(Cut Content) Chapter 18-19
Chapter 18
Dr. Stable sat behind his desk, working. The clock on the wall read five past three in the morning, and he felt it, his eyes had bags under them, and he felt the dull ache of fatigue coursing through his weary body. He reached out with his magical aura to take another sip from his coffee cup. Sadly, it was empty. Sighing, he set it down and leaned back in his chair as he rubbed his tired eyes with the back of his fetlocks.
A soft knock on his door caused his ears to perk forward and for him to call out tiredly, “Come in.”
The door opened and allowed Nurse Redheart to trot inside, a pot of freshly brewed coffee riding on her back in an insulated and most importantly, spill proof container.
Relieving the nurse of the pot of liquid gold, Dr. Stable refilled his cup and took a long, appreciative sip. Letting loose a contented sigh as he felt the caffeine flood his tired system he looked up and said, “I’m surprised to see you here this late, I’d of thought you went home hours ago.”
Redheart replied dryly, “I did, but I decided to come in early today to get a head start on Mr. Ross’s lab work and see what can be done.”
Dr. Stable nodded. “Probably a good idea, after getting blindsided by his appendix I decided to have a more thorough workup done. I’m still awaiting the results from Canterlot, but-”
“Canterlot? Why would you send samples to them?” asked Nurse Redheart, cutting him off, as she poured herself a cup of coffee.
“Because I didn’t want to miss anything else. One medical scare per visit is more than enough, thank you very much,” replied Dr. Stable with an unhappy look.
“Fair enough,” said Redheart as she took a sip. “So who did you send his samples too then?”
“Pretty much everypony I could think to send them to,” was his reply.
“Hmm, the Crown is gonna be getting a hefty bill for that,” remarked Redheart dryly.
“They can either accept the bill or a potentially dead human, their choice,” snapped Dr. Stable, his ears laid back in irritation. Though he quickly composed himself upon seeing Redheart’s shocked and slightly hurt expression, and said quietly, “Sorry for snapping at you there Redheart, I didn’t mean it.”
She returned his contrite look with a warm smile and trotting around his desk wrapped the tired doctor in a hug and said gently, “You’re forgiven, I understand that you’re under a little stress,” she giggled, “you always get that way when a medical conundrum presents itself to you. You get so wrapped up in solving it, that you forget to take care of yourself and that leads you to being a big grumpy wumpy pants.” She said as she teasingly squashed his cheeks together with her hooves and saying the last bit like a mother making baby talk with her grumpy foal.
He was not amused.
“Are you quite through?” he asked through squished cheeks.
“I don’t know, are you going to go home and get some sleep or am I going to have to make you?”
“You and what army?” came the defiant reply.
“I know your body weight, what you are allergic too, and what you drink mister, don’t think I won’t slip a sleeping potion in your coffee when you aren’t looking,” came the threatening reply.
Knowing he had been beaten, he let his shoulders slump tiredly, Nurse Redheart let his cheeks go as he slid out of his chair, his joints and muscles stiffly protesting from being locked in position for so long.
However, once out of the chair, he let loose a satisfied groan as he felt his joints pop and turning to Redheart said, “I guess you’re right, we won’t know anything till later this morning at the earliest, and since it’s a slow week, the hospital only has a few patients, none of them serious, other than Mr. Ross. As such, I believe the morning shift should be able to take care of anything they should require, and if not-”
“We know where you live, yes, yes, now go home and get some sleep!” said Redheart as she pushed the doctor out of his office with her head.
“Alright, alright, I’m going, I’m going!” complained, Dr. Stable as he was herded towards the main lobby. Though judging by the slight smile on his face, he wasn’t too put out by his head nurse’s behavior.
Arriving at the main entrance, he finally got Redheart to quit pushing him and opened the front door with a burst of magic. Turning back to her he said before he left, “I’ll be back after lunch, come get me if, Mr. Ross’s condition changes.”
Giving him an exasperated smile, “Of course, now off you go, shoo, shoo!” she said, waving at him to go with a forehoof.
He shot her a parting smile and with that turned and left, the door swinging shut behind him.
Letting loose a sigh of relief, Redheart turned and trotted back into the depths of the hospital. There, now that the workaholic is out of my mane, I can work in peace! She thought happily to herself, a slight spring in her step and a soft smile on her lips, as she grabbed a nearby clipboard and began her early morning rounds .
