Canterlot Library
Large wooden doors towered over the pony, and while they stood open he was convinced a dragon could fit comfortably through them. They also looked solid enough that same dragon could never breach them if locked shut . It was a daunting sight, his reflexes told him to let his wings drop much like a human’s jaw seemed to do on occasion. Stormy fought his own intimidation as he entered the library only to realise the entire building was of similar scale. The bookcases stood at least three time taller than the doors with walkways making separate floors.
Very few ponies could be seen. There was an elderly mare manning a desk and a few others in the distance reading books. Stormy tried to remember the last time he had been to any library, and the only one was way back in primary school. How can there be so many books? The weather factory has its own collection of books but it’s nothing like this.
Stormy continued to stare until a pony came up, tapping on his shoulder. He turned to see an elderly earth pony mare with grey mane and cantaloupe fur. There was a small light brown desk against the wall, half covered in books with a “HELP” sign below it. Conveniently She wore a badge that read “Venerable Parchment”.
“May I help you find a book?”
Stormy was still struck by all the books. There had to be millions.
“Ummm,” He knew there was no way to find anything in here. How are they even sorted? “Please.” Stormy gave her what he hoped was an encouraging smile. “Books on Earth?”
“I am afraid we do not have many of those.” Parchment went back to her desk, rummaged through several papers and came back carrying one in her left hoof. As the earth pony led the pegasus through various aisles she would check the paper and compare it to numbers on the shelves. “Celestia only recently approved a budget for new materials. It then takes our researchers a fair bit of time to discover the reliable ones.”
Stormy thought about that for a while. It went against what he had heard about Celestia ordering a lot of human books, but could be true. How many things had he heard throughout his life that had only been mare’s tails? Although Nightmare Moon was true. How unreliable could a human’s books be? They don’t seem to lie that often although they have some big stories like moving building by helicopter.
“Here we are, Human Studies.” Parchment waved at a large, empty bookcase. Not exactly empty, just that where the other bookcases were jammed with books, this one had less than two dozen. Most were leaning against a side or just laying flat. The titles were even more boring. “A concise history of human evolution.” “Deities of the Sinai Peninsula.” “Scholastic Science Dictionary.” “The Way Things Work.” “Animals of Earth.” “Taming of the Shrew.” Several whose titles started with “National Audubon Society First Field Guide.”
“Are you sure there is nothing more?” Stormy questioned, flipping quickly through the books again. None of them dealt with the information he needed.
“Quite sure.” Venerable Parchment took some time to tidy up the dusty shelves. It was in a back corner and seemed like nopony ever visited this section. “This section has only been open for the last few weeks-”
“Parchment. Celestia’s student has finished going through another stack.” A snow white pegasus rounded a corner. Sunny Skies gave a brief wing wave to Stormy before saying more to Parchment, as if a whole spiel had been memorized. “There is nothing new in this section but at least four-thousand have recently arrived from Earth, most are in section 3 but there are a few new additions to section 9, if you can please inform our ‘special’ readers of these new acquisitions.”
Venerable Parchment took a brief bow, it lasted all of a second. “I was just showing this pony our current selection of books on Earth.”
Sunny hid a petit giggle behind her radiant hoof.
A look of horror crossed the maretron’s face as she looked between the two pegasi. “Oh, no. You two know each other…” Parchment took an immediate longer bow which was met by a less stifled giggle out of Sunny.
“Tis nothing like that.” A snort or two could be heard when Sunny took in breathe. An instant later she was back under control, though the smile never left her face. “Stormy here was at my orientation. He’s one of the new ‘ambassadors’ to Earth. The new list of accredited individuals should be at your desk within a week.” Sunny lowered her head in apology. “We never expected somepony to show up quite this quickly.”
“Yes Ma’am.” Venerable Parchment gave another deeper bow. “I will leave him with you then and return to my work.” The elderly earth pony turned and left, moving at a canter and turning down another aisle at the first chance.
“Looking for books on Earth?” Sunny had followed the other mare with her eyes, and looked still to be following her.
