--------------------------------------Whirlwind's POv-------------------------------------------------
What the hell do I want? Whirlwind thought as she stared at the computer screen in front of her. I feel too… weird… to do anything. There was a dark, strange, swirling mixture of emotions within her, just waiting to temporarily disable her the second she paid them any attention. Confusion, worry, fear, frustration, hate, love, depression, self-hate, hopelessness and angst were all winning the battle against the part of her that just wanted to be happy. And what made everything a hundred times worse was the fact that nothing had really happened to set these off. She had a good life. Maybe she just had too much empathy.
It was always like this with her. She started worrying over some “unimportant” things and the fear and angst just increased and increased until she’d start looking for distractions, such as browsing meaningless. And then those distractions would distractions would distract her so much that she wouldn’t be able to get any work done and then she would just get depressed. Not real depression, just temporary, inconvenience depression that would wear off by the following morning.
But the real problem was that she always found herself so saddened and disabled by things she shouldn’t be saddened by. And when she was emotionally insecure, she couldn’t be bloody productive in any way. She just hated her goddam lack of self-control and her overly-emotionalness. If she couldn’t handle the shit she was dealing with now, how would she handle adulthood in all it’s horribleness? She was much better off than most people. But she still felt all these things. Why? Was something wrong with her?
The thing that had happened that day was the fact that the truth of how terrible the economy was for the youth of Equestria had dawned on her. She had been doing a project in school which had made her research some of the problems in Equestria. She had stumbled upon an article about the widening income gap between older and younger Equestrians. Then she had found a bunch of articles and reports about the higher-than-ever and still growing unemployment amongst the youth, the crippling, freedom-crushing student debts that most of them owed, and the fact that many eligible and skilled ponies between the ages of eighteen and thirty were stuck at dead-end, vastly underpaying jobs at drive throughs and stuff, had just pissed her off. Pissed her off to the point where she was breathing hard and clenching her fists as she stormed down the harsh white hallway of her school.
The horror stories of interns and other people on the lower end of the corporate scale, and the dissenters and people who had spoken out of turn scared her. In a world where freedom of speech didn’t really exist and people had to say whatever they said anonymously and in fear. That had just filled her with fear. Fear and frustration and anger.
At first she had been mad. She had been mad enough to want to punch something over and over again until either her fists broke of the thing she was punching broke. But then she did more research and found out how hopeless everything was. Like everything these days was, economics was impossible complicated. And, like everything else these days, it was just getting worse and worse as time went by.
She got home and did some more research. Article after article stared at her from the bright screen of the computer, bringing the news of Equestria’s steady destriction.
Fight somehow, sure, she could do that, if she wanted to end up with nothing left to lose. Even though they tried to hide it, those corporations had the final say in everything from government to art. They had ways of making sure anyone who said as much as a word of dissent towards them ended up wishing they were never born. That had made her feel worried. Worried about her future and the future of all the other children and youth of Equestria. Sure, some people got out of the horror and then proceeded to create it, but those were few and far between. Good people rarely ever got power. And that made her feel worried, angsty, and so incredibly frustrated. It was an indescribable kind of frustration. She just wanted to scream and make anything just fix everything, but she knew that would never happen. Wished she could just bend the laws of logic and make everything fix itself. Maybe hijack a rocket and fly every oppressed and hopeless pony to the moon where they could start their own society. But she knew that that was crazy, immature dreamer talk. Like it or not, she was stuck being a corporate slave, making sure rich ponies got richer. Just another gladiator dying and killing while the crowd cheered.
She got up and paced. She knew how lucky she was, just by the fact that she could just sit all day, but how long would that luck last? Three years and she would have to leave the safety and protection her parents provided and go out into the world.
And all that information, which she had always known but never focused on, was now coming at her in such a way that she felt that it would crush her if she thought about it anymore. So she browsed pointless shit like she always did when her overly-emotional, melodramatic crazy mind began losing control. And that numbed her mind. her mind didn’t want to be numbed and slid to a state of depression, where she could neither think nor not think.
She hated herself for being so melodramatic. If she couldn’t stand thinking of what was to come, how could she stand living it? I mean, she didn’t even have it as bad as all the ponies that had been pulverized by war, or the lonely souls of the world. Not even the lucky ones were lucky.
She wished so much that everypony was in the past, where the princesses ruled and camaraderie ruled and even the unlucky were lucky. She wished she could be beside CS, but the both of them were busy with their lives. Poor baby Cottoncandy was facing the plight of the youth full on. That made her sad.
---------------------------------------------CS’s POV------------------------------------------------
The rain banged against the glass of the large, harshly-lit room. The cold and hard metal shelves were filled with phones, tablets and computers in their perfectly square or rectangle boxes, and ponies were busily pacing to and fro like ants.
It was another hectic, miserable, life-draining day at the tech shop. Filled with customers that either ignored him or were unreasonable, co-workers who excluded and hated him, and bosses who tore him up inside no matter how hard he tried. The work load was large, most of the jobs meticulous and the pressure high, but the most difficult task was keeping what few strands of his spirit together. He was losing confidence, hope and the resolve to fight fast.
