As Gerardo, Sharpie and the two guards pressed further into the factory complex, it slowly came alive with automation that hadn't yet shut down for the night. They crossed outdoor bridges over fields laden with moving machinery, under conveyor belts halted with chunks of ore still sitting atop, on catwalks through chambers containing pistons that turned gears the size of houses, and past iron pipes that had boiled their paint away and glowed green at the seams. Chains moved up and down in the distance, raising and lowering lifts and buckets and empty hooks that sometimes grew close enough to touch.
And yet, for every device they passed that showed signs of operation, there were just as many metal walls bearing empty bolt holes around slightly less-weathered rectangles, places where equipment had been used and removed countless days before. Spider webs existed in corners just out of the way, high-up windows were missing panes, chunks of rusted pipe connected to nothing sat in space from the past that had yet to be reclaimed.
"This is... a startling amount of activity," Gerardo observed, watching the indeterminate machines doing their jobs. "I was under the impression that Sosa found itself without much to do, as of late. What all is this being used for?"
Bardal shrugged. "Can't say that you're wrong. We do have nothing to do these days. As for this stuff, most of it is for materials processing... you know, turning the stuff from the Flame District into other stuff we can export, or making things for those weapons the yaks keep getting us paid for. A good amount of energy production, too. And then some of it is just on because it still works and ponies feel better when it feels like stuff is happening. How much of it does that, heh..." He wiped his brow. "Please don't make me think about that."
Gerardo eyed a noisy centrifuge closer, squinting. "You operate machines purely for the sake of operating them, without a single goal but to make the area look... industrious?"
"Sure do!" Egil answered from in front. "The good old days were beyond my time by a bit and a half, but all this did do something, once! Some of it used to reinforce metal for ship hulls, back when we did that. In fact, there's probably still things around from the days of Project Aslan. These machines are even older than Shinespark!"
"Project Aslan..." Gerardo mused, recalling. "Ah, yes. That was your ill-fated endeavor to build an airship, yes?"
Sharpie rolled her eyes. "Way to be sensitive about it..."
Egil ignored her. "That, my friend, depends on your definition of 'ill-fated'. The politics around it at the time were pretty revolting. As for me? I'm just glad I wasn't part of it!" He gave a full-chested laugh, then scratched his chins. "Shinespark thinks it was a great idea in hindsight, though she wasn't even born yet when it happened. Still, she's the one who keeps most of these machines in shape when they go and break down. Just some of the little old things she does to clean up around here, you know? Up in the Stone District, it would be like hiring a public artist to draw murals or something!"
"Interesting..." Gerardo paced onward. "I take it these don't require a lot of oversight, then? There seems to be a lack of ponies tending to them..."
"Aside from turning them on and off, I'm not even sure what an overseer would do," Bardal replied. "Like, see this one here?" He tapped on a big, whirring drum that lay on its side, pipes disappearing into the floor on either end. "I see a control panel with a few indicators, fifteen-something years old going by the standards it meets, and all of one unmarked lever. That's called automatic. It just does its own thing."
"And that thing it does may very well be nothing," Gerardo finished, shooting a look at Sharpie. If the pegasus was bothered by the blatant wastefulness and inefficiency, she didn't show it... or perhaps made a point of not showing it.
Idly, he filed away the information that a large number of production-oriented machines were doing something, seemingly nothing, primarily at the behest of one pony, yet no one could be bothered to find out what that something actually was, and continued down the automated hall.
As gradually as the factory had awakened around them as they entered, its din soon began to quiet, Gerardo and company drawing into dimmer, darker reaches that were farther away from the heart of the complex. He had lost much of his sense of direction aside from a vague idea that they might be going east, though if someone had told him it was west he would have nodded his head and told them they made perfect sense. Above, strips of mana lighting glowed with luminescent energy, opting to use exposed power conduits framed in glass as opposed to conventional crystals.
"We're, uhh..." Bardal blinked at an intersection, then turned left, the metal walls bluey-black around him. "Almost there. This is more the administrative area. Lotta offices and paper pushers around here."
One wall of the corridor was replaced by glass, offering a proud vista of an empty courtyard bathed in what light from the setting sun managed to seep over the mountains. Below, grass and weeds grew in cracks between broken concrete flooring slabs, a forklift sat parked, and in the distance a weathered metal statue of a stallion looked proudly out over a dusky road into the forest.
A right turn and a long, steep staircase later, and they were back to the ground floor, inside a mostly-empty warehouse that faced the open courtyard. Instead of heading to the open the doors that lead outside, Egil wandered to a far corner of the room... and his telekinesis flicked open a lone, nondescript door that could very well have been a storage closet.
Gerardo blinked. "That seems like a somewhat out-of-the-way place to put an important pony's office..."
"Heh. Bear with him," Bardal chuckled. "That's probably what Mobius thought when he first gave her the space. Just wait until you see what she's done with it!"
The door lead immediately to another staircase, descending in a series of switchbacks below the earth. Its steel frame hung in a smooth-walled, rectangular shaft, as if it had originally been an elevator and had the stairs installed retroactively, much later. They were certainly newer, Gerardo reflected, running a wing feather along the shiny metal.
Eventually, the stairs bottomed out, at least three stories below the ground in an octagonal chamber lit by a single conduit, round and dark and completely empty save for a few scattered boxes and a single door set into the edge. It swung open of its own accord, moving seamlessly on well-oiled hinges.
Sharpie attempted to follow both close to Gerardo and at a distance, but was forced along when Bardal insisted on bringing up the rear. Past the door was another chamber just like the first... and when the door forward from that one began to move, bright daylight spilled through.