//------------------------------// // Three // Story: Lightning Bug // by QQwrites //------------------------------// The Equestrian Weather Service's Canterlot field office was located on the outskirts of the city, in an office block surrounded by houses, parks, and coffee shops specializing in esoteric blends and inventive uses of the avocado. I had taken a carriage to meet with the Regional Director, a stallion by the name of Trailblazer. Like most EWS upper management, he was a Pegasus. Uniquely, he was missing a wing—“Tornado!” he yelled cheerfully when he saw me looking at the stump. Trailblazer was also a little deaf, a condition I assumed was self-inflicted. “Got clipped by debris and never flew again!” I mumbled an uncertain apology. “Meh! Nothing to be sorry for! Haven’t had to face a tornado since. Nasty things, you know!” There was something about his optimism which was infectious. Nothing seemed to bother this guy and I liked it. I smiled in spite of myself and before long we were sharing drinks. Finally, over a pear cider, I got to the purpose of my visit: “I’m looking into the CIM incident. I have these pictures,” I showed him the blackboard photographs, “and someone in the administration mentioned something called LN-16. Know anything about either?” Trailblazer looked over the photographs carefully. His face screwed up like it was in a vice, before he slacked and gave a heavy sigh. “The formula looks like something I saw at a conference last year. The professor was really something: brilliant unicorn. She was nice enough to repeat herself when I asked.” “And the LN-16?” He stood up and walked over to a display case. There were sample jars of different weather phenomenon, suspended in stasis: clouds, tornados, dust storms, firestorms, rain, and lightning. It was an exquisite collection. From the shelf, he grabbed the lightning jar with his one wing and tossed it at me gently. “Turn it over,” he said after I caught it. Feeling like I was holding a burning powder keg, I rolled the jar upside-down. Stamped in the glass was a series of numbers and letters. One of them was, “LN-1”. “You’re looking at production line numbers and dates,” he said casually. “But, you asked about the sample code: LN is short for 'Lightning'. The number indicates intensity. That’s rated from weakest—that’s what you’re holding—to ten, the strongest. LN-1 is like a zap from a woolly sweater. Ten turns sand to glass.” “And LN-16 would mean what?” I asked, looking again at the lightning suspended in time. It was blue and white, arching from the top to bottom, where a tiny model tree was split in two. He shrugged. “Bull. Scale goes to ten.” “Anything else?” “Yeah: If LN-16 exists, it’d be pretty dangerous and probably unstable. There’s a reason we stopped at 10. As far as I know, something like that would be purely academic. If you want to know more, you should meet the professor I mentioned.” I thanked him and he gave me his card. He also gave me one for a Professor Mint Julep who he said lived in the Castle District. I borrowed his secretary long enough to get an introductory letter out to Julep and made my way back to the city proper. The Castle District is, as one might imagine, where the Canterlot Castle actually resides, its tall, stalwart walls surrounding the keep. Along the street leading to the main gate can be found the homes of the most affluent families in Equestria; sitting at the gateway of ultimate power, they carried a prestige few would ever hope to attain. The Julep Family estate was narrow at the street, sprawling back and along the castle walls. Little could be seen from the road—it wasn’t until the attendant opened the gates that I saw the mansion on the other side—three storied, plantation style with large white columns set with gems. Professor Julep joined me in a library as tall as the house, lit by a massive, domed skylight. She was a yellowish paint with white patches and mint-ish mane. She was younger than I expected, around college aged was my guess, but ‘Professor’ is what Trailblazer called her, so I followed suit. “No need to be so formal,” she laughed. “Call me Julie, please. Do you prefer Quick or Quill?” “Quill, if you don’t mind. I don’t like the implication of the former.” She laughed at my bad joke. There was a bubbliness to the way she spoke, like it was all in good fun and nothing was worth worrying about. “I was sorry to hear about what happened at the Institute: I have fond memories studying—and teaching!—there.” “Perhaps you can help me identify the information in these pictures.” I placed them in front of her. She snapped the pictures up quickly and held them with magic, flipping between them excitedly. She started scribbling furiously on a notepad. “The chalkboard was a walkthrough of converting magic to usable energy. It’s a common practice: light bulbs, fireworks, lightning—specifically the manufactured kind. It’s all magic.” “Anything look out of place?” I asked, trying to follow her notes as she wrote them. “A lot of the board is missing, but the values I do see are really high. Like, what would you use it for?” She asked with a shrug, setting the photos down. I sat there for a moment thinking about it, trying to put the pieces together. Maybe someone was working on a new, more powerful lightning and something went wrong. “The fire chief says a lightning jar busted. An administrator hinted at something called LN-16, which is a rating for manufactured lightning, except the scale stops at ten.” “Lightning is very dangerous, but not reliability fatal; though the injuries can be long term. I don’t know what application a more powerful lightning would have.” “I have one more question and I’ll get out of your mane.” She nodded appreciatively. There was nothing evasive about her: it was all in good academic fun. “Whoever is making this: do they have to be a unicorn?” “Not if they have the raw materials! How do you think Pegasi do it? There’s magic everywhere in nature. Just follow the recipe. The institute has all that stuff in stock!” She was still laughing as I left the library and crossed the main hall. In the half hour it took to get back to the street, I couldn’t get the joke. A package from my boss (and EWS head honcho) Director Maelstrom arrived that evening by special carrier. I sat on the lumpy hotel bed and read a letter clipped to a binding of manila folders. I read it in her even, bureaucratic tone: Quill, Enclosed are copies of the employee files for Velvet Melody and Squeaky Clean as we have them here, per your request. Legal says give Royal Guard a wide berth. Good Luck, - Mal No mention of LN-16. Maelstrom was painfully precise: that she would fail to answer my question was conspicuous. A newspaper clipping was attached to the reverse of Maelstrom’s note. The title read: Royal Guard Public Opinion Low – Are They Worth the Expense? The date was missing, but from the content of the article, I placed it sometime shortly after the Changling attack in Canterlot. I was living in Manhattan at the time, but the idea that anypony could be an enemy in disguise rocked the community like an earthquake. Opinion was the guard had been next to useless preventing and fighting back the invasion, a blemish which had the Royal Guard had done little to repair. I set the article down and focused on the employee files. Velvet had a good career: the EWS hired her right out of college as an analyst, then moved her to Public Relations, and finally management. Over all, pretty boring. Then there was Squeaky Clean, the janitor. His file was long: lots of jobs over his many years. He wasn’t always a janitor: sometimes a cook or a gardener or a laborer. A miner, a taxi driver, a clerk, a hospital clown (volunteer). I recognized some of those jobs as pieces of my own past: menial, exhausting labor which lasts too long for too little. Squeaky had been working for the EWS about ten years, moving from station to station along the way. Unlike Velvet, his position never advanced: janitor, janitor, janitor all the way to— Someone had underlined his previous position: Cook, Pinebeard Schoolhouse. The name scratched at the back of my mind. I didn’t know a town or a pony by that name. I made a note to look into it at the library when it opened next.