April 24
It was chilly and the sun wasn't up when I woke up. I'd gotten used to the fact that everywhere I'd been sleeping was heated, so I wasn't used to it anymore.
The only solution was to stick my head under the covers and snuggle up as tightly against Aric as I could. He'd told me that when he went on the road trip he and David and Angela all had to cuddle up in the back of the truck to keep warm, and now I knew why. And I bet it was at least a decigrade warmer than it had been over Spring Break.
He woke up as soon as I moved and hugged me against him and then said that he hadn't expected it to get this cold overnight. He said he could turn on Winston and we could sit in the cab and warm up, but I thought that would be wimping out and I said that if he was okay with the chill I was okay with it too.
We both dozed but didn't really get much more sleep at all. When the dawn was finally breaking over the trees I nuzzled his cheek and then tugged at his pants with my hind leg (he was still wearing his clothes because of the cold) and he got the idea and it wasn't too long before the blankets all managed to get pushed off but we didn't mind.
There was a trick to getting out of the back of Winston easily which I couldn't manage. Aric had to push the glass back window up and then reach over the edge to get the handle, which was recessed too far for a hoof to pull. When he finally got it, the tailboard crashed down and he slid out and went off to water a tree. He’d told me that the French word latrine came from 'le tree,' because that's what you peed on when you were in the woods.
I found my own tree on the other side of the clearing where I could still see him but not too close because some stallions were weird about that and I thought maybe boys were too.
It would have been fun to spend the rest of the day in the clearing, but we didn't have any food at all, so we got in the truck and drove back to Kalamazoo and went to Nina's because that was his favorite place to have breakfast and I liked it too.
I asked him what he wanted to do for the rest of the day and he said that he ought to be finishing the diorama for his set design class but he could always do that later. And he said that he did have to fix some theater lights because there was an upcoming play in the black box theatre that he was doing lights for and he really wanted to use the Berkeys because they had irises in them but all of them put out shit for light and no one could ever get them to focus and he wasn't sure why.
So we wound up going to the light shop together so he could work on them. There were a couple of tall stools (which wasn't comfortable for a pony at all) and a cabinet full of the special bulbs that the lighting instruments took and cables all over the walls and big flat drawers full of colored plastic which he said were gels and used to make the light a different color.
There was enough room on the workbench for me to sit there and watch as he took one of the Berkeys apart and started inspecting it. They didn't have a lot inside them; there was a tube which had the lenses and then a slot where the iris was and another slot where you could put a thing called a gobo which made a pattern in the light, and there were also shutters that blocked off some of the light. He explained what all that was as he took it apart.
When he didn't find anything in the main body he got out a screwdriver and started taking the lens train apart to see if that was where the problem was. When he got it open he studied them and pointed to little marked slots where they could go—he said that one of the cleverest things about the Berkeys was that you could move where the lenses were to change the angle of light coming out of them, so it really took the place of several different lighting instruments and then he showed me by pulling one of them out of the forty slot and putting it in the fifty slot and sort of drew with his finger how the light would come into the first lens and then be bent into the second and midway through he stopped and just started laughing and picked up the frontmost lens and turned it around.
He said no wonder they couldn’t be focused; the front lens was in backwards and he bet that they were all that way. So he reassembled the one he'd been working on and then lifted up another one and looked through the end at the front lens and it was wrong too.
Aric said that now that he knew what the problem was it wouldn't take more than a couple of hours to fix the rest of them and that he might as well give me a tour of the rest of the theatre while we were here.
He said that the smartest thing about the light shop was that it was above the scene shop and it connected both theatres. There was a door on either wall near where we'd come in that led into the catwalks. He said that we might as well go into Balch first, and he led me onto the catwalk that ran above backstage and then over what he called the house—where the people sat. There were lots of other lights hung from the railings and he named them all as we went by—there were Kliegels and Parcans and Fresnels and Shakespeares and after a while I couldn't keep track of them any more.
