//------------------------------// // Chapter 4: Prayers to the porcelain god // Story: The Masseur // by NachoTheBrony //------------------------------// Personal Journal, Day 32 since appearing at the Land of Talking Equines Earth’s Date: September 15, 2012, according to my watch. Picked up the cloak and rain poncho. I’m pleased with them, and will likely commission that same tailor again before winter. Also bought some alcohol, just in case I need it tonight. Personal Journal, Day 33 since appearing at the Land of Talking Equines Earth’s Date: September 16, 2012, according to my watch. Yesterday I bought a little cask of something strongly alcoholic that smells of apples. I had bought it to have a private celebration of Mexico’s 202nd Independence Day, which incidentally coincides with my grandpa’s 18th death anniversary. I couldn’t drink, though. My grandpa wouldn’t have wanted us to remember him in sorrow. Thus, the only sorrow I went to bed with was knowing that, back at home, my mother and my friends must be fretting about me, wondering if I’m a John Doe in a hospital, a slave in a sweatshop or a pile of maggots in some ditch. I was mopping around all day today. Despite my efforts at acting like my normal, sullen self, it seems that the entire castle noticed, with Hikaru patting my back, the teachers skipping my personal lesson after lunch and the maids apparently clearing out my now-customary, thrice-weekly meeting with the potters. I’m lucky to have people here who can see beyond my usual saturnine disposition and see when I need some help. I just hope that tomorrow I’ll be back to abnormal, so none of my friends decides to kick be back into gear. By the way: how much I wish that those potters could just get the idea of running their own businesses, rather than trying to get my input in every little design variance. It isn’t like they were actually trying to sculpt them differently: why do I even need to know about porcelain colours and flowery paintings? Personal Journal, Day 36 since appearing at the Land of Talking Equines Earth’s Date: September 19, 2012, according to my watch. Okay; today I became convinced that Bottle-of-Ink, Good Listener and Talks-a-Lot are indeed a triple item: Inside the castle, you usually find them moving in a pair plus one following, but today I saw them heading out after our classes. The weather was rainy, so plenty of people had raingear. The girls seemed to have forgotten to bring any, but when Good Listener offered them his poncho, they rather put it on him, then slipped under it and crossed their heads across his upper back. I’m not sure if I can really put it into words just how hot that was: they essentially blinded and muffled themselves, then disoriented themselves and surrendered to him. He certainly caught my eye: he gave me an utterly shit-eating grin, then started moving away in an unmistakable Spanish strut. I am utterly discarding my hypothesis of the girls being domineering on him: now I think he’s just shy or something. One thing I can say: as soon as I’m done writing this, I’ll hit the books as hard as I can and will not go to sleep until I can formulate the following question: “How hard did you fuck the girls last night?” {unreadable} jiurn… jour… {ink stain}… churnal… eh… Diary! Day 37 (I think) in Uma-shi, as Hikaru calls this place. (And darn be the {ink stain} Japanese: he can call it “horse city” and still make it sound polite, just like he calls the inhabitants uma-jin (horse people) and makes it sound so right!) Anyway. After lunch, I pulled Good Listener, Big Reader and Hikaru into my room, broke open that cask of hard cider I had bought for September 15, then made sure that Goody boy had a drink before I asked him how had he solved the “one boy and two girls” problem. The {ink stain} wouldn’t tell. Im’ writing this ‘cause I’ll be damned if I remember anything that we are doing. This drink goes down like sweet beer, but kicks like strait tequila. I {unreadable}{unreadable} not as drunk as I think I am, ‘cause {unreadable}{unreadable}{unreadable} in the morning! Big Reader got stuffy and left early. Hikaru is laughing under the table. Good Listener is singing off key and I’m surprised at not having gotten merry rather my normal lousy. I’m such a lousy drunk. But not today. Hikaru’s barking! That’s {unreadable}{unreadable}{unreadable} stain! And it stinks! Good Listener is howling! I’m {ink stain} {unreadable}{unreadable}{unreadable} {ink stain} {unreadable} {unreadable} And to the fuck with so much toilets, and no decent toilet paper! {unreadable}{ink stain} {unreadable} Bidets! Yeah! This{unreadable} {unreadable} needs bidets! {unreadable}, I’ll {ink stain}-ving bidets up the ponies of {unreadable} potters guild! {ink stain} {unreadable}{unreadable} {unreadable}{ink stain}{ink stain} {ink stain} potters! Personal Journal, Day 38 