Canterlot, July 2014
The city of Canterlot shone brightly as the morning sun ascended over the mountaintop and glinted off of the pearly white domes of Princess Celestia’s palace. This spectacular display, which could be seen on clear, bright days when the sun was at just the right place in the sky, made the mountain city of Canterlot shine out like a lighthouse beacon, its rays visible across all of Equestria.
Today was just such a day, and the radiant capitol domes were seen all across the countryside below. However, Canterlot also stood that day as another sort of beacon for a different reason: Canterlot was one of the only cities unaffected by Discord’s recent chaotic rampage. True to his promise to Twilight Sparkle and Princess Celestia, he had spared it.
However, Canterlot had not merely been spared, it had been booming. The capital, normally an affluent city even when the rest of Equestria was as prosperous and whole as normal, had taken the chance to become even wealthier than before. Through the expansion of agriculture, the city had managed to fill the production gaps caused by the drought, since Canterlot’s weather was unaffected.
Not all ponies believed that this was appropriate. One pony, a turquoise pegasus mare named Lightning Dust from Cloudsdale, believed that it was unfair that Canterlot not have to bear any of the terrible burden borne by the other cities in Equestria. Today, she and a few friends and activists decided to hold a demonstration demanding that Princess Celestia take needed action to bring relief to the crisis-stricken areas of Equestria.
Lightning Dust hovered above a small crowd which had gathered in front of the city of Canterlot’s drawbridge and front city walls. They were an eclectic bunch: many pegasi from Cloudsdale, many earth ponies from farming towns, and the occasional unicorn from Ponyville or other small towns. About a hundred of them were gathered. Lightning Dust hovered in the air above the crowd, her golden mane mane blowing slightly in the breeze. She and took a megaphone in her hooves.
She spoke, “I assume that you have all gathered here after seeing my flyers posted on walls in the cities and towns around Equestria. My name is Lightning Dust. I used to live in Cloudsdale until the Wendigos destroyed my home. The devastation was horrible, but thankfully I had evacuated. That was three months ago. I have yet to receive any of the Princess’s aid money which she sent out, but even if I had received it, I have heard from other ponies that this money is barely enough to live on. Besides, I am still homeless. I’ve burnt through my savings just to pay rent on an apartment and to buy food, the prices of which have more than tripled. It’s been three months, and my situation has yet to improve. The quality of life should be changing. Who’s with me?”
The crowd cheered in agreement. One pony, a buff, light-brown coated earth stallion with a chocolate mane and three horseshoes as his cutie mark, jumped in the air and raised his hoof.
“Let us hear your story as well!” Lightning shouted, tossing the stallion her megaphone.
“Name’s Caramel,” said the stallion, “I was not as unfortunate as Lightning Dust here; my house is still standing. However, I am a wheat farmer, and the drought destroyed my wheat crop. Since they’ve yet to close the rift, I can’t plant another crop; the heat will get to it. We may have to sell the farm, since we can’t afford to pay the bills any longer. We have been hurting, too.”
“Thank you, Caramel. Now, you may all wonder why I have gathered you all here in Canterlot. The reason is two-fold. One, this is one of the few cities in Equestria left entirely unaffected by Discord’s recent chaotic rampage. If we can show the residents of this town who we are and how we are suffering, then they will have no choice but to help us. Two, this is the capital of Equestria, and we must convince Princess Celestia and the legislature to give us more relief.
“Here is the plan. We are going to take a walk down Founders Street to visit the stock market. Then, we will turn on Marketplace Avenue to visit the town bazaar, and then finally onto Capital Street where we’ll march on the royal palace and demand that Princess Celestia hear our pleas for help!”
The crowd cheered. A grin spread across Lightning Dust’s face as she shouted into the megaphone, “WE ARE EQUESTRIA!”
“WE ARE EQUESTRIA!” the crowd yelled back. A thunderous clip-clopping of hooves sounded as they crossed the wooden drawbridge and entered the capital city.