Stormy’s eyes darted between his fellow ‘student’ and where the librarian had stood. “Yes.” He gave a truncated nod, unsure what was going on, again. “There was some stuff I wanted to research.”
The cheery pegasus finally moved her attention fully to the stallion. “Then this is the wrong place to look.”
“But isn’t this where they house all the books?” Stormy took another sweeping look at his surroundings and the massive aisle of books. A city in its own rights.
“The books on Earth have been separated depending on their sensitivity.” Sunny spoke as if only they two existed and walked a circuitous path around various bookcases. “They are ranked from one to ten with one being what was on that shelf and ten being only for the Princesses and very select others.”
“Why would the Princesses do such a thing?” Somehow Stormy found he was in an old stone hallway.
Sunny’s eyelids lowered as she stopped walking. This was the first time the pegasus had looked stern, there was no more sense of levitity or regality she had embodied until now. Instead she looked like a disappointed teacher explaining how to buck clouds for the twentieth time to the same student. “There are beings, on both worlds mind you, that would like nothing more than to see any and all alliances fail. Neither humans, nor ponies, nor griffons, nor many others look great when viewed through certain lenses. What do you think would happen if the average fearful pony got ahold of that book you were reading?”
“. . .” All Stormy could do was meat the question with a stunned silence.
“80 million people died in their last big war.” Sunny’s wings ruffled as she faced the other pony. She began radiating something, Stormy had never felt that kind of an emotion before, like a deep sadness. “More than 50 million were civilians. If that became common knowledge Celestia and Luna would have to work constantly just to keep their ponies from reacting out of hoof.” Sunny pointed to a mirror on a wall. “Look at yourself, how you look after learning that. You have met these humans. Now imagine how the average pony would react. How you would have reacted before going to Earth. That is more life than a pony can reasonably understand. That number is only one note in their history and a very little detail compared to the bigger picture.”
Stormy declined to look in the mirror, one that had seemed to materialize out of nowhere. He could feel his stomach turning, increased blood flowing through his body. Hooves clopping on the stone floor.
Sunny turned away, her tail moving as if it was a creature in its own right and completely avoided Stormy where anypony else would have hit him with their tail. He could see her sides and wings quivering. Her chest making big movements.
“I’m sor-” The stallion apologized.
“You have nothing to be sorry for.” Sunny sighed. “It has been a long week. I have not slept since returning to Equestria. There are so many errands and things to file. The paperwork piled up. Celestia needed crop reports from Ponyville, the list of requested imports and exports, new tariff laws, researcher requests.” Her head rested against the cool wall.
“You will have access to everything level 5 and below.” Sunny metered her voice. “As will most every other student visiting Earth. There will be some restriction based on past history and personality.” She took one last deep breath followed by a loud exhalation. The smile slowly returned. “Next time you want to see these books, just show Parchment your UCLA ID and she will lead you to the proper doors.”
“How will you handle all this work while on Earth?” Stormy followed her down the hallway to a wooden door just the right size for an alicorn.
“I am training my younger sister, Moonlight Sonata, how to take over my duties. It is quite tiring.” The mare let out her own small laugh. “But that is its own interesting matter.” Her manner had entirely returned to what it had been as she opened the wooden door.
Another HUGE thanks to Scope Eva. Best editor I have ever had. He catches a lot of my mistakes.
Apparently I am bad with subtlety. It is either to subtle or too blatant. 
That and its weird trying to write stupid characters.
On a different note. It is hard to write a character and not have them reflect some aspect of your soul as they can only represent what you know or perceive. That is why self inserts can easily turn in a mary sue, and why they should be avoided. And writing this I though Stormy was an earlier version of myself and I was very wrong, he annoys me. But I did put someone in who is very like me, Sue. Shocker, but that is the character in here most like myself. Would like to point out there is a difference between accommodations and being treated differently. I was kicked out of my major due to health issues, things I have always had to struggle with. I could do the same work, or more, than other students but would not be in my desk everyday. So, where is that line in accommodations?