since appearing at the Country of Equines Earth’s Date: September 21, 2012, according to my watch. Waking up underneath Good Listener is not the best way to start a day: any pony weights much more than we humans, and he spent the night across my back. Being hung over is bad. I hadn’t gotten sufficiently drunk to achieve a hangover in like seven years. Having gotten totally sloshed with only two glasses is even worse. The drink was so sweet that I thought it was just like a sweet beer, and I thought that my beer limit would apply here. Having Reads-a-lot frown at us and at the girls all morning was the worst. I wonder if I made a snafu and invited somebody’s in-law or father, or if the old one simply is a prude. Anyway… after classes, I had another freaking meeting with some potter representatives: they wanted me to choose between purple flowers and red flowers. I made a show of choosing by rolling a dice. I think it has been my most productive meeting in the last two weeks. And tomorrow I’ll have to track down which of the maids had to pick up Hikaru’s vomit. While the vomit was his, it was my room and my party. All of the maids have been looking at me somewhat stiffly today. Personal Journal, Day 39 since appearing at the Land of Ponies Earth’s Date: September 22, 2012, according to my watch. Today’s lesson, after the typical daily two or three hours of vocalization training, turned toward world politics. As it turns out, this country is the land of ponies: neighboring countries are inhabited by griffons, pony-sized donkeys, camels, desert horses and pony-sized zebras, plus semi-nomad populations of whales, minotaurs, bisons, dragons and sea drakes. Beyond the oceans there are some minor continents, one for elephants, one for penguins and one shared between pandas and foxes, but their landmasses are minor in comparison. And yes: the world is fully explored, as attested by a globe showing the different landmasses and a spattering of minor islands and archipelagos scattered over the vast oceans. Something else to notice: the ponies dominate their continent, with the other countries only controlling minor swatches of land here and there, not being close to being 50% of the continent all combined. If we then add the minor continents, we end up with them not adding up to a landmass half as big as this one. Thus, ponies control a third of their world. Thus, I made a toilet for a monarch who despises luxury and opens her court for farmers and labourers, yet holds more power than the British Empire ever did. Empress she is; despot or tyrant, she is not. I have resolved one thing: I will gift her with every piece of science and technology I can pull out of my head. She will know how to responsibly administer it. She would even make sure that Novel’s invention never leaves the mines. By the way, I couldn’t ask which maid cleaned up my room, so I have been looking at them all throughout the day and kissing their hooves. As the old saying says: “You may go displeasing everybody, but the cooks.” Personal Journal, Day 40 since appearing at the Land of Ponies Earth’s Date: September 23, 2012, according to my watch. Yesterday’s campaign to regain the maids’ favor seems to have worked: they are once again smiling at me. They also brought me a little cake with my dinner. Now all I need is milk: without it, I could barely swallow that triple-chocolate abomination. Nothing else to note today September 23, 2012, Supplemental: It’s 2AM, according to my watch. I forgot going to the bathroom before bed, so I woke up in need to do so. In my way back, I found it odd to see the throne room illuminated, so I diverted and found Court to be in session, although presided by the dark princess rather than the white queen. The composition of her court is also quite different: while the queen’s court seems to be oriented toward the service of supplicants, this one seems to be oriented toward bureaucracy, with the princess levitating several tomes around her throne, working an abacus furiously and dictating numbers to a nearby scribe, and the floor dedicated to a number of desks with bureaucrats working abacuses and pens. Around her, a several dozen ponies, sitting in an equal number of desks, were busy flinging beads on abacuses, scratching quills on parchment, running to filling cabinets and pulling papers from inboxes and into outboxes. There were also a number of gophers pushing trolleys, emptying outboxes, refilling inboxes and rushing to and fro a sorting desk in the middle of the office floor. It’s funny to think that the medieval throne room of daytime looks to me at night like a historical representation of a late 19th century cubicle floor. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that all the furniture (but the thrones) rests on wheels, I would have a hard time believing this to really be the same empty floor where the queen holds court. I didn’t hand out for long, considering that I was falling asleep on my feet, but I was impressed. I’m currently formulating a few hypotheses concerning why the two thrones are arranged as equals. I will not dive into the subject right now, but I needed to write this entry down before I fall asleep again. Note to self: invent both calculators and typewriters. And also think hard about how to make a keyboard that can be worked with hooves and still isn’t as big as a whole desk. Second note to self: introduce Hikaru to the Night Court. I suspect he’ll take to it like a fish to water. Third note to self: don’t bother showing your metrication project to the queen. Show it to the princess. And start working hard on getting a presentation ready! Personal Journal, Day 45 since appearing at the Land of Ponies Earth’s Date: September 28, 2012, according to my watch. FINALLY! I finally learned how to explain the concept of royalties! I skipped lunch completely: I just went straight to my room to pick up my potter collar, then raced to the guild’s president shop and gave him my terms: I wanted them to work on their own and just give me royalties. I asked him for a proposal that they could find agreeable. Some six hours later, after getting scolded for outrunning my escort for the day, then finishing with today’s private lesson and having an early dinner, I had to attend a meeting at the potters’ guild. The whole membership was there, offering me a 10% royalty, artistic control over the product and that they would only sell toilets to the rich. For a moment, I thought I might have mispronounced something on my counteroffer, considering that everybody just kept sitting there, looking like… well, I don’t really know how: I said that I wouldn’t accept more than 5%, that I wanted each artisan to make their own decorations (although I did want some involvement on real R&D) and that I wanted toilets to be from very luxurious to very simple, so every family could have one. The cheering started after a while, but it soon rose to an uproar. It took me like twenty tries before I managed to slip out, something like an hour ago. I believe that it definitely didn’t help me to be half again as tall as any of the locals. Something that did help, though, was that the punch had pears floating in it, and as I appreciate not becoming violently sick, I managed to remain dead sober while the meeting devolved around me into a rave. In the end, though, I won: the potters took my entire evening today, but they will stop smothering me from now on. Now lets see if I can remember what was that other project that had me concerned… Personal Journal, Day 55 since appearing at the Land of Ponies Earth’s Date: October 8, 2012, according to my watch. Today’s the day: I will go down to Night Court and demonstrate the Metric System to Princess Moon. I have two-dozen visual aids, starting by an excellent Cartesian presentation. I have all the props I could need. I also have confidence on myself. I will rock tonight! October 8, 2012; Supplemental: At the last second, I got cold feet: it isn’t only that my command of the local language is not enough to satisfactorily explain my demonstration and then answer questions: while my demonstration so far takes into account the four primary measurements of the metric system (length, area, volume and mass), but the very moment I saw her (and her crown), I remembered the Archimedian density-finding experiment. I am thus underprepared. Besides, I also wanted to make a few calipers, but in my rush, I hadn’t even started working on them. Personal Journal, Day 60 since appearing at the Land of Ponies Earth’s Date: October 13, 2012, according to my watch. Today being a day multiple of thirty, I should be making another recap, but not much has happened this last month: Hikaru and I continue to learn the local language and customs, Robbie continues getting rounder, Shi Pun continues screeching gibberish at people, the Spaniards continue festering inside their dungeon (and they do fester, considering that the guard has to forcibly bath them once per fortnight), and the world continues to rotate. Something that I would have wanted to put on the recap would have been my presentation of the metric system, but I got cold feet at the last second. I’m still trying to get a water vessel large enough for the crown, and with an efficient overflow spout. I may end up getting made a metallic bucket with a teakettle spout. Oh, and the potters delivered the first two-dozen toilets yesterday. They gave me my royalties, which I immediately spent on a cask of liquor that I had then delivered to the maids’ rec room. And when I went there to use the bathroom before bed, I found out that the day queen had also sent a cask, and hers was as large as an oil drum. Needless to say, breakfast was late today.