//------------------------------//
// Sixth Stop: Day At The Office 
// Story: Aether Express 
// by MagnetBolt 
//------------------------------//

“License and registration,” the pony said again.
“I don’t have either,” Rarity said, also again. They’d gone around in circles for what must have been half an hour. She was seated in front of a pony in a small booth and apparently an even smaller number of words in her vocabulary. As soon as they’d arrived in the station, they’d been herded into something that was either customs or inmate processing.
Rarity hoped Diana was having better luck than she was.
“I’ll try to explain this again,” Rarity said. “We aren’t from this Realm. Whatever local paperwork you have, we don’t have copies of it. I’d be happy to answer any questions you have and perhaps you can call a manager or supervisor or somepony with more authority to make decisions, hm?”
The pony adjusted her glasses. Her expression didn’t change from the annoyed, flat look of a retail worker at the tail end of a day a dozen hours too long. She was chewing gum that must have long ago lost its flavor, because Rarity had to assume if there was any joy at all in the pony’s world they wouldn’t be quite so obtuse.
“I went on this journey to find out how to become an alicorn, and since I am not immortal yet you are wasting my time,” Rarity said, starting to feel testy. “Please, get me a supervisor!”
“You can’t speak to the supervisors without going to the office,” the customs officer explained. “They only take walk-in appointments at the office.”
“I’d be happy to go see them at their office,” Rarity sighed. This was starting to go in a familiar direction already, like she was walking in a rut that had gotten knee-high.
“The office is through customs. You can’t pass through customs without filling out the customs inlet form,” the mare said. She held up the clipboard, tapping it with her pen.
“I understand that,” Rarity said.
“I need your license and registration to fill it out,” she concluded, sounding triumphant. It was clear the mare thought that she was not only being extremely helpful but that she thought Rarity was slow and needed things explained several times in the same way just to understand how to stand in a queue.
“There must be some other process,” Rarity said. She wasn’t a foolish mare. She’d met all sorts of ponies before, and was starting to suspect there might be a faster way to get through this. It wasn’t her first option - in truth this was somewhat uncouth - but it might be the path forward.
She reached into her saddlebags and fished out a few bits, sliding them onto the counter in front of the pony.
“Ma’am, are you attempting to bribe me?” the customs officer asked.
“Perhaps we could instead call it a fee for expediting my request?” Rarity asked.
The mare looked down at the bits, counting them. “This is only twenty-four bits. The standard bribe for a customs officer is thirty-two.”
“Oh, my apologies, I miscounted.” Rarity put another ten bits on the desk. The mare slid two back.
“Thank you for your patronage,” the officer said, producing a stamp and slamming it down on the paperwork. “Let me get you a receipt.”





“I thought you’d get through customs faster than I would,” Rarity admitted, an hour later when Diana finally joined her outside the platform. Diana looked particularly annoyed by something. She huffed and sat down heavily on the bench next to Rarity and then yelped and immediately stood.
“The bench--!” Diana growled.
“Shocked you,” Rarity said. “It got me, too. You can’t sit down unless you buy something from one of the vendors.” She held up a small can of some soft drink. She couldn’t read the can, but it tasted like the color blue and buying it had given her a place to sit while she waited.
“I think I’ve already developed a dislike for this world. Our tickets should have been enough to serve as a passport.”
“If we’re going to do anything in this Realm we’re going to need paperwork of some kind,” Rarity said. “I suggest before we even try the hotel we correct that.”
Diana nodded.
The city reminded Rarity of Manehattan. The streets were a perfect grid, numbered instead of named. Ponies moved like they were on rails, keeping to the right and never stopping or getting in each other’s way. Uniformed stallions and mares stood in every intersection, watching the crowds with impassive dedication to order.
“They seem like the obvious ones to ask for directions,” Rarity said. “Excuse me, sir?”
She waved to attract the attention of one of the uniformed stallions. It was an impressive uniform, to be certain. It struck her as being midway between a knight and police officer, armored but with a badge, tie, and a billy club instead of a sword.
“Can I help you citizen?” he asked.
“Ah, yes,” Rarity said. “I apologize, but my friend and I are new in town and we need to get our paperwork renewed. Could I trouble you to assist me with directions to the nearest office where we could get that taken care of?”
“You don’t have any paperwork?” the stallion frowned, and with half his face hidden with sunglasses it was difficult for Rarity to tell if he was angry or concerned. “That’s a very serious matter. You realize that if you were stopped and asked for your identification you’d be looking at fines and possible imprisonment?”
