Noon falls on Appleloosa and with it arrives the first train from Dodge Junction, bringing the early risers. As the train starts slowing down, its brakes grinding and screeching, Smiley raises her head and looks out of the window.
“Lil’ guy, it’s time to stop,” Apple Strudel puts a hoof on the harmonica 99999 is holding with both forelegs and blowing into it tone by tone. Thankfully, while the changeling is far from learning how to produce a proper tune, some polite requests from the annoyed, sleepy passengers shortly after leaving Dodge quickly made it a priority for Apple Strudel to teach it how to control the volume, “We’re in Appleloosa.”
99999 puts Apple Strudel’s harmonica down and looks at Smiley.
“So, what do we do now? This Apple place is on our tickets but it’s not Sanpa Lomino,” when Smiley seems to completely lock up, staring blankly ahead, it adds, “Smiley?”
Smiley’s breathing quickens and she looks at the blank tablet hanging around her neck as if asking for advice. After a brief moment, she just shows the empty tablet to 99999 and Apple Strudel.
“Ya’ll don’t know where ya going or, ya know, how to get there? Ya said ya were sent away, but for real… didya run off?”
Smiley slowly lowers her tablet and looks out of the window where the moving scenery stops.
“No, we didn’t,” 99999 shakes its head, “It’s complicated but it’s harder to remember stuff now that we’re alone, it’s a changeling thing. I’m sure Smiley will recall everything soon,” it rubs its head against the now weakly trembling mare.
“APPLELOOSA TRAIN STATION. PLEASE EXIT THE TRAIN.”
The loud announcement makes both changelings twitch and look at the ceiling.
“Does that mean everyone?” asks 99999 and Smiley’s breathing quickens.
“It does,” Apple Strudel nods and stands up from their four-seat booth, “This train runs only between Dodge and Appleloosa. C’mon,” he nods at them, “Whatever’s the problem, ya’ll have to take it outside.”
99999 pats Smiley’s head, puts its large backpack back on, and says:
“We’ll figure it out together, Smiley. Let’s go.”
Smiley, mouth slightly open and still breathing too quickly, just nods, takes her bag, and follows a clear direction.
***
It’s still over an hour before the end of current worky time, and one unimportant tunnel intersection becomes the witness of something unusual, possibly even unique - a drone just sitting and doing nothing? No digging, no carrying anything, just lost inside its own head, running through a specific set of memories on repeat, and muttering.
“-maybe more left… drag against the wall… carapace changes would solve that… gonna need stable hooves for that… could I join 10000- 10k’s yoga?”
“Heya, 99012!” a voice from the darkness calls out, stopping 99012’s vocalized train of thought.
What is that? A second drone without something to do this far from breaky time? Its rank shows 99066 and, just like 99012 it doesn’t seem worried about being found not working at all.
“Hi, 99066!” the first drone returns the greeting, “How’s it going? I think I’ve figured out a route between oosx-665-qp and oosx-702-ac that’s bound to break your record but I’ll need some practice first.”
“Niiice!” 99066 smiles back, “I’d love to see it. New skip or just different love usage? Wait, before you answer - we discovered two new skips with 99380 last breaky time, but we don’t know how to activate them yet.”
“Two during one sweep? Sweeeeep- I mean sweet!” 99012 grins at the possibilities for the evolution of quicktrotting.
“Awww, goop!” a new, disappointed voice joins in, its hive link identifying it as 99971, “Am I the last one again?”
A third non-worker?! What’s the hive coming to?
“Only by a little bit,” 99066 cheers it up, “So, I guess we all have the same problem, right?”
“Yup!” 99012 nods, “I’m done with my carrying, I can’t find another free work marker on the map, and there’s a suspicious amount of time left.”
“I thought I did something wrong!” 99971 nods vigorously, “It’s too early!”
“Nope,” 99066 stands up and does a few jumps to warm up, “Maybe 10k misplanned something. I tried to reach it from here but it must be all the way up at High Score’s. Anyone up for a friendly trot from here to there?” it winks at the other two, “I go first, 99012 next, and finally you, 99971? Five seconds between us.”
“Waitwaitwaitwait!“ 99971 waves its foreleg, “That’s one thing I wanted to talk about. I think you noticed I’m not as good at using love as you are, so I’ll always be slower, but I’d like to still compete in a way that would make sense. And it’s kinda weird that we want quicktrotting to be fair but anyone who’s managed to scrounge up more love to burn on a run will be faster no matter what. Could we… maybe… not use enhancements?” it ends up meekly, pausing for a moment under the looks of the other two, “I know that ruins the idea of being the quickest b-”
“That’s a brilliant idea!” 99066 and 99012 exchange glances and nod with wide smiles, “That way we make sure almost anyone can do it, it will be based on technique, AND it won’t make them hungry. What do we call it? No-love category?”