*****
The Flim Flam brothers had taken advantage of the drought crisis to expand their market for farm equipment, as they elaborated on in a newspaper interview in the Manehattan Times. They had a brilliant idea to avert the coming food shortage: grow crops in the hills and valleys surrounding Canterlot, which were not affected by the drought. The areas were high enough in elevation to still be cool enough for rainfall, but not too high to prevent farming. Though most ponies in Canterlot were business-minded, Flim and Flam still sold them on farming due to the high price which food fetched during the famine. To the new farmers buying these machines, farming was another investment opportunity.
The plan worked very well, and soon Canterlot was a booming farming town. Even though Canterlot was populated with mostly unicorns, the plan was still successful for two reasons. For one, these farming machines enabled one pony to do the work that it would normally take hundreds of ponies to do. Even a physically-fit stallion like Big Macintosh could only plow a few acres in a day, while the mechanized tractor could plow hundreds of acres a day. The second reason was that these machines could be operated by a unicorn. Some unicorns were able to farm, as long as the unicorn had at least one earth pony parent, since the genetic trait enabling "earth pony magic" allowing farming would be passed on. Though earth pony magic was still required to farm even with a machine, it could thus be used by a unicorn.
On this day, the Flim Flam brothers were continuing their successful marketing campaign by doing one of their musical demonstrations for their new machines. They stood at a stall on Marketplace Street. True to its name, this street was lined with dozens of market stalls with vendors selling all sorts of goods. Hundreds of ponies milled about and browsed the selection at the stalls.
The Flim and Flam brothers had a stall too, with many paper catalogues and forms on the table. Behind the stall stood two large wheeled machines. Atop the stall was a banner which read, “Do you own grassland or other significant property holdings in the metro Canterlot area? Come attend our seminar!”
The first, a four-wheeled machine, had a corkscrew-like contraption attached to its rear. The second had a cylindrical, open pod on the front which was covered in a half-dozen long, slender blades. It had an open bin on the back, on top of which rested a metal chute. Both of the machines were powered by steam engines in front of the cabs, which were fed by coal the operator shoveled in. A group of fifty or so ponies stood in-front of the machines, as mechanized farm equipment was a peculiar oddity.
Flim asked the crowd, “So, you all have arable land, yes?” The crowd responded with nods and yeses.
“This isn’t one of those timeshare things, is it?” asked a skeptical unicorn mare.
“No, of course not,” Flam responded.
Flim continued, “And as I am sure that you are all painfully aware, there is a drought and food prices have gone up?” Yet more acknowledgements.
“Then do we have an investment opportunity for you!” Flim and Flam then sang a song about their machines. Flam began with the opening verses.
“When Discord went to Ponyville, he opened a crevasse.
The heat it caused killed all the crops and all the trees and grass.
But Canterlot was spared; now we’ve got a job to do.
Equestria needs Canterlot to grow their vital food!”
One of the ponies in the crowd asked, “But I’m not a farmer. I’m not strong enough to pull a plow and work out in the heat all day. I have land, but I also have another job. How and why would I grow food?”
As if prepared for this question, Flim responded,
“You may ask how or why, those questions I’ll address.
The ‘why’ is simply just because it makes good business sense!
Food has all gone up in price, there’s profit in things green.
And ‘how’ to grow this food is with the help of our machines!
For years ponies have labored to grow their corn and wheat.
They’ve worked in packs, they’ve broke their backs, they’ve sweated in the heat.
But with technology it needn’t all be done by hoof,
I’m Flim, he’s Flam, we’ve got a plan, so come and take a look!
Flam jumped on top of the first machine, the tractor. He sang,
“This tractor is steam powered, it just takes a load of coal
Shovel it in and it begins, and then it starts to pull
The plow will loosen up the soil quicker than you know
It’s an easy way and it won’t take days to have a whole field hoed!”
Flam demonstrated the machine by adding a load of coal to the furnace and turning it on. He drove it down the market street, and the onlookers watched him.