“That’s why we want to make things right as quickly as possible,” Rarity assured him. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“Good. I like it when ponies avoid trouble.” The stallion reached back and pulled a small notebook from his belt. “I’m writing you directions to the office. This is also an official notice of warning. If you go directly to this address and get your identification, all you’ll get is the warning. If you get stopped, show the officer this and let them know what’s going on.”
“Thank you so much,” Rarity sighed with relief.
“And if you don’t get it taken care of by the end of the day, the warning will be on file and you’ll get three years in the cubes instead of a fine. Understood?” He scribbled notes in the notebook and tore off the top sheet, separating two extra carbon copies.
“Ah, yes sir,” Rarity said, less relieved. She wasn’t sure what the cubes were, but they certainly didn’t sound good. She took her copy of the warning and backed away quickly, running back to Diana. “How long do we have to stay here?” Rarity hissed through her teeth.
“Two days, plus a few hours,” Diana said. “Three years might make you late for the train.”
“I’m sure it won’t come to that. The ponies here care about the rules. I’m sure as long as we cooperate and do our best, things will work out.”





“This is the worst!” Rarity sobbed. She was inconsolable. Of all the things that could have happened, this was absolutely the most humiliating, awful thing. She collapsed in the lobby seat next to Diana. These didn’t shock them on sitting down, but there was a sign above them that started counting down and telling them how long they were allowed to remain seated before they’d be considered to be loitering.
“A bad photo on your ID card is the worst thing that ever happened to you?” Diana asked. She held up Rarity’s card. It was still warm from being laminated. It had taken almost an hour to get the license made. Not because it was a long process - they were happy to issue them licenses once the fees were paid.
It had taken almost an hour for them to wait in line to fill out one form, then a line for payment, then a line for the photo, and then try to get Rarity to take a picture without smiling or making a sultry look or acting for the camera at all.
“I look like a potato!” Rarity wailed.
Diana raised an eyebrow. “The most attractive potato in the patch, I promise.”
“That’s not terribly reassuring, Diana,” Rarity huffed. She took her ID card back and put it away before anypony else could see. At least they hadn’t forced her to remove what little makeup she had. That would have been beyond the pale. “It’s silly! How is anypony supposed to recognize me when the photograph on my identification looks like a totally different pony? A lady lives and dies by her smile!”
“Two days from now you can put it in the bottom of your luggage and never look at it again,” Diana assured her. “Mine isn’t much better.”
“Well, I suppose it might be the fault of the photographer,” Rarity said, feeling a little better now that she had company in her misery. “If they couldn’t get attractive pictures of either of us, it can’t be our fault.”
“Certainly not your fault,” agreed a third pony who Rarity was sure hadn’t been there a few moments ago. He was wearing a very precisely tailored suit with pins that were positioned and affixed with the importance and dignity of rank markings on a military uniform. If there had ever been a pony who could be described entirely using a ruler and square angle, it was him. Even his mane was cut at perfect angles.
“Can I help you?” Rarity asked. She glanced above her seat to make sure they weren’t straying beyond the time limit.
“I think we can help each other,” he said. He held out a hoof to shake. “I’m Factol Mil. I’ve been hearing a lot about you.”
Rarity looked at Diana, then carefully shook his hoof. Mil was clearly aware of her hesitation but chose not to acknowledge it.
“You know, it caused a little bit of alarm when ponies came through here claiming they arrived on the Aether Express. That’s a train that’s not supposed to even exist, and yet here it is, as big as life and with none of the permits or permissions it should have. Obviously that’s not your fault at all but we can’t even figure out how it got to our station and we’d love some answers about that and some other things.”
“It’s starting to sound like you want to interrogate us,” Rarity pointed out.
“No! I’m not a Judge!” he laughed. “I’m just a curious pony who works in weights and measurements. Very important branch of the government, as you know. If things aren’t standardized and measured, nopony would be able to get anything done. Like trains! Couldn’t make the trains run on time if the rails were all made differently or clocks disagreed on the length of a second!”
Rarity nodded. It was true enough. She’d traveled practically from one side of Equestria to the other and standardization was still a stumbling block. There were amazing inventions and ideas that never got further than a genus stallion or mare’s hometown because of it.
“I just want to ask a few questions about you and where you come from, say… over dinner?” he offered. “And as a show of good faith, what if we start by getting you a better photo for that ID?”
“You can do that?” Rarity asked.
“Of course. I have a little pull with the ponies around here. I once even got them to allow a pony to wear a hat on his ID! He didn’t want ponies to know he was going bald. Never took the hat off anyway so it seemed fair enough to me. You seem like the kind of mare who always looks her best, so your ID should match that, right?”
