Jot Day - 1
What an idiot.
Jot groaned to himself, opened his wings and took to the sky. He’d bumbled over all his words like some moronic pubescent teenager! Just when he’d done everything he could to finally meet Trixie in person, when he finally got a chance to speak with her, to get to know her better: he just crammed his hoof in his mouth!
He soared over the busy manehattan streets while keeping an eye out for other flyers in the twilight sky — it was never fun having a mid-air collision in the traffic-heavy airway. It was a short flight to his destination — the Manehattan Journal’s main building. With a few flaps of his wings, he came to a quick, hovering halt before pushing open the door to the lobby.
“Hey, Cuffs.” Jot gave a quick wave to the security guard.
“Yo, Jot.” The security guard didn’t look up from his chessboard. “Working late again?”
“Mmhmm... “ Jot sighed, “Live to work, right?”
“I think that’s supposed to be work to live, isn’t it…?”
“Eh, never could figure that one out.” Jot slid into the elevator and punched the button for his floor. “Catch you on the way out.”
“Mmhmm.” The guard waved a hoof idly at him as he walked into the elevator.
The soft ping alerting him to his arrival at the correct floor brightened his mood. This was the writer’s home-territory.
The big, open work-floor after regular business hours was a quiet place. Here and there a few night-shift reporters toiled over their articles and the odd sportswriter looking to cram in the sports score from the recently completed buckball game was far too preoccupied trying to quickly smash out a few lines that they had no interest in speaking with anypony else on the floor.
Bawdy quietly trotted over to his cubicle and slumped down with a heavy thump, before turning to look at his cluttered desk. With a grin, he reached forward with his wings, spreading out his feathers and stretching the various muscles and tendons that he used to do his work. Reaching out quickly, he pulled the unstarted piece of paper from his pride and joy — a classic black typewriter.
Of course, eventually he’d have to finish his work on a company-provided laptop, submitting it in the digital file format required by the printers downstairs before the weekly deadline, but there was nothing that could replace the clickity-clackety rhythm and tactile feedback of an authentic typewriter. The way the mechanical linkages whirred and clicked, filling the white page with black symbols as thoughts poured out of his head, racing down his feathertips and onto the blank canvas. The satisfying ding of the carriage reaching the end of its travel track, necessitating a hoof-push to reset the whole thing and begin on a new line. He even loved the way an error couldn’t be so quickly deleted but instead had to stand as an annoying blot of backspaced-out X’s. It meant he had to be entirely in the zone, in-synch with his feathers, mind, and the clattering keys.
His whole writing process was like a jazz recital of words.
It had bought him some street-cred with the few old-timers that had survived so many of the waves of incoming new journalist ponies. Many of those veterans shared stories of the publication’s glory days when the news was hard and breaking a story meant something… Not many of those ponies were still around — they’d been replaced by ponies of Jot’s age, or younger, most of whom were more concerned about just how controversial they could make their next piece, how they could integrate their stories with the latest media pusch, all so they could aim of getting more followers.
But he wasn’t one to complain. It was a great job — and there were many starving writers out there who would kill to make the cushy salary he did.
“Hey — Jot… Equus to Jot? You there?”
Jot looked up from his page — he hadn’t noticed what he’d been writing - he was too much in the flow… but he’d filled the thing up with a half-baked essay on the importance of believing in yourself and speaking from your heart. But his frame of mind had completely distracted him from his surroundings — and the senior editor hovering over his cubicle wall.
“Hard Copy?” Jot looked at the older unicorn, who was grinning down at him. “Sorry, I didn’t notice you! I was writing…”
“Yeah, I could hear you from halfway across the floor — that old thing makes a real racket late at night.” He chuckled, then extended a cup of coffee. “Need some fuel? You behind on a story?”
Jot shook his head but accepted the cup. He wasn’t a coffee drinker, but wouldn’t refuse a kind gesture. “No, I already got my piece for the next submission date out… I just… I wanted to think…”
The older, mustached pony glanced around the floor with an arched eyebrow. “...so you came into work in the middle of the night?”
Jot grinned. “Hey, I might end up tricking a senior editor like yourself into thinking I’m working harder than I am. What keeps you here so late?”
