//------------------------------//
// Chapter 58 
// Story: Fine Print 
// by Starscribe 
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Tracy didn't have much time alone in Equestria anymore, not now that Rose was away from work and they were usually together. But just because they were trying to capitalize on every moment they could didn't mean there weren't times he was alone.
 
One of those was early in the morning, when he'd finished every project Apex had left with him and didn't have anything new. Janet's "reputation reconstruction" left him with almost exclusively grunt-work, nothing that occupied his attention as soon as he came home. That was probably for the best—his work-life balance was already broken enough as it was.
 
Still, it was a shame that Everwake came with an ever-mounting threat when he stopped using it. Having the entire day was great for his productivity.
 
But with nothing to do at work, his Earth friends not really talking to him anymore, and Rose busy serving breakfast at the flower stand, Tracy had a little time to himself. Time to bundle up as tightly as he could, covering his wings with enough layers that it didn't feel like he would bleed all his heat and freeze to death.
 
He didn't have anywhere specific to go, but he never had. The winter was a great time to leave his phone in the house and just go walking, letting the snow carpeting everything muffle the sound and leave the whole city in silence, except for the crunching of his own hooves on the ground.
 
That was what he expected, anyway. Usually that was what he found in Ponyville, a relaxing environment with the occasional little group of ponies out on their business. The smell of woodsmoke was a constant companion, and most homes had a little line of pale white. Simple, maybe. He didn't want to call it primitive.
 
Maybe Discord was hearing his thoughts today, because the noise coming from down the lane completely shattered his conception of what Equestria should've had. A low mechanical drone, getting louder and quieter at regular rhythm. Like a poorly-designed diesel generator.
 
Tracy didn't even think about it, just trotted off. He wasn't the only pony to be investigating, though most glanced only once towards the sound, then hurried the other way.
 
Tracy continued all the way through Ponyville, so far that he had to cross the bridge over a frozen river. By the time he saw the building, the noise had risen from a gentle hum to a roar, the kind that made him wish for ear protection. His bat ears pressed down involuntarily, but he didn't walk away. Instead he stared, taking in the strange sight.
 
The building called itself a "relay station", though the two times he'd passed, it was just an empty wooden shell with two pony faces on a sign beside it. It wasn't just an empty building anymore. The hardware had finally arrived.
 
Several flatbed trailers packed with wooden crates were parked as close to the side of the building as possible, where a set of wide doors was now propped open. Pulling the ensemble was a vehicle he could only describe as "vintage steampunk", with wooden spokes but a massive brass boiler on the back. Sparks of magic rose steadily between large electrodes, and so many gears and belts were in motion that he imagined they had to be for show. 
 
But the mechanical side wasn't really what interested him, or even the thick cable running off the back of the vehicle and through the open doors. It was, rather, what was inside.
 
Ignoring his better judgement, Tracy ducked through the open loading doors, looking around at the building's contents. The smell of smoke was thick here, and not the faint wood smell that he was used to from Ponyville. This was rubbery, oily. Something had burned that wasn't supposed to.
 
The room was filled with electrical hardware, every machine trimmed with brass and stamped by hand. On one side of the room, a bank of Van-de-Graaff generators were connected with sparking electrodes to a set of objects he could only take to be capacitors. Like everything else, they were electronics he'd never seen outside of a museum. 
 
The room connected with a single set of doors to a room labeled "studio", complete with a light-up "on air" sign. Why the owners had taken the time to decorate the space before finishing assembling the backbone, he couldn't guess.
 
"Hello?" Tracy called. The generator outside was so loud that he didn't expect his voice to carry far. Indeed, there was no response.
 
But someone brought all this in. They couldn't be far, could they?
 
He should probably go back the way he'd come. Equestria might have different social rules, but that didn't mean he could just go breaking in. 
 
But then he saw what had happened in the back room, beside the closed door to the studio. The ground was stained with ash, breaching out from the door and scarring the cement where it touched.
 
Inside was the wreckage of several more machines, even more intricate than the ones outside. Everything on the left wall was destroyed, though it didn't actually look like the building had burned. Several were covered with a powdery pink residue—Equestrian fire extinguisher?
 
Yet the generator outside hadn't actually been turned off.
 
Tracy stepped over several open toolboxes towards the centerpiece of the room, and likely also the center of the accident. He stared down at the various dials and switches, running from the front of a pony-sized machine to a raised set of brass rods ending in spheres at head level. He'd seen the like of this machine before—there was a smaller version plastered onto his butt.
 
He leaned forward, nudging the charred front panel of the machine. It popped out, so warped with heat that it was eager to move.
 
What he saw inside was a spidery mess of wires, connected to components he'd never seen before—at least not the version that ponies used in Equestria.
 
It's a spark-gap transmitter, he thought. The sign meant a radio relay station. It was the first step into wireless technology, a natural extension of the telegraph and railroad that were already ubiquitous. Why'd they bring it to Ponyville?
 
But he found that question didn't interest him much. There was a toolkit here, and boxes filled with spare parts. 
 
Like many old electronics he'd seen, this machine was trivial to read. At least so far as he knew, the fundamental laws behind electrical engineering hadn't changed in Equestria.
 
Before he knew what he was doing, Tracy had removed a spool of wire and a set of pliers, and he went about replacing the burned electronics. As he worked, he replaced wires in regular straight runs, rather than letting a twisted bundle block other parts and restrict airflow to temperature-sensitive components. 
 
He worked without really thinking. His hooves moved, his wings moved, and he hummed quietly to himself, losing himself in the labor. This was the way it felt when Apex gave him something interesting to do—a difficult problem was its own satisfaction to solve. But far from a sterile computer screen and an endlessly flexible CAD file, now he had actual wires in front of him, arranged in ways he could understand.
 
Time became a blur. Tracy worked, and the sun moved across the single window, caked with smoke. It didn't matter when it was too far to illuminate the room very well—his night vision made it easy to stick his head into the machine and see what he was doing without a flashlight. 
 
He was so engrossed in the work that he hardly noticed when he stuck back a hoof for a replacement vacuum tube, and it settled obediently into place. He clicked it into the transmitter, grinning at a job finally done. He looked back, and realized he wasn't alone anymore.
 
A pair of unicorns had entered while he was working. With the door only a few feet away, he must've been in a near-trance to fail to notice them. But fail he had, long enough that one had brought a chair, and was drinking steaming cider from a mug. The other was more focused on what Tracy was doing, a pair of faintly glowing goggles settled onto his eyes and a toolbelt around his waist.
 
"Oh." Tracy flushed, wings flattening. "Guess it was the generator... didn't hear you come in."
 
Had he just committed a crime in another universe? But they'd left the door open and everything!




 
"Don't stop on my account, hardworking little bat," said the unicorn closest to him. The pony had a clipboard levitating behind him, along with a paper-wrapped drafting pencil. Tracy glanced at the board, and realized what was depicted on it. It was the transmitter, or at least what Tracy's hard work was turning the transmitter into.
 
"This is your stuff," he said awkwardly, settling the spool of wire into the box. "Sorry about, uh... I don't know what came over me."
 
"We have some idea," said the other, sipping on his glass. "At least about the 'what'. The 'how' is a bit more interesting."
 
They sounded almost identical. Brothers then, maybe even twins? Even their marks looked similar, one a slice of apple and another the fruit with only one section missing. The first continued from where his companion left off, without missing a beat. "If you were a tad shorter, I'd guess you discovered your special talent while working with our little machine here."
 
He looked away. "I haven't had the chance to do anything interesting in a few weeks. Work is... getting better. I saw your broken transmitter here, and couldn't help myself. I'm sorry."
 
"No apology is necessary, new friend," said the nearest of the unicorns. "My name's Flim, my fine brother there is Flam. We're the owners of the patent for this device, soon-to-be wireless pioneers across Equestria!"
 
"I wasn't aware there were any ponies outside of Canterlot University who had studied the potential applications of thaumic-wireless transmission, least of all a practical technician who happened to live in the town of our first station. Who taught you?"
 
"You would not believe the answer to that question," he said, gesturing into the machine. "There were two problems in here, but I think your rectifier was the cause of your grief. That was what melted. For as much voltage as you were running through your transmitter, you need active cooling. Drill a few holes, keep a fan on this thing. There were a few other issues with the capacitors that would've kept you from full transmission power, but it's all sorted now."
 
He sat back, glancing out the open door behind them. Roseluck would probably be looking for him by now. He hadn't taken the phone, so she couldn't just send him a message. "Ponyville has electricity. What are you doing with a generator?"
 
"Ponyville declines to issue a permit," Flam said. Or maybe it was Flim? How could he keep them straight when their names were so close? "We're in negotiations with the hydroelectric provider. But they're unconvinced of the sustainability of our venture. Nearsighted fools, every one of them."
 
Flim emerged from the inside of the machine, grinning. "That's a remarkable talent you have, pony. Don't think we caught your name."
 
"I'm Tr—" He hesitated. "Spark Gap."
 
The unicorns shared a look. "Well if you aren't the strangest stroke of luck we've had this winter," Flam said. "But can you talk as well as fly?" 
 
His brother seemed to interpret that as a signal, because he pressed the transmission key. The lights overhead dimmed faintly, and a flash of energy passed between the balls of the transmitter. Blanketing the radio spectrum, maybe for hundreds of miles around. 
 
The unicorn held it for a few seconds, then pressed a few times more. Nothing in the box smoked, or caught fire. Flam grinned at him. "Well that result sure does speak for itself. How about a job?"






 
Tracy trudged back home through the snow about an hour later. The shadows stretched long, a winter afternoon already fading towards night.
 
Rose looked up from the couch as he entered. She was watching Frozen again, and this time hadn't needed his help working the remote. "Where were you?"
 
"Having one of the strangest experiences of my life," he said. Then he told her. He didn't need much detail about the location or the building, Rose already knew all that. 
 
As soon as he began to explain what he'd done, she stopped him with a hoof over his mouth. "I was waiting for something like that to happen. Congratulations Spark Gap! You have a special talent. Other than crashing."