Gaze glazed, Sundance was lost in thought when Twilight Sparkle returned in a shower of glittery sparks. The sudden appearance of the alicorn along with a crib did not phase him, and failed to rouse him from his near stupor. Twilight lifted the sleepy infant from the crib, sat down, and then laid the babe to rest in the crook of her foreleg. The foal yawned once, snorted out a wad of confetti, kicked her tiny legs, and then slipped into a deep comatose slumber. It took him a while, but Sundance slowly gained awareness of Twilight’s return.
Miss Strudel nibbled upon a wheat meat nugget.
“We still have much to discuss,” said Twilight as she settled into her chair and made herself comfortable. “But before we get started, do you have any questions that you would like for me to answer? Is there anything that you’d like to know? Is there something that I can help you understand?”
Insightful, with a calm mind and clear thought, Sundance considered Twilight’s inquiry. There were a lot of questions, and if he asked all of them, the day would turn dark. Nothing else would get accomplished. So it came down to asking the right question, or questions, which was easier said than done. While he sat there, lost in thought and searching for what to say, Twilight resumed eating, though not in the same ravenous manner as she did before.
“Taxes,” he said at last. “Won’t that raise eyebrows if I don’t pay taxes?”
After she swallowed, Twilight sighed, then replied, “Corporate charities exist. This is a complex issue.” She straightened her neck and her tone changed to that of a schoolmarm. “All of your finances will become a matter of public record. I’m still refining the process. My friend, Applejack, she is the co-owner of Sweet Apple Acres, which is now operated as a corporate charity. Applejack funds a lot of my projects… things I do off the books and without the approval of the Royal Treasury Department. Those ponies really, really hate me. They think that spending money is an act of treason against the Crown.”
She shrugged and waved her free front hoof around in a dismissive gesture.
“I’ve learned a lot navigating those waters with Applejack. Enough that I believe I am ready to scale up what I’ve learned to apply it to our situation. A lot of our tax-exempt status comes from the nobility, many of whom do not pay taxes, because they directly fund other projects for the Crown, such as sponsoring a regiment in the guard or funding a Crown-sponsored project. This is Celestia’s doing. About three-hundred or so years ago, Celestia got it into her head that some ponies would actually pay more than their fair share of taxes if they had a say where the money went, or what it was spent on. So, she authored a series of laws that granted tax-exempt status to noble houses that offered grants and sponsorships.
“Turns out that she was right. The noble houses competed to outspend one another when sponsoring a regiment or supplying a garrison. Studying the system led me to create the leaderboard… which I must say, has been wildly successful. Now, I am trying to get the same spirit of competition into corporate culture, because I think massive corporations competing against each other to do good for Equestria would fix a lot of things. It’s certainly done a lot for the noble houses.”
“And I suppose that I’ll be doing both?” asked Sundance. “As a corporate noble, I mean. Am I to lead the way? Make equinekind my business?”
“That is my desire, yes.” Nodding, her head bobbing, her mane bouncing against her brows, Twilight was enthusiastic with her approval.
“So you want to turn this into a game… where everypony competes to do the most good?” Sundance considered his own words for a second. “And taxes are cut away so I have more resources for my projects… with the hopes that I dump more into the project than I might have paid in taxes to begin with. So you’re adapting the tax codes applied to the noble houses to corporate structures? In a sense, I mean.”
“Exactly that. Applejack offers more in charitable funding than she ever paid in taxes.” Twilight wrapped her free foreleg around the infant she cradled and began to rock the tiny filly from side to side. “It is my belief that ponies want a say in how their tax money is spent. Yes, this is fraught with problems, such as unpopular things being underfunded, but I’m working on a solution. Ponies have all manner of things that they are passionate about, and if given the chance, they will give freely. I’ve seen that over the course of my leaderboard experiment.”
He’d dipped a hoof into the water and all that was left now was to dive in. Though he didn’t understand it, it made a strange sort of sense. Twilight was all about options… choices. She even offered a choice in how one paid taxes. Either directly—or indirectly. It didn’t matter, so long as something was contributed. Those who had an option paid more than those who were coerced, it seemed—which was exactly why Twilight ruled Equestria and he was the caretaker of a vast expanse of nothingness.
