise when Crystal Miner had made his entrance. He sat as he had been, erect, on the chair behind the desk, his paw and claw clasped together in contemplation. As the two ponies on either side of him withered away and attempted to make themselves smaller, trying unconsciously to position the desk between as much of their bodies’ surface area as possible and the unicorn who was now letting the rifle droop from his leg, the draconequus only sat up straighter, while his companions’ lukewarm eyes seemed to drain with the prospect of mortality, his beady red eyes only seeming to sparkle more fiercely with the fire of life, his brain having absorbed the cold, routine, calculating thoughts and methods of the unicorn standing in front of him. And though all the draconequus said was a tentative “May I help you?” Crystal Miner’s face drained of color, and he felt his muscles starting to grow limp and useless as he stared into his eyes, as the unicorn’s being was inundated with piercing thoughts that were transmitted to him through space from this fantastical creature, ideas and concepts that no words would ever be able to describe, notions would never be able to be captured into the beauty of a mathematical relationship—and Crystal Miner felt the iron band encircling his horn begin to grow cold.

“Are you lost?” the draconequus said.

Crystal Miner heard it only as a dull murmur, as if his ears were stuffed with cotton, but as he grasped at the cold metal in his forehoof, felt the finished surface of the metal rifle, his plan came rushing back into his head in an instant. It was so dizzying that he shuddered and shook his head, as if trying to plant his feet firmly into reality once more. He took a deep breath and felt the trigger of the rifle wrapped around his hoof. “Oh no, Mr. President,” he said, bringing his forehoof down and finally completing the step forward he had been intending to make before he had been distracted. “I have never been more aware of where I was and what I was doing at any point in my life.”

Princess Luna and the old pegasus were now almost completely hidden by the desk, and their heads were lifted just enough so that their eyes could peer over the surface of the desk, watching the intruder.

The president looked to a few papers on his desk, breaking eye contact with the unicorn—and Crystal Miner took a sigh of relief—and shuffled through the refuse with his paw and claw. “I don’t believe I have any engagements scheduled for this hour,” the president said. “What was your name again?”

“Mr. President,” said the unicorn, “I have no appointment. But there has been an egregious miscarriage of justice, and surely you out of all realize the paramount importance that such enormities are rectified and the victim compensated as quickly as time permits—even if the proceedings that would follow would not fit conveniently into our schedules.”

“Why, you little wretch!” said Princess Luna, rising to her full height and glaring at the unicorn with the most damning stare she could muster under the circumstances, but because of the trembling of her legs and the twitching of her cheeks, it took everything in Crystal Miner to keep himself from laughing, as a child laughs when he sees an ant trying to defy a magnifying glass. “How dare you . . . how dare you impress upon the president in such a manner—at such a time, during the current state of things! Such actions are absolutely inexcusable and unacceptable, and you can be assured that you’ll—”

“Now, now,” said the president, holding out his paw toward the princess and fixing a curious stare on the unicorn, “this young stallion took valuable time out of his day and walked all the way here carrying such a heavy load just to see me. Whatever he has to say must be important.”

“But—sir!”

The president made a clicking sound with his tongue while still holding out his paw, and Princess Luna reluctantly pressed her lips firmly together, her brow furrowing, and her body strained to keep them shut.

“How in the world did you even get in here?” said the pegasus, who had now garnered enough courage to move his head slightly higher above the desk, such that his entire face and chin were now visible.

“Enforcer,” said the president, still looking at Crystal Miner, “if the vice president has not earned my permission to speak, what makes you think that you have?”

Enforcer blushed and pinned his ears before sliding completely out of view behind the desk.

“I apologize for the interruptions,” said the president, clasping his paw and claw back together, in the same position that Crystal Miner had initially found him in. “You were saying?”

Crystal Miner took a deep breath, ran his hoof slowly over the rifle’s hammer, and took a determined step forward. Princess Luna took a reflexive step backwards. The president did not move at all.

“Mr. President,” said Crystal Miner, and as he continued to speak, the louder his voice became and the more firmly he gripped at the rifle, “for five years, I haven’t slept. My memories of the past five years consist entirely of the sight of eraser shavings and of graphite scratched into the form of equations onto a piece of paper. For five years, I spent every moment I could, missing work at times, to work on this vision, this dream that came to me one night. All my friends, my colleagues, told me that I was crazy. They told me that such a rifle would be clunky, would jam too much, that it would be incredibly impractical, and even if it was good, there would be no demand for such a machine. I didn’t hear any of this. I just saw the equations and the drawings in front of my eyes, the ultimate problem that some power somewhere had tasked me to solve and would not let me have any peace until I had solved it.

“There were times that I truly felt it was impossible. There were times where I on the verge of throwing the mountains of paper I had accumulated over the years into my furnace in a fit of frustration. But, every time that happened, I would slam my head against a wall; and, to my surprise, I would always hear a metallic sound. And that sound would ground me, would remind me of whom I was and what that meant.” He ran a hoof against the iron band around his horn. “Mr. President, do you know what this is and what it means?”

Enforcer wiped the sweat forming on his forehead with his lapel. Not daring to speak, he turned to the president, muttering a silent prayer that he would not say anything offensive or out of place.

The president stroked his goatee. “You’re married?”

“Yes—no! No, that’s not what it means!” bellowed Crystal Miner, his eyes filling with the magma of frustration and rage, which Enforcer could see was on the verge of spilling in a fiery eruption.

The president raised an eyebrow. “Your fiancée is extremely cheap?”

“Mr. President!” blurted Enforcer, unable to contain himself any longer, “it means—”

“No, no, no, no!” screeched Crystal Miner, banging the stock of the rifle harder against the floor with each utterance of the word until the marble cracked. “It has nothing to do with marriage!”

“Of course it doesn’t,” mumbled the president.

Crystal Miner’s face began to turn red. While he was staring at the wall, vigorously rubbing the band on his horn and possibly contemplating smashing his head against one of the expensive paintings on the walls of the Horseshoe Office, Princess Luna’s horn began to silently glow a deep blue, almost black shade. Next to her, a solid gold statue also glowed blue and rose slowly, almost imperceptibly, from its resting point. She focused her gaze on the unicorn who was facing a wall and muttering something incomprehensible to himself, and she took aim—but she was shocked into dropping it back by the firm and insistent motion of a flared paw moving in front of her face. She looked down and saw the president, his paw out, looking right at her; and he shook his head firmly, his brow furrowed in a stare of concentration, of authority, and there was nothing she could do but step back, watch the blue-green unicorn turn back to face them, and let events unfold.

“Mr. President,” continued Crystal Miner, “this ring is worn by all those whose minds and ability are responsible for moving the world. Because we look like everypony else, ponies quite often forget who we are and what we do, taking our gifts to them for granted—we wear this ring to distinguish ourselves, to remind ourselves that we carry this burden of keeping the train of the world moving, for if we were ever to disappear, it would grind to a halt and spray a thick plume of smoke over its passengers; and nopony would know what happened to it, how to fix it, and what the smoke consists of.

“Do you know what this ring is made out of, Mr. President? It’s not a rare metal, like gold or platinum; in fact, it’s one of the most abundant metals on this earth: It’s iron—iron-56, to be exact.

“But it’s not just iron from anywhere. It’s iron from a very special place. You see, Mr. President, a long time ago, there was an engineer named Tangent Tolerance: A great engineer, probably the greatest engineer to ever walk this earth. And rich, too. He was so rich that he could have purchased the entire city of Manehattan and still have had some to spare—but he deserved every single penny. His practices and his methods set the standards then—the same standards we use nowadays—when it comes to almost every facet of civil engineering. The buildings that he erected all those years ago are in better condition than the newest Baltimare skyscrapers, and his buildings will stand until the earth crumbles around them, and then for a bit longer. As a matter of fact, Mr. President, he was a pivotal figure in Unification, and he designed over half the buildings in Canterlot alone—and if I’m not mistaken, the architect of this very building borrowed heavily from one of his designs, if not completely.

“He was contracted by the city of Vanhoover to build a bridge across Galloping Gorge. This bridge would’ve joined up with the road out of Vanhoover and would’ve run straight to Manehattan. Can you imagine that, Mr. President? A road, straight as an arrow, east to west, from Vanhoover to Manehattan! Do you know how many hours of travel time that would cut down?

“When they asked him if he could do it, he responded the same way he always responded when accepting any job. He said: ‘That route looks treacherous. There are many obstacles that will no doubt impede any attempts at industrialization. It seems that Mother Nature threw everything she had to make sure that we would never expand in that area. She’s strong, all right; there’s no question about that. But, gentlemares, I tell you this: there is no will on the planet that is stronger than mine.’

“Then he disappeared. He kept no communications. Nopony saw or heard of him for an entire month. Vanhoover had even started looking for another engineer.

“A month later, he showed up at the city hall. He walked right into their debating chamber—they were right in the middle of a session. His eyes were barely open from fatigue; his mane was completely matted; and across his back was slung posters inscribed with projections, proofs, calculations, notes, and summaries.

“The entire room went silent as this disheveled figure walked into the focus of attention. He cleared his throat and removed a greasy napkin from one of his pockets. He stood in place for a while with his eyes closed—some think he actually fell asleep for a second. And then, all of the sudden, his eyes snapped open; they were as big as dish plates and as red as the sun as he stared at the napkin, and he filled the entire chamber with a thundering voice that commanded: ‘I need two hundred twelve workers working forty hours a week at a wage of one and one-half grams of gold an hour. I need twenty-three cranes, forty-six pulleys, each one fixed with a cable no shorter than two hundred meters and each cable with a maximum breaking tension of no less than four hundred kilonewtons. Oh, and I need eight hundred thousand tons of iron—just iron. I want none of your weird solutions—none of your home-brewed steel. Iron will suffice. The whole operation will cost no less than five tons of gold and will take eighteen months if there are no delays; and, like always, my personal fee will be nine kilograms of gold. We’ll work out the specifics and the logistics on site.’

“He coughed once and tucked the napkin back into his pocket. The delegates of Vanhoover were completely silent; they did not even whisper to one another. He took one look around before leaving to the construction site—the only place where he would be able to be found for the next thirteen months—and said: ‘Gentlemares, let’s build a bridge.’

“And everything went really well for the first thirteen months. He was always there, watching the beams being loaded, calling out to the workers, consulting his plans. Every day, the bridge extended further along the gorge, a brilliant gray strip in the middle of space, reaching out toward the edge of an earth that nopony doubted it would touch.

“On the thirteenth month, the bridge looked complete. Its arches seemed to touch the edge of the sky. The iron seemed brighter than the sun itself. And even those who had no interest in structural design took one look at the bridge and could not help losing their breath at its majesty. Tolerance had been right; even Mother Nature could not have sculpted a rock more wonderful than what he had created.

“To the laypony, it looked done. On the eleventh month, less and less workers started to be seen on the bridge every day and for shorter and shorter hours; until, on the twelfth month, while standing on the side of the gorge, one could see no activity on the bridge. On the thirteenth month—that is, after a month where no activity could be seen from bystanders—the mayor of Vanhoover came up to Tolerance; and the latter was standing motionlessly, a hoof shielding the sun from his eyes, and he was looking at the arches of the bridge. The mayor clasped a hoof on his shoulder and said: ‘Well, Mr. Tolerance, I’d wager you weren’t counting on the expeditious work ethic of the citizens of Vanhoover to complete your project in a time frame you thought to be impossible!’

“He didn’t turn to face her. He said only, in a flat monotone: ‘The project is precisely on time—not a month early, not a second late.’

“She laughed and gestured toward the sea of boxcars filled with iron piled half a kilometer away from the building site. ‘So, I guess we can store the rest of the iron?’

“‘Whatever I don’t use, you’re welcome to as soon as I’m done with this project. It’s your iron, after all. But I wouldn’t count on me leaving anything over; I plan to use every single atom. If anything, I’ve ordered too little.’

“The mayor gasped. ‘What more could you possibly be doing that would warrant such a tremendous amount of the element?’

“This time, Tolerance turned to face her. ‘Did you not look at the plans? Have you never once looked down?’ he said. When he saw the stupefied look on her face, ‘Follow me’ was all he said before he walked toward the bridge. He and the mayor approached the edge of the gorge. When the mayor saw Tolerance wrap a foreleg around one of the wire supports and dangle his body precariously into the gorge, she looked down into the fissure, and she saw what Tolerance had meant.

“In the bottom of the gorge, near the supports of the bridge, nearly the entire building crew were moving iron bars around. Around the supports, they were fixing the long bars to the floor of the gorge. The support closest to the western side of the gorge and the following four supports had already had their iron rail addenda added, and the crew were working on the fifth and the seventh. The mayor could see that, eventually, every support would have these bars, and the entire bridge would look like it was fixed to an enormous train track.

“‘Galloping Gorge was formed by a strike-slip fault,’ said Tolerance, when he saw that the sight of the railings was bouncing off the mayor in incomprehension. ‘Just another way of Mother Nature trying to sabotage our plans. But that old bimbo didn’t count on this brain.’ He tapped the side of his temple with his other forehoof. ‘It took me forever to figure out how to prevent a collapse, but I did it. Oh yes, I did it! When it came to me, I hit myself in the head: It was so beautiful, so elegant, and so obvious. Tracks! Of course! When the fault shifts, the bridge will just slide along the tracks instead of crumbling. Pretty clever, if I do say so myself.’