One end of the catwalk was right over the top of the stage and there was a bare light bulb hanging from it which was so bright it hurt my eyes and Aric said that was the ghost light and they had found it when they were cleaning out the lamp cabinet and that it was a two thousand watt lamp.
Then we went all the way into the back where there was a door which went down to the lighting booth where I'd been before. I'd already seen that, so I said that I wanted to see the other theatre, which was called Dalton. When we got over there the catwalks were much nicer because they were more open and didn't have beams across them.
He said that from a lighting perspective, it wasn't as good because the catwalks were in the wrong place so they had to improvise a lot. It was all right for a concert, he told me, but there was a dance troupe that performed in there and it was really tricky to get the lights where he wanted them for their show. He told me that at the last show, he'd used every one of the patch cables I'd seen hanging in the light shop.
Then he showed me to the light booth, which was a bit wider than the other one, and he said that was nice but the lighting board was a lot older. He said it was more fun to use, though because it wasn't as automated so you had to do a lot of effects by hand.
When we were going back to the light shop, he pointed to a border in the stage and he said that the whole front of the stage could be lowered all the way into the basement and at first I didn't think that was possible but then remembered how the whole restaurant at the Space Needle had rotated so I guess if that could be built then a giant stage elevator was possible. I wanted to see it work, but he said that it took a key he didn't have. He told me that he could show me one other secret, though, and when we were in the light shop he pointed up to a hatch in the ceiling which he said went to the attic and he said that from there you could get onto the roof.
I stuck out my tongue and told him that I could get on the roof whenever I wanted to.
He said that this was more fun than just flying up there and climbed the ladder to the hatch and undid the lock and then opened it up. I flew up behind him but he had to grab my forelegs and pull me through because the opening wasn't wide enough for me to fit.
There were a few bare light bulbs hanging around that gave enough light to see, and there was a catwalk that led off to the north, I thought—it went off in the direction of the Balch theatre.
He led me along it until we got to another short ladder and there was a hatch above that and he said that we couldn’t go through because it was daytime and students weren't supposed to know it was there but he pushed it up just a little and I could see daylight through it.
He said that some night we ought to come out here and look at Kalamazoo because it was the second-best place he'd found to get a look at the city at night: the first-best was the top of the parking garage next to the hotel. He supposed that the hotel was probably a good place, too, but he had never gotten a room there.
Once we were back in the light shop, he said that I could stay and watch him work if I wanted to but if I had other stuff I wanted to do that was okay, too.
I knew that I probably would get bored watching him work all afternoon and I really wanted to fly because even though the day had started out chilly it was just getting nicer and nicer.
When I got back to our dorm room to get my flight gear Peggy was there like she'd said she would be, but instead of doing her homework she was watching a movie on her computer. She said that I looked happy and hadn't called or showed up late at night so things must have gone well, and I said that they had and she reminded me that I still had to tell Meghan and I said that I knew but I didn't have to do it right away and I was going to go flying before dinner.
I didn't challenge myself; I just took a nice, lazy flight over the city. There were a few decent thermals that gave me a boost, which was nice. I could circle in them and get some altitude with almost no effort on my part, and then mostly glide along until I came to the next one.
I did sort of lose track of time, though, and didn't get back until kinda late. I hadn't missed dinner, but all of my friends were already gone, and I had to eat by myself and most of the food had already been taken. But there was still a good selection of salad, and some cookies left, too.
Even though I didn't like taking showers at night, I decided that I ought to at least rinse myself off, since I'd been running and flying and there was probably a lot of sweat dried in my coat. And then I meant to just stretch out on bed until I'd dried off but I hadn't really gotten enough sleep last night because I dozed off and didn't wake up until a couple of hours later. Peggy and Sean and Christine were playing euchre and when they saw I was awake they decided to partner me with Peggy and we played a couple of games before it was bedtime for everyone.
What sort of messed up unit of measurement is Equestria using that 0.0016 radians is a useful measure of temperature?
7328047
If there are 100 Centigrade in one 'Grade', then there are 10 decigrade and 1000 milligrade.
7328047
https://xkcd.com/1643/
Silver displaying her usual subtlety.