“Of course,” he said, his tone both soft and hesitant, “there is the matter of figuring out how to accomplish all of this. How am I supposed to take what I have now and do what you want done with it?”
With no windows, no shadows, there was no sense of the passage of time. It might have been hours, or could have been days since they started. Twilight finished off yet another hayburger while the sniffling infant slept in the crook of her foreleg. Miss Strudel had stopped eating, but still eyed the remaining food with a hungry expression. As for Sundance, he too abstained, because he still had to fly home somehow.
After she licked her lips clean, Twilight said, “You have open land. Lots of it. What you lack are residents. To that end, you need to entice homesteaders and townsteaders to come to you.”
“Townsteaders?” For Sundance, this was an entirely new word, one he’d never heard before. It sounded odd in his ears and strange in his mind. “What’s a townsteader?”
“Well”—Twilight smiled—“by definition, Sundance, you are a townsteader. A pony that founds a township, rather than just a single home. Ponyville was founded by a group of farmers, who were townsteaders.”
“Oh.” The word still sounded strange, but now made sense for Sundance. “So how do I get more ponies to come to me?”
“By making it financially viable,” Twilight replied.
“I pay them?” Here, Sundance blinked a few times, and thought about the cost.
“Well, not exactly. You offer grants so they can be properly supplied and outfitted. Only you won’t have to worry about the cost, because I’ll be paying for it.” She paused, then corrected herself. “I won’t be paying for it, not exactly. Those jerks at the treasury would go nuts if I submitted the paperwork. No, Applejack and Rarity have amassed a sizeable sum of money just for this purpose. My pet project is off the books… for now.”
Somewhat apprehensive, Sundance wasn’t sure how he felt about all of this being off the books. As a bureaucrat, he felt that good record keeping was mandatory. After all, what if a long-distant descendent wanted to find his grandmother? The mere suggestion of off the books made him cringe more than a little.
“When you say it that way, it almost sounds illegal.”
“Oh, Sundance… you’re funny.” Brows furrowed, with deep creases visible above her eyes, Twilight tittered for a short time—a sound that was not entirely wholesome.
“Is this legal?” he asked.
“As a social experiment, done for the sake of study, it is perfectly legal. As the Princess of Friendship, it is my prerogative to institute social programs for controlled friendship studies. Which is what we’re doing. While I can’t offer Crown-sponsored land grants… which is outside of my authority, I can do multi-generational friendship studies. Right now, I am securing a location.”
“I see.” He swallowed, licked his lips, and hoped that at least good records would be kept. “So this is a matter of working around your current restrictions. That’s fine… I guess. You’re not doing it for equinal gain, so… I’m still on board.”
“I am also going to pay you to be an administrator for this friendship study,” she said.
Ears pricked, Sundance sat up a little straighter. “Is that so? How much?”
“One gold bit a year.”
An invisible felinoid thief snatched Sundance’s tongue and he was left without a response. While he was surprised, this really didn’t bother him, but he felt as though it should. One gold bit a year? That was fine, more or less. His needs were met and he really didn’t need more. Surely, other benefits would be made available to him, so this really wasn’t a big deal. It even made sense; he was doing this for friendship, a sort of lifelong partnership with Twilight Sparkle.
“You will get one gold bit a year,” Twilight said in hushed tones. “However, your barony will get extensive funding. As much as I can muster through my own means. We start with grants for homesteaders and townsteaders. Once that is established, we move on to infrastructure. You will act as a corporate front for my efforts. Since you’ll be operating as a corporate charity, every single bit spent will be a matter of public record. Once you get established a bit, I’ll do what I can to get others interested in our cause. With a bit of luck, we can maybe snowball a bit. All those brand new towns will be prime investment opportunities, and those investment opportunities will only be available to investors of the highest quality… those who have established themselves as servants for the public good.”
“So this will be a reward for a contest,” he said.
“Of course.” Her tight-lipped smile stretched across her perfect teeth. “And you… you will be the benevolent saviour of the impoverished masses, a selfless, self-sacrificing soul who devotes the whole of his existence to this cause for one gold bit a year. That will be quite a talking point. We’ll manufacture your image. Sell you to the public. We’ll curate a fine public opinion of you. You’ll be the compassionate Corporate Executive Officer that lives as an example to others, and that others will aspire to be.”