“The mayor stared at Tolerance with her mouth open. ‘How long have the workers been down there?’

“Tolerance looked at her as if she had just asked him why the iron of the bridge was shiny. ‘Since the beginning! Did you not read the schedule? I spent a week drawing up the events of almost every single day! In fact, I’ve been using that part of the job as an incentive for the workers; the workers that work the hardest get a few hours of labor down there, in the shade.’

“The mayor scratched her head as she counted the number of supports. She began to go cross-eyed, and she remarked: ‘Every single support? You’re going to need a lot of iron, then—an absurd amount of iron!’

“‘Tell me about it!’ said Tolerance. ‘Nearly half of the iron I requested goes to the tracks alone. Not a perfect solution, but I’m quite proud of it.’

“Now, for whatever reason, the mayor was not happy about this. She didn’t like how much additional time and iron that Tolerance wanted, and she thought that he wanted it simply to satisfy that paranoia and obsessive-compulsion peculiar to engineers. I think she might have been up for reelection, and the completion of the bridge would’ve really helped her campaign, or something like that. I’m not entirely sure, but it’s not important to the story. In any case, she wanted it completed quickly, and she felt that eight supports—four on the west side, four on the east side—should be plenty.

“‘Do I come down to where you work and tell you how to make engineers’ lives difficult?’ said Tolerance, after she suggested that. The mayor stared at him confusedly and didn’t have a chance to speak before Tolerance continued: ‘No. So don’t come down to my construction site and tell me how to build my bridge.’

“She whispered with a few of her advisors before turning back to Tolerance and asking: ‘When was the last time the fault moved?’

“Now, Mr. President, you must understand that Tangent Tolerance was an engineer and, unlike the mayor, not a natural public speaker. Everything he had ever said in public—and I believe his entire conversation with the mayor up until this point—had been rehearsed countless times in his head. And this question had caught him off guard. ‘It . . . it,’ he stammered, ‘well, I mean . . . judging from the air photographs . . . and from what I’ve seen, of course . . . I think . . . I mean, I know that the fault . . . the fault hasn’t moved for . . . for about . . . twelve thousand . . . well, maybe thirteen thousand years—give or take . . . a few hundred years.’

“‘Thirteen thousand years?’ the mayor said, with a smile. ‘So, you’re telling me that the fault is dead?’

“‘Now . . . now, hold on . . . I never . . . I never said . . . said that. I said . . . I said . . . I said that the fault . . . the fault hasn’t moved . . . hasn’t moved for . . . for thirteen . . . twelve . . . ten thousand years . . . give or take—’

“‘So, in other words, the fault is dead.’

“‘Ms. Mayor . . . please don’t put . . . put words in my . . . my mouth. I hate . . . I mean, I don’t appreciate . . . I don’t appreciate when . . . when contexts . . . contexts are dropped. I said . . . and this is all . . . all I ever said . . . I said that the fault . . . the fault hadn’t moved . . . hasn’t moved for a long time. I . . . I never . . . said that the fault . . . the fault was dead. It’s very . . . very alive. There’s a big . . . there’s a big difference between . . . “dead” and . . . “dead” and “hasn’t moved.”’

“‘I don’t understand,’ said the mayor. ‘How can a fault be active while not having moved for millenia?’

“Tolerance’s hoof was getting so sweaty that he had to pull himself off of the wire and onto solid ground, next to the mayor. The workers had stopped, and they were staring up at him, as if awaiting for him to say something, as if they had heard the entire conversation. He panted, clutched a hoof to his heart, before saying: ‘You see . . . you see, Mayor . . . faults don’t always . . . they don’t always slide . . . slide quickly. They creep . . . they creep, you see . . . over decades. They move slowly, and . . . and . . . ’ And, all of the sudden, Tolerance exploded. ‘This is ridiculous. I’m not arguing this with you! I’ve done the math; I’ve drawn the diagrams; I’ve worked everything out. The bridge needs these tracks—and that’s it! You’re wrong! I refuse to have my skills questioned by somepony who probably wouldn’t know how to put the chain back on her bicycle if it fell off!’

“The mayor gave an amused smile, one with the clear intent to deride, though easily deniable if she was called out upon it. ‘So, you’re telling me,’ the mayor said, ‘that if I were to put a train upon that bridge right this second, it would collapse?’

“‘Also not what I’m saying.’

“‘So, it wouldn’t collapse, then.’

“Tolerance glanced at the bridge and tried to explain, not being able to help his stutter. ‘There are a lot . . . there are a lot of factors . . . factors that control the breaking weight—speed of . . . speed of the train . . . weight . . . then there’s—’

“‘Speak up, my dear,’ said the mayor.

“‘Then there’s of course subtler things . . . things like resonance. Things . . . things like that.’

“‘“Things like that”?’ said the mayor, smirking at him. ‘I must say, Mr. Tolerance, that you’re not presenting your product like a businesspony. In other words, you’re not inspiring consumer confidence in me.’

“Tolerance closed his eyes and clenched his teeth together. He thought much faster than he spoke. He took a deep breath, his head bowed in a sort of meditation, before looking back at the mayor, and his irises had reassumed their sharp gray color, as gray as the iron of the bridge behind him, and he said clearly, without any of his previous stuttering: ‘Look, Ms. Mayor, I’m sorry for snapping at you earlier. That was wrong, and I apologize. But I’m telling you—and I would not hesitate to bet my life on it—that that bridge needs the tracks. I’m not asking you to believe me; I’m asking you to see. Over there is my cabin, and inside you’ll find all the proofs, all the calculations, all the models I’ve ever made for this project—everything you’ll ever need to see into my mind and to understand my thought processes. You’ll see that no matter how many times I approach the scenario, I keep coming back to the same problem, and there are many solutions to this problem; but I’ve decided, in my professional opinion, backed up by decades of experience, that the best solution, given our time frame, is the railings. If I had more time, I might have come up with something better. I’m not making excuses, Ms. Mayor; I’m confident that the railings will suffice, that they will perform their duty as long as the bridge stands, and it is the absolute best solution when all things are considered.’

“The mayor nodded thoughtfully. ‘And how long would it take for you to finish?’

“‘I said eighteen months for the entire project, and that time frame has not changed. It’s been thirteen months, so that means that the bridge will be done in five months.’ And when he saw her glance at her advisors with a look that said too much, a look that made his heart sink, he added: ‘Ms. Mayor, it’s not a question of if the bridge will break; it’s a question of when will it break and how many will die when it happens.’

“The mayor shrugged, in the way that a parent does when saying ‘You should have known better’ after punishing an insolent foal, and said: ‘Well, I’m sorry to inform you, Mr. Tolerance, that the government of Vanhoover has reviewed the progress of this bridge and has learned that the last building code required to deem this public structure safe for general use had been fulfilled one month ago. Although we do appreciate the intimate work that you, Mr. Tolerance, put into every single one of your phenomenal pieces of architecture, the government of Vanhoover has decided, begrudgingly, that it cannot justify the price of the additional amount of iron you’ve requested for personal touches to the structure. But, because the bridge adheres to every single one of Vanhoover’s building codes, we are proud to call this year-long project finally concluded.’

“‘“Personal touches”?’ said Tolerance, staring at her wide-eyed and in disbelief. ‘“Personal touches?” Since when—’

“‘And it is only thanks to you, Mr. Tolerance, that such a monumental task was completed in such a short span of time. You have our everlasting gratitude. And, in your honor, I, the mayor of Vanhoover, dub this structure to be the “Tolerance Track”, and—’

“She didn’t have time to finish her speech, for she was hit directly in the face by a wet plastic object. When she peeled it off her face with a forehoof and looked at it, she saw the construction site ID card of Tangent Tolerance, P. Eng., Project Leader. Tolerance had torn the card off the thread around his neck with his mouth and had spat it in the face of the mayor.

“She stared at him with her mouth wide open, and the only sound that escaped was a pathetic little cry of surprise. He was looking at her, his lips firm, his nostrils flared; and with narrowed eyes with dilated pupils that did not quiver, did not dart, that only stared at her mercilessly, pitilessly, as if there was not a crime worse than the one she had committed against him. ‘Do not name this bridge after me,’ he said, and he did not raise his voice, nor did he let any fluctuations of tone reveal that the fact that he had not been holding any of his tools was the only thing that was stopping him from killing her in cold blood, right then, right there. ‘This is not my bridge. I had no part in its design and no part in its conclusion. As such, you will not send to me, or my bank, the nine kilograms of gold that would normally be my fee for a project of this scale; I will not deposit it, and my bank will refuse to serve you. You will not name this bridge after me, because this is not my bridge. And I know this, because I know that I would never, under any circumstances, design such an intricate and expensive contraption of death such as this.’

“And he immediately made off toward his cabin. A moment later, the mayor saw its chimney venting hurriedly away a thick, black smoke and saw him leave the site, with empty hooves. They ran into the cabin only to find, too late, that he had thrown all of his notes into the furnace. Everything that he had worked on for months, the proofs, the models—all gone, destroyed.

“And, despite everything, they still called it the ‘Tolerance Track’ and started running trains on it immediately. When a reporter came to Tolerance’s expansive mansion in Canterlot and asked him how he felt, shortly after the first train, moving at a speed of over a hundred twenty kilometers an hour, went over the Tolerance Track, he responded with only: ‘I don’t know whom they named that bridge after, but I know it wasn’t me. I had no part, at any point, in the making of that bridge. Any attempts to tell anypony otherwise is a blatant, slanderous lie.’

“Many contractors tried to get Tolerance to build things for them, but nopony ever saw him outside his house, other than that one time when he opened the door once to answer the reporter’s question. There were not even sightings of him at corner stores, or even at his favorite gentlecolts’ cigar club. When the contractors finally gave up on him, a shadow fell over the industry and the neighborhood where his house stood. You don’t understand, Mr. President; Tangent Tolerance had set the industry standard for virtually every single thing he did related to his work. A few contracting firms had even gotten rid of coffee pots in their offices at one point, after Tolerance had said, a while back, that he never drinks coffee while working, as he thinks it interferes with his concentration. With him gone, the industry, though it did not die, seemed sluggish. Things didn’t go at the speed ponies expected them to go during the Tolerance days. Although, outwardly, everypony dismissed Tolerance, after one year and no sighting of him, as an eccentric madstallion, each and every one of the them felt that there was something wrong. Even the passengers of the train traveling over that bridge—though none of them feared the bridge per se—they always felt something unsettling as they felt the crossties shudder under the weight of the train, like there was a presence that they couldn’t see or hear, but could feel, cursing each one of them, silently, judgmentally.

“And exactly ten years later—literally, exactly ten years later, same day when he left the project and everything—at the precise moment the nine-thirty train’s center of mass was directly in the middle of the bridge, the fault shifted for the first time in thirteen millenia. The bridge, in the blink of an eye, was split in half, and the train was swallowed up by Mother Nature, who had been fasting for a while, waiting for the ponies who thought that they were above her to get complacent, only to seize the opportunity to snatch them up in her ravenous jaws. Anypony who, by some miracle, had survived the fall to the bottom of the canyon, most certainly was killed by the rain of iron that followed afterwards. It was as if a bomb had exploded on the bridge—one might as well have exploded—and it could be heard from Canterlot. Many citizens had thought that there was some sort of foreign invasion.

“The train had six hundred seats and always carried exactly six hundred ponies. On that particular day, three hundred seventy-nine stallions, one hundred twenty mares, and one hundred one foals were traveling from Vanhoover to Manehattan; and on that particular day, at approximately 9:31 a.m., three hundred seventy-nine stallions, one hundred twenty mares, and one hundred one foals were killed when their train slammed into the bottom of Galloping Gorge.

“What Vanhoover should have done was to confess and take the blame as soon as possible. But that would have been honorable—would it have not been?—and we certainly can’t have that! Immediately, the government of Vanhoover announced that they were ‘investigating the matter immediately,’ and within the hour, they announced that six hundred charges of Criminal Negligence Resulting in Death had been placed upon—whom else?—Tangent Tolerance, P. Eng., former project leader of the Tolerance Track, who had not been seen for over ten years.

“And then, in another hour, the police obtained a search warrant to enter Tolerance’s mansion. There was a throng of spectators—or, as I prefer to say, voyeurs—who watched as the police broke down the beautiful wooden door of Tolerance’s mansion and entered, swiftly, as if there were hostages.

“For ten minutes, Equestria gritted its teeth as they waited to see Tangent Tolerance emerge from his house for the first time in ten years—and I do believe there’s a picture of the exact moment the captain stepped out of the house after the raid. It’s quite grainy, but it’s such a powerful picture for a number of reasons. She’s facing the crowd, and they are desperately begging her—you can’t see it, but you can feel it when you look at their postures—to let them know the answer to the mystery. You can see the pure despondency in her cheeks as she faces the crowd, her eyes sunken back into her skull underneath a large helmet sitting on a furrowed brow, and her mouth is open as if she’s saying ‘Why?’—and Tangent Tolerance is nowhere in sight.

