Chapter XX
Littlepip grabbed her toolbox, the generation II Pip-Buck, and its projections and sat outside the door marked “Spare Parts.” It had been three days since she had started work on the Pip-Buck. She laughed to herself when she saw the meager process she had made in that time span.
The past three days, like every single day of her life, were a blur to her. She could discern no specifics, only the generalities: that is, she had woken up, had eaten, had worked, and had slept. Just like every other day. These were her only constants. And those days had held them constant.
But it’s not my fault, she thought. It’s these damn first-angle projections! “Damn, damn, damn first-angle projections!” she shouted.
She was taken aback by the manner in which she had pronounced those words. Why the outburst? It really wasn’t that big of a deal. She would figure it out eventually. She was a good, diligent worker. Such an inconvenience did not warrant such an outburst. Am I cursing at something else? she thought—then, she shook her head. Useless line of reasoning. I have to get back to work. I’m not fed to think. They expect me to repair Pip-Bucks, and that’s it. And that’s all I want. That’s all that’s desired of me; that’s all that will ever be desired of me; and that’s all I’ll ever do or be good at. Why strive for anything else? I know my place. I’ve always known my place.
She used a forehoof to brush some of the grain-sized pieces of glass out of her mane. They clinked to the floor with a pleasant ring.
The poster of Velvet Remedy was gone. Stable-Tec’s poster was still there. She noticed nothing.
With a very deliberate magic, she held steadily the screwdriver and removed the screws to the Pip-Buck’s casing. She caught the back of the casing as it fell off. Wires spilled out of the body of the Pip-Buck. Carefully, she took the motherboard, untangled the wires, and turned it over.
And then she laughed.
One of the easiest to replace chips was fried. The CPU was fine; the RAM was fine; the fans were fine; it was the one chip, burned out, a chip that nearly every electronic in Stable 2 used. It was a matter of unscrewing the chip, taking a new one from a junk electronic, and using it to replace the old one.
She opened the door to the closet marked “Spare Parts.” On the second shelf, she kept a variety of electronics. Some of them were harder to open than others, and she scanned the items one-by-one, trying to find the one she thought would be the easiest to open: a run-down ceiling fan, an old computer speaker, a dusty alarm clock, a small set of earphones, a fractured oscilloscope, some weird sort of tablet computer, a prewar wireless telephone, an e-reader, a video game controller, the rusted body of an old robot.
She scratched her head. Finally, she decided that the alarm clock would be the easiest to open and pulled it from the shelf.
The rest was routine. With a few flicks of the screwdriver, the case was off, the chip removed and replaced, and the reset button of the Pip-Buck pressed.
The Pip-Buck flared to life.
She was about to leap for joy when she noticed that the text on the screen was blurry. She flipped through the different on-screen menus in a vain attempt to fix it. Resetting it again didn’t help.
It didn’t like the chip. Perhaps it had something to do with varying voltages? she thought. But how would I be able to measure that?
She glanced back into the closet and saw the oscilloscope. It looked as if it would probably have to be repaired before it could be used. She looked back to the Pip-Buck and shrugged. I’ve worked on you long enough, she thought. I’ll get back to you later. I need an oscilloscope anyway.
She thrust her head back into the closet to get a better look. God, she thought, that oscilloscope really is in disarray. What’s that wire doing on top of the casing? How did that get there? That won’t be easy to put back in—wherever the hell it goes.
But she was confident. She had repaired the Pip-Buck that she had thought were irreparable. Why not this oscilloscope? Why can’t I put this wire back where it belongs? All electronics are the same, anyway.
She levitated the oscilloscope out of the closet, balancing the wire on top, and set it on the floor next to the Pip-Buck. “Now, where do you go . . .” she said, extending her hoof to the wire.
It yielded unresistingly to her touch. It floated a few centimeters off the case, hovered in midair for a split second, then fluttered lightly back down.
She laughed. “It’s a wire.”