Bad Aric, don't teach bad linguistics to a horse who doesn't know any better.
Ouch, I was thinking we were out of the woods on drama. Is it too much to hope that Meghan takes it the same way as Aric, especially since they haven't gone as far yet?
Typo report: *then
Silver probably meant deka grade not decigrade but English isn't her 1st language.
It is getting late enough that people are going to be out camping. If she isn't careful she is going to give some boy scout one HELL of a thrill (or shock). Then their parents are going to give her one Hell of a shock, followed by some hooves on experience with laws about indecent exposure. (Aric said the worst part was he was released for "insufficient evidence"!)
Larine comes from latin: Latrina. And it is when you build a small outhouse with a hole in the ground or if you are doing it well, a true septic tank.
Still, sric's interpretation is funny, albeit very very implausible.
The name of the different lights! It's been so long, the only one I can still remember is the [Gobo], I don't even know how we spell it and I certainly never learned how you call it in english.
7328229 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centigrade
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Conference_on_Weights_and_Measures
Centigrade is how Celsius himself called his temperature scale. The GCPM selected the name Celsius in 1948.
So if a degree is centi, ten should be deci.
7328072
That only moves the question to "Why is she speaking colonial English." and "Is that the correct SI capitalization and does it matter?" and "Wait, Equestria uses Metric, right?"
Heh. Speaking as someone who measures stories in kilowords, I have to appreciate excessive use of metric prefixes. (Speaking of, congrats on breaking 200 kw with the journal.) In any case, a lovely bit of bonding between Silver and Aric.
interesting chapter.
7328072 gradians measures angles. Although Celsius was originally centigrade, it was changed to avoid confusion. In general you don't put prefixes in front of temperature
Really sweet moments between Aric and Silver. And Silver still continues to use really wierd units
7328274
how the hell did napoleon get there ?
When Napoleon said Able was I ere I saw Elba he wasn't kidding.
7328456
+1. Centigrade was changed in '48. Technically, a centigrade could represent 100 steps of anything- although any measurement other than a gradian would be confusing linguistically. Typically a "Grade" refers to a slope.
7328488
Huh?
7328557 gradian is a measure of angle used in civil engineering and is equal to 0.9 degrees.
Oh I forgot about Silver having to tell Meghan. Now I'm not so sure if Meghan would react the same as Aric did. She is quite sensitive and harbors a nervous crush on Silver...Oh I can only expect the worst but hope for the best.
7326770
oh aye, i can agree with that from experience. Just glad I was normally on the outside of it
So, is aric using protection with Silver?
Sounds like a spontaneous set of sessions which would imply no.
7329402 I doubt he could get her pregnant. The only other thing they have to worry about is disease, and I'm going to assume they're both clean. Certain viruses might not even be transmissible between them.
7329438 I'm not worried about either; it'd be more about the transfer, and lingering, of scents and discharges of his sperm at random times that'd be most embarrassing in her life between journal entries.
7329402 7329438 I wouldn't be quite so confident about that. Judging from a number of fanfics, pony-dragon and pony-griffon hybrids are entirely possible. And judging from Earth mythology, the portals have clearly been open before...
7329531
7329438
"And that, my little centaur, is how you were born," she told him as she closed the journal years later.
7329533 Hopefully he'll turn out better than the one centaur we've seen on the show so far...
7329531 I recall that very same question being asked earlier, and the answer being "no".
But I am too lazy to look at every previous comment, so unless someone want to do it for us, we will need to wait a bit for confirmation.
Aric is a reasonable! Yay! Now we can only hope that Meghan follows suit. I can see reasons for it to go either way, her uncomfortableness with the situation in general being one of them. I've never really been sure if Meghan was actually interested in a relationship with Silver, or more curious about the 'pony' experience. She always seems to be forcing herself every time she moves into more intimate territory, and she seems much more worried about what people will think. On the other hand, she DOES keep pushing forward, so who knows?
