//------------------------------//
// The Tour Continues 
// Story: The Olden World 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

Nobody talked as Melia led the party across the next bridge linking the school and the hospital. It wasn't even Chauncey's fault so much as hers; the unicorn kept her lips thin and her demeanor rigid and businesslike. Starlight watched her with an analytic curiosity, recognizing the look easily: it was exactly what she saw every time she looked in a mirror in Equestria, determined not to enjoy something she should have taken pleasure in. But her flank was marked and she had been cheerful only minutes ago, and Starlight's best guess that she didn't enjoy doing things without her sister was shot down by the fact that she had sent Sirena away herself and volunteered to continue the tour.

"Since the school and hospital are adjacent, this room is the school nurse's office," Melia said, gesturing with a hoof around the brightly-colored first room they entered. A mare behind a desk with her mane in a bun and a clean medical hat smiled cheerfully to her, though the little chairs that lined the room were all empty. Starlight wondered how often they had to be used.

Melia took them out a door and down a staircase, opening into the ground-level main lobby. This room looked more sterile, with glass and metal trim in addition to the wood and plaster. It reminded Starlight of the skyport atrium more than anything, trying to inspire ponies by invoking thoughts of progress, though the young mare bent over in a chair with her head in her hooves didn't look very inspired. The griffonness shepherding two bouncing, lollipop-sucking toddlers, on the other hoof...

"Gramps?" Melia asked, looking up as they paused in front of the receptionist's desk, a disinterested sarosian shuffling through a ledger behind it. "Where should I take us? It's a big hospital."

Chauncey, who had been bringing up the rear, wandered closer. "It is a big hospital," he agreed, admiring the lobby. "The proudest accomplishment of our administration. Why don't you show... everything aboveground?" He winked at Starlight and her friends. "Most of the underground areas are longer-term residencies and procedural areas for committed patients, such as the operating rooms and mental health facility, as well as quarantines for infectious diseases and laboratories researching technologies and cures. They're not very pleasant places."

Melia nodded, but as she began to head for a door, the receptionist called out. "Your Excellency," she said, getting Chauncey's attention. "Doctor Zybar called minutes ago and wanted to let you know the checkup's report is almost ready. He wanted to give it to you in person, as always, and seemed to look like it went well."

"Good news as always," Chauncey replied. "Keep up the good work. We're heading his way right now."

The receptionist nodded, and Melia took them down a corridor, doors with wall signs on either side.

Stopping, she pushed open an extra-wide door, beckoning everyone in. Starlight blinked; the room was two stories high and only a little wider than some of the other rooms she had peered into, but this one was taken up wall-to-wall by a gigantic, cylindrical machine. A cradle the size of an adult griffon with a glass roof sat before a treelike structure, arrays of manaconduits lining the walls and runes inscribed on various surfaces. Pipes broke away like branches into the walls, and nodes of light trickled sluggishly across the thing's facets and out from between riveted metal plates.

"Oh my..." Slipstream sucked in a breath. Starlight felt the same.

"This certainly looks disconcerting," Gerardo admitted, sizing up the machine, the cradle bed next to a terminal looking clean and sterile.

"We were more interested in getting it to work than appearing pretty," Chauncey replied with a proud smirk. "This installation was completed eight years ago, and it was a miracle technology progressed to the point where we could fit it inside. My research laboratories have improved things even further since, and we're perhaps three years away from having a production version that can be loaded onto a cart."

Before anyone could ask what it did, Melia answered. "This is a general-purpose injury-reversion machine. Technically, it uses some of the principles involved in Varsidelian combat medicine, but in the form of a reusable machine that lacks the downsides of being a finite resource and increasing the likelihood of re-injury when used at a lower grade. Right now, it's mostly useful for treating lacerations and broken bones, and useless for aging and disease."

"It's exactly what's needed for most of the trouble Izvaldens get themselves into," Chauncey continued, standing in front of the machine. "Blunt trauma, physical injury, anything that could happen on a farm up to amputations and loss of limbs, and it's possible it could get that far in the future. It's what allows this hospital to operate with the costs it does, and concentrate all its resources on the more intense cases and research that happen downstairs."

Valey eyed the cradle with sudden appreciation. "So, like, it's the perfect thing for if you get on the wrong side of a fight..."

Chauncey gave a toothy smile. "That's what Wallace thinks. In the research section of the underground, we have a prototype specifically big enough for him. That's a place you might be interested in seeing."

Slipstream frowned. "So if all the contagious diseases and long-term things go underground and this is here, what's the rest of this building for?"

Melia nodded, leading back out of the machine room. "General health. Come; you'll see."





Starlight and her friends were led through several hallways, up two flights of stairs and past countless doors to departments. "This is dentistry," Melia went on, nodding at a door with a smiling unicorn poster on the front. "As Izvalden life expectancy increases, it's becoming more of a field, though it's not my area of expertise."

"I'm surprised you know so much already," Maple admitted respectfully.

"She gets it all from me," Chauncey chuckled. "The girls get to listen to me talk about my projects a lot. The well-being of Izvaldi is important to us all..."

The hallway opened up into another empty waiting room, and Melia nodded at the departments on either side. "That's the maternity ward," she said, pointing at one closed door. "Izvaldi historically has a high birthrate and low life expectancy, so Gramps and Lord Percival poured a lot of money into making it big, to try to give foals as good of a chance as possible. But most of the time doctors for it make house calls instead, so the building itself doesn't see as much use as we had hoped." She pointed at the other. "That's dietary health. It helps some people with healthy eating and exercise plans, and others with discovering allergies. They're closely linked with the research and governmental departments, for tracking outbreaks related to food sickness and bad products. About a year ago, we had to ban a supplier at the commerce building because these people found out they were selling contaminated fish. It was a major political drama."

As they left the waiting room and continued down the corridor, Starlight doubted they had the same definition of major political drama, following along at the end of the line and trying to get space to think. The click of a door opening sounded behind her suddenly enough to make her jump.

"Huh...?" She spun, but the doors to both departments were still closed. Stopping for a second to glare suspiciously at them, Starlight turned and ran to catch up.