“You’re absolutely right!” Rarity agreed. She stood up. “I’d be happy to help you fill in the gaps in your reports. I assume this is all for some sort of report, that is.”
“Everything ends up on a report eventually,” Factol Mil said. “Otherwise, why would we have them?”





“The way we do things here is purely based on logic and rules,” Mil said. They’d gone to a small restaurant after Rarity had a new photo taken for her ID and they’d been immediately seated. She’d expected it to be sort of soulless and mechanical, but it was actually a charming place. “Like this restaurant. There are certificates in the window that show it’s been inspected, that it has a license to operate, and a few details about average menu price and meal length for those who need a little more information to decide where they’re going to eat.”
The meal had been interesting. Rarity couldn’t read the menu, but Factol Mils had been happy to order for them, and they’d ended up with soup and sandwiches. Rarity couldn’t identify the multicolored greens in the salad, but the fried cheese patty in the sandwich had been a surprise along with the spicy sauce on it.
“That’s not so different from home,” Rarity said. “Of course it’s not as tightly controlled as your realm here.”
He nodded. “And you said you just rode the train here? Any idea how it actually arrived on the tracks? We’ve got an automatic tracking system for safety, designed to detect the passage of trains on the system. Apparently your Aether Express just appeared out of nowhere between two sensors, and that shouldn’t have been possible.”
“The Express moves between worlds,” Diana said. “You should ask the Conductor for the details, but from what I understand, the magic of the train makes rails in different realms overlap. So it rides one set, then for a time it rides in two worlds at once, and then when the overlap ends, it is in another realm.”
“Interesting,” Factol Mil said. He took a sip of the foaming cider in his glass. “I’d love to know how it all works. Even here, there are two standard rail gauges. Does the train only go to worlds where the rails are compatible? Does it change itself to fit the rails in each world?”
“That, I’m not sure,” Diana said.
“It has to run on some kind of rules,” Mil said. “Everything does. If you know all the rules, you have power over anything governed by them.”
“Not everything runs on rules,” Rarity corrected. “Magic is unpredictable.”
Mils shook his head in disagreement. “Magic has more rules than anything else! That’s why there are whole libraries about how to properly cast spells. If you follow a spellbook exactly, you get the same effect every time.”
“He’s right,” Diana agreed. “But there are things that are truly unpredictable. Ponies.”
Mils shrugged. “Yes and no. There are statistics and trends and if you know a particular pony well enough you can guess what they’ll do, but you’re broadly right. It’s like magic, not impossible but with too many hidden variables.”
“But if you knew all the rules you could make a pony do anything?” Diana guessed.
“You might end up breaking them, but in theory,” Mils shrugged. “If you really wanted to make them do something, you might have to isolate them to remove all the variables, break them down a little at a time. Get them to trust you. It’d be deeply unethical. Anyway, there was something else I wanted to ask.”
“Please, ask away,” Rarity said. “You’ve been so kind to us.”
He smiled. “Tell me about alicorns.”
Rarity blinked. “Alicorns?”
“You mentioned to the pony who let you through customs that you were on a journey to become an alicorn. Immortality. Now that’s something I’d really like to get details on.”
“So would I,” Rarity sighed. “Nopony seems to know much, not even the alicorns themselves!”
“You must have some in this realm if you understand the term,” Diana pointed out. “Why don’t you ask them?”
“I have. The details of their ascent are state secrets.” He shrugged. “I spent a year filling out forms and writing requests and eventually got a hoof-written letter. They kindly informed me that additional alicorns could be destabilizing and that my interest was noted but my expertise was needed in my station.”
“I’m sorry,” Rarity said. He seemed almost more amused by it than sad, but she understood the frustration of hitting a dead end pursuing one’s dreams.
“Why do you want to become an alicorn?” Diana asked. “Power? Prestige?”
“Both would be lovely,” he agreed. “It started with curiosity. Now it’s just because I don’t like being told no.” He smiled. “The truth is I’ve already got plenty of power and prestige. I keep my grip on it by not telling anypony else all my secrets, and I have to assume the Empresses are like that too.”
“Empresses, hm?” Diana asked. “I suppose it’s an appropriate title.”
“Is it?” Rarity asked. “Princess Cadance refused that title when she was given stewardship of the Crystal Empire. She said, and I agree with her reasoning, that it’s a touch sinister.”
“They’re not like that,” Factol Mils said. He sighed and glanced out the window. There was a tall spire visible even from here, reaching up and past the clouds, impossibly slim for its seemingly infinite height. “When I was young, I was in love with them. Maybe I still am.”
He turned back to Rarity.