“I’m sorry to say, Mr. President, that this story does not have a happy ending. Tangent Tolerance was not in his house. His relatives were as informed of his whereabouts as the rest of Equestria. He was nowhere. It was like he had disappeared off the face of the planet. He, until thirty years ago, was Equestria’s most wanted fugitive of all time, despite the fact that he had certainly died long ago from natural causes.

“The destruction of the bridge has always hung over the city of Vanhoover as a massive scar of shame that ponies rarely talk about. Haven’t you ever wondered why there is no bridge across Galloping Gorge? For the longest time, engineering students at the University of Vanhoover never studied the case. It was only until thirty years ago—that recently!—that the government of Vanhoover issued a formal apology toward Tangent Tolerance and his kin, rescinded the warrant for his arrest, and posthumously awarded him the Key to the City of Vanhoover. At the same time, the Department of Engineering at the University of Vanhoover offered Tangent Tolerance’s nominal fee—that is, nine kilograms of gold—to anypony who can bring in his body; and this request has yet to be filled.

“The only thing that was left of him was the bridge—the whole of the pieces of which are now referred to, lovingly, as ‘Tolerance’s Requiem.’ All the iron is cleared out now, obviously, but it hasn’t been repurposed into tracks and sewer gutters, as it typical of iron from destroyed buildings; it hasn’t even been put in a museum. No, Mr. President, where it is now—or, what remains of it now—are spread out in multiple specially-made storehouses at the University of Vanhoover.

“At the end of every April, the end of every school-year, some of Tolerance’s Requiem is removed from the facilities. The iron is then melted and then poured into molds—molds of jagged, plain rings. These iron rings are shipped to every university in Equestria and are given to each engineering student, along with their diploma, at their graduation ceremony. Tangent Tolerance was a civil engineer, but the principles by which he lived, by which he performed his duty, those fundamental principles which, when strayed from, result in machines of life being distorted into those of death, hold true in any discipline of engineering.”

And Crystal Miner touched the piece of Tolerance’s Requiem on his horn. “Mr. President, this is the mark of an engineer, a disciple of Tangent Tolerance. I move the world. And though the world needs me desperately, it, at times, forgets it, and it treats me like an expendable. That’s why engineers hold these iron rings, Mr. President. My ring reminds me of who I am, what I do, and whom I work for. When times get tough, I remember Tangent Tolerance, and I remember what I’m up against—I remember that my enemies are the very ones whom the machines I breathe life into are for, and I remember what will happen should I grow complacent, disillusioned, and begin to think that they’re the ones who give meaning to my work, and I begin to think that they’re the ones on whom I am dependent. Well, Mr. President, I say no! This iron ring reminds me that I’m the master of nature, not them; this iron ring reminds me that I feed the coal into the furnace of the train of the world, and the ones on board who do not stand at my side along the fires should be grateful that I am its conductor. This iron ring reminds me that what I build is my life, and that I’ll die before I see that it’s used for anything other than the purpose for which I designed it or before I see it wallow in neglect!”

A pervasive silence, save for the muffled sounds of some hurried boots and urgent voices a few floors below, reigned supreme. In the Horseshoe Office, a disciple of Tangent Tolerance was locked in a duel of will with the ideological son of President Platinum, their eyes their weapons, the light between them their battlefield.

The president was the first one to speak. “Do you want to know what I think, honestly, what I think?”

“That’s why I’m here, Mr. President,” said Crystal Miner.

The president could see Enforcer, out of the corner of his left eye, trying to discretely wave his two outstretched forehooves to him, as if urging him to stop. The president pretended not to notice him and instead said: “I think you, along with every other engineer, are a bunch of megalomaniacal, deranged cultists.”

Enforcer let out a high pitched cry of distress. Even Princess Luna could not suppress a choked sound from within her throat.

But Crystal Miner simply smirked. “That’s your opinion, Mr. President. You’re certainly entitled to it, and I encourage you to morally judge all who come your way; however—and if I may be so audacious to paraphrase a rebuttal you employed in one of your debates—I will not stand here while you attempt use an ad hominem to stall for time, nor will I ascribe any intellectual value to your moral judgment upon me, which you so dishonestly and so slyly attempt to employ as a substitute for an argument!”

Crystal Miner could almost hear the hinges of the jaws of Enforcer and Princess Luna as they swung open as widely open as they could. His eyes widened along with the president’s, and the unicorn’s ears perked up when he heard the president begin to laugh, quietly at first, but growing louder by the second until it resounded in a torrent of explosively powerful force; and the president, in his fit of laughter, violently slammed his curled up paw against the surface of the desk. Enforcer and Princess Luna felt their hearts begin to curdle into black holes of despair and emptiness as the president’s laugh reached their ears, curling itself in the recesses of their brains, suffocating them with its opacity—but Crystal Miner’s smile only seemed to grow unsettlingly wider as the laugh got louder. He couldn’t help but force his lips upwards into the dark curl of a smirk.

The president turned toward Princess Luna, who was looking at a spot on the floor with a completely blank stare, and said, gesturing with a talon toward the unicorn standing in the middle of the room: “I like this kid.”

“Yes . . . yes,” said Enforcer, meekly, almost inaudibly, struggling on wobbly knees to his feet, “he’s a fine boy. I like him, too. Why don’t you put the gun down then, son?”

“All’s well,” said the president, turning back to Crystal Miner, “but I fail to see what any of this has to do with you—you, standing in front of me, right here, right now.”

Crystal Miner cocked his head to one side, like the hammer of a rifle, and stared at the president sideways.

“You still haven’t explained,” said Princess Luna, “why you’ve forcibly entered, armed, caustic and belligerent, and insolently insisted that you see the president. I demand an answer!”

Crystal Miner turned to Princess Luna, and unlike the way he had been looking upon the president earlier, he looked at her as a statue looks at a tourist from on top of a pedestal, imperiously and judgmentally, only needing a further nudge to fall over and crush the impudent observer. Princess Luna took another step back.

The unicorn turned to the president. “Mr. President, I am here, because I feel that lives are on the line. I am here because, like Tangent Tolerance before me, my genius and my intellect has been disregarded, casually thrown away, not appreciated for what they are. I went to the Department of Magic and Defense, and I prostrated myself before them, asking them openly—and now I realize naively—to see the great gift that I had brought before them. And you know what they did? They threw me—literally, threw me—onto the sidewalk, after insulting me and my work. I had not been allowed to ask them to elaborate on their ambiguous arguments. But, Mr. President, I will not stand by and watch my rifle sit in my closet collecting dust, when it could be in the hooves of the most elite soldier to ever walk this earth; I will not sit and do nothing at home while that soldier is killed, defending me and the country I love, when that death could have been avoided if he had had my rifle; I will not roll over and accept the abuse that my creations, which are produced by my mind alone, are given by ignorant bureaucrats as long as I have any say in the matter!”

The president nodded thoughtfully and stroked his goatee. “You’re quite wordy, sir; I’ll give you that. And I think that had you not gone into engineering, you would’ve made the perfect politician. But you’ve forgotten one thing: due to deliberation, or most likely due to the fact that you were caught in the heat of the moment, you spoke volumes about your feelings—but I still know nothing about you or your rifle.”

Crystal Miner blinked. The president continued: “Your conclusions are all very nicely put, no question about that, and they unequivocally seal whatever argument you tried to make—provided one accepts your premises.”

“My . . . my premises?” said Crystal Miner, stammering his words, his voice slowing for the first time in the conversation.

“Yes,” said the president, “you said that it would be a crime to allow the soldiers of the Union Army to die when they could have been holding your life-saving rifle. I agree; it would be a crime—provided that your rifle is truly deserving of the merit you ascribe to it. But, sir, you have not demonstrated to me that this is the case, and you certainly haven’t demonstrated that to the Department of Magic and Defense. For all I know, your machine could be as worthless as the remains of the Tolerance Track.”

Crystal Miner clenched his teeth together and bared them. As he tightened his hoof around the trigger of the rifle, a large vein in his temple begin to visibly pulse with the adrenaline of rage, and he shouted: “My rifle is not worthless! It’s brilliant!”

“Then defend it!” snapped the president, suddenly rising to his feet; and, in a voice that had a volume and tone that Princess Luna and Enforcer had never heard him use before, a voice with a maniacal fervor that made them shudder and question who in the room was, at that moment, more dangerous, he shouted: “I’m sick of sitting here and listening to you talk about yourself, you arrogant foal! Have the rectitude and the moral fiber to stand there and defend your work with an argument, instead of cowering behind verbosity and intimidation like a mindless brute!”

And it was at that point that Enforcer finally saw the volcano of Crystal Miner’s eyes erupt. The pegasus pressed his body against the window behind him as the unicorn walked—marched—angrily, with heavy stomps, toward the desk. When he closed the distance between him and the desk, when his face was mere feet away from the president’s, he raised a forehoof and, with a violent, crazed movement of his leg, swept the papers, the pens, and the sculptures sitting on the mahogany desk to the floor. The clatter of quills and the loud crash of paperweights slamming to the ground rocked the room with an echo that seemed to reverberate through the entirety of the Presidential Mansion.

Enforcer saw Princess Luna recoil with fear, as she saw Crystal Miner’s horn begin to glow, raising the rifle to the president. And though the president had a fully loaded rifle pointed at him, he never sat down; he never relented; he never broke eye contact with the unicorn—whose horn was now beginning to glow brighter.

With sweat pouring down his temples, the unicorn strained with a supreme effort, and his horn burned with a light that had an intensity of no less than a kilocandela. The rifle twitched in front of the president’s face. A click was heard within the interior of the metal—and, with a blinding flash of light, brighter than his horn, the rifle exploded.

It exploded, in the way that Crystal Miner and his fellow bearers of Tolerance’s Requiem explode objects when trying to accurately describe them when projecting them on two dimensions. When the president blinked, clearing the spots from his eyes, he no longer saw the rifle; he saw pieces of metal, assorted levers, and springs floating, engulfed in a blue light, in front of his desk. Scattered intermittently around the parts were small brass cylindrical tubes. Behind the debris, the president could see the unicorn, his eyes closed in concentration, his lips pressed firmly together in a strained effort.

The strap on the fabric satchel on Crystal Miner’s undid itself when the magic reached it, and out of the satchel flew a rolled up piece of poster paper. It unfurled briskly and set itself down on the table, spending a few seconds orienting itself as soon as the president started looking at it. Three pieces of the rifle—the lever that had been fixed to the underside of the stock, the receiver, and the barrel—positioned themselves on blank spaces on the paper. The rest of the pieces were gently laid on the ground.

On the paper, the president saw thick black graphite strokes, outlining what he could tell to be various views of the rifle. Aside from the silhouette of the firearm that bordered all the drawings, he could make nothing of the various dashed lines inside the body of the drawings; the arrows that seemed to point at nothing, with multiple numbers that specified dimensions that did not seem to exist; and the various diagonally solid lines.

Crystal Miner began to point to various scribblings; and he said, his words coming out in rapid-fire and moving faster than his hoof was able to point to the parts he was referring to, an explanation which the president only caught bits of: “The Miner Repeating Rifle: Here are the orthographic projections, third-angle, front, right, and top views. All dimensions are in millimeters. There’s a general tolerance of a tenth of a millimeter. All fillets and rounds have a radius of two-point-two millimeters unless otherwise specified. All holes are on the basic hole system, and the two shafts here have an allowance of negative point-one-five millimeters. All holes are finished, of course, as are these surfaces, here and here. Here’s the section view of the whole lever system; as you can see, the movement of the user operating the lever moves one of the seven cartridges from the magazine, located in the breech—this hole in the stock, right here—into the chamber. Oh, the section view of the feeding system is right here. Anyway, they’re held in place by this rod, by this spring in it. So, like I was saying, the downwards movement of the lever by the operator ejects the shell of a cartridge in the chamber from this hole here—if there is one—and allows one of the bullets, pushed forward by the spring in the rod, which must be inserted into the magazine after loading and prior to firing, to be deposited into this chamber here; the upwards movement of the lever brings the cartridge into firing position. The hammer is then cocked by the user, and then it’s ready to fire. Actually, this is just one of two designs I have for the rifle, the other being one with a smaller barrel which I call the ‘Crystal Carbine,’ and . . .”

The president was not looking at the drawings. He was looking at Crystal Miner’s mouth, watching his chin move up and down. Eventually, he could not hear the words anymore, but the engineer’s chin and tongue kept moving and tongue moving, as if they were still forming sounds. Crystal Miner spent a minute after he had finished speaking mouthing words that he did not say, looking at different parts of the poster, still pointing.

After some time had passed, the unicorn nodded thoughtfully to himself and looked up at the president. When he saw the president looking back at him, Crystal Miner held his head high, took a step back and said, solemnly and full of conviction: “Omnia locutus sum.”

The president looked at Crystal Miner; and the draconequus’s eyes narrowed in deep thought, in cold analyzation and judgment, but his cheeks rose in a curious, approving smile of recognition, and he said, softly, smoothly, and with the trace of the light tones of humor: “Omnia locutus es.”