He walked around, trying to find any customers that might need him. Nobody did. They were all turning away from him, somewhat purposefully, and going to the other workers. Cottoncandy sighed inwardly. This was always what happened. Was he trying to do anything wrong? Oh hell no, he was trying to do everything right. Was he doing everything wrong? It sure seemed like it. He just didn’t understand. But all around him were ponies needing help, seeing him, and walking to any other employee around. Cottoncandy tried his best to keep a forced polite smile onto his tired, sad face. after what was maybe an hour, a customer finally approached him. She was a mare with a dark blue coat and a determined face.
“Hi,” he said almost robotically, “How may I help you miss.” He honestly hoped she could do a good job serving this mare and that that she’d walk away happy and satisfied.
“I would like to buy an ePhone Six, please,” she said.
“Okay, would you like to see it first?” CS asked politely.
“Yes, definitely.”
He took a box off the shelves and opened it, taking the slim rectangular piece of technological genius outside and showing it to her.
“So how do you like it, m’am?” he asked.
“I like it a lot, I think I’ll buy it,” she stated unemotionally.
“Okay, so here you go,” he said, putting the phone back in the box and handing it to her, “That’ll be seven hundred fifty bits.
“Of course I don’t want this one, I want an original one!” The lady said harshly. She was getting mad, this was not good. CS would have to smooth this over or else.
“What’s wrong, m’am?” He asked, trying his best not to show any falter in his polite tone.
“This one has been used, I want an original one,” she stated, getting more irritated.
“M’am, this is an original one, I just took it out of the box,” Cotton said.
“No, I want one that hasn’t been opened yet.” This was gonna be hard. If she didn’t buy this phone, it would be so hard to sell it again because phones that have been touched were much more difficult to sell.
“M’am, no-one’s used it yet. I just opened it to show you what it looks like. Besides me, no living soul has touched it.” Cotton was growing scared now.
“Of course it was! Do you think I’m stupid or something? I swear, I will talk to the manager here unless you get me a new one!” Cotton wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. This lady was so colossally stupid, but he had colossally fucked up as well. But of course he hid it.
“I don’t think you’re stupid, m’am, but trust me when I say there is nothing wrong with this phone. “
“Listen, colt, you’re pissing me off. Get me what I want or I’ll call the manager.”
“Okay m’am.” He went to get another box.
As the lady went out of the store, looking pretty dissatisfied. A noxious cocktail of emotions started bubbling up inside Cotton. Mostly self-hate and regret. He couldn’t do anything right.
Of course he couldn’t. That was his lot in life. He was destined to be a lonely outcast. Destined to be a failure. There was no hope for him anymore. Though the world was supposed to be about “free choice,” people were definitely not free to choose. He wasn’t free to choose. And even when he was, he made all the wrong choices. There was no hope for him anymore. Of course there wasn’t. He’d known that for quite a while now. He was born as prey and he would die as prey.
---
Cotton hoped that was the last of what he would hear about the incident, as he sat on the bare grey dest trying to recover a laptop. It was very meticulous work, as forgetting anything would put him and the customer in a lot of trouble. The difficulty wasn’t really the problem, the problem was that he was most likely going too slow or would somehow mess up. His shoulders tense, his eyes glued to the numbers on the screen and his fingers moving fast, he was engrossed in work at the moment.
“Hey, boy?” A strong, masculine voice suddenly intruded into his thoughts. His head twisted his head to the size as a surge of panic that was only about 60% He was a dark brown earth pony with a light yellow mane, in his late forties or something. The guy had seemed pretty nice at first, but as the days went on, Cottoncandy could tell he didn’t like him. He wasn’t sure why. Cotton tried his best and worked his hardest. Maybe there was something wrong with him. A rock formed in his chest, made of of only what he could describe as fear. he had a good idea of what was coming next.
“How far are you?” the stallion asked coldly, though it wasn’t hard to find the edge of dislike in his voice.
“About a third done, I think I’ll need another hour,” CS said, gulping. The rock in his chest was getting bigger and heavier.
“This one or the whole load?”
“This one.” Cotton tried to appear calm as he braced himself for what was coming next.
“You damn lazy boy, why do you always have to be so slow? You can never keep up! You always cause me pain! Why are you such an idiot?”
“Sir, I’, trying my best. I don’t know what you want from me but I’m trying to give it to you.” That was definitely the wrong thing to say. Cotton didn’t know what went on in most ponies’ minds, but he knew it wasn’t empathy.
“WHAT?!! IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT I WANT THEN I SUGGEST YOU LEAVE RIGHT NOW AND DON’T COME BACK?!!!”
“S-sorry,” Cotton stuttered, “I wasn’t thinking, I understand that what I said, no, what I thought was wrong. I’ll never do it again.”
“No you don’t understand. You never understand anything. If this isn’t done in half an hour you’ll be sorry.”
Cotton sighed, tears welling up in his face. He wished he could leave, go somewhere else where he could learn and work without feeling like a piece of shit. But the way the economy was right now, he was lucky he had a job at all. But it’s not like he deserved one.
Self hate, misery, hopelessness, angst, hate for life, depression, confusion, fear, these were all emotions that rushed through him like a flooding river, banging on the dam of his life, wanting to break through like they did before. But he wouldn’t let them break through. Even if he didn’t have much to live for, he did have something.