Several hours later, however, the spring had lost its sprung, and the smile was now an irritated frown. The main cause of her irritation were several manila folders that had just arrived from the Royal Canterlot Hospital’s toxicology lab, and the results didn’t look very good. The second cause of her irritation was the pony who had delivered them to her.
She was an average looking unicorn, with a pine green coat, coffee brown mane and tail with gray highlights that were done up in buns. Her white lab coat covered both her cutie marks of a flowering hemlock plant, and a gray turtleneck sweater. While her square, wire rimmed glasses framed a pair of vivid orchid colored eyes that promised a painful demise if you wasted her time, and right now, she was aiming those eyes at Redheart.
“Nurse Redheart, I do not know what kind of game you are playing here, but I am not amused at being dragged into the middle of whatever it is,” said the clearly irritated mare.
Redheart rolled her eyes at the other mares bluster and dryly replied, “Nice to see you too, Connie.”
“That is Doctor Hemlock to you, Nurse Redheart,” came her acidic reply.
Nurse Redheart merely glanced at the unhappy mare across from her whose face was currently twisted up in an offended expression at Redheart’s impropriety at failing to call her by her full name and title.
Sighing, Redheart put on her best ‘Do not mess with me face,’ and calmly replied, “Fine, Doctor Hemlock, if that is the way you want to play it, I’ll play it that way. So,” she said, as she steepled her hooves together, and shot the mare across from her a steely look, “would you kindly enlighten my as to why you’ve come here at this time in the morning acting like an unprofessional nag?”
Hemlock’s eye twitched, but she took a deep breath and calmed herself. “I,” she began, her tone as icy as the Northern Crystal Mountains, “am here, acting like an ‘unprofessional nag’ because you sent my lab contaminated samples!”
Redheart blinked in confusion. “What are you talking about? What samples did we send you?”
Hemlock rolled her eyes in frustration and pointed to the folder jacket. “These ones for a, ‘Mr. Ross’. Honestly, do you take me for a fool, Redheart? Even a slack jawed medical intern could have seen that the samples were contaminated. Though, the fact that your samples were this heavily contaminated in the first place is raising some eyebrows back in Canterlot.”
Grinding her teeth together at the condescending tone of the doctor, Redheart replied, “Well, maybe if you would show me just what the hay you are talking about, we could clear this all up! I personally oversaw the extraction of those samples and I watched Life Flight fly them up to Canterlot yesterday! There should be no way they came in contact with any kind of contaminate between here and there!”
Hemlock picked up a folder in her brown magical aura and shoved it in Redhearts face and said, “Here, see for yourself then!”
Catching the folder, Redheart began reading over the graphs and data tables inside, her irritated expression slowly transition to confusion. However, the further she read, the more that confusion turned to horror, until finally she looked up at Hemlock and said in a shaky voice, “Please tell me you double checked these.”
Hemlock rolled her eyes and sarcastically replied, “No, I just guessed they were right the first time. Of course I double, then triple, then quadruple checked them, you ninny! I even went so far as to check the packaging for signs of tampering or outside contamination. However, I didn’t find any, which is why I assumed the samples were compromised here before you sent them out.”
“Oh, this is not good,” turning, Redheart shouted, “Nurse Snowheart! I need you to get Doctor Stable, right now!”
A pale yellow earth mare trotted to the front, her face scrunched up in confusion at Redheart’s sudden outburst. “What’s wrong, Redheart? Somepony come in banged up or what?”
Redheart shook her head and quickly said, “No, Mr. Ross’s toxicology report came back, and it’s not good.”
“How bad is it?” she asked, as her green eyes scanned the various folders strewn across the front desk.
“Bad enough that if you don’t get your flank moving, you’re gonna need to find another job,” growled Redheart, her frustration visibly showing on her face.
Rolling her eyes at Redheart’s reaction, Snowheart said, “Alright, alright, I’m going. Geez, no need to get your tail in a twist, I’ll be right back,” and with that she quickly trotted out, leaving Redheart and Hemlock alone.
An awkward silence descended over the two as Hemlock stared at a suddenly very tired looking Redheart whose face was currently buried in her hooves, as she gently rubbed her face with them in an attempt to banish the headache that was trying to emerge. She was not fully successful. Finally, after what felt like hours, but was only a few minutes, Hemlock asked, “So, judging by your reaction, I take it that you believe our report to be accurate?”