She picked it up with the bottom of her hoof. It swayed in the air as she pulled it toward her.
“No,” she said, through her teeth, “it’s a wire.”
She brought it close to her face.
“No, it’s a wire!” It quivered as every one of her shallow breaths brushed it. It swayed like a sail to catch the air of her exhalations.
It was a single, thick strand of golden bronze hair.
She dropped it and staggered backward. She was vaguely aware that her mouth was open.
Her feet could not find their places on the floor. She tried to regain her balance as she felt a weight on her spine. She felt as if the ceiling had come down upon her, crushing her, smothering her. Every time a leg slipped, she would shift her weight to another one, and then that one would slip, and she would shift again, and her body sank lower and lower while the ceiling became ever more heavy. Her muscles burned from exhaustion; her head burned with the half-shaped knowledge of what she was doing; and her eyes watered in response. The weight continued to strain her, only augmenting in magnitude as her efforts increased; until the exertion demanded by the task required more oxygen than there was in the air. She collapsed, belly first, feeling her spine broken, completely shattered, destroyed by the unbearable burden of the roof of the stable.
In Stable 2, the door which is marked “Spare Parts” is nearly always left open. It opens upon a very small room on the floor just above the basement, just below the living quarters, two floors below the cafeteria. The room or, to speak more accurately, the closet, is quite small, about one meter by one meter by three meters. One can usually find the Pip-Buck repair technician in front of this door in one of six poses: standing, crouching, sitting, prone, lying on her back, or prostrate. Each one of these poses corresponded to the difficulty of a problem.
She was now prostrate.
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I don't usually post comments such as "looks cool, will read later", but I must say that more than the description, the strange chapter structure (with the wildly inconsistent chapter sizes) makes me curious about the fic.
2868043
It's definitely not your typical FOE sidefic, and most of what it has in common with the original Fallout: Equestria is largely superficial. It's also written in a wildly different style (Romanticism), which accounts for why the chapter structure and sizes seem so strange.
I'm definitely curious about this little story. I'm going to have to give it a read soon. It certainly looks different and unique.
This took me a long time to read. But I absolutely loved it.
Thank you for this Archer.
2916343
Something that occurred to me, while I was reading this, was the idea that the overmare might be Copper's mother. Some of their dialogue reads way differently if you think of them like that. Did you happen to think that about them? Or what do you think of that idea?
Archer has told me that he never planned it that way, but was surprised when he couldn't find anything inconsistent with the hypothesis. I like to think she was his mother anyway, even if it wasn't planned that way.
2917289
The overmare being copper's mum doesn't quite feel right to me. There is something about her tone when talking about copper's death.... Although she talks a lot about being a mother, I think she refers to the stable as a whole, not just copper.
I can see where you're coming from though.
2923301
It's actually the way she talks about being a mother versus being the overmare is what I really like about the idea of her as his mother. Her character is all about being evasive: she never answers questions directly and she's always very deliberate about what she says and how she says it. She talks about Copper in a very detached way, and then there's her line about wanting to go hug her own son; it seems to me like she's trying very hard to reconcile her own grief with having to keep up appearances for the rest of the stable at the same time, and all of that on top of them having an estranged relationship. I honestly feel sad for the overmare if I think about it like that.
A lot of that is probably just me projecting, but I like it.
2923524
It makes you wonder whether she believes what she herself is saying. The Overmare says there is nothing outside, but I somehow get the feeling she isn't telling the whole truth.
Chances are I'm just projecting too...
But that's what I like so much about this story. The entire thing ends up virtually how you want it to, as you cannot believe what anyone says, apart from Pip and maybe Copper, so only choose the bits you want to hear. For example, I don't think Copper committed suicide. But I don't know if he got out of the stable or was murdered. Or something wacky like that.
I still don't understand why so few people have seen this! It's not nearly as popular as it should be!
This comment ended up far longer than it should have.
...oops.