“I didn’t think the Aether Express was really real. A lot of my colleagues are trying to ignore that you even exist, which is why I’m not so worried about talking to you.” He took a breath. “And I know about the rumor. That at the end of the line on the Aether Express, there’s a way to become an alicorn.”
“Somewhere,” Diana agreed.
“That’s why I had to speak to you in person. I needed to know if it was worth it. Giving up your life and everything you had to go on a quest.” He looked pained, then reached into his carefully pressed suit and produced a wallet. It was old and faded, but when he opened it there was something shining silver inside it.
“You have a ticket,” Diana said.
“I spent a small fortune getting it,” Mils confirmed. “Then I spent years waiting for my chance to take the train and I wondered if it was even real. But in that time… well, I spent a small fortune but I earned a much larger one.”
“It would have been easy to make the decision before,” Diana said. “And now you have, as you mentioned, power and prestige.”
“Quite a bit of both,” he confirmed. “I’d have to give it all up. You can’t take it with you, as they say. Do you regret leaving your old lives behind?”
Diana closed her dark eyes. “No.”
“It’s complicated,” Rarity said. “I suppose my situation was a bit like yours. I didn’t have much time to decide. It took quite some time before I even found a way to send a letter home to let ponies know where I’d gone! They must be so worried about me…”
Factol Mils chuckled. “That, at least, is one thing I don’t have over my head. My secretary might have to break in a new supervisor, but she’s done it before.”
“If you want my advice, I think you already know your answer,” Rarity said. “One of the legends of the Aether Express is that it arrives only once in a pony’s lifetime. It’s here, and you have a ticket. I think it’s destiny. That’s also why I knew I had to leave.”
She sat back in her chair, thinking of some of the worlds she’d seen on the tip already.
“If you simply stay in one place and do your single job well, you’ll never become an alicorn. I’ve started to think a pony can only ascend by pushing themselves to their limits. Not just facing down challenges of the kind they’re already comfortable with, but going outside of their comfort zone.”
Diana nodded. “Well said.”
“I admit, I am very comfortable where I am,” the Factol said. “Part of me thought about selling this ticket over the years, but I always kept it somewhere safe. Now I’m worried if I’m the right pony to have it.”
“If you have the ticket, it means you can be the right pony,” Diana said. “The tickets only seem to appear where they’re needed, passing from hoof to hoof. If you refuse the call, it will go to somepony else eventually. After all, you’ll know it’s useless to you, since the Express will never appear before you again.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” Mils said quietly. He downed the rest of his drink. “Thank you again for meeting with me. You’ve given me a lot to think about. I’ll make sure your bill is paid, and if you want to have a few extra drinks, it’s on my tab.”
He stood up, putting the ticket away in his coat pocket and producing something else.
“Oh, and take these.”
He put two yellow slips on the table.
“What are these?” Rarity asked.
“In case you do have those extra drinks, this is a pass so the Judges won’t have you arrested for public intoxication,” Mils explained, amused. “We take the rules seriously around here, remember?”





Rarity didn’t see Factol Mils again until the Aether Express was almost ready to leave. In truth, the realm was dull and there was little to do in the time they had to them - almost everything had some waiting period or queue attached to it. Every purchase came with a detailed receipt and even tax forms began to make appearances.
She’d given up on doing more than window shopping when she learned that even hats couldn’t be purchased off the rack because various laws had been created in the distant past about properly fitted clothing for safety reasons.
They ended up on the train platform, with what little they’d brought with them, repacking their saddlebags after going through customs. They’d been given a detailed search just in case they managed to make it to the next platform on the line instead of traveling to another Realm. They’d also been given extra forms to give to the next customs agents they saw in the hope of creating inter-dimensional trade law.
That last part had been explained to Rarity with the glittering, hope-filled expression of a pony who was seeing their greatest dream come to life.
“Can you believe that mare didn’t believe that I was perfectly capable of adjusting my own hemlines?” Rarity huffed. “What kind of society makes laws about skirts having a minimum length?”
“I saw the way you looked at her,” Diana scolded her. “The moment she said they had to be no more than an inch above the knee, you were already making plans for a hem lying halfway up your thigh.”
“It would have been my right as a free pony!” Rarity huffed. “Fashion is about being daring and taking chances and standing out!”
She stopped and grabbed Diana’s cloak, giving her an intense, almost burning look of fashion passion.
“Can you picture it, darling? I could be the first pony in this realm to wear a miniskirt! I’d be a legend, Diana! A legend!”
“I’d have loved to see it, though I think you’d get arrested in the process.” Factol Mils said. He waved from where he stood, waiting next to the Aether Express.