I wish she'd gone into a little more detail about the conversation she had with Aric last chapter, though. It'd be interesting to find out what her take on monogamy, marriage, and the general family structure we use is, but I really want to hear more about the kind of family she grew up in. Matriarchal herd that invites itinerant stallions in when someone wants a foal? She mentioned that her mother got knocked up at a weather conference, but never mentions a father, so it's most likely he wasn't a part of her life. It seems like such an alien concept to me, having grown up mostly in a nuclear family, not even being bothered that you've never met your Dad. I can't remember if she mentioned the whole 'it takes a village's thing, or if that was from something else I read recently. Does the community as a whole take the place of a family unit? The idea seems naively idyllic to me, but if they can make it work? *Shrug*
7328229
She most certainly did not. Assuming for the sake of argument that a "grade" is a unit of temperature equal to 100 kelvins (based on a "degree centigrade" (now known as a "degree Celsius", but whatever) being a unit equivalent to one kelvin), an increase of a decigrade would be 10 K warmer, while an increase of a dekagrade would be 1000 K warmer. One of these things takes you from "cold day" to "chilly day", the other takes you from "cold day" to "andesitic lava flow".
7328132
She's very subtle. Okay, she's not.
Hey, that's what I learned in Boy Scouts--are you saying that the scoutmaster was wrong?
It's probably too much to hope for, but you never know.
Thank you!
7328229
Well for better or worse, they're not an an official campsite. It's private land (and they're trespassing, but Silver doesn't know that).
That would be unfortunate.
No, she means decigrade. He logic is that you have metric scales (grams, liters, and meters), and they all have prefixes to say how many (centimeter, milligram, etc.). She thinks (incorrectly, obviously), that the Celsus scale works that way; that there's a 'grade' which is a unit of temperature, and you can subdivide it into centigrade, milligrade, kilograde, etc.
7328230
I had to look up the Berkeys; all the others just came right back to me. I don't remember model numbers, though, except for the Par cans (we mostly had Par 64s, and I've also used Par 38s).
7328274
She presumably learned the (I'm going to say Imperial, but here in the US we usually call them 'standard') measurements--miles, pounds, and inches before she came over here. Then, since she was taking climate science class, she very quickly had to learn the metric, since that's what any reputable science class would use.
What she does not know is that people either use one or the other, typically. She's mixing and matching to whatever is the closest measurement, which means there's a possibility she could say something was ten meters and five inches long, for example.
And while I notice in the comments that Celsius was made the official name long before I was born, people in Michigan were still calling it Centigrade.
7328313
Thanks! Next goal is one megaword. We'll see if it gets there
7328320
Thanks!
7328456
It's funny that I didn't know that it was changed to avoid confusion. I've always used the two interchangeably (celsius/centigrade, that is, not gradians and celsius)
Silver Glow doesn't know that. She's assuming that the temperature scale works the same as meters, grams, and liters.
Silver likes to use whatever unit is the closest to what she's measuring, whether it be imperial, metric, or her best guess at what it should be.
7328836
Yeah, that's still to come.
7328927
Heh, I wish I could have been that lucky.
7329402
No, they're not using protection (except biology, which means he can't get her pregnant).
7329438
I've been doing a little research on that and so far I've only found a few STDs that you can get from a horse* (I've had less luck finding STDs you can give a horse, if there are any). So they're pretty safe.
________________________________________
*These are sexually transmitted from horse to horse, but can be contracted in humans by other means . . . although I suppose you could also get them by having sex with a horse, but I haven't found any literature on that.
7329528
Possibly TMI: As soon as she pees, she'll take care of any potential discharge; as for the lingering of scents, that doesn't bother her at all. That'd be something she'd be used to back in Equestria anyway.
7329531
In this story, I'm going with somewhat more realistic biology, so it's not possible for Aric to get her pregnant.
7329533
I plan to do that one of these days, but this isn't the story where that's going to happen.
7329859
The official confirmation is here! No man can get her pregnant.
7330726
Meghan has mixed feelings and is therefore sending very mixed messages. She wants to but she isn't sure she should.
She's not very familiar with customs outside of the town where she grew up, so she mostly thinks that they're dumb.