And when he heard those three words, Crystal Miner realized in an instant that, regardless of what the president would say next, he had defended his work to the best of his ability—and it was standing on its own integrity, standing firmly, as firmly as the alloy with which it had been made, as firm as the iron that composed entirely the ring on its creator’s horn, and the creator was seeing the physical instantiation of his idea as clearly as how he had seen it in his mind, and it appeared to him exactly as how he wanted it to appear; and he knew that the president knew this too, that the president understood that the machine was being presented to him fully, openly, as the creator intended, that it was not an inferior job by a lesser engineer, the kind of which who would attempt to excuse and pass as acceptable faulty design choices by pinning his ears in the attempt for sympathy and by giving the nebulous explanation that he struggled with bringing his ideas to light—and Crystal Miner saw, could feel, that the president understood this, that the machine had earned the right to sit on that desk in the Horseshoe Office, ready to receive a judgment by a sound mind, a judgment that it would deserve. The Miner Repeating Rifle was complete, five years later—the engineer knew it; the president knew it; and both of them felt, through this machine, that each one of them had given and gotten exactly what had been expected.

Just then, heavy, slow, thunderous footsteps were heard outside the room. Crystal Miner spun around and recognized the obese sentry from the front gate, standing just outside the room. His head hung to the ground in fatigue, and sweat poured from his every pore. He stood there panting for a few seconds, too exhausted to look at anything other than the floor. Between wheezes, he barely managed to choke out: “You . . . stop . . . in the . . . name . . . of the Union.”

“Mr. President!” came a voice from an unseen pony around the corner of the archway. “Stay calm. Nopony’s getting hurt today. Just listen to what he says, and we’ll get you out of there soon!”

“I assure you,” the president yelled back, “I’m quite safe.”

They saw the head of a helmeted pony stick out from around the corner. Her brow was raised in confusion as she said: “What? You’re—you’re alright?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” said the president, with a laugh. “Come in, Lieutenant!”

The pony moved the rest of her body into the room. Crystal Miner was taken aback when he saw her: The tall earth pony was wearing a full suit of gray body armor that rattled as her limbs moved. A Stallion Army revolver was sitting in a complexly assembled leather holster on the thigh of her right hindleg, and a blunderbuss was slung across her shoulders. She looked fully equipped for war, which is why it struck the engineer as odd that she was speaking in such a surprised voice.

“We heard that a madstallion with a gun had entered the building and was heading to your office!”

“I am not in any danger, if that’s what you fear,” replied the president.

The lieutenant used a forehoof to press firmly on her helmet and moved it across her head, using the fabric lining underneath it to scratch her scalp.

The president gestured with his paw toward the unicorn. “Lieutenant, I’d like you to meet—”

“Crystal Miner,” said the unicorn, finishing the president’s sentence.

“Crystal Miner,” continued the president and then, gesturing to the pieces of metal scattered on the floor, added: “He’s been showing me the plans for a machine he designed, which he believes would be of great service to the Union.”

The lieutenant looked back to the security guard. The security guard shrugged. She looked back to the president and said: “So, there was nopony here trying to kill you?”

“There is nopony here trying to kill me.”

“I see,” said the earth pony, looking into space. She stood there silently for a few seconds, as if she was disappointed, before curtseying politely and saying: “I’m terribly sorry for bothering you Mr. President. I do hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Oh, not a problem at all, Lieutenant! I’d much rather have a vigilant police force than a complacent one. Send my regards to the station, would you?”

The lieutenant nodded before turning lugubriously toward the door and shuffling away, slowly. The joints in her armor seemed to sigh with dejection as she moved. At the threshold, she stood facing the sentry, who was smiling at her coyly, before slapping him across the face with a forehoof. The sentry stood in place, rubbing his face with a frown that expressed disappointment at the gesture but with a recognition that it had been deserved.

The lieutenant had disappeared around the corner, and Crystal Miner was about to turn back toward the president when he heard: “So, what’s the situation, Lieutenant?”

He turned back around. This was a new voice, a male voice, but it had not been that of the sentry. It was coming from around the corner, in the direction that the lieutenant had walked. “There’s no situation,” he heard the lieutenant say.

He heard muffled whispers down the corridor. “What do you mean?” said the first voice.

“I mean that the president’s fine. It was a false alarm.”

He heard the outburst of a collective groan, as if an entire crowd had gathered in the hallway outside of the office.

“Can you, maybe, check again?” said another voice. “Because, you know, I was kind of hoping that I could tell my family that I saved the president today at work. I have a dinner party in a few days, and—”

“No, I’m not going to check again! Come on, let’s get out of here. We had a report of an armed robbery that we had to blow off for this; we can go get that now, alright?”

“It’s not the same,” grumbled the first pony. Crystal Miner heard the shuffling of armor and the thud of many metal-plated boots against marble growing quieter as it moved down the hallway. The steps were not firm or fast, nor in unison like the steps that had approached; they were more like the trudging of feet, like the movement out of a theater after a bad performance.

When Crystal Miner turned back, he saw the president looking at the plans on his desk. “What’s this?” the president said, pointing his talons at something on the poster.

Crystal Miner leaned over the table and saw that the president was looking at the drawing of an elongated tube. The tube with tipped with a cone, and little black dots were clustered in the middle of its body.

Crystal Miner gave a smile full of pride. “That, Mr. President, is one of the many ways the Miner Repeating Rifle distinguishes itself from the muzzle-loaders; that is the section view of the rifle’s cartridge.” His horn flashed and the brass tube, represented by the projection in question, floated in front of the president.

The president immediately seized it with his talons and, after flipping it around a few times, inserted its base into his mouth and bit down firmly. “Not very forgiving to the teeth,” he said, rubbing his paw against his gums. “How do I open it?”

Crystal Miner took a deep breath, allowing the feeling of satisfaction to sweep through his body. “Mr. President, to answer your question, I must explain what makes this cartridge different from the paper ones that charge the muzzle-loaders. You see, this cartridge—whose body, as you can see, is made completely from metal—like its paper counterpart, has a premeasured amount of gunpowder and has been prepared in advance by the factory whence it came. But, unlike the paper cartridges, this one needs no more preparation by the soldier before the bullet it contains can be fired.”

He pointed on the full section view of the rifle to a long, tubular region running up the length of the stock of the rifle, which was identified by the lack of diagonal section lines though it. “The soldier places the cartridges into this hole, this ‘magazine.’ The magazine can hold seven of these cartridges before the soldier must charge it again; what this means in practice is that a soldier can fire seven times before having to bring the rifle around to load—eight times if a bullet is already in the chamber prior to completely loading the empty magazine.

“Mr. President, do you realize the tactical implications of this? With this, if a soldier misses his target, he won’t have to bring the rifle down and spend agonizing seconds reloading before he can fire again, by which time the target is probably out of sight. All it takes is two flicks of the hoof, the forward and backward cocking of the lever; a tap on the hammer; and it’s ready to fire again—and the soldier, who is presumably still looking through the sight, can see where the bullet landed and correct his shot appropriately, relative to the sight.

“The invention of the percussion cap, contrary to popular belief, was not without its drawbacks. With the flintlock firearms, the cartridge was used to charge the pan directly—a single, quick action—before continuing with the loading process. With the switch to percussion caps, the soldier now has to carry a separate pouch, in addition to the one that holds the cartridges, and after the ramrod has been returned, he needs an additional three movements to place the cap, three movements which the musketeer did not need, which means that the musketeer can actually fire slightly faster than the riflepony. The percussion cap, though its water-resistance and its reliability compared to the flintlock was revolutionary, did nothing to help the speed of the loading process. But all that changes with me.”

Pointing to various parts on the cartridge, he continued: “This gray part, on top here, is the bullet, as usual. Seated underneath it is the gunpowder, also as usual. But the key part is right here.” He pointed to the circular stubbed end at the bottom of the cartridge. “This is the percussion cap. In the chamber, the rim of this part is struck by the hammer, igniting the gunpowder and propelling the bullet.

“Look at this, Mr. President! Cap, ball, and powder—all in one. To answer your earlier question, I can’t open it; I sealed it when I assembled it, and I do not have the tools on me to unseal it. Why would I want to? It’s ready as it is.

“Do you know what this means? This means that a soldier no longer has to fumble with the painful assembly of a cartridge; all he has to do is slip it into the magazine, cock the lever, and prime the lock, and it’s ready to fire. This is the cartridge of the future! No more dropped bullets and spilled gunpowder, no more bits of paper stuck between teeth, no more mouths full of gunpowder.”

“I actually like the taste of gunpowder,” said the president, picking at his teeth with a talon. “I add a bit of it to my breakfast cereal every morning. I find it gives me a nice kick to my day, if you know what I mean.”

“If that’s the case,” said Princess Luna bluntly, suddenly, and unexpectedly, staring absentmindedly at the ground and avoiding eye contact with the president, “then, should you be killed by the rebellion—which seems to be growing larger by the hour and increasing the number dead by the day—I’ll be sure to keep the Union Army’s explosive squad on standby outside the crematorium, in case anything disastrous should happen when they start the flames.”

Enforcer and the president turned to Princess Luna, their eyes wide with incredulity. Enforcer felt his heart sink in his chest. Crystal Miner pretended to look at an equation on the poster.

“I am appalled,” said the president. “That was unusually dark and sarcastic—even for you!”

Princess Luna said nothing and continued to stare at the ground.

Turning to the engineer, the president said: “I apologize for the vice president, Mr. Miner; she’s under a lot of stress, with the rebellion and everything. We’re all under a great amount of stress, I especially; I’m just capable of hiding it better than the rest.”

“Hmm?” said Crystal Miner, looking back at the president, “oh, I understand!”

“I only understood half of what you said,” said the president, “but I must say that I’m impressed by the way you presented it, if not by the machine itself. What were the reasons given for its rejection by the Department of Magic and Defense?”

Crystal Miner groaned. “Now, Mr. President, I’m not a military tactician, so take as you will my opinion and my disgust for their reasons—”

“Don’t hold back for the sake of social expectations,” interrupted the president. “I’ve never liked them anyway. They deserve all the criticism they get and more.”

“They told me that, in addition to not wanting to retrain all the soldiers, they thought the ease of loading and firing the repeating rifle would cause the soldiers to not take care when aiming, and they would instead fire as fast as they could, sending bullets haphazardly to and fro, hitting nothing and wasting money.”

The president scoffed. “Now I know that you’re making things up. That can’t be what they said.”

Crystal Miner put a hoof over his chest. “I swear on everything, Mr. President, on my life and on my rifle, that that was the reason they gave me.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense! It riddled with contradictions.”

“There are a lot of problems with the argument, I know, but—”

“No, I don’t think you understand. I read the Union Army field manual; they teach their soldiers to fire quickly, not accurately. It baffles me. Despite the fact that rifles have been around for decades now, they’re still stuck in the mindset of the musket. Do you know that they still stand in lines? Out in the open, no cover, in lines, firing intermittently, as fast as possible. What was the point of buying all those rifles if they were not going to appreciate their accuracy? In fact, the general of the Union Army prides herself on how fast her soldiers can load and fire. Why, just a few weeks ago—you remember when I presented the title of Colleague of the Union to that songwriter?—we had a soldier of the Union Army there, a young specialist who entertained us by loading and firing a Trottingham Rifle four times in a minute.”

Crystal Miner opened his mouth and raised a hoof; but all that came out of his throat was a strangled, grunting sound, as if his mind had aborted in mid-flight the point it had wanted to make. He moved his hoof to his face and pulled on his cheeks in bemusement. “I have nothing to say to that.”

The president leaned back in his chair. “Well, Mr. Miner, you’ve made your case. I must complement you on your thoroughness; however, it may disappoint you to learn that I’m not convinced as of yet.”

“What!” exclaimed Crystal Miner, and his right foreleg twitched and grabbed the sash around his body. When they felt no rifle stock, the engineer jerked his head left to right, looking for the machine until he saw it, too late, disassembled and lying in pieces around the Horseshoe Office.

“Theory is one thing,” the president went on, “but implementation is something completely different. Your theory is remarkable, to be sure, but I haven’t seen anything that would confirm its efficacy in reality.”

“But I explained everything! How are you not satisfied? I showed you the cartridge, the receiver, the plans, the—”

“Now, hold on,” said the president, waving a paw at him, urging him to stop. “all I said is that your argument isn’t over just yet. What I was going to say is that I’m willing to see the second part of that argument.”

“What . . . what are you suggesting?”

The president smiled. “I have a few things to do first, some telegrams to send, some ponies to talk to. Can you meet me in the courtyard in about three hours? Or, is that too short of a notice? I presume you live somewhere nearby; perhaps we can schedule a time in the future where—”

“No!” Crystal Miner interjected. Then, clearing his throat and assuming a lower tone of voice, he added: “No, I mean, three hours from now is fine. I’ll see you there.” He closed his eyes and strained his horn, and the rifle parts on the carpet and on the desk began to glow, and they lifted themselves off of their resting surfaces. Slowly, they approached one another; and, after another flash of light, the rifle appeared in front of him, the pieces all in their appropriate positions, and clipped itself onto the harness around his body.

He turned and was about to leave the office when he heard the president’s voice behind him: “Bring the drawings, and bring the rifle. Oh, and Mr. Miner?”

Crystal Miner turned around, and the weight of the rifle on his body seemed to pull him upwards with elation rather than downwards with gravity. He looked at the president. “Yes, sir?”

“Bring as much ammunition as you can carry.”

In a second, the rush of adrenaline to his brain made Crystal Miner’s eyes light up in realization. He felt a bead of sweat fall off his temple and onto the floor as he bowed swiftly toward the president.