Redheart nodded. “My heart doesn’t want to believe it, but from everything we’ve seen so far in regards to Mr. Ross’s current condition, it would definitely explain a lot.”
“I feel as though I’m missing something here, just who is this ‘Mr. Ross’? The name doesn’t sound ponish, is he a griffon per chance?”
Redheart shook her head. “No, he’s a human.”
Hemlock blinked. “I’m not sure if I am familiar with that species.”
“I would be surprised if you were. Long story short, Discord brought him here from another world. We’re not sure why, but he’s here so we have to deal with it. In this case, we’ve found his appendix was too small to handle the ingestion of high levels of magicules, additionally his gut flora isn’t able to properly break down the magicules, so he had a bad reaction to some medicine we gave him. As a result, we’ve decided to run a full battery of tests on him. Those,” she said, pointing at the folders, “were samples we took from him yesterday morning. Too be honest, I’m surprised you processed them so quickly.”
“Well, we had a slow day, and when we saw the first result of the batch, we devoted our full attention to it, so it didn’t take long once we got the bit between our teeth,” said Hemlock nonchalantly.
Redheart nodded in reply, a dour expression on her face as she glared at the folders in front of her. Finally, the front doors banged open signalling the return of Nurse Snowheart and Dr. Stable.
Suppressing a yawn, Dr. Stable trotted blearily over to the front desk and shot Redheart a tired look. “You know, when you sent me home, I would have thought I’d have more than a couple hours of sleep before the next emergency cropped up.”
“I know, and I’m sorry, Dr. Stable,” replied Redheart, an unhappy look on her face, “but the toxicology report from Canterlot is in and it’s not good.”
“What do you mean, and who is this?”
Bowing her head in greeting, Dr. Hemlock replied, “I’m Dr. Hemlock, from Canterlot General, at your service. I’m the one who brought the results here, as I thought you had contaminated them, and I may have taken my irritation out on your staff, for which I apologize,” she said, while looking at Redheart.
Redheart for her part waved the apology away and replied, “You’re forgiven, I can understand your irritation at a botched sampling. Still we have a bigger issue at hoof, namely that according to the toxicology report, Mr. Ross should be dead from heavy metal poisoning.”
Dr. Stable blinked in surprise, and lighting up his horn, quickly scanned the reports before him. As he read, he could feel his heart fall to his hooves, and turning to Hemlock he asked, “I don’t suppose you-”
“We quadruple checked them, that’s another reason why I’m here. If your patient is this toxic, I want to be here to evaluate them myself. I’ve had my personal lab packed up and sent after me, it should be arriving on the next train in an hour. I would appreciate having some help to get it set up. After which, I’d like to run some of my own tests as well, if that is alright with you.”
Dr. Stable nodded. “Of course, we’d be happy to have you here, Dr. Hemlock. I’m sure we can find some space for you to set up, and find you a place to stay while you’re here in Ponyville.”
“Thank you, I appreciate that. In the meantime, why don’t we go and see this patient of yours so that I can get a first impression of them?”
“Of course, right this way,” said, Dr. Stable as he quickly took the lead, the folders still in his magical aura, while Hemlock and Redheart fell into line behind him. Snowheart meanwhile took Redheart’s place at the front desk.
The trip through the hospital was quiet, save for the sound of hooves against tile and the tinkling of magic as Dr. Stable continued to peruse the toxicology report. Years of practice of reading and walking, along with a good memory of the hospital’s layout, allowed him to navigate his way unerringly to Allen’s room. Giving the door a perfunctory knock, he stepped through before Allen had a chance to respond.
Both Nurse Redheart and Dr. Hemlock quickly stepped into the dimly lit room, while Redheart strode over to the window to pull back the blinds and let in the early morning sunlight, Dr. Hemlock took the opportunity to see this mysterious Mr. Ross for the first time.
“Well, he is certainly an...interesting looking specimen,” she stated patently.
Allen for his part simply stared back at the new pony as an awkward silence fell upon the room. Finally, he stuck out his hand in an effort to get past the awkwardness, and said, “Hi, I’m Allen. What’s your name?”
Clearing her throat, Dr. Hemlock stepped closer and extending her hoof replied, “I’m, Dr. Hemlock, from the Royal Canterlot Hospital Toxicology Department. We received your samples yesterday, and there were some questions regarding their results that I needed to clear up. Hence why I am here.”