“What about getting the crops out of the ground? What about grains?” another pony asked. Flim jumped onto the combine harvester and sang,
“This harvester is combine, which means it’s two in one
It saves you time and effort in getting harvests done
It reaps the wheat with blades that the motor quickly spins
Then threshes up the chaff and dumps the grain into a bin!
Flim dumped a bushel of wheat into the harvester to demonstrate. The harvester shot out threshed grain. The ponies looked on in excitement as both brothers joined in for the ending chorus of the song.
“Now that you’ve seen our new machines, I think you all will know
Automation is sensation meaning crops and profits grow.
You can farm entire fields and grow food all by yourself
Then take advantage of the record prices when you sell!”
Flam yelled out, “Yes, installment payment plans ARE available, and your first payment won’t be due until after your first harvest!”
The crowd burst into applause, and catalogues flew off of the table. Orders poured in. Flim and Flam were inundated as they struggled to write down orders for machines.
“Yes, I’d like to place an order for one of each of these machines. I have a plot of land near town and I’d love to try my hoof at farming if it’s that profitable and easy!” said a beige earth pony who was first in line.
Flim responded, “And indeed it is, good sir! Now, let’s talk about payment—“
“WE ARE EQUESTRIA!”
Flim and the customer paused and glanced down Marketplace Street to where a large crowd had gathered. Rather than one or two hundred, it was now five hundred strong, as other ponies from both Canterlot and other cities had arrived to join the protest.
The crowd continued their march down Marketplace Street until they reached Flim and Flam’s stall.
Lightning Dust shouted into the megaphone at the confused shoppers, “So, you are the food growers who charge us so much for our bread and apples! You should be ashamed!”
Nopony said anything for a minute. Finally, one of the customers, a unicorn, spoke, “I can’t speak for any of these ponies, but I am not a farmer… yet. I may well become one, as I own some land on the outskirts of town and happen to have had an earth pony father. I believe farming is a good investment opportunity with food prices as high as they are.”
“So you plan on conducting price gouging!” Lightning Dust shouted. The crowd booed at this.
“Price gouging? Shouldn’t I charge whatever ponies will pay? What would you prefer that I charge?”
“Charge what the food prices were before Discord!” Caramel shouted.
“If that was all I could charge, then I wouldn’t do it. I have another full-time job, at a factory. Farming would only be profitable to me if I can make more than my factory job. If you will only pay pre-Discord prices, than I shall have to let my land go unused.”
“Not when there are ponies starving!” yelled Lightning Dust.
“But what would you have me do? I could lease my land to somepony else, but they would just charge whatever ponies would pay them: the market price. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be worth it to them, either.”
“Look, you’re just living in an ivory tower. You don’t understand the plight of the common ponies who don’t live in Canterlot. You need to farm on your land and quit your factory job. For the sake of us and feeding our families!”
“I have a family too, you know,” the unicorn scoffed.
“IVORY TOWER! IVORY TOWER!” the crowd angrily chanted.
“Now, now, listen up here,” Flam said, raising a hoof into the air, “If it weren’t for our farming machines, Equestria would be in even worse of a food crisis than it is now!”
“Yes,” said Flim, “You all should be thanking us for our innovations which enabled this to be possible, not criticizing us!”
“IVORY TOWER! IVORY TOWER!” the crowd continued their chant. Two burly earth stallions jumped over the market stall, crowbars in their mouths, and swung at the engines of the machines. They made several dents in the engines, and they started to smoke.
A third pony, a unicorn, charged at Flam with his horn. Thankfully, his brother Flim pushed him out of the way, and the unicorn simply slammed into the side of the stall.
“Come on Flim, let’s get out of here!” Flam shouted.
“What of our machines?” Flim asked.
“Your money or your life, Flim!” Flam exclaimed. Flam frowned and charged up his horn, teleporting off. Flim followed thereafter.
“COWARDS!” Lightning Dust yelled.
“Come back here and face justice for swindling the common pony with your predatory pricing!” another pony shouted.
“WE ARE EQUESTRIA! WE ARE EQUESTRIA!” the crowd chanted. After they had trashed the machines and the market stall selling them, they continued their march on towards the palace.