... What the flying buck just happened?
Sleeping in a tree really sucks, well pokes, rather.
Uh, Yeah. I'm gonna talk about something more... coherent.
Here's an odd one.
So, after the big mess with the hospital, news got out that a changeling was on the loose. It wasn't confirmed for sure, but a few ponies caught a glimpse of me as I ran wildly through the halls. I needed to be more careful, and try not to go insane.
A few days later, I got a letter addressed to me from a Cog G. Apple. She wanted to hire me for some reason. I wondered why my services were required, I'd never heard of Cog Apple doing anything illegal. She was the CEO of Clockwork Industries, a company that... I really don't know, Clockwork Industries did a lot of things. They manufactured trains, published books, sold trinkets, manufactured weapons, and I'm sure many other things. Just not actual clocks. A rather misleading name, methinks.
They were basically the ACME corporation, except not in a cartoon.
I read way too many cartoons.
Escorted by her giant, burly, and somewhat intimidating guards, I entered Cog Apple's office. It was furnished with polished oak furniture and flooring, and had a big window on the left wall. I could see the entire building looking down from it. The earth pony mare was a pale green with wavy blond hair, her eyes a deep emerald green. Atop her head sat a slightly undersized top hat. Her eyes were slightly wrinkled, indicating a somewhat matured age, but she carried a foalish energy to her, though she didn't seem innocent like a foal. The area around her desk served as a display to moving trinkets of all sorts; there were Neighton's Cradles of all sizes, eternally spinning gyroscopes, an endless variety of dizzying kinetic sculptures were all moving rhythmically with a constant clinking. My eyes followed metallic spheres in their parabolic paths, it was all rather dizzying. Cog was sitting behind the desk, watching me intently.
"Hello, my dear acquaintance!" She greeted enthusiastically, gesturing with a hoof towards a comfy looking chair.
"Please, take a seat." She pulled it outwards, smile wide. Her eyes glimmered with anticipation, as if she was meeting some big movie star. Most ponies look at me with vague apprehension, sullen dejection, excessive frustration, or, if I'm lucky, an annoyed glare. The sparkly-eyed thing was new.
"Make yourself comfortable, I had my guards leave, you can show yourself now."
The room flashed green briefly as I reverted to my default appearance, and adjusting my hat, I sat down. The seat was very plush and just as comfortable as it looked. She took a large bottle and two cups out from somewhere under her desk. Uncapping the bottle and tilting it downwards, she filled the two small cups with a frothy golden liquid, capped the bottle, and neatly slid it under her desk. She slid a cup towards me. The amber liquid fizzed appealingly in its glass.
"I'm sorry, I don't drink." I could get quite intoxicated by a glass that size. Saying that I can't hold my liquor is an understatement of an understatement.
There was this one time I was talking to this rich guy in a Canterlot bar who kept on giving everyone free beer, and I was drunk after one mug, so I didn't have the judgement to stop accepting mugs. My speech was so slurred, it sounded like another language. I eventually blacked out and woke up on top of the tallest building in Equestria, stuck in a glass lift. Imagine being stuck in a glass elevator on the top an absurdly tall building looking down on a city that stands on a mountain. Don't ask how I got out. Seriously, don't ask.
"Ah yes, changeling biology, I reckon?"
"Yeah, something like that."
Cog took a swig from her cup, some of the froth sticking to her lips like a fluffy white mustache before she licked it off.
"It's a shame, right here's some of the best cider in Equestria."
"I'm sure."
"I think I have some non-alcoholic cider somewhere, I could have some sent in for you."
"Thanks, but I don't-"
Cog pressed a button on her desk, and a microphone floated down on glimmering magic tendrils.
"Can you bring our guest here a soft cider?" She spoke into it. The microphone was pulled back up into whatever ceiling compartment from which it came.
She sat back in her chair, putting her front hooves behind her head and her legs crossed on top of the desk. She studied me with those ever effervescently effusive emerald eyes of hers. Her smile was polite and warm, but her eyes were somehow simultaneously snakelike and juvenile.
"Do you know what I do in my work?"
"You, uh-"
"I create, my friend, I create. What do I create, you ask?"
"I-"
"I create progress. I create the future." She leaned forward dramatically, removing her legs from the desk, her pupils dilating. "I envision a new world, with bright, hardworking ponies all working together to even further progress this world's technology and culture."
"That's-"
"Our species is evolving, my associate. We are becoming something more than mere ponies, we are no longer individuals, but members of a whole, a vast collective consciousness. The society, our society."
"What are you-"
"This is our destiny. We make progress towards it with every waking moment. Every time something is invented, every time a new generation is born, every decision we make brings us closer. Still, there are those who, er," Cog Apple's face became an emotionless slate. "Oppose this, this progress. Our progress. My progress. That is where you come in."
