Silver Glow's Journal

by Admiral Biscuit

September 3 [Eastbound Trains]

September 3

It felt like I'd hardly fallen asleep when the telephone ringing woke me up and at first I couldn't figure out what it was. Then I remembered and I stuck my head up and jumped out of the chair to answer the telephone and got the blanket stuck around a hind hoof and had to shake it loose.

The clock said it was two, which was a really dumb time to be awake after being awake all day long. I don't know why the train didn't run at a more convenient time. Maybe nobody in Kansas ever used it.

I answered the telephone and Mister Salvatore was too cheerful. He said that Miss Cherilyn was already up and that she was ready to leave and that they were just waiting on me, so I grabbed my saddlebags and trotted down the hall to their room.

Miss Cherilyn was awake but not much more than I was. She had an old t-shirt on that said Montclair College Prep, and a pair of lounging pants. Mister Salvatore looked like he was wide awake, though, and he was wearing nice clothes.

The movement of the truck and the soft swishing noise of its tires on the road were too much for both me and Miss Cherilyn and we fell asleep again until we got to the train station, and he had to wake us up and get us out of the truck.

We sat on a bench on the platform and she put on his jacket because it was a little bit chilly for her, and I dozed off until I heard the train horn, then I sat up and watched for it.

There wasn't anybody else on the platform waiting for the train, and when