He straightened himself upright as quickly as he had bent and turned smartly on his heels toward the exit of the room. He stepped across the crack that he had made in the marble, under the archway of threshold, and out of the room, taking care to close the door behind him. As soon as he was out of sight, he pressed the side of his head against the wall of the corridor in an attempt to cool his face; clasped his hoof to his chest, trying to calm his rapidly beating heart; and took rapid, deep breaths. He had not noticed how stuffy the atmosphere of the Horseshoe Office had been.

Part III

“Hello,” came a voice from outside of the shack.

The sentry looked up from his newspaper and felt his large stomach churn with disgust. In front of him was the blue-green unicorn from earlier—this time, standing politely at the gate. Across his back was slung a massive pack, similar to the ones used by hikers, and bound to the pack, strapped crosswise like the symbol of a railroad crossing, were two rifles. The unicorn had all four of his knees bent, trying desperately to support the weight of the pack, as he attempted to force a smile at the sentry and to say: “In what direction is the courtyard?”

“Go kill yourself,” said the sentry, turning back to the newspaper.

The unicorn nodded faintly. “Much obliged,” he said, and he continued through the gate.

The courtyard was not too difficult to find. It was one of the many exhibits of history in the city of Canterlot. At its length, it was two hundred yards long—at its width, one hundred yards. In a big grassy plain, far away from any impeding clusters of trees, Crystal Miner let fall with a sigh of relief the pack, from which could be heard the soft rattle of metal cartridges against each other.

He looked at his pocket watch. He still had an hour to spare until the president arrived, plenty of time to make all the necessary preparations. From his pack, he removed a few small white cardboard boxes, each containing twenty cartridges. He pulled two tube springs from two of the side pouches on his pack and laid them on the grass. His horn began to glow and, with great concentration, he began to press, carefully, the cartridges into the magazine of the longer rifle. Four bullets had smoothly slid down the hole with a pleasant rattling sound before he stopped; the president will probably want to see how it was loaded as well, he thought, as he overturned the rifle and dumped the four bullets from the magazine out onto the grass.

He laid out onto the grass a few barrels of different lengths, three additional magazines rods, a few varieties of hammers he had brought for testing, different designs for the lever, some medium and long-range sights; and a few replacement springs, in case the slightly rusted ones that were already installed in the rods should pick an incredibly inconvenient time to break.

As he set out a few old dinner plates upright against some short bushes, along with some pieces of sheet metal—favored targets of his, which made a satisfying clang when hit—he realized that there would be plenty of opportunities to show the president how the rifle was loaded. And he realized that, despite the fact that loading the rifle was an action he was intimately familiar with, he was going to have to do it in front of the president; and, as with all familiar tasks, all familiarity and ease with the task instantly disappears when one knows one is being judged—and he did not want to start off his demonstration, which in reality had to be more akin to an entertaining performance, by fumbling with bullets and springs in front of a creature whose sole job was to judge.

He levitated multiple bullets at once, raised the rifle to them, and tried to line up the bullets as close as possible to each other, in an attempt to load the entire magazine within the span of a second. As he was performing this sort of balancing act, he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, a screw near the sight of the rifle with the shorter barrel that was jutting out slightly more than the screw on the other side of the sight.

Instantly, in a panic, he dropped the rifle and the bullets he was holding over it, hovered the smaller rifle near his face; and he felt his heart began to race when he saw that the screw had become dislodged, and the sight was listing to the right, out of place, and not firmly fixed to its holder. His breaths becoming more shallow and rapid, he rummaged frantically through the rucksack, throwing out various pieces of metal carelessly, looking for one of the simplest machines that existed: a machine that had existed ever since the first pony, beginning to make the first noises of the first of the languages of his species, uttered a sound that represented the idea that was the closest to the modern concept of “engineering,” a machine which, after several minutes, caused Crystal Miner to fall back onto the grass, distraught, when he realized that he did not have it—a screwdriver.

He was trying to push, helplessly, the dislodged sight back into place when his blurry peripheral vision detected movement, and he looked up and saw four figures quickly approaching him. Sweat forming on his forehead, he quickly found a patch of slightly overgrown grass and tossed the rifle into it. He immediately looked away from it, hoping that if he did not steal a glance at it, then nopony else would. After hastily and messily loading the magazine of the longer rifle—where, more than one time, the bullet whose turn it was to be dropped into the breech bounced off the edge of the hole and landed on the grass, causing its inventor to grab another one out of the cardboard box, not wanting to waste time looking for it in the grass—he quickly shouldered the rifle before standing at attention and waiting to be approached, hoping with all his might that they had not seen his incompetence with his own machine.

Their faces were too far away to be seen, but he could make out the tall, slender figure as the president; the moderately tall, dark silhouette with a regal step as Princess Luna; that short, jerky, teal blur as that obsequious secretary; and one more specimen, a firm, auburn pony, who he could not recognize. Crystal Miner quickly pulled the iron ring off his horn, brought it to his mouth, smothered it in his humid breath, and rubbed it against his fur before quickly slipping it back on.

When they were in earshot, he heard the president call out: “Good afternoon, Mr. Miner!”

“As to you, Mr. President,” Crystal Miner yelled back. “I hope your limbs are steady and your eyes keen. The rifle requires a light touch; a skilled, careful, and deliberate hoof; and its recoil, full of wrath and coldness, will dislodge those who treat it improperly.”

When the group was closer, a thought came to Crystal Miner; and, without allowing it to pass through that filter installed in his brain for the sake of social customs, that filter which prevents thousands of thoughts from being converted into language every second lest the impurities make their way out of the speaker’s mouth and frightens society, he added: “In many ways, it’s quite like a female.”

When Crystal Miner’s eyes met those of the fourth, auburn figure, and when he saw the pince-nez sitting on her nose, the memory was recalled to him, and he could feel it filling his mouth with its sour taste. He gagged and shuddered.

“Mr. Miner,” said the president, turning to the fourth, “may I introduce Vice Director Ripples of the Department of Magic and Defense.”

It was only now that the vice director recognized the unicorn with the smug stare and arrogant posture, and she took a step back, her tongue out in disgust. “Sir, you didn’t tell me it was him!”

“I had assumed you knew,” he replied. “Is there a problem?”

She looked at him and raised her brow, as one does when one is trying to impart a grave truth to someone, a piece of knowledge that would mean the difference between life and death. “Sir, I don’t know what he told you, but his behavior—the things he said, which the most fundamental of manners forbid me from repeating in your presence—compelled me to have him forcibly removed from the premises. He gave the police quite a few bruises when he resisted their attempts to escort him.”

The president nodded. “Having met and spoken extensively with Mr. Miner,” he replied, “I will admit that he can be . . . exuberant, to say the least; however, the interest that the government of the Union takes in this stallion and what he has to offer is of a purely scientific nature—and since this is a matter of science, his personality and his method of relating to his fellow citizens is completely irrelevant and does not, in any way, besmirch the value he offers.”

“Well,” said Vice Director Ripples, levitating her glasses and wiping them with a cloth that came out of her breast pocket, “regardless of his personality, I did indeed review the matter. Mr. Miner wanted to sell to the government of the Union a weapon he had invented—a ‘repeating rifle,’ to use his words. I evaluated the machine, personally; and, after weighing the facts, after considering the pros and the cons, I, as the director of the Department of Magic and Defense, made the executive decision to not purchase the rifle for the Union Army. This upset Mr. Miner, and he became violent toward me and my employees.”

“‘Vice director,’” said the president.

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“You referred to yourself as the ‘director of the Department of Magic and Defense’; this is an error, as you are its vice director.”

There was a moment’s silence. Vice Director Ripples stared at the president with an amused smirk, expecting him to relent at any second. When he did not, when she saw that he was staring at her as firmly as ever, and when she saw his beady red eyes protrude out of their sockets, trying to rip an explanatory answer out of her brain before it was ready, she took a step back and, in a wavering, hesitant voice, said: “Mr. President, as of right now, I hold supreme authority over all facets in the Department. I’m—”

“The director of the Department of Magic and Defense is a unicorn named Brilliant Star. A warrant for his arrest was put out about a month ago. Until he is arrested, tried, and found guilty of treason and desertion, he is still its director; and if—I should say when—he is found guilty, only then will the position of director be available. And I would like to remind you, Ms. Vice Director, that it is I, the president of the Union, that personally appoints the new director of the Department—and I must say that presumptuousness is not a quality I find becoming in a leader.”

The vice director nodded and stared at the ground. She began to absentmindedly prod at the grass with a forehoof.

Crystal Miner could feel a warm sensation of pleasure rising in his chest.

The president turned away from the vice director, finding it unnecessary to keep staring at her while she stewed in her unease, knowing that she could still feel his eyes on her, and said: “Well, I suppose that’s enough talking for now. When can we start? My talons are trigger-itchy.”

Crystal Miner wasted no time in turning the conversation in his direction. Levitating a magazine rod and the rifle with the intact sight in front of the president, he said: “I believe you should have the honor of firing first, Mr. President.” The rod inserted itself into the stock of the rifle; turned sideways, snapping shut with an audible and satisfying sound; and the lever underneath extended forward with a sharp noise that caused Princess Luna to flinch with surprise. After the lever was returned to position, the hammer was cocked with a quiet click; and the rifle, its barrel pointing down toward the targets and its stock pointing to the observers, flew toward the president. He reached out and grabbed it eagerly.

The president stayed where he was, some fifty yards away from the dinner plates lined in neat row in the branches of a long bush that bordered the entire courtyard. After thoughtfully running the fingers of his paw over the finished metal of the receiver, he suddenly brought the rifle to bear toward the target with such a swift motion that Crystal Miner reflexively dove out of the way between the president and the range.

As Crystal Miner peeled his face off the grass, he was surprised that he had heard no explosion of gunpowder. He stood up and looked at the president, who was still looking through the sight of the rifle. His stance was impeccable: the ease in his shoulders; the slight, forward bend of his knees; and the firm grasp he had upon the rifle showed every single hallmark of a professional, his grasp steady, his breathing even—and, most remarkably, a steady calm over his entire body. His countenance surpassed in skill those of even the most skilled snipers in the Union Army. And the last thing Crystal Miner noticed about him—but by far the most remarkable—was that the president, looking through the flip-up sight of the rifle, kept both eyes wide open.

When Crystal Miner had visited his distant family in the country, when they had gone gopher-shooting in the corn fields of his father’s uncle’s cousin’s daughter, he had noticed how the line of earth ponies choosing their targets with their muskets had always kept the eye on their nondominant side closed, and only their dominant eye was open and staring through the sight. When it had been his turn with the musket, Crystal Miner had regarded the parallax as distracting and had instinctively closed his left eye as well. It had not been until he had started work on the rifle, when he had acquired a copy of the field manual of the Union Army, when he had learned that their snipers were taught to keep both eyes open when shooting. It made complete sense to him; the double perspective allowed a sniper to align his shots more accurately, and Crystal Miner had started keep both eyes open when practicing. It had been difficult to adjust to the double image, but through enough practice, Crystal Miner had gotten used to it and had found a major improvement in his accuracy. And he had been surprised when he had passed by the shooting ranges in the Department of Magic and Defense and had seen privates, specialists and corporals, and sergeants, and even the officers, lieutenants, captains, and majors shooting their rifles—with only one eye open. And when he saw the president standing there, like a professional, with both eyes open, he realized exactly for what kind of creature he had intended the rifle to be operated by.

The wind rustled the grass; the faint noise of a far-off bird singing was barely heard, and Crystal Miner was aware of the profound lack of sound in the courtyard. He could hear the sound of the blood rushing in the canals in his ears. The president was still staring through the sight of the rifle and still had not fired. The engineer was not aware how long he had been standing there, watching the president; he had lost track of time. He could watch the president in that position for the rest of his life.

“You know,” he heard the vice director whisper. She had leaned her head toward Princess Luna and was trying to say something discretely to her. “I’ve never liked—”

She was interrupted by a deafening report. The shock and the imposition of the sound caused Crystal Miner to jump reflexively a foot in the air. When he looked back at the president, he saw a thick, bluish-gray plume of smoke rising from the barrel of the rifle. He looked toward the bush and saw that the left-most plate had been split by a bullet, which had passed directly through its center.

“Bravo, Mr. President, bravo!” exclaimed Enforcer, who had taken to his weak, old, faltering wings and was clapping his forehooves together.

The president kept his eyes on the range and through the sight of the rifle. He extended his paw, palm up, toward Crystal Miner, without turning to face him, and said, brusquely: “Cartridge.”

“Mr. President,” replied Crystal Miner, and the light hint of humor in the engineer’s voice was enough to break the president out of his trance and make him look toward the source of the carefree utterance, “the Miner Repeating Rifle. Pull on the underside lever.”

The president turned back toward the range and inserted his paw into the oblong hole of the lever. He tentatively moved his wrist and extended the lever until a clicking noise was heard. He then cautiously moved the lever back until it snapped into its original position.

“Ready the lock,” Crystal Miner instructed.

The president raised his paw to the hammer behind the rifle’s flip-up sight and wrapped his fingers around it. The hammer did not move at first, but as the president began to apply more pressure, it began to shake, until it finally slammed backwards. Crystal Miner noted that the president had not settled the hammer on its half-cock position, as the engineer himself had done a few times unwittingly, thinking that it was at the desired state of fully-cocked.