“Um…” Unable to respond in any sort of meaningful way, Sundance reached up and scratched at the scars on the back of his neck. It was rather brilliant—but he was secretly relieved that Twilight Sparkle was a good princess, and not an evil one. An evil Twilight Sparkle would be rather unnerving—but no doubt quite friendly.
Lifting one hoof, Twilight began stroking the fuzzy, well-rounded tummy of the foal she cradled in the crook of her foreleg. With smooth, even strokes, she rubbed the filly’s tender tum-tum, all while she smiled the friendliest of disarming smiles. All things considered, Twilight seemed quite pleased with herself at the moment, now that her big plan was revealed. Or maybe it wasn’t; there could be even more plan to reveal, and this was just the opener.
“We’ll focus on getting these townships started, and then, once those are established and stable, we’ll begin phase two: providing services. Education is a must. It is very, very difficult to tackle education in our big cities, but I think we could do more in small planned communities. Remember… we’re trying to preserve the right to choose, so having a basic education is of the utmost importance if ponies are to leave your barony someday and make some kind of life for themselves in the city.”
That seemed reasonable. What she said was true, or at least had an element of truth to it. A one-room schoolhouse was a far easier fix than a massive inner-city school with thousands of students. Of course, there might come a day when his barony’s population was so large that such schools would be necessary—but would he see that in his own lifetime? At least Twilight had some kind of plan, which was certainly more than what he had at the moment. Of course, it was still up to him to find some way to turn his barony into a financial powerhouse.
But a few small settlements might be a start.
“And what is phase three?” he asked.
“Doing something about the absolute isolation that you face,” she replied. “There’s no railroad, no roads, not much of anything. The previous baron wanted the modern world to stay far, far away. Now we’re stuck trying to fix that. I’ll do what I can to help.”
“The railroad depot is very far away.” He took a moment to reflect upon his isolation whilst he scratched at his scars. “In the lowlands, near the Canterhorn, there’s a massive swampy bog. To the south is the Everfree. Off to my west, there are mountains, and from what I understand, the most dangerous patch of wilderness that Equestria has left. I’m not sure what’s up north of me, but close to the barony settlement itself, there are a bunch of tar pits, boiling bogs, boiling lakes, and an untold number of fumaroles that spew sulfurous fumes.”
“You are the victim of hostile geography,” Twilight remarked. “Draining the bogs would be a monumental effort. Your best connection to the world is in the south, where the railroad runs north of the Everfree. But that is also a long, long way away from your settlement. There is a solution though.”
“There is?” Hopeful, his ears pricked in anticipation for Twilight’s explanation.
“We’re about to build a transportation system between Canterlot and Ponyville. The cogwheel trains that run up and down the mountain are very expensive to maintain. We’re looking at a system of cable airships. Tell me, Sundance… are you familiar with how an airship functions?”
Like a colt in class who wanted to impress his teacher, Sundance put his brain to work.
When he failed to answer within a reasonable time, Twilight began to explain. “A nacelle is filled with Celestium gas. When electric current is applied, Celestium has incredible lift. Now, Celestium is basically helium… you have two neutrons, two electrons, two protons, and at least one thaumaton.” She took a deep breath, then continued, “Now, airships tend to be expensive because they need engines to produce electricity to provide lift. However, there’s a new kind of design… one that flies along an electrified cable. It is tethered to the electrified cable and moves along the length of it. It doesn’t need an engine to function, but it does have two airscrews: one up front, and one in the rear. Back and forth it goes, endlessly traversing its route.”
With very little effort, Sundance understood the simplicity of it.
“These are small craft, with very little cargo capacity, but they are cheap to operate and inexpensive to maintain. The first one to be built will stretch from Ponyville to Canterlot. Should be done in maybe a year. I want the second one to be built from your barony settlement down to the railroad depot to the south. It will be a slow system… probably… and might take several days, but that is better than no transportation at all.”
“I have no electric grid,” Sundance said as he thought of the major flaw in Twilight’s plan.
“Not an issue,” she said in return with a dismissive wave of her hoof. “We’ll find a way.”