“Agreed!” 99012 nods.
99971 just nods, still surprised but happy that its idea was accepted so easily.
“We’ll work out the details later, but how about we do the first no-love test trot from here to High Score’s? As I said before - count down from five, then go. That delay should be long enough so that we don’t get under each other’s hooves,” 99066 recaps the rules.
“Let’s gooooo!” 99012 grins.
99066 lowers its body to the floor, bounces its behind like a cat ready to pounce, counts-
“...two… one…”
-and gallops!
***
Busy with this worky time assignment, 99380 is quietly humming a tune playing inside its head. It can sense fifteen links tapped into it and another thirty-one tapped into them just listening to the music while working. The drone is digging mostly on autopilot while its mind is busy providing links between drones who wouldn’t otherwise reach each other, updating the hive map in real time, and processing and categorizing general information flowing between links far away by using other drones’ connections in a way and at speed which wouldn’t drain them.
By now, 99380 is used to living in this semi-dreamlike state, and drones who know about its peculiar mental talent know not to push when something seems to take longer to process. Now, for example, 99380 is actively forgetting pages upon pages of text provided by the the smart box that the drones managed to carve into walls and ceilings of the most stabilized core tunnels the previous worky time to lower the love cost of maintaining so much detailed information within the drone section of the hive mind.
The drone is also used to knowing stuff which by all means it shouldn’t, because there’s so much information in the hive mind that it can’t actively process all of it so the vast majority happens sort of… in the background, and it briefly stops digging to smile at nothing when a piece of interesting news surfaces out of nowhere.
Nice, 65536 is here! I wonder if it brought more spinnies for the music box… and also something to fix the music box. I should have guessed it would be coming over soon when 57999 said the outside was covered in… snow, was it?
Do I have the shinies to trade? I know it brings presents that don’t require trading for but I’d feel bad.
The hive mind immediately lists the contents of its personal stash with pictures.
New Scufflestick tinies - can’t trade. Three greens, sure. One blue… I really like that one, but if 65536 brought something special then sure-
As it’s sorting out its meager possessions, 99380’s body keeps digging ahead, and the information that it’s dug through a hole into an open space gets lost somewhere on the way from its eyes to its brain. The drone’s foreleg moves through empty air, and it takes a step through the hole, immediately plummeting into a freshly opened, deep crevasse.
-one red, sure. Some yellow-soft dust. One stone tablet with glowgoop writing. I could make one for 65536! That way it can always see some words from us even at home. Now to think about something that would remind it of us in the best way-
The massive snake on the bottom of the ravine, alerted by the falling rocks, looks up at the falling drone entirely unaware of what’s happening, and just opens its mouth filled with circles and circles of teeth made to grind smaller victims into paste.
99380’s body finally gets a warning signal through to its head and the drone’s focus slips out of its mental space into the real world just in time to be too late to spread its wings and stop its fall due to velocity which would rip them off if it tried to.
99380 looks down at the swarming snakes, each with a mouth so big it looks as if they evolved precisely to eat drone-sized prey.
“Not ag-!”
***
A squeak is heard in the High Score cavern or, more likely, isn’t heard because the only drone currently present is 65536, until now taking a nap in one of the many unused beehive-like alcoves dug out in its sides, and it’s the one who just yawned. Squeakily. Aligning its sleep schedule with the rest of the hive drones is bound to take some work, but by tomorrow it should be sorted out, especially if the drone finds some exhausting activity to knock it out around sleepy time, and it has a couple ideas.
A quick mental scan of hive links reveals only a couple within reach, but none in a comfortable chatting distance, so 65536 shuffles out of its alcove and flies down to ground level before stretching.
“Brrr… it’s freezing in here,” it shudders after hours spent wrapped inside the warm sleeping bag, and starts hopping around to warm up, “It’s not as bad as outside but not by much. Weird, it should be a lot warmer.”
“New vents have been installed since your last visit, 65536, and some lead directly to the surface. They have benefits and drawbacks,” says a friendly, source-less voice directly inside the drone’s head.
“Heya, voice!” replies 65536 cheerfully, “How’s it going?”
“The hive is thriving.”
“I meant you personally,” 65536 starts doing push ups.
“There is no ‘me personally’, but if there was I would be satisfied that the hive is thriving.”
