A stallion with a silky silver coat and stress faded orange mane lay sleeping in his bed.
He had an a discontented and tired face as he rest.
Now this stallion wasn't the brightest, or the strongest, or the luckiest, and definitely not the happiest pony in Stable 45.
This dull stallion was named Speak Easy,
and unfortunately for him, he was the main character of this story.
How very unfortunate
It was very late at night, and as one would expect, the room was dark, dark to the point where one would have difficulty seeing their hoof if it was right in front of their face.
A single droplet of water slipped it's way though a crack in the ceiling and made it's way above Speak Easy's bed.
*Drip*
Hm?
*Drip*
I sat up in bed as the droplets of water ran down my face.
It took a few second to gather where I was, then another few second to regain my senses, and then another few seconds to realize that there was water on my face.
A droplet slid into the crescents under my eyes created from a lack of sleep due to work hours and my boss being a bitch.
I wiped my eyes with my hooves, removing the droplets and partially regaining my vision slightly.
*Drip*
The cold droplet impacted with the top of my head, which caused a shiver down my spine and my next reaction which was to look up at the ceiling, where I was presented with the problem.
I saw that the source of the droplets was an indentation in the metal plated ceiling that had split open.
An annoyed frown seemed to instinctively form on my lips.
Great, looks like the water purifier is leaking again, just what I need at...
I looked at my pipbuck to check the time.
The bright yellow light shone into my eyes, brightening my half of the room, I covered the side of the screen with my hoof so to not wake the pony who slept peacefully on the other side of the small area.
I looked over at my brother, biting my lip. After a few moments of silence, I turns my eyes back to my screen.
The sudden change in brightness cause a loss of sight for a few moments.
In the top-right corner of the display showed the time in small, black, six-sided digital shapes,
1:04am
"Crap."
I whispered to myself, the frown on my face growing even larger.
I sat with my head held in my hooves, a large part of my soul was still asleep while the other part wanted to go back to sleep.
Guess I might as well get it done now so I don't have to deal with being called up about it tomorrow... Again.
As quietly as possible, I slipped out of the bed. Hush was a light sleeper so making a mistake would cause him to react.
He would get pissed if he found out I went out at night without telling him where I was going...
Also Hush is quite pissy in the morning if he can't get any sleep, I really didn't want to deal with that situation again.
I grabbed my tool belt, pressing the tools to my chest so they wouldn't jangle, and hurried out of the room into the main hallway of the living quarters.
The halls were barely lit so it can sometimes be hard to see where your walking during night hours. Then again, its hard to see anything, anywhere at night hours.
Who's great idea was it to build a poorly constructed water purifier above the living quarters? More importantly, why above my room?
I thought to myself as I walked past the different rooms, the snores of sleeping ponies coming from some of them.
The yearning for my bed was starting to creep up on my shoulders, I was attempting to complain to myself in my mind to keep it awake.
I have to fix it nearly every week!
I also just wanted to complain.
I finally reached the stairs, and after stumbling over the first few steps, I regained my footing and began to ascend, all the while mumpling about the 'no elevator during night hours' policy that some dead asshole overseer decided to come up with years ago.
I yawned for the third time in the last minute and without looking where I was going, not that I could see much to begin with, I bumped into some unknown pony, falling down from the impact
Shit, where did they come from?
I thought to myself as I rubbed my now bruised forehead.
Fuck! The SCF are on patrol!
The SCF, or Stable Correction Force was Stable 68's way of 'enforcing the rules', but in my opinion, they were just a bunch of pride blinded assholes that shouldn't be in charge such power, especially in recent years.
I sighed and looked up at the pony of interest, prepared for any potential fate that were to befall me.
I nearly lept with joy to see the barely recognizable face of Taze.
Taze, or better know as Taser Jolt, was one of the few SCF that I respected and was friendly with, and that's saying something considering that she's an energetic drunk with the record for the most amount of times her boss has yelled at her.
Wait, she does know it's me right?
"Mother fucker. How dense must you be to bump into a SCF during night hours?"
She help up her flashlight with grey magic down the thin stairway.
The sudden change of lighting made my eyes squint in discomfort.
"Are you retar... Oh hey Spazzy! This is a bit embarrassing huh?"
The black manned, tan coated unicorn asked with a "friendly" smirk, rubbing a hoof on the back of her head. She was blushing a bit.
Spaz, the nickname I've come to despise. I have been cursed with it since I was little. The name was brought on by a stammer that I had outgrown.
Even though I was pulled out of school early, name calling never stopped, It was the bane of my existence back then, and it still annoys me a bit. Now I realize that I should have been more worried about school. If it wasn't for Hush, I would still be as uneducated as a brick.
Taze never seemed to realize that I hated my nickname, so she just joined the crowd and the name stuck.
She isn't the smartest or the most perceptive pony, but that's why we relate.
"First off, sorry about bumping into you."
I responded, trying to hide my disapproval of the nickname, blinking a few times at the brightness of the flashlight, my vision slowly restoring.
The unicorn smiled back, nodding her head.
"Well, I may have overacted a bit on my end. I'll let this fly since we're friends, but also because I don't want to hall someone into the station right now, kinda tired.
She gave a shrug complemented by an 'eh' smirk. Seeing my discomfort with her miniature floodlight, she turned it off and returned it to her bag, returning us to darkness. The effect left white splotches in my vision.