No sooner had the president placed his paw back on the grip than the second shot was off, along with a loud report and a plume of smoke. Crystal Miner was about to look back toward the targets, when he heard two quick clicks, the cock of the hammer, and another shot. He saw the president about to chamber the third round, and Crystal Miner watched him go through the rest of the magazine with the same awe as if he was watching a miracle being performed by a god. He had never seen the rifle operated so fast before. As the president fired, the column of smoke grew larger and thicker, and Crystal Miner watched him as he was engulfed by the blue-gray cloud. But the president’s stance never faltered; his eyes never took themselves off his target; and the motion of his limbs never relented, moving with dangerous efficiency across the action of the rifle, chambering the bullet, readying the lock, and sending a bullet down a path calculated to an extreme precision in the fraction of a second by the intransigent sharpshooter, using the sound of the exploding powder as the voice of his ideas and the force of the recoil of the rifle as proof of their existence and of their ramifications.

The entire sequence lasted no more than eight seconds. Through the smoke, Crystal Miner heard the sound of another click, a familiar little clash of metal—the rifle was empty. When the smoke had been cleared by the gentle breeze, giving dominion back to the transparent oxygen and nitrogen, he saw the president holding the rifle’s stock against the ground and looking downrange. Crystal Miner turned his head and looked as well: six more shots, six more plates broken.

No sound came from any of the four ponies for nearly a minute, not even that of breathing.

Crystal Miner stood up straight and looked upon the president with a smile of pride, much like the look the engineer had received from his dad, when he had seen him in his graduation gown and with a bright iron ring fixed firmly upon his horn. “Not bad,” said Crystal Miner, as he pulled the same ring off his horn again, exhaled on it exaggeratedly, and rubbed it on his fur, “for an amateur.”

The president said nothing when he turned to face him, but by the way he abandoned the impeccable firm of a warrior in favor of leaning on the rifle and slouching with the provocative stance of a rival, a patronizing smile completing the image, Crystal Miner knew that the president had accepted his challenge of a duel, and that he was planning to see it through, eager to see the complete extent of the prowess of the engineer, which could only be expressed so much through the examination of his machine.

“Well,” said Crystal Miner, responding to the implied, but unspoken, question and sliding the ring back onto his horn, “I estimate this distance to be, say, fifty yards? It’s impressive feat, to be sure—for a musketeer. But, Mr. President, as we’ve said, archaic and barbaric tools such as muskets are unfit to be in your presence. What you have fired is a rifle, and the distance across which you’ve placed the shots with such accuracy should not be bragged about, lest you are subjected to embarrassment and ridicule for your delusions of grandeur.”

Crystal Miner walked over to the shorter rifle lying in the grass and hovered it for all to see. “Observe the feats which can be achieved with this machine when in the control of a weapons expert, a professional, such as myself. This firearm is of a different design and, in many ways, inferior to the one the president holds.”

“It looks exactly the same to me,” Vice Director Ripples snorted.

“To the unlearned eye, that’s an easy mistake to make,” replied Crystal Miner, not giving her the dignity of eye contact. “Notice how the barrel on this one is shorter and its receiver slightly smaller. This is the carbine version of the Miner Repeating Rifle—I refer to it lovingly as the ‘Crystal Carbine.’ For this model, I’ve replaced the more massive parts with smaller, shorter ones, though less mechanically desirable; the result is a more compact and lighter rifle, but one with less accuracy and a slower muzzle velocity. The soldier loses some ability to hit a target, but he supplements that loss with an increase of mobility. But I will demonstrate that, in skilled hooves, this model has no less of an ability than its heavier and longer cousin in commanding the range.”

He spun it around a few times in the air, as if he was expecting some oohs or ahhs. When he received none, he said, as if speaking to himself: “What’s the lengthwise distance of this courtyard?”

“Two hundred yards,” Enforcer immediately said.

Without saying any further words, Crystal Miner clipped the carbine to a hook on the harness on his body, threw it over his shoulders, and began to walk down the courtyard, past the three other ponies, and kept going, not looking back once to see the perplexed stares he was getting.

“Never,” the vice director spat, when she saw that he was still walking a minute later, “will he make the shot.”

They watched as he continued to increase the distance between him and them, his figure growing smaller by the second. It seemed he was deliberately walking slowly, as if to emphasize the growing silence that his absence created, being all the more imposing after the reports of the volley of rounds that had recently shattered their eardrums. The president walked to the group, the four of them never taking their eyes off the little shade of blue-green walking away from them, leaned his head toward Princess Luna’s ear and, watching the light of the afternoon sun reflect off the iron ring on the top of the shade of blue-green, which was still clearly visible even at a hundred yards distance, said: “I’ve been thinking: I need a symbol of some sort, some little trinket that I can carry with me at all times, that represents my position. I’m having trouble deciding on what that should be. Any ideas?”

“A pair of hoofcuffs bound together with a metallic chain that rattles with the sound of a fruitless plea for justice when shaken,” said Princess Luna, not turning to face him.

The president bent his eyebrows at a sharp downwards angle in a scowl of disapproval. He said, in a low tone of voice with no traces of the earlier amiability, in a voice as sharp and reproachful as the way he stared at her: “I meant something instantly recognizable, something distinctive, something that identifies my power.”

“Emboss the cuffs with the Seal of the President of the Union.”

Princess Luna’s attention was captured by a fast movement in the distance. She looked and saw Crystal Miner, and though his face was not visible and she could not hear what he was shouting, the sight of his forehoof flailing madly in the air signaled that he was trying to communicate something of vital importance. She saw Enforcer’s head turn in her direction, seeming to look at her—or, rather, through her—and when she looked in the same direction, she saw the president ten or fifteen yards aside, leaning behind a short, long rock with a faded plaque.

“I’d get out of the way if I were you,” he said.

The three ponies turned their heads back down the courtyard, and when they saw the urgent gestures of the engineer in the distance, they understood. At once, all three of them ran toward the president and crouched down behind the rock. From their position, they could still see the targets but had lost sight of the unicorn behind a large hedge near where he was standing.

Almost immediately, they heard the report of a shot, the sound of a small object cutting through the air, and the rustle of the leaves behind the targets as the piece of metal nestled into their folds.

“See?” said the vice director, her lips moving with the faint traces of a smile. “I told you he wouldn’t—”

They heard another shot, and almost immediately afterwards, they heard the loud crash of metal on metal. Above the line of plates, they saw a small cloud of dust erupt from one of the pieces of sheet metal. When the dust dispersed, they saw a round hole, perfectly through the piece’s center.

Six successive shots followed, followed by six more gusts of air; three of the bullets found themselves cracking the dinner plates, two of the plates being hit directly in their centers; three resounded against the sheet metal slabs—the bullets alternating between the two choices of targets.

When the seventh shot had been fired, the four of them stood straight and looked at the damage: Four holes, no more than an inch apart away from each other, were in one of the pieces of metal. One of the plates had merely had a corner chipped off from it and would still be passable in the dining room of most families, while two others had been smashed into dozens of pieces that not even the homeless would deign to eat off of.

They saw Crystal Miner emerge from behind the hedge and begin walking toward them across the field with a confident stride. Though he walked slowly, they could tell he was just waiting for the precise moment he came within earshot to resume his words of deification of himself, his prowess, and his rifle, and the four watching him approach were quickly deciding on the appropriate way to react to what they had hastily perceived he was going to say, and they were adjusting their postures accordingly.

“Two hundred yards,” said Crystal Miner, shouldering his rifle, when he was close enough for them to see his smug air of satisfaction, “and with the carbine version at that.”

“The Trottingham has a maximum range of twice that distance,” sneered the vice director.

Crystal Miner frowned and assumed a stance that could only be described as hostile and confrontational. “Maximum range,” he growled. “What’s its effective range?”

The president stepped between the two, holding out his forward extremities. “Let’s not be quick to form conclusions. We still have a lot of arguments to see; the demonstration is not yet over, and I, for one”—and he eagerly flailed the fingers of his paw in the air—“am waiting enthusiastically for my next turn with the rifle.”

“That,” said Crystal Miner, “can be arranged straight away, Mr. President. If your patience permits, I can show you how the rifle is loaded.”

“Please do.”

Crystal Miner unfastened the carbine from his harness and, straining, levitated it alongside the rifle; and, seized with a whim of that mystic arrogance peculiar to unicorns—an arrogance even more insidious in unicorns who also happened to be engineers—attempted to the slide fourteen bullets into two breeches in front of the president; and, just as he had feared, the task proved to be embarrassingly difficult—exacerbated by the fact that he was attempting it, for the first time, with two weapons simultaneously. “I’ve struggled with a way of hastening the loading process,” said Crystal Miner, when he felt his anxiety increasing, “but one can certainly see”—as he dropped a few cartridges on the ground—“that, regardless of any perceived drawbacks, the loading process for the Miner is unequivocally easier and simpler than the process for the Trottingham.” He was too scared to look at the expressions on the faces of his spectators when he accidentally dropped the magazine spring; but, if he did, he would have noticed Princess Luna and Enforcer exchanging bemused glances, the vice director rolling her eyes—and the president standing there, watching the process attentively, no signs of fatigue or impatience in his appearance.

Finally, Crystal Miner managed to fix both magazine springs and twist them shut. He floated the rifle to the president, which was received keenly, and clipped the carbine to himself.

“Actually,” said the president, “I would like to try the Crystal Carbine this time.”

“The carbine?” said Crystal Miner, whose teeth were beginning to chatter as he began to think about the loose sight. “But . . . well, you see—”

“Oh, pardon me!” said the president. “I had been so wrapped up in this exhilarating sport and spectacle that I had completely forgotten about the chain of command!”

With the rifle clasped firmly in his paw, he thrust it toward Princess Luna. “Ms. Vice President, it’s your turn. Would you like to give it a try?”

“No,” she answered immediately, flatly, and bluntly, not looking up at the president or the rifle.

The president pulled the rifle back. “No? Why not?”

“I don’t like guns.”

The president looked at the varnish on the wood of the stock of the rifle with the same look one might have given to a mistress, and he sighed contentedly. “What’s not to like about them?”

She turned to face him with such a quick movement and such an imperious glare of condemnation that it caused the president to flinch. “I cannot even begin to conceive of the reasons why one would be infatuated with them,” she said. “They’re loud; they exude suffocating walls of thick, ugly smoke, and they have only three purposes: death, injury, and destruction. Why on earth do you like them?”

The president threw the rifle against his shoulder and his mouth fell open in shock. “Vice President Luna! I’m appalled,” he said. “I’m absolutely appalled that you think of this machine as, and only as, a tool of death. That’s how the insurrectionists would think of it; that how brutes would think of it: They would see it in only one way, and that’s purely in the sense of the two emotions that are associated with the word ‘gun.’ They hear the loud crack of exploding powder and the cloud of smoke that precedes the bullet; and, depending on whether the bullet hits or misses, this conjures one or both of these emotions within them. These two emotions are the most primitive and basic of them, and are present in all animals, regardless of how advanced their cognition is: Fear and pain—one or both, depending on whether the bullet misses or hits. And these emotions, despite being important in their own ways, are experienced by all creatures—experienced by the highest-functioning engineer, to the lowest functioning chipmunk. But there is an aspect to this machine that the chipmunk will never be able to see: it will never be able to see what the gun is made of; and, even if it does, it will never be able to see that it’s so much more than steel—but the engineer sees all these things too clearly. I’m surprised you do not see this like him and am baffled that you do not see what makes this machine so amazing:

“This unicorn that you see standing before us was, a good number of years ago, born into dust, as we all were. He had to learn how to walk, to talk, to feed himself, as we all must have done. Within a decade or so, he learned, very tentatively, how the world works, in the sense that he learned how the things that satisfy those primal desires we all have come to him—which, in our day and age, come to us, more or less, in ample supply—as we all did.

“And that is a place where many of those his age had decided to stop. For the rest of their lives, they regarded the world as a sort of massive vending machine: they learned to drop the small pieces of metal they had been told was money into the machine of the world and had banged on it long enough until it dispensed what they needed—just enough so that they could survive to the next time they could do it again.

“But this unicorn here was unsatisfied with that way of life. He looked to the ones before him who had taken the world out of the stone age; and, instead of asking what their inventions could do, he asked how they did those things and why they had built them. I suspect he never found an answer to that last question; thousands of philosophy theses have been written on the subject, not one satisfying enough to put to death the question for good. So, instead, he focused on the how. He learned, using the jolt of innumerable cups of coffee barely keeping his brain on a functional level, through the pain of sleep deprivation, the how. He studied their methods, their observations, their findings. Until, one day, he found a strange power coursing through his veins, and he instantly knew it was the exact same power that the ancients he had read about had had: he doesn’t see a piece of iron, the way you and I see it, as a gray piece of metal that turns brown when left in contact with the air; he sees it as one of the most malleable and ductile elements in existence, and he sees it in his mind instantiated in many different forms—and each and every one of these forms, in some way, are for his use, his pleasure, and his convenience.