“I had a call with a Neighponese source. The time difference can be brutal… mutually annoying for both of us if we split the difference — so I agreed to come in really late.” He chuckled. “Good strategy on your part, though. For the record — I know you’re working harder than most of the other writers around.” He patted Jot on the shoulder. Hard Copy was one of the better bosses to work for. “You’re one of my star writers, and good to have in the team — which is why I’m giving you the cover story next week.”
Jot blinked and leaned back, scratching his head. “Wow. I mean, I really appreciate that… but… I don’t have a big story on the go right now — what are you expecting me to—"
“Oh, come on.” Hard Copy scoffed, before taking a sip of his coffee. “Everypony knows you’ve been doing that big Lulamoon exposé for months now. You can’t sit on something forever, Jot.”
“Trixie?” Jot blinked again, his mouth dropping open slightly. “Why do people think I’m doing a—"
“Jot, please. You don’t need to be an investigative journalist to figure that one out.” Hard Copy gestured at the various stacks of materials in the cubicle, most of which had something to do with Trixie. The short stack of Trixie photographs wasn’t helping either.
“Ah.”
“Yeah, so just punch up your hit piece a bit and run it by me next week. It doesn’t have to be whatever giant thing you’re prepping — just a taste… if it takes off, you can run a series on her.”
“Okay, I guess, but… wait… hit piece?” Jot pushed back from his typewriter and sat upright, a serious look crossing his face as he stared at his tired boss.
“Well, I just assumed. She is Trixie Lulamoon, former evil villain after all.” Hard Copy took another sip.
“Boss, I…” Jot hesitated, considering his next words carefully. “...It’s not a negative piece. It was a profile story of a pony who’s changed and actually deserves a lot of credit for —"
“Eh… that’s probably not gonna fly.” Hard Copy sighed, setting down his cup and rubbing his temple. “Paper’s owned by FlimFlamCo, you know.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, for starters, they didn’t buy us to lose bits… they want stories that sell, that get clicks, that improve subscriptions and advertisers. Biographies won’t cut it! Scandals and outrages about former villains operating in Manehattan would.”
“That's ridicu—"
“And.” Hard Copy quickly cut him off. “I happen to know that the brothers, Flim and Flam, have a personal grudge against that unicorn. Something about her suing them for wages owed when she worked for one of their traveling shows back in the day... In fact, their acrimony for Trixie was the main selling point I used to get you that cover story: I think they’re drooling to get some revenge on Ms. Lulamoon.”
Jot snorted, a scowl forming on his lips. He took the pencil out of the crook of his ear and tossed it onto his desk with dismay.
“You gotta be joking me.” Jot crossed his forelegs across his chest.
“What?”
“With all the political claptrap that’s filling up the other papers, with all the reporters out there with an agenda… we’re going to go this way too… fake news?”
“Oh, spare me the drama, kid.” Hard Copy rolled his eyes. “Fake news is just the latest in a long line of epithets used against us — nothing has changed.”
“That’s crap, and you know it.” Jot spat. He could see the negative impact his words were having on the mood. He wasn’t usually so forceful around the office — and definitely not with his boss, but this was just… wrong! “Ponies depend on us to do our best in telling the truth of what’s happening out there! What’s gonna happen if they need to discount everything we tell them — always wondering what our angle is?”
“What’s up with you Bawdy Jot? You got a thing for the mare or what?”
Jot felt a flush cross his cheeks and the wind come out of his sails slightly. It wasn’t that he had a thing for her… was it? “N-no! I just… it’s really not the truth at all!”
Hard Copy shrugged and sighed, turning away from his young protege. “Well, maybe that’s the case… or maybe you’ve just got a soft spot for the lady… either way, we’re running a front-page exposé on Trixie next issue — get it done!”
Jot groaned, slumping back into his chair. He knew that Hard Copy meant it — the pony would find another writer to make sure that the story got out on time — if there was one thing that the aging editor didn’t do, it was to miss deadlines.
The passion project he’d been working on in his spare time had suddenly turned into the bane of his existence — Jot angrily swatted the photos and notes that lay strewn about his cubicle, knocking them to the ground. If only he’d been more secretive about it, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.
He growled at himself before looking up at his typewriter.
Suddenly the keys and paper were more menacing than a rabid timberwolf.