Early on, she mentioned 'Mom and Dad,' although he's not her biological dad; more of a godfather, really. Most mares would likely share a house with at least one other mare and however many foals there were between them all.
I suppose if you're used to it, though? I always thought it was weird how people would get divorced because that wasn't something that anyone in my family had ever done.
Silver Glow said that somewhat recently. What I see in a town like Ponyville is that all the foals pretty much run around on their own and are presumably watched by older ponies who happen to be there, regardless of whether they themselves have any relatives in the mix. So a relationship like Rarity looking after Sweetie Belle or perhaps more appropriately Rainbow Dash 'adopting' Scootaloo (as an honorary little sister) isn't that weird to them. An isolated family like the Pies is very strange to Silver Glow.
7336774
RE: diseases.
Depending on how deep you want to go into the worldbuilding, and how different you might make ponies from humans, the ability for human disease to cross the species barrier might be extremely low, to the point where it might be relatively impossible.
Take a virus, for example. In order for that virus to infect a cell, most of the time it has to interact with certain receptors on the surface of the cell. For example, HIV is studded with protein complexes on its surface that interact with the CD4 and CCR5 co-receptors on macrophages and certain T cells. Without these receptors, the virus can't enter the cell.
But let's say it can enter the cell. There's no guarantee that any of the biology on the cellular level is going to be the same. Earth has a universal genetic code, yet even if ponies use the same amino acids and same nucleotides, there's no reason to think that the two are going to sync up in a manner that's the same. Let me give you an example: for every organism on earth, the codon AUG codes for Methionine (and the start for a reading frame) but even if Silver's DNA used AT/CG nucleotides, it's possible that AUG could code for another amino acid all together. So the DNA/RNA/dRNA injected into the cell's DNA is going to end up translated into gibberish proteins. And ponies might very well have different protein needs, compared to humans or even organisms on earth in general (such as requiring more-than-the-20-standard-amino-acids). Bacteria might have an easier time of it, but I don't know.
Which is kind of why I was surprised in the recent chapter that the CDC seems to be letting her go. It's one thing for a disease to cross the species barrier, that can be alarming enough, but crossing the dimensional barrier? crazy and scary. Of course, I suppose she could be sick with an Equestrian illness, but where would she have gotten it from? She's practically in a clean room on Earth.
7336774
7337493
You're both right. As I understand it, you are very very unlikely to get a disease from another species. However, when that happens, you get diseases that do way more damage than they intend. This is where we get plagues like smallpox and cholera from.
Granted, either Silver or Aric being "Patient Zero" would be a dark turn to this story, so, you know, it's okay to not mention it.
Some interesting videos on this, if you haven't seen them:
2kw is 5 times the power-requirements of Juno. Juno only uses about 40% of the Wattage of a microwave-oven.
7375701
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (also titled Guns, Germs and Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years) by_Jared Diamond. He says that there are 160 land animals where the adults are over 100 lbs. & humans have domesticated 14 of them. Llamas came from South America, the rest are from Eurasia.
He started w the questions. "In New Guinea, humans have had agriculture almost as long as they have in the Middle East. So why did Europeans come to NG & not the other way around?" + "Why was NG still in the Stone Age when Europeans arrived?"
8728219
One of the things that I've learned about domesticating animals is that you need fairly short gestation times (because of course nobody back then could put the time into a thousands of years long program), and you also need an animal that has enough of a social structure that you can be its leader, and it will respect and obey you.
That's apparently why nobody ever domesticated zebras, although some have been tamed.
That is why gym class is so valuable. You learn to be naked & shower in front of other people
You will need this if you ever go to jail or join the military
8728695
Zebras are almost untameable. They are Goddamned Vicious. Almost everything from Africa will attack humans far more than critters from the rest of the world.
9302652
Yes.
Also, jail sucks. I don’t recommend it.
Pretty much. From what I’ve read, if you want to ride a zebra (and presumably also want to live), your best bet is a crossbreed, a zorse, rather than a native zebra which--understandably--assumes that anything that gets close to it probably wants to eat it.