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Moony! Will be interesting to see how she'll take to Human civilization.
A good way to explain the restriction of information. Particularly since it's not a complete censor and doesn't seem to be a permanent one either.
What do you mean by "counterbalance"?
6950979 one is light and the other dark, lets them balance out some
it is propyl a good thing to filter the books as most pony's code not handle he truth.
I still found some typos ("meat" where the term should be "meet" is the big one) but all in all, pretty good.
I did find the character interactions (especially Stormy) a little bit stiff.
That said, I do think the rating system is a good idea...especially since they're still in the First Contact stage and demagogues on both sides need only a little excuse to cause an international incident.
Out of curiousity, can we see some examples of the books and their ratings?
6955377 well... out here in the sane state of Cali
6956949 ouch, giving me more work to do
Meet
Stormy never went to the library at UCLA?
6982132 for now... MWAHAHAHA!!!!
and dang that is far. Maybe once space travel really hits but until then can't image farther.
6962092 only from the outside. Blame the bibliophile (me) who ignores the existence of libraries
6984946
The library was central to my time at college, but mostly as a nice place to get work done.
6985568 I use amazon and sites like jstor and projectmuse for research. I study in my room or the local gaming center. The library is sooo quiet, too quiet to study and the atmosphere always feels desperate with the people sleeping in there. So regimented.
6986500
People sleep in the library? I can see why you don't like it. Any noise distracts me, I found not possibly study somewhere where there are people talking.
6987529 people will sleep anywhere. They even take sleeping bags and pillows. And the sheer number of people in there, will have to include it at some point. I just like studying either alone or with people I can talk out the readings with.
6988169
I can't imagine, sleeping in the library. The computer labs sure, but not the library.
6989278 prob a typo on my end
6988515 but computer labs are so bright
6990562
Rumor had it that a guy did that at the school where I studied abroad to avoid rooming charges.
6990762 can believe that. here everything closes down around 9 until it hits 7th week, then its 27/7 and there are people that stay in there for over 36 hours at a time. Something about travel time to their rooms taking needed resources for studying
6991569
That's sick.
6991877 part of the culture here is to do anything to get the best grade possible. Doesn't help when some profs use a bell curve to guarantee only X% of the class get A's. Had a roommate stay up so long once (about 3 days straight) to finish a research paper, he was hallucinating by the end. Then again he didn't start until 3 days before it was due. The idea is that a C isn't good enough, and it isn't figuring a C- is a 1.7 which can get you kicked out and means it won't count towards the classes you need to complete. Next year they have a 24/7 cafe opening up and in the dorms there is almost always someone in the lounges studying, or smashed, it really is a toss up. There are good aspects but that is up to each person to find imo.
6994414 is that how curving works there? At my school, professors use curves to fix a low class average on a midterm. For example my thermo class had an average grade of 49% on a midterm so the professor adjusted 49% to 70%.
Wow, I read this story fast. Yay procrastination.
7009431 NSA is different than RA. We still have RAs in the dorms for what they are worth but NSA are just to introduce people to the campus.
7009568 Wish it worked more like that. Taco Bell would be much better than a carry out sandwich from a dining hall. Or the fact of if you have classes all day having to pay out of pocket for food gets annoying.
7010021 that sounds really interesting, yet to have any hippie profs. many majors do actually mock the engineering students (even the math and computer people do), here at least.
7011062 exageration? there are some that say they do but don't have any proof outside of midterms so it may not apply to finals. South campus (math and science) do curve grades up, so that 49 can become an A due to that being the highest grade. North has almost no curving period. Some of that also just becomes spread by word of mouth and may not happen much anymore.
7011358
ahh, it sounds like our RAs did what your NSAs did.
it was pretty weird in engineering. We'd meditate, then talk about crystalline substructures. Were i'm at, pretty much everyone in the college of engineering and the college of math and science pokes fun at each other, it's (mostly) good natured. Even different types of engineers poke fun at each other.