Allen smiled as he gently shook her hoof. “Hehe, I get it, cause hemlock is poisonous, and you work with poisons, hehe, that’s a good one.”
Dr. Hemlock’s expression immediately morphed into a frown. “Is there something funny about my name?”
Allen quickly held up a hand and shook in a negative gesture. “No, no! I meant no offense, it’s just that a lot of you’re names tend to line up with what you do in life, and your, uh, what were they called again, those pictures on your butts?”
“Cutie marks,” supplied, Dr. Stable helpfully as he went about checking the various machines and their printouts.
“Right, cutie marks, those also seem to fit in with what you do.”
“Well, of course they do, they are our special talents after all,” replied, Dr. Hemlock with a huff.
“Well, sure, but like I said they also tend to fit well with your name, I mean, your name is Hemlock, and you have a hemlock plant as your cutie mark. So either you changed your name when you got your mark, or your name and mark are linked together somehow.”
Dr. Hemlock blinked, confused slightly at where the human was going with this train of thought of his. Giving her head a shake, she decided to get the topic of their discussion back on track. “Well, much as I would like to ponder the mysteries of the universe, we have more pressing matters at hoof at the moment.”
Allen, shrugged. “Alright, so what do you want to know? I’m assuming that the results were not very good.”
She nodded. “You are correct,” she turned to, Dr. Stable and asked, “may I?” Indicating a folder with a hoof.
“Certainly,” he replied, hoofing over to her.
“Thank you,” she said, as she transferred the folder from her hoof to her magical aura. Opening it up, she leafed through it, till she came to the page she wanted. Turning it around, so that Allen could see it, she explained, “As you can see here, this is your toxicology report, these graphs,” she pointed at a box with various color coded bar graphs in it, “represent the levels of various toxic compounds in your body. This graph,” she pointed to a black bar that was very small,“represents the average level of a given toxin within the general population of Equestria, the lower the bar, the better. However,” she then moved the tip of her hoof to indicate a red bar that was much bigger than the black one, “this red one represents the level of toxins within your body. As you can see, they are quite high in comparison. In fact they are so high, we initially thought that the samples had been contaminated somehow. However, I believe that to be less likely now than earlier. Though, I still want to run some of my own tests when my equipment gets here to make sure.”
“Okay, so what does this mean for me?” asked Allen, an unsure expression on his face.
Clearing her throat again, Dr. Hemlock cautiously said, “I’m not entirely sure, it would depend on whether these readings are accurate or not. Part of me wants to believe that there was some sort of contamination of the samples, but, since you are not from Equestria originally, I can’t just outright dismiss the possibility that your body has toxin levels in it, that in many cases, would be considered lethal to the average pony.”
“Well...that’s a fine thing to hear in the morning,” replied Allen dryly.
Hemlock nodded. “Now you understand my position. You, Mr. Ross,” she said, pointing an accusing hoof at the bed ridden human, “are a medical conundrum. If these results are accurate, then you should, by all known pony medical standards, be either extremely ill, or dead. Yet, here you are, seemingly none the worse for wear, at least outwardly.”
Glancing between, Dr. Stable and Dr. Hemlock, Allen finally asked, “So...does this mean more needles?”
The grim smile that played across Hemlock’s face put paid to that question.
Chapter 19
Dr. Hemlock slowly pushed herself away from the lab bench that she had been hunched over the past several hours with a groan. Glancing up at the wall clock nearby, she noted that it read, 11:49 at night. Letting loose a tired sigh, she stood up and stretched, several loud and very satisfying pops rang out through the quiet medical lab. However, the sound of hooves on tile quickly took their place.
Glancing at the door, she watched as Dr. Stable trotted through with a pair of warm cups of coffee in his magical grip. Giving Hemlock a tired smile, he floated one over to her, which she gratefully accepted. Taking a healthy pull from it, she let loose a contented sigh and asked, “So, how is the patient doing?”
“Exhausted, sore, and a little grouchy, but otherwise no change. Of course,” he added with a small smirk, “I can’t say I really blame him. I was afraid you were going to drain him dry the way you were sticking him today.”
Rolling her eyes, she set her coffee cup down on the nearby counter and retorted saying, “I wanted to make sure I had enough to work with, that’s all.”
Dr. Stable didn’t respond, electing instead to sip from his own cup, a humorous smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. However, the smile quickly faded and his expression shifted to one of professional focus. “So, what did you find?” he asked.