Taze have been a good friend of mine ever since I took the blame for her one time when she 'accidentally' knocked somepony out.
"Anyway Taze, why are you up so late? Did you get stuck into the late shift again?"
I said, trying to find the railing. Instead, I waved my hoof around like a lunatic for a few seconds before giving up.
Her smirk faded away
"Yeah, I was caught skipping a morning shift again so I now got to do a night hour patrol until seven."
She said, helping me find the railing.
Wow, until seven?!
I mean it's a mystery how she's still in the SCF! This is the fifth time she has gotten into trouble by skipping shifts.
This month!
Then again, it's probably because of the lack of members, after all, no one really wants to do that kind of job, and those who do don't do it for justice or whatever.
A sudden 'tang' sound from the pipes that ran along the ceiling reminded me of the reason I came out here in the first place.
I can't stand around and wait anymore, I have to get this job done, my sleep is in vain.
"Guess I'll leave you to it, I got to get my job done too"
I said with a yawn, hoping that I can get it done quickly.
She responded with a wave and a yawn of her own, smiling again.
Then we went our separate ways.
Why was she on this floor anyway?
The stairs tired me out more than I would have liked, despite only having going up a flight or two.
I made my way up a floor and toward the water purifier room, which was through the cafeteria/diner.
The lights are still on. Did someone forget to turn them off?
I opened the door to the diner to be greeted by Albert, the Mr. Handy unit stationed at the counter.
He was easily identifiable because of his brown coloring, and how a filly had drawn a bow tie and mustache in black marker on the front of the robot's oval shaped 'head' and thruster.
"Why hello sir! Can I help you with anything?"
The Handy unit chirped in programmed delight.
I guess someone forgot to power him down for the night.
Might as well use him to my advantage
I sat down in one of the swivel seats at the counter front.
"Hey Albert, the water purifier is leaking again so I thought I might as well get it fixed now,"
"Mind if I can get a coffee or something to stay awake?"
It seemed like the robot nodded at my order and floated over to the coffee station.
Coffee! a plumber's greatest weapon.
or a cold beer
"How would you like your coffee sir?"
The cheerful voiced robot asked, The metallic ring of the voice gave an artificial feel to the already programmed emotion.
I thought it over a while before responding,
"I just have it black"
Albert didn't talk much unless he was taking an order so I just sat there in the chair with my coffee for about fifteen minutes.
Part of me wished that the robot had the program to entertain in other ways, but that would be asking a lot from somepony and I sure don't know anything about programming, so the thought just disappeared into the void of my mind.
I got a bit bored, and when I get bored, I often think some deep thoughts. Which can often be bad, some good, but most of the time I just think about my current situation and life.
I don't have a very interesting life, in fact it's a very boring one.
At some point, I, like everyone else in this haphazard vault, is going to die in the chamber filled with other ponies you never bothered to meet.
It's not like it matters, I'm probably going to have a child that has to have the same fate till the end of his life.
Still, I'm lucky that I have friends to provide some entertainment and hope, but I just feel...
Empty
Woah, I'm starting to scare myself. I really need to get back to sleep before I start questioning life itself.
When I finished, I thanked Albert for the coffee and made my way across the cafeteria and into the water purifying room.
To this day I have no idea why there needs to be such a large room for two or three connected pieces of equipment that take up only 1/3 of the space
Upon walking toward the machines, the problem was easy to see, one of the filters leading into a pipe became clogged and that caused the pipe to detach, therefore, causing a leak.
I grabbed the tools needed to fix the problem in my teeth and got to work
luckily, I had the job done in about thirty minutes and it didn't need any replacement parts.
Yes!
That got me thinking
Why do I even do this? it's not like anypony is going to appreciate this anyway, and I'm probably going to get another, more tedious job tomorrow...
I really need to stop thinking about these depressing things, there're starting to get to my personality. I wonder if that's how some ponies in this stable view life?
whatever
I wiped the sweat from my brow and headed out.
I said goodbye and thanks again to Albert,
and before I knew it, I was already at the living quarters.
As I walked through the dimly lit hallway, I wondered if Taze is still on patrol or just got bored and is now passed out somewhere until somepony finds her, likely me.
She has done it before after all.
Oh yeah! what time is it?
Time had flown by at a surprising rate and I became worried that I might not sleep well enough tonight.
I checked my pipbuck again.
1:59am
That's a relief, it didn't take as long as I expected. Not like the job was too difficult or anything
The hallway was still quiet, the only sounds to be heard were the sounds of sleeping ponies and the hum of the reactor at the end of the hall.
Despite how loud it was, the hums were like white noise. They were relaxing and helped me fall to sleep at night.
Then you realize that there is a nuclear reactor so close to the living quarters.
I may not know a lot about nuclear reactors, but I'm pretty sure that if they leak radiation, they can cause a whole bunch of problems.
Either the ponies that built this place had no idea what they were doing, or Stable-Tec was run by a bunch of clueless filly scouts.
I found my room relatively quickly, it was located only a few doors away form the stairs and made my way inside.
And gee wiz was I excited to see Hush sitting up in his bed, staring right at me.
'Where were you?'
My brother signaled to me, an annoyed look on his face dug into my soul.
"Well Shit"