“And so, he, endowed with the power of creation, a force which some say is inaccessible to an individual and which can only be employed by gods, picked up the iron. Using the principles laid out by the ancients and using inventions by the moderns—the latter no less deserving of our admiration and praise—he concreted his vision in the form of writing, equations, and mathematical relationships. He had learned that, years earlier, iron had been combined with other elements similar to it, these elements having very different and important properties, and had formed a solution, some sort of steel, an alloy that possessed properties that the parent iron did not posses alone—and he used this steel to build the machine, for the iron alone would not have sufficed.

“In many ways, he is better than the ancients; he built a machine that some of them would have certainly branded as witchcraft, without realizing that it was the principles that they had established that the witch had used.

“He took this metal; and, while never changing its chemical composition, he had been bended it, cut it, hammered it, and arranged it. These elements—which, by themselves, nature normally leaves lying around to rust and weather—had been turned into a working, moving, machine. He had taken something useless and, by arranging them to his desires, had made something of value. Is this machine not like a body, in a sense? Chemically, there is nothing remarkable about a body. A body is just an assortment of elements, mostly carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen—the first three being run-of-mill elements that can be found in plenty in a tablespoon of air, the last two being two of the most abundant elements in the universe. But, when these elements are shaped by a powerful force, they become something indescribably remarkable—and that’s exactly what the Miner Repeating Rifle is. Nature brought life to the nonmetals; he, and those like him, brought life to the metals. And the force he wields is no less powerful—and, in some ways, more powerful—than a number of the forces the earth wields.

“Don’t you see, Ms. Vice President? He didn’t just build a gun—he created life. Now, do you understand why I am intrigued by Mr. Miner’s invention, why I am ‘infatuated,’ as you put it?”

Princess Luna mouth was slightly open, as if she had been planning to say something; but, if she was, the words failed her. She stared at him with a raised brow and a disbelieving stare that carried faint traces of disappointment. She said nothing but turned swiftly and walked back toward the mansion. The three remaining watched her until she disappeared.

When she was out of sight, the president shrugged. Turning to the vice-director, he extended the rifle toward her and said: “Well, with the absence of the vice president, I suppose it’s your turn now.”

“I also must decline the offer,” said the vice director, sticking up her nose.

The president grunted. “Any particular reason why?”

“I must say, that I found your little speech quite enjoyable,” she replied. “It really reminded me why, unlike many of those with whom I work, I enjoy weapons and technology as opposed to magic and incantations; in other words, you could say I’m more fond of the ‘defense’ part of the Department of Magic and Defense. There is a certain . . . intoxication that one feels when operating firearms, to be sure. I remember the first time I fired a Trottingham Rifle while in the Union’s service: that loud crack of gunpowder, the recoil of the rifle that hits you with the exact same magnitude of momentum that the bullet is moving with, the sight and sound of the target being split into a thousand pieces . . . it felt like my body had been charged with the power of the Union, and it felt . . .” She blinked, reanimating her eyes, and coughed. “Like I was saying, I’m afraid that shooting the rifle will get me caught up in the whole sport of it, and I’m afraid that that will interfere with my ability to judge this rifle’s value to the Union. I’m content to watch.”

“So, in other words,” interjected Crystal Miner, “you’re afraid you’ll like it!”

“So much the better,” said the president, turning to Crystal Miner. “We only have so much ammunition, and this means more for us. Are you up to a friendly competition?”

And when the president looked at Crystal Miner just then, when Crystal Miner stared straight into the beady red eyes of the draconequus, the unicorn felt his brain and spirit charged with a nameless frenzy, and an indescribable feeling of power and drive filled his muscles. He felt his heart starting to beat faster, and it felt as if his muscles had been endowed with a phenomenal strength so that they would be able drive his body in the pursuit of a new goal: and that goal, one purpose that had pushed out all other thoughts and goals in his mind, was the satisfaction of the urge to seize everything beautiful in his grasp, throttle it until it died, and absorb everything good it had once contained. And he felt that no matter how many of these cravings he pursued, it would only provide a suggestion of a pleasure that was possible and would leave him hungrier than ever for the next kill.

And, as his breathing became more rapid and while he keeled over and grasped a hoof to his chest, in a war against his own soul, he realized that this unshakeable urge, this insane, deranged want for destruction was the way the president was feeling right now and had felt his entire life. As Crystal Miner knelt on the grass, trying to regain control of himself, he looked up and was in awe when he saw how calm the president looked, how collected and carefree. The country thought that the confrontation with the rebellion was the president’s great war; but Crystal Miner saw that the war the president was fighting, the greatest war he ever knew, was within himself, a war that he had to fight while trying to go to sleep in the evening, a war that he was fighting and had been fighting every second of every day in his life, and he saw that that war, if were ever to manifest itself in some concrete form, would be the most destructive entity in existence, wiping out all life on earth in the blink of an eye. Crystal Miner was impressed when he saw that placid, innocent smile hiding all that, that quaint way he leaned on one leg, the carefree way he twirled the rifle—he was amazed at how the president managed to convincingly pull off all these little gestures under the guise of awaiting for the answer to a completely innocent question.

And for Crystal Miner, the option of refusal was not a possibility.

Part IV

It was dark when the last muzzle flash coming from the Presidential Mansion’s courtyard could be seen. The shot was taken from the carbine by the president. Crystal Miner had let him use the carbine when the first rays of the sun had begun to disappear; and it had not seemed like the president had noticed, or had cared, about the loose sight.

When the plates had been obliterated, and when the pieces of sheet metal had been riddled with so many holes that not even Crystal Miner could conceive of how they still managed to hold together, they had turned their attention to the leaves and the bark of the hedge. The two of them laughed simultaneously when they saw the wood splinter in all directions and when one of them managed to blow one of the large leafs clean from its stem. Amazingly, in all the cacophony and the ceaseless sound of exploding gunpowder and moving levers, nopony had been hurt by any capriciously put round, for the president had made his views on the boundaries of the range clear when he had stopped Crystal Miner from turning around and taking aim at a pigeon that had been startled when a bullet had ripped through the folds of its tree.

Shortly after Princess Luna had left, Vice Director Ripples had laid her back down on the grass and shut her eyes. Her initial attempts at repose had been ruined by the laughter, the cheers, and the shots regarding whatever wager the president had had with Crystal Miner; but, eventually, she had found herself able to fall asleep—even the loudest of sounds fade into the background if they are maintained consistently and for a sufficient length of time.

Enforcer had managed to go after Princess Luna, and nopony had realized his absence.

“Well, Ms. Vice Director?” June Ripples heard a voice right above her head.

She opened her eyes, and when she saw two figures standing above her—one short silhouette that would have been invisible in the darkness had it not been for the fact that she saw it supporting the outline of a rifle against the dim clouds desperately struggling to retain the last of the light of day, and a taller, slenderer silhouette that had the shape of a creature of nightmares, serpentine and malformed, looking at her with eyes a faint yellow, through pupils that were a blood red—she sprang to her feet, dusted her coat off; and quickly fondled the chain of her pince-nez, dangling helplessly around her legs, until she had once again firmly settled them on her nose. “Yes, Mr. President?” she said.

“We are out of ammunition, thus concluding our demonstration. You’ve been here watching the entire thing. I presume that Mr. Miner has already showed you the drawings and explained how everything works, so you are now ready to pass judgment. Have you come to a decision?”

“Yes,” she responded immediately. And despite the fact that Crystal Miner heard none of those haughty and dogmatic tones that she had used earlier, it did not make him any less angry when he heard her say: “From a purely technical standpoint, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t impressed by the rifle; however, the mechanical beauty of the design of the weapon is not necessarily directly proportional to its efficacy on the battlefield, and I see a lot of problems with it. For one thing, though the cartridge is certainly revolutionary, after watching you fumble them clumsily into the breech, I do not believe that loading this is any easier than loading the Trottingham.”

She heard a groan of exasperation in the semidarkness from the shorter figure, and she heard Crystal Miner saying: “Do I even need to begin to explain how much less dexterity, both magical and manual, loading my rifle takes compared to—”

“I am still talking, Mr. Miner; please don’t interrupt me. As I was saying, the inventor used the firing rate as one of the rifle’s selling points, but I believe it to be one of its drawbacks. I’ve been watching you load and fire, and I estimate that the rifle’s rate of fire is close to twenty rounds per minute; compare this rate to the Trottingham’s three per minute; account for the fact that the cartridge is brass, as opposed to paper; and you’ll see that firing this rifle for an hour is noticeably more expensive than firing the Trottingham. Now, I cannot put a price on the life of a single soldier of the Union Army, and if buying this rifle and its ammunition meant that I could save a single life, I would buy it now without hesitation; but because of the Trottingham’s three rounds per minute, a soldier is forced to take more care with his shots, and I fear if he was armed with this, that care would be thrown to the wind if this rifle is truly easier to reload, as you say—which I don’t believe it to be.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Crystal Miner. “First of all, you don’t even—”

“Oh, shut up!” said the president in a voice and with a spontaneity that caused Crystal Miner to jump back and the vice director to flinch. “Carry on, Ms. Vice Director.”

“Thank you, Mr. President. In addition, even though I, personally, am impressed by the technical nature of your rifle, as I said before, this new design raises problems that do not exist with the muzzle-loaders. The Trottingham, aside from the small hammer and trigger system, has absolutely no moving parts, while this ‘repeating rifle,’ by its very nature, has many. It is very rare for a Trottingham to jam. Even if your rifle did not jam once during this demonstration, today was a very dry, sunny day, and I suspect that there will be at least one more rainy and muddy battle in the days ahead of the Union Army, and I fear the repeating rifle will not be able to endure—unlike the Trottingham, which has demonstrated, time and time again, its reliability. And it is for these reasons that I’ve said that the government of the Union will not, at this time, purchase the Miner Repeating Rifle.”

She could hear the president humming thoughtfully to himself. “Is that all?” he said.

“Yes, Mr. President.”

Instantly, they heard: “May I respond?”

“Certainly,” said the president.

Crystal Miner took an angry breath. “Now, look here, you—” Suddenly, he stopped himself. They could hear him taking a step back, and they heard a deep breath preceded by a profound silence. “Look,” he said, at length, “I’m aware that my rifle has flaws; I’m not debating that. My rifle is not perfect by any stretch of the word. While it is true that it has drawbacks that are nonexistent with the Trottingham, the inverse is also true: The cartridges I’ve made are waterproof, unlike the paper ones. I imagine a soldier has dropped his cartridge box into a puddle on more than one occasion, ruining many of his shots. It’s true that my rifle has many moving parts; in fact, at one point, I had considered making the action of the lever also cock the hammer, but I had decided against it and made the cocking of the hammer a separate manual action, because I was afraid that you would say exactly as you said earlier. It still has a lot of moving parts; but, I assure you, I have done the calculations, and I have run stress tests—and I am confident that the rifle can stand up to a lot more than you believe. As I’ve said, there are drawbacks this has over the Trottingham, but it also has a lot of strengths over it as well—and I believe, very firmly, that the strengths overshadow those of the drawbacks. But, regardless, I . . . I accept and understand your decision.” He pinned his ears, bowed his head in deference, and walked over to his rucksack. He began to slowly pack up the assorted parts and scraps that were lying around it.

He turned and saw the president approach the vice director, and he knew they were talking about something, but they were too far away and their voices too quiet that he couldn’t hear them:

“Ms. Vice Director,” said the president, “answer me this one question: do you believe, truly believe, everything you just said?”

“Not only that, but more”—she leaned closer to him and dropped her voice to a whisper—“I failed to mention that we have a good relationship and discount with Stallion’s Arms, and I don’t want to ruin that.”

“Understandable,” he said, “but do you believe the rifle is meritless?”

“I do not believe it’s meritless; I believe that there is no place right now for it in the Union Army. That may change, in the future. But, as of now, almost all of our regiments are deployed, and the ones that remain cannot easily be retrained, nor would they accept eagerly such retraining.”

“Really? You mean to tell me that there is not a single individual that can be trained with the Miner? No recent graduates of basic training who could be issued the rifle for the sake of an army experiment?”

“None, as of the moment.”

“Why do I find that hard to believe?”

“It’s the truth, Mr. President.”

The president nodded. Then, turning to the darkness, he yelled: “Enforcer! Go up to my office and fetch the recruitment statistics for the Union Army!”

“Wait, wait!” exclaimed the vice director. “Now that I think about it, there’s one division about to graduate—three regiments, the One Hundredth, the one Hundred and First, and the One Hundred and Second Canterlot Volunteer Infantry Regiments.”

“How many strong?”

“Exactly thirteen thousand.”

“And could they not be issued the Miner Repeating Rifle?”

There was a silence, and the president could hear saliva sloshing around in the vice director’s mouth. “Well . . . Mr. President, you see—”

“I’m not asking for an army-wide adoption. I just want to conduct a test, an experiment. Is this possible?”

There was another silence as the vice director shifted the weight on her feet. “I . . . I suppose there wouldn’t be that much harm in that.”

“So, then, will you sign the approval for thirteen thousand Miner Rifles and fifty-eight million of its cartridges?”

“It’s not just me who has to approve,” she said. “General Sherbert technically has some say as to what is adopted and what is—”

“General Sherbert will do whatever I tell her to do,” the president snapped.

The vice director took a step back. “Yes . . . yes, of course, Mr. President. I’ll . . . I’ll contact you when the order is drawn up.” She curtseyed brusquely and walked—ran—toward the front gate of the Presidential Mansion.