2924792
I think the overmare is in a tough position. I think she both believes and doesn't believe what she says. She strikes me as being motivated primarily by her duty as overmare to keep the stable, well... stable. This is why her conflict with Copper is so interesting, because he, with his individuality, appears to her as a threat to the stable. I don't think she did kill him, but I do think she was capable of it. I think the way she evades littlepip's inquiry about what exactly happened and where the body was was her way of trying to believe her own lies (whatever those lies are).
Hopefully more people will get around to reading this soon. I'd love to see what other people think about what happened and what this take on LP and Velvet has to say.
Archer has mentioned, in one if his reviews of FOE, something to the effect of Littlepip's reasons for chasing after velvet being really lame. Or something like that. I kinda have to agree, honestly. But this story, even though it shares little more than a few names with FOE, leaves me with the feeling that this is the Littlepip who would leave the stable. I also like to think that Copper was what influenced Velvet to leave the stable herself.
Don't worry too much about long comments. Having something to say is never a bad thing.
2925295
Another good point. I though it was Archer complaining about FoE awhile back, and I have to agree. Pip doesn't seem to have any actual reason to leave the stable. It wasn't until about chapter fifteen that I really got into FoE, and I only got there through sheer willpower!
This Pip and Velvet are the ponies who would be motivated into leaving the stable, whilst in the original it just isn't that clear.
Sorry for late replies!
I've recently finished Blank Slate, and posted a somewhat lengthier-than-FiMFic-comment-standard review here. It speaks mostly in generalities; if anyone would like to discuss the finer points I would be glad to.
2930086
I almost immediately liked FOE when I read it, but now, some two years later, I see it as just being overwhelmingly mediocre and rife with missed potential. Still, it made a big splash and inspired an entire subcommunity. So it's noteworthy for that much at least.
It's stuff like Blank Slate that I'd like to see more of; a story that can take FOE's setting and use it to say something, rather than just muck about in it like so many other sidefics just looking to run around on an adventure with no real plan or goal in mind (this is why we see so many sidefics run over 200k words with no end in sight).
The poor thing, she is having all kinds of irreparable trauma inflicted on her right now.
Thank you for the interesting story.
Finally getting back to post about it, I can safely say that this is as unique as fics get. While I can't say it fits with FoE canon, it did carry the feel of a FoE fic. If you are interested, have some more in-depth paragraphs about it here.
Got around to reading this. It's honestly quite a romp. Bit disjointed with the source material (Not that that is a bad thing. Literally every FOE sidestory has differences in lore, themes, or even worldbuilding. Project Horizons literally reinvents the wheel and then tries to add more edges.) but interesting none the less.
I feel like a proper sweep is in order though. Going back and cleaning up the problems when your 'voice' overrides the 'characters' and 'humany' words are used. I think others have touched upon that in their personal reviews though so I won't parrot them. But honestly at the end of it all I sorta feel like this could've been completely rewritten removing any mention of ponies and placed in an ambiguous Post-Apocalyptic world and literally nothing would change, content wise.
The fact that Littlepip is in it only seems to resonate if you try to imagine what this, and I make a distinction since your characters are pretty different from the source, Pip would react once she left the Stable.
"This is an even bigger jail than the one I came out of." is how I imagine it'd start.
This not only should, but deserves, to get more attention though. I definitely find this Littlepip, the romantic hero, a whole lot more interesting than what Kkat wrote sad to say.
I'm trying to figure out the significance of this last scene, but I am so far unable. Why does Pip react so strongly to the piece of hair?
Your book has been advertised on the new facebook group page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/foebooks/ :)
So, could someone summarise this up to me?
I'm afraid I'm not quite with all you folk with a brain. For certain; the story was interesting, but it felt very strange. I thought it was a horror at one point, the noises Pip hears behind the Stable Door, the weird mess of children in the hallway from the one guys notebook, that pointed to horror, and I see no romance in this story at all, other than Pip seeing Copper as a friend.
Poor Littlepip