Taking a long pull from her own cup Hemlock sighed, and said, “The original samples you sent us weren’t contaminated, they are exactly the same as these ones.”
She pulled a sheaf of papers over to her and began looking them over. “He has lethally high levels of lead and mercury to name a few, and that’s just the ones that I’ve been able to identify. He has several compounds in him that I’ve never even seen before, just that they come up as being harmful according to the medical scan spells.”
“Hmm, that is quite troubling,” replied Stable as he glanced over her shoulders at the print out. “I’m not sure how much you know about Mr. Ross’s condition, but after he had a bad reaction to some vaccines, we did an MRI of him and found that his appendix was badly underdeveloped. In addition, the gut bacteria that are responsible for the digestion and regulation of magicules were next to non-existent.”
“So in other words, his body can’t break down magicules, store them, or dispose of them should they become too concentrated?”
“In essence yes. At first we didn’t suspect anything was wrong with him when we did our first round of vaccines.”
“Of course you wouldn’t, if you followed the standard immunization program that all foals and foreigners get, then the amount of magic that you put in his body would have been so small that even his system would have been able to handle it. Not too mention the fact that if what you, and he, said is true, and that his world has so little magic as to be practically non-existent, than his body was probably scarfing those magicules down like a college frat colt downs free carrot dogs at a homecoming game.”
Dr. Stable gave a snort of amusement at the mental picture that, Dr. Hemlock provided him. “Yeah, probably. Though, I would have thought that he’d have shown at least some signs of magic over-saturation.”
Dr. Hemlock shrugged. “Maybe he did, and he and you all wrote it off as the medication reacting to his biology. It obviously wasn’t severe enough at the time to warrant a closer look.”
He sighed. “Still, I feel as though we should have seen something.”
She shook her head. “That’s just the joys of being a medical professional. You think you have everything figured out, and then something new comes along and throws a wrench right into the middle of your perfectly organized beaker collection.”
Cocking an eyebrow, Dr. Stable replied, “That sounds a little too specific to be a metaphor,” an amused smile tugging at his lips.
Hemlock returned his smile with one of her own. “Yeah, one of my ex’s was into mechanical things, so he carried a tool belt around all the time, in case he, and I quote, ‘ever needed to fix something’. Well, he fixed something alright, my prized beaker collection. Came over one night, drunk as could be and proceeded to try and impress me by juggling his tools. Needless to say, he failed rather spectacularly.”
“So is that why he’s your ex now?” asked Dr. Stable with a chuckle.
Dr. Hemlock shook her head. “No, after I bucked him out of my apartment, and he sobered up, he came over later and apologized by buying me a new beaker set.”
“So why is he your ex then?”
She gave an indifferent shrug. “Life got in the way, and we decided to break up to focus on our chosen professions. We still exchange letters and gifts every so often, but we’re just friends now.”
“Ah, I see,” said Dr. Stable, a knowing look on his face, “college romance’s rarely last in my experience.”
“In anycase, back to the topic at hoof,” she said with a tired sigh, “the fact that he has such high concentrations of toxins in his body is going to mean that we need to do a detox and hope we don’t accidently kill him the process.”
“Well it’s either that or he dies from the magic destroying his body because his body can’t handle them.”
Dr. Hemlock nodded, a tired, and frustrated look on her face. “I know, but nopony has ever done a detox with toxin levels this high before! I mean for Epona’s sake, Stable, his toxin levels are at a minimum ten times the national safety limit! It’s a miracle he’s survived this long, and speaks highly of his species biology if they are all capable of carrying around this much toxins in their bodies and still somehow function!”
Dr. Stable placed a comforting hoof on her shoulder and replied, “I know, trust me, I’ve had similar thoughts as well.”
“However, that begs the question of whether he’s the only thing on his farm that is contaminated to this degree,” she said with a deathly serious face.
Dr. Stable nodded in agreement. “The Royal Engineers have already been out there and have been working on taking and analyzing various samples from the farm and the surrounding area.”
“Judging by the look on your face, I can guess that the news isn’t good,” remarked Hemlock.
Stable nodded. “I’ve had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Ross in between my daily rounds, and I’ve found that because his world lacks any appreciable amount of magic, they’ve been forced to use less than...safe methods for weed and pest control on their food. This usually means the use of toxic compounds that we ponies would consider insane to even think about using on our food.”