Crystal Miner saw the hurried departure of the vice director and saw the president walking toward him. He stood up, pulled the grass out of his fur, and waited to receive him.

“Mr. President,” Crystal Miner began, “I’ve been thinking: it really was a stretch to expect my rifle to instantly be made standard-issue.”

“That it was,” he replied.

Crystal Miner pulled the barrel off the carbine, removed the magazine spring, and slid them both into a pocket on the rucksack. “Do you mind if I ask what she said to you?”

“This is what’s going to happen,” said the president, “an infantry division just graduated, and they will be outfitted with your rifle.”

Crystal Miner felt his muscles turn to ice, his horn burn with magma, and his packing instantly stopped. “Wha . . . what? How . . . how many is that?”

“Three regiments, thirteen thousand soldiers, who will need fifty eight million cartridges to start with. What’s the price on a single rifle and cartridge?”

“Why . . . why, I was intending to charge fifty-six grams of gold for the rifle and fifty eight milligrams per round, so if you want thirteen thousand rifles and fifty eight million cartridges, that’s . . .”

“It’s a little over four tons of gold.”

Crystal Miner turned so white that his pallor could be seen in the semidarkness. “Oh . . . I . . . I can’t believe—wait! No, I still have to rent factories, buy materials, hire workers; but, even after that, I still have—”

“But I forgot to mention that this deal was conditional.”

Crystal Miner blinked. “What condition is that?”

“It’s a very simple condition,” said the president. “I’m going to ask you a question, and how you answer it depends on whether the deal is made. If the government of the Union is going to purchase your rifle, then there is only one possible answer you can give: the truth.”

Crystal Miner took a deep breath, perked up his ears, and held his head straight. “And what is your question, Mr. President?”

The president stepped closer; and his voice dropped its loud, carefree tone and took on one so solemn and quiet that Crystal Miner had to lean his ear toward him to hear it. “You came into my office,” said the president, “and you said how you were outraged that your rifle wasn’t bought, when all you wanted to do was to serve your country. You then went on about your profession, for which you gave explanations that were not so consonant with what you said earlier. My question to you is this: is your intent purely and honestly to do nothing but serve the Union? For whom did you make the rifle and why?”

Crystal Miner opened his mouth and was about to say something when the president interjected: “Take a moment to think about it. I’m only going to give you the chance to answer once. And remember: your answer must be the truth.”

Crystal Miner stepped back and his eyes began to dart in circles—the exact same way they moved when he was writing down equations. In his mind’s eye, he could see the drawings he spent years perfecting. He remembered spending years chasing down the appropriate parts, talking to the right ponies, and finally finding the factory where he could assemble the first model. He remembered, as soon as the metal had cooled, the first time he slid the last part into the assembled product; and he was, once again, filled with that feeling of achievement. Then he remembered himself walking into the Department of Magic and Defense holding that rifle for which he felt the same love as if it were his child—and then he remembered watching it being twirled disrespectfully in the air by the vice director. And, at that moment, he winced as he felt the pain of his chin against the sidewalk outside the building.

He looked at the president. “Mr. President, I did not make the rifle for the Union. I lied when I said I could not stand by and watch the soldiers of the Union die because they didn’t have my rifle; that was my last concern when the rifle was refused. I made the rifle for myself, and only for myself. I wanted to watch a professional operate the rifle I had created and use it to place a shot that would not have been possible with another firearm; I wanted to watch him use something I created as naturally as he used a limb of his body. I wanted him to know who created it and why I felt the things I felt when I did so. When my rifle was rejected, I thought I was going to die from pain, for I couldn’t stand the thought that I would never see my rifle used the way I wanted it to be used. I did not work on this for five years in the service of any master; I am the master. I built the rifle with the intent of achieving my pleasure alone, and I regret that I tried to hide that by cowering under the pretense of a mindless social duty.”

Crystal Miner cringed, waiting for the president’s answer. Out of the slit of his eye, he could see the president bob his head slightly in comprehension. “Wait a few business days,” he heard the president say after an agonizing ten seconds, fiercely cutting the thick silence like a bullet. “You’ll receive a telegram with the order.

“Now,” the president quickly said, before Crystal Miner had enough time to react, “four tons sounds like a lot; but, after everything, like you said, you’ll find you’ll have a lot less than you’d like. Still, with what’s left over, you’ll have enough to start your own company. In addition, you’ll be authorized to deal directly with regiments of the Union Army; this means that you or your associates will be permitted to conduct trade with individual soldiers and company commanders. Any soldier that wants to buy your rifle and ammunition directly will be permitted to.”

Crystal Miner stepped forward. “Thank you, Mr. President,” he said, holding out a hoof.

The president grabbed it with his paw and shook it firmly. Suddenly, he did not seem to Crystal Miner so tall, so threatening, as he had been earlier—and as he still appeared to everypony else. He seemed that he was eager to listen, to understand, and trying to find something to admire. “Look, Mr. Miner—may I call thee ‘Crystal’?”

Crystal Miner laughed. “Yes, yes of course you may.”

“On a very personal level, Crystal, I want to say that I’m touched—not just by thy rifle—but thee in thyself. It’s been too long since I’ve seen such a mind pursue relentlessly what it wants, regardless of those who would say that it’s wrong. That passion is something that this world is devoid of, and when I see it now in thee, it reminds me that there is still something good in the world, and it helps me temporarily forget a great deal of . . . of some ideas that I’ve been trying to ignore, but which relentlessly keep coming back to me. I haven’t been able to fight these things for a long time, and I’ve had no choice but to let them overwhelm me. And while I’m certain they’re going win before long, my encounter with thee will certainly help what’s going to happen next easier; and when it happens, I will be thinking about this day, about thee, about the potential that could have been.”

“When what happens?” said Crystal Miner, with a sudden rising of tone, indicative of fear. “Mr. President, what are you talking about?”

“Never mind that. I’m saying that, until that happens, I will be the most fervid advocate of thee and thy rifle. I’m going to press for this for the Union Army as hard as I can. May I borrow the rifle just for a few weeks? I want to show it to the general of the Union Army. I promise thee, Crystal, that I’ll represent it as accurately to the best of my ability and in the same manner, same speech, and same thoroughness as thee.”

“Mr. President,” said Crystal Miner, “I want to you to have it, as a gift from me to you. It would be an honor to have the first Miner Repeating Rifle ever made, fired by the president himself, on display in the Presidential Mansion.”

“It goes against my morality to take something without compensation,” said the president. “But it’s also against my morality to refuse a present. I’ll take thy rifle, and I’ll consider it payment for the marble tile in my office that thou brokest.”

Crystal Miner blushed. “Oh . . . oh, that’s right. Sorry about that. I get worked up easily.”

“No matter. However, I do feel bad about using so much of thine ammunition. Along with the advance payment for the order—which is intended to be used by thee for obtaining the necessary factors of production to fill this order for the government of the Union—I will include a payment for the ammunition we’ve used.”

“Thank you, sir,” breathed Crystal Miner, slipping the rucksack over his shoulders. “Thank you.”

“No, thank thee. I’m more indebted to thee; thou broughtest a form of beauty to me—and not entirely by means of thy rifle—that I thought to be entirely gone in this world. I will not be able to make thee understand, but I feel that even if I were to replace every single weapon in the Union Army with a Miner Repeating Rifle, it wouldn’t repay the debt I feel owe thee. If there’s any way I can be of service to thee in the future, perhaps for a recommendation, a favor, an award, let me know immediately, and I will do what I can for thee immediately. Dost thou needest anything? A recommendation—a title?”

Crystal Miner’s eyes lit up. “‘Colleague of the Union’?” he answered, with a charmingly inquiring tone.

“Don’t push thy luck,” said the president, with ironic derision. “But that’s not a bad train of thought: Thou art definitely deserving of some moniker of recognition. I will give thee a title—a very personal title.”

“Not ‘Colleague of the Union’?”

“No. The title I want to give thee is much more personal, something of a significance that none will recognize or appreciate—save me, and possibly thee, depending on how observant thou art.”

“Sir, I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Well, I’ve only told one other this, strange as it is: I don’t think of others by their birth names. When I need to recall somepony, or when I see a face, the first thing that’s presented in my mind is a word or two, something I use as the placeholder for every single one of their describing features. The vice director, for example, is associated in my mind with the word ‘gray.’ When I think of the word ‘gray,’ I think of a tall auburn unicorn, pretentious, officious, with a pince-nez, the vice director of the Department, and she likes to be called ‘June Ripples.’ With the word ‘gray,’ I think of her birth name the same way I would think about the color of her fur. Understand?”

Crystal Miner grimaced skeptically. “‘Gray’? Why ‘gray’?”

“Why ‘gray,’ or why not her name, period? Thy guess is as good as mine.”

Crystal Miner smiled and nodded in the same manner as one would do when encountering a toothless beggar on the street who is asking for change. “Yes, Mr. President . . . I . . . I understand, I . . . suppose—but what does this have to do with me?”

“There’s something I’d like think of thee as; but this name, unlike most others that I give, requires the consent of the pony in question first.”

The president stood to his full height, the posture he normally used to intimidate others—but he gave none of his typical signs of hostility or censure; and Crystal Miner understood through something that he could not describe, through an unspoken feeling that seemed to dominate his consciousness, that the words that the president was going to say next deserved the utmost respect in themselves, in addition to the absolute integrity required by the recipient of them. “Do I have thy permission,” said the president said, at length, “to think of thee not as Crystal Miner, but as Aureax Ferri?”

Crystal Miner extended a hoof in incredulity. “‘Aureax Ferri?’” he repeated. “What does that mean?”

The president suddenly slouched again and stepped back. “Oh . . .” he stammered, “it means . . . it means—nothing. Nothing at all. Just a silly categorization system I have in my head. Pay it no mind.”

Crystal Miner shrugged. “If you say so, sir.”

The president was silent for a few seconds, as if he expected Crystal Miner to say something. “Well?” he finally said at length.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Do I have thy permission or not?”

“My permission for . . .” Crystal Miner scratched his head with a forehoof. “Oh, right. Sure, I don’t see why not.”

The president clasped his claw and paw together in delight. “Oh, thank thee!”

“You’re . . . welcome?” Crystal Miner said, slowly backpedaling toward the gate to the street—more importantly, away from the president.

“Leave thy rucksack and the carbine here,” said the president, before Crystal Miner had even managed to move a foot away. “I’ll have them delivered to thy residence. If thou continue to walk down the street while brandishing a fully loaded rifle, ponies will begin to get the wrong idea—few are as understanding as I am. Thou needst to exercise more prudence in the future.”

“I will, Mr. President,” replied Crystal Miner, dropping his backpack. “Thank you, again. I hope that this is not our last business dealing, and I look forward to our next one, whenever that may be.” Crystal Miner bowed.

The president said nothing, but he nodded in a gesture of farewell.

Crystal Miner took off at a steady trot toward the front gate. Every ten steps, he turned back to see the silhouette of the president still watching him, never moving from the stance in which Crystal Miner had left him. Eventually, the president’s outlined blurred with the surrounding hedges. At twenty yards, only the glowing yellow eyes with the red pupils, which seemed to have a light of their own, left any indication of the draconequus’s presence.

At fifty yards, Crystal Miner turned for the last time, and when he squinted, he could just barely make out the ever so faint red glow. He took one slow step back and saw the light blink out of existence, fading into the surrounding night and disappearing into the void—like the dying flicker of a coastline lighthouse whose beacon is shrouded by a fog and rendered useless by the oncoming storm, despite the intensity with which the light shines, and despite the despondent attempts of the keeper in his lost struggle to guide his ships safely home.

Crystal Miner sighed pensively and shook his head. Turning back toward the gate, he resumed his trot, and the memory of that strange creature and the foreboding notions that it had instantiated in his head were pushed out by the ego, now free to dominate his thoughts once again. “‘Crystal’s Contraptions Corporation,’” he said to himself. “No, no, ‘Miner’s Arms Manufacturing Company.’ Wait, perhaps I won’t want to be in arms forever. ‘Miner’s Machines’—no, no! ‘Miner’s Machinations.’ Yes, yes, that’s right. ‘Miner’s Machinations.’ It’s perfect.”

As he approached the tall, gilded gate, he laughed to himself. “Yes, ‘Miner’s Machinations.’ I am Crystal Miner, P. Eng., CEO of Miner’s Machinations Limited. I am the mover of metal, inventor of the Miner Repeating Rifle—why, yes, it is the standard-issue small arm of the Union Army! It was the rifle that crushed that rebellion all those years back. I am its inventor. Tolerance, Stallion, Galloping, Ranchard—and now Miner. That’s me. I am the driver of iron.”

He walked through the front gate and stopped on the sidewalk in front of it. There was not a soul in sight. He closed his eyes and let the cold night wind blow against his face, carrying away the heat built up from the past five years.

He looked at his watch; it was nine-thirty. He looked down the road and thought that if he hurried, he would be able to make it. He turned east and broke into a gallop, in the direction of the intellectual property office.

Crystal Miner raced through the deserted streets. In the light of the oil street lamps, his eyes twinkled with the anticipation of the future. The iron ring shone back in the solemn acceptance of a challenge.