A red light began to flash on her desk, accompanied by a repeated sound, that I may make an onomatopoeia of: boink.
Cog's ear twitched upon hearing it.
"Do you hear that?" Cog put a hoof to her ear, leaning close to me from across her desk. "That's the sound of scientific progress."
"Scientific progress goes boink?"
Cog turned behind her just as a sucking noise, not unlike the sound made from lifting one's foot out of mud except extended for around thirty seconds, was emanated from the transparent glass tube behind her. Ew, mud. A capsule shot out of it, knocking Cog off of her chair, sending her bouncing off of her desk. Cog's hoof reached up and she pulled herself back up. Her hat was somehow still in the same place it was before.
"I'm still working out the kinks." said Cog, placing the glass capsule on her desk. "I had a vacuum transport system installed. We're using it transport things around the office for now, but I envision it being used to transport ponies around a city."
She twisted the capsule, which hissed, and from it, she pulled out a bottle of non-alcoholic cider.
She poured me a glass and continued speaking.
"I'm giving a speech tomorrow at around noon to my customers, investors, the press and potential investors."
I picked up the cider, swirling it around in the glass, looking at the way it distorted Cog Apple's face. It was like a funhouse mirror, stretching her face upwards into a thin line, and flattening it into a wide plate.
"There will be an attempt on my life at that time."
I sipped from the glass, the sweet taste of the cider wetting my taste buds. It really was good.
"You know this how? If you don't mind me asking." I said, placing the cider back on the table.
"My special talent is... finding what makes things tick. Due to that, I can understand the machinations of any system, including the machine that is the bureaucracy of business." She paused, thinking before starting up again. "Everypony in this bureaucracy is corrupt in some way or another, myself included, obviously indicated by my discourse with the likes of you. Ponies in this will resort to any means to get money and power, even if it means ending a life, an important life. Money and power, power and money. MONEY AND POWER, THAT'S ALL THEY BUCKING WANT!"
Ow, shouldn't have asked.
Cog inhaled sharply, startling me slightly.
"Hahah. Hehe. B-Bucking-..." She exhaled.
Cog Apple had turned red, she stood up with her front hooves slammed into her desk. It was rather startling. She sat back into her chair, taking deep breaths and calming herself. Slowly, the red in her face washed away and with it, any signs of her previous rage.
"I do apologize, that topic really gets me upset." She took another deep breath. "That's not to say I don't have money or power, in fact I have a great deal of both. Alas, these commodities are necessary for what I wish to accomplish. I am going to introduce something to Equestria. An affordable public airborne transportation system. Those in the transportation business will not take kindly to the competition, and one of my employees has already leaked what I'm doing. I haven't found out who, or to what company the information was leaked, but I know for certain that there is a problem. The company, or a large shareholder in the company, a member of one of the mobs, I'm sure, will want me dead. Without me, Clockwork Industries will crumble, or stray from the path I intend it to take, for my successor is young and is not prepared for this responsibility yet."
"Ok, so what do you want me to do?"
She leaned back in her seat, tapping her chin in thought before leaning forward with an intense look in her eyes.
"I have certain beliefs, that not many else share. The way I see the world is from an... evolutionary standpoint. Any living being who dies must have some... trait. A trait that ultimately led them to their death. So, when they do die, whatever trait they carried that caused them to die is eliminated from the gene pool. Anypony who dies was destined to by nature. Not only that, but they make the pony race better because of it."
This mare was insane, and this is me talking.
"You would condone genocide because it would better the race!?"
She chuckled.
"Oh no, of course not. That would reduce the population size too quickly and not give us time to recover. Here, look at this ant." She pointed at an ant making its way across the desk.
"It is insignificant. It is so small compared to us that nopony would care if something were to happen to it. Its colony? There are thousands of ants in a single colony, so do you think that a single ant would care if I were to-"
Cog lowered her hoof slowly, so that it would hover just over the ant. The ant was engulfed by her hoof's shadow.
"-do this?"
Cog pressed her hoof into the spot on desk slowly. I watched in horror as the ant's legs crumpled underneath it, its exoskeleton cracking open. Cog pressed slowly, all of its insides were being forced up into its head, and then, its head popped. The ant's insides were splattered against the desk. An antenna gave a dying twitch before flattening against the desk. I normally would not have batted an eye if someone squashed a bug, even if I am kind of a big-ass bug, but somehow when Cog Apple crushed that ant, I felt as if she was crushing my insides through my eye sockets.
Cog smirked coolly, her eyes locking with mine. I felt shivers go down my spine, as if the room had dropped ten degrees. Wait, I heard a whirring, the room actually did get cooler.
"I want you to stop my would be assassin, and I want you to bring them to me. Alive, at first."