“Pfff, be that way,” the drone stands back up and arches like a cat. Despite the reply, there’s no disappointment in it. Voice does voice things, “Any ideas where 10k is? I thought it wasn’t allowed to dig and carry stuff anymore because of its wounds, but it’s not here.”
“It is near a coal deposit on 01-ddd4-ye1. I see you can’t access the full hive map yet, and there have been many changes during the past year. Did Chrysalis forbid you to access hive knowledge in full?”
“Yep,” 65536 nods to… no one, really, “But I can’t blame her. Last time I borrowed a book from the forbidden section of the Canterlot library, I accidentally summoned the Cerberus, that’s a fluffy woofer with three heads, and I had to exercise it.”
“Exorcise.”
“Nope! We played fetch, then it chased me until he caught me, then we played drone toss -I was the drone- but he didn’t bite down hard at all so I know he liked me. It took a couple hours before he vanished, and then the Princesses said I wasn’t allowed to read magic books without supervision anymore. Good times,” 65536, smiling, is now running on the spot, “Aaanyway, so I get that there may be some knowledge the Queen wants to keep only for the hive.”
“I see. Still, being unable to access the map would be inconvenient for all parties, so… here goes.”
Normally, even with the Queen’s precision, a sudden influx of information of this scale would make a drone feel discomfort at least but with the voice somehow doing it, 65536 feels more as if it just entered a giant library and had a list of contents at hoof instead of forcefully cramming all knowledge into its head. It feels refreshing, like taking a deep breath, holding it for a short time, and then breathing out.
“10k is here,” a marker appears on the now significantly more complicated map filled with numerous notes and references.
“Wow, you guys have been busy,” comments 65536 after a whistle while examining the map, “Ohhhh, these must be the new vents. 99856’s testing site has got a lot.”
“99856 is a bit of a chemist and, after one of its first experiments cleared out this cavern for days, 387 and 10k decided that while a vent of large size was a security risk, a couple extra small ones were necessary. Unfortunately, this is the first winter with the new vents and there clearly is room for improvement.”
“Hmmm, I could share some tips from Canterlot-”
“Not with me,” the voice interrupts the drone, “You, of all drones, should understand the importance of interaction and growth in contrast to only receiving orders from above.”
“Hmm, you’re right,” 65536 nods, and heads off towards the crack serving as the cavern’s entrance, “I guess it’s time to see what 10k is doing then.”
The voice doesn’t answer this time, instead 65536 senses three rapidly approaching hive links. It squeezes through the crack and looks left into the hallway. Surprisingly, despite it being worky time, there’s no panic coming through the links, so 65536 just waits instead of running towards them. Moments later, a drone ranked 99066 emerges from the darkness, followed by 99012 and 99971, all galloping as if they were chased by tunnel monsters.
One by one, they gradually stop once they pass the cavern entrance, all calling out numbers very close to each other.
“Nine… fifty-four!” 99066 manages to wheeze out while gasping for air, “Goop… you beat my time, 99012.”
“Ten… exactly,” 99971 sits down, resting its back against the wall.
“This is… a rough… category…” 99012 beams from ear to ear, “I… love it…”
“Hi, guys,” 65536 greets the quicktrotter trio, “Is there trouble or something? You normally don’t see drones running around during worky time if there isn’t.”
“Nope…” 99971 looks up, swaying and trying to stabilize its breathing, “Are you… finished… with worky time… too?”
“Wait,” 99066 recovers the fastest, “65536? You’re already here?” it beams at the Canterlot drone.
“Yup, I arrived yesterday,” 65536 smiles back now that it’s confirmed there’s no impending trouble, “But the Queen and the high ranks wanted to hear all the big news, so I spent the sleepy time with them until 10k woke me up when it came to report stuff. You guys are doing stuff all official-like now, I see.”
“Not really,” 99066 shakes its head, “It’s just that 10k’s doing all the worky time planning now instead of 387. Oh, by the way,” the drone points at the other two quicktrotters, “You haven’t met yet - this is 65536, a veteran like 10k who made it big in Canterlot as a guard. 65536, these two newbies are 99012 and 99971, we’re quicktrotters.”
“What’s that?”
99066 rubs its hooves together in anticipation.
“We’ve got a looot to talk about, buddy. But first, we gotta find 10k. It’s still worky time but we don’t have any more map markers to follow.”
“Perfect!” replies 65536, “I’ve got something to talk about with it too. We can go find it together, and you can tell me about this quicktrotting.”
“And maybe later, a chance to test our skills and planning against the stamina and speed of a properly trained guard in the new no-love category?” 99066 winks at the others.
99012 and 99971 grin from ear to ear in perfect sync.
“Can’t wait!”