Hemlock nodded in understanding. “In the meantime,” continued Dr. Stable, “I’ve been going over everything that we’ve collected and analyzed from both Mr. Ross and his farm. Thankfully, the Royal Engineers have been very thorough in their collection of samples, and they have even had time to analyze some of them. The initial results are less than pleasing.”
“In what way?”
Dr. Stable leaned forward and pulled a manila folder out from a large pile to one side of his desk, opening it, he pulled a piece of paper out that had various lines and graphs on it with periodic symbols next to each graph and line. “This,” he said as he floated the paper into her outstretched hoof, “is the top soil collected from various portions of the property. According to the initial analysis, the Engineers say the soil barely meets the minimum quality standard for even the most lax of safety standards on the export market, and that is only because they averaged all the soil samples currently taken into one grouping.”
Hemlock felt her muzzle scrunch up in consternation at the preliminary results she was seeing. Dr. Stable meanwhile just nodded in agreement at seeing her expression. “Exactly, which is why I when I read that, I went and spoke with them after I finished my rounds yesterday.”
“And what did they say?” she asked, expecting bad news if her facial expression was anything to go by. She was not disappointed.
“That their initial report, which is what that,” he said, pointing a hoof at the paper in her grasp, “is incomplete and that they had just finished writing a more complete version the day before. I asked if they would let me have a copy, and they were only too happy to give it to me. Which,” he said as he lifted a much thicker folder onto his desk with a grunt before letting it fall with a hefty thump, “is what this is. I actually just got done reading the summary a few minutes ago, and suffice to say. Mr. Ross’s farm won’t be cleared for use in an agricultural fashion until the Engineers have had a chance to decontaminate the land. In fact, the engineer I spoke with told me that they had requested priority in getting labor and resources to decontaminate the farm as they fear the various chemical compounds in the soil may leech over into neighboring fields and into the groundwater supply if something isn’t done soon.”
“Just how bad is it?” asked Hemlock in a distracted tone as she glanced over the report.
“According to him, it was and I quote, ‘A crime against nature, ponykind and the law.’ As far as he was concerned the parties responsible for this ‘crime against nature’ should be locked up for life in Tartarus.”
Hemlock hummed thoughtfully in response as she continued to look over the Engineer’s report.
“What concerns me the most, is the high concentrations of lead in certain areas, as shown by this map here,” he said, flipping the pages till they came to one that had a crude aerial map of Allen’s farm with various shaded areas that denoted the various chemical concentrations present in that area.
Hemlock’s eyebrows knit together in confusion as she stared at the map. While nearly every square inch of Allen’s farm was contaminated with lead, or at least a chemical compound similar in composition to it. There were areas that were worse than others, particularly around the equipment sheds, Allen’s driveway, and the part of his property that bordered the road. The roadside especially had extremely high concentrations of lead present in the soil. This was quite concerning as lead was well known to block magic and by extension magicules. It’s why it was often used to line rooms where sensitive magic experiments were being conducted, as it was an excellent way to block out unwanted magical fluctuations and readings.
Naturally, this meant that if a pony were to have too high a concentration of lead in their system, it could be crippling, if not fatal, as their magic wouldn’t be able to properly circulate and interact with their cellular structure. Hence, the concern and confusion over Allen’s current condition and why Hemlock was here.
“That is not going to be cheap to fix,” she stated.
Stable shrugged in response. “Agreed, but what can you do? Contamination levels of this magnitude can’t be ignored, and it’s going to be an absolute pain to pull that lead out of the soil. The only upside is that it’s not exactly the same as normal lead in its composition, so the Engineers think they can use less...costly methods to extract it. However, because of the sheer amount of the blasted stuff, it’ll take time. What’s worse, is that not only is the soil and Mr. Ross contaminated, but every plant and animal on that farm is as well. I shudder to think how much it will take to clean it up. From my understanding, His Grace is going to be coming back soon to oversee things.”
Hemlock nodded. “Probably for the best, Epona knows how much this will cost The Crown, not too mention how the public will react when they hear about this.”
“Which is probably why we were told to keep our mouths shut on the matter,” replied Stable matter of factly.
“We were?”