“So I am guessing that the homesteaders and townsteaders will establish themselves along the planned route for the cable airship?” He rubbed the back of his neck with his hoof, thoughtful. “It will be a means to move goods north and south, as well as anypony that needs to get from one end to another.”
With these words said, this seemed possible. Feasible. Reasonable. Why, this could be set up in just a few years, maybe. He knew nothing about the proposed system, how it worked, how it functioned, but the idea seemed sound. This would also mean potential electrification for his barony, at least along the cable airship route. Modernising his barony wasn’t quite as impossible as he thought. Though, it still fell upon him to find some way for the barony to start cranking out a tremendous amount of profit, which was easier said than done.
“There will be a corridor of civilisation running north to south. It will be up to you to see that this flourishes. It’s a good thing that you’re a pegasus.”
He understood; he could fly from settlement to settlement with little effort.
“Radiance is currently working on the new railroad depot—”
“He is?” Sundance was quite surprised by this news, as he’d heard nothing about progress.
“He is.” A rather sketchy grin could be seen on Twilight’s mug. “Radiance is quite put out that Nuance showed him up. He’s busy trying to redeem himself, because his doting mother takes every opportunity she can to remind him that his brother supervised the construction of an entire town and a castle.”
“Nuance did more than supervise,” Sundance said. “My gatehouse was designed by him. The little guy has an eye for functional architecture.”
“He’s come into his own and it drives Radiance crazy. Which is good. Because Radiance is a massive jerk.”
“Oh, come on, he’s not that bad—”
“No, he’s worse.” She muttered something completely unintelligible beneath her breath, her eyes rolled, and her expression turned sour. “But he kind of needs to be a callous jerk to do what he does best, so it can’t be held against him.” Lips pursed, she huffed, and she puffed, and then she gave the sleeping filly a loving squeeze. “Nuance got accepted into a somewhat prestigious academy for officers, and he did so on his own merits. They train diplomats there… not soldiers. Celestia is very, very proud. She’s been strutting around everywhere she goes. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that Nuance is her favourite… right now.”
A huge grin appeared in Sundance’s face.
“There is no phase four,” said Twilight, who abruptly changed the subject. “We’ll start planning that together once we reach phase three. For now, our work is cut out for us. Begin townsteading. Ideally, we want homesteaders to start homesteading next spring, which will be here before we know it.”
“You really believe that I can do all of this, don’t you?” he asked.
Upon hearing this question, Twilight visibly relaxed. Her face, now serene and calm, was a thing of curious beauty. There was wisdom in her eyes, and she radiated a sort of intense, inspiring magnificence. “Not only do I have faith in you, but I have faith in your friendships. You started out in debt… which is now all gone. A lifetime or more of debt, all of which is now settled. If that can be accomplished due to friendship, just think of what else might be done.”
“Rustic has a head for business and Turmeric has a knack for organisation. I got out of debt by accident… through no real effort of my own.” Sundance bowed his head and found that his next words were hard to say. “It was just a thing that happened. A stroke of good fortune. Luck. Call it what you will. Just like everything else that’s happened. Me inheriting the barony. These things keep happening to me and there are times when I find myself barely involved in the outcome.”
“Maybe it isn’t about you,” Twilight said to Sundance. “There’s plenty of times I found myself caught up in a whirlwind of events, and while I had a part, it wasn’t about me. I think that you will find as your friendships develop, you will find yourself caught up in more and more things. Why, just imagine how Rustic and Turmeric might feel about saving their friend. You may find yourself in their position someday, providing good fortune and serendipitous circumstance to another in need. In fact, given the scope of our project, I’m sure of it.”
He hadn’t considered this before, but he thought about it now.
“Celestia has high hopes for the two of us.”
Sundance found himself looking Twilight right in the eye.
“She has most of her attention focused on the war, Sundance. If the world was at peace, she herself would be far more active in our plan.” Twilight resumed stroking the filly she held, and her ears took on a more relaxed posture. “Just think, Sundance… long after we’re gone, centuries from now, Celestia will be there to watch over whatever we create. She will be able to watch it grow. Prosper. Centuries from now, she will judge our works.”
How exactly did one respond to such words?
“Are you ready to get started? We’ll not see the end, but we’ll have a fine beginning…”