“I wasn’t sure we would see you again,” Diana noted.
“I wasn’t sure either,” Mils said, with a smile. “I had to do a lot of thinking, and I do my best thinking when I’m brushing up on codes and regulations. There’s nothing quite as meditative as a book that is absolutely, perfectly clear about the way the world should be and the best way to fix things when the world fails to live up to the ideal.”
“That sounds… riveting,” Rarity said.
Mils laughed. “You know, rivets were actually part of the volume! It was all railway regulations, steam boilers and rails and the like. I was reading it for obvious reasons. I’d never really thought about it before. Tested on it once in school, then never used it again. That’s the whole reason we have reference books.”
“Were you thinking of writing the Aether Express a citation for improper design?” Rarity asked.
“No, no. I’m sure I could come up with a good excuse for it if I had to. Not registered with our nation, so it isn’t subject to our laws, that sort of thing.” He waved a hoof. “No, what struck me was something else. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”
“Conductor?” Diana called out.
“Fifteen and a half minutes,” the Conductor said. Rarity and Mils both jumped a little. The coal-black pony seemed to appear out of nowhere when Diana called for him.
“Plenty of time,” Diana said.
Mils nodded. He sat down and sighed. “When I was reading those regulations about boiler construction and the design of steam tubes, I realized I didn’t know why most of the rules existed. Why does a steam vessel of a certain size have to be made out of steel, and only steel with a few named grades? Why do the rivets have to be exactly this size, and in this pattern? Why are the rails exactly this distance apart?”
“Your rulebook doesn’t say why?” Diana asked.
“Speaking from experience, there’s usually a reason,” Rarity said. “You wouldn’t want to make a steam engine out of glass. It’s a bit like a dress code in a restaurant, isn’t it? Certainly there are ponies who wouldn’t need a tuxedo to be in style, but by requiring it you can avoid some foppish noble from demanding service while wearing only a rude T-shirt and a bad attitude.”
“You’re almost certainly right,” Mils agreed. “That’s the same conclusion I came to. It’s all about being as safe as possible, even if it means things are overwrought or checked too many times or filed away in a cabinet where nopony will ever look at it again.”
Diana nodded. Rarity felt sorry for Mils. She could see that the understanding was weighing on his shoulders like a great weight, a mass of rules and regulations that he was starting to question the necessity of.
“You can escape it with your ticket,” Diana noted. “But you aren’t going to.”
“I’m not going to,” he agreed, smiling again.
“You wouldn’t have needed to ask about the time otherwise,” Rarity realized. “But why?”
“When I was younger and bought this ticket I didn’t have anything to give up, so it would have been easy for me to leave. Now? I’m in a position where I have control over my destiny. It took me until last night to realize I could try and change things from within. The Empresses told me they didn’t want another immortal upsetting the balance, but I think a regular mortal might still be able to stir up some trouble.”
He chuckled and winked.
“I’m going to stay here because there are ponies like the younger me, who want to make the world better. I’m going to help them grow. The rules shouldn’t chain us, they should help us all work together to build things up.”
Rarity sighed and gave him a sad smile, approaching the stallion and pulling him into a polite hug.
“It would have been a pleasure to travel with you,” she said. “You are a gentlestallion.”
“Oh, that reminds me!” He reached back, producing a paper bag. “Here. I got you a copy of the law volume on railway regulations. I don’t actually expect you to read it, but it might help you think of me from time to time.”
Rarity took the bag and the shockingly heavy book within. It must have had almost two thousand thin pages, like an entire dictionary covering everything from seating arrangements to minimum wages for coal shovelers.
“You’ll want this, too,” Mils said. He opened his wallet and produced his ticket. It shone with pure silver light, perfect and untarnished. “I’ve had this for decades and look at it. Not even a wrinkle.”
Factol Mils shook his head and offered the ticket to Rarity.
“But Darling, I don’t understand.”
“I want you to take this. Not as a gift,” he said, moving it a little when she tried to take it. “I want you to give it to a pony who needs it. If you find a pony who wants to escape or find some bigger universe out there, I want you to make sure they get it.”
Rarity nodded and carefully took the ticket, holding it tightly.
“If you’re sure,” she said quietly.
“I’m sure. Thirty years ago I’d be the right pony for that ticket. Now? It deserves to find its way to the right colt or filly.” He gave Rarity a pat on the shoulder. “I’m sure this is the right thing, because now that it’s out of my hooves I feel relieved it’s gone.”
“I understand,” Diana whispered.
“In return, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me about the pony you end up giving it to if you ever come back to this Realm.” Mils laughed. “I’ll buy the drinks!”