He nodded, passing a scroll bearing the official seal of Princess Celestia to Hemlock he said, “Just came in an hour ago. Apparently, word travels fast, and decrees even faster. Both Princesses don’t want to cause a panic, hence the gag order. Everypony that knows anything about this has been told to keep quiet. Lieutenant Palisade has also mustered the garrison and they’ve cordoned off the area around Mr. Ross’s farm to try and keep nosey ponies away. Though in this case, it’ll probably just make said ponies even more curious. But, alas, they don’t ask me for my opinion.”
Hemlock chuckled in response. “Agreed, so,” she asked, her expression turning serious, “when is His Grace supposed to arrive then?”
“Early tomorrow morning. He’s supposed to arrive on the first train from Canterlot, at which point he’ll probably want a meeting with everypony involved to bring him fully up to speed.”
“I see, well in that case, I think it would be wise to get some rest then, Epona know’s it’ll be a long day tomorrow and I’d rather not do it on a couple hours of sleep and ten pots of coffee.”
Dr. Stable nodded in agreement. “Probably a good idea, well then, I suppose I’ll see you in the morning then, good night.”
“Good night, Dr. Stable,” replied Hemlock as Stable turned to leave. “As soon as I finish this final test here, I’ll be off myself.”
Dr. Stable waved a hoof in acknowledgment as he walked tiredly away.
Turning back to her interrupted test, Dr. Hemlock resumed her work, the clock quietly ticking away as the seconds marched ever onwards.
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I see why you cut these chapters, primarily due to the toxins in the soil. That would have been a major distraction to the story, even if it's a realistic concern. I would imagine that we humans would have a higher tolerance as we don't have magic for the toxins to mess with. As such, we have a higher allowance of toxins in the soil and environment than the ponies find acceptable.
Are you going to address the pollution that Allen's equipment is producing? Or just ignore it? If you address it, you could just have any new fuel the Equestrians make for him has magic to make it cleaner-burning, or have a magic box over the exhaust that transmutes the toxins in some way.
Yeah, this would have been an almighty knot in your story and no mistake, good choice taking it out.
That said, I like the ludicrous human adaptability on display, with Allen's biology casually tanking levels of contamination that would have long since killed a pony.
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At this point, I feel like it can be left alone for a bit. The amount of pollution put out by Allen's diesel tractors is so minuscule in the grand scheme of things that it would realistically have no noticeable effect on the health of the local ponies. That being said, I do plan to address it in some fashion at a later date when Allen gets his fuel situation sorted out, (and for those wondering, I do have several ideas in the works). So in the short term, we're not going to worry about as a main plot point, in the long run, it'll most likely be addressed in some manner.
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That was one of the other reasons I cut these chapters. While the idea of Allen being toxic to the point where he is essentially a walking bio-hazard does have some comedic possibilities, there were just too many logistical headaches to make it worth dealing with in the end. So it was cut, and in the end, I think it worked out for the best.
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Fun thing is, the man lived out in the boonies on a farm, he was the human ideal of "clean living". Imagine what an inner-city New Yorker or Chicagoan would have looked like to them, the unnatural fruits of necromancy mayhaps.
Definitely a good call in cutting these chapters. This would be an entirely different fic if they had to decontaminate everything.
Good read.
Fortunately, lead was really only used in petrol to prevent it behaving like diesel. diesel engines didnt have that problem, so didnt need teh lead.
Now if the farm was old enough, and had lead water pipes from the well or other source.
Gas was fucked
I agree with your judgement in canning this bit. It complicates everything, changes the tone of the story, and the research is a pain in the ass.
Also: don’t mess with the head nurse. Ever. 😆
I actually Liked these chapters a lot, but agree that they would have stalled the story progression. Though it does make ya wonder, do any of the older tractors still need lead added to the fuel for lubrication? Cuz they would have to stick a pin in them... But no matter how bad the soil is, remember Discord was involved so, it could have been much much worse...
images7.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED939/5d1c653c75f70.jpeg
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That picture made me chuckle. As for the fuel. I believe only the Super M will need leaded gasoline. Though older diesel engines benefit from higher amounts of sulfur.
The bales that Filthy took.... ouch. Also lead not quite the same? I wonder if there are some differences in atomic physics, magic at play, or maybe a little bit of chaos magic. Or all three or none. Gien that it was mostly found near where exhaust was doesn't really help me in figuring that out. Still interesting take though
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Heh, wonder if he has some old cans of carb cleaner in the work sheds. That stuff takes a year or so off your life every time you used it, but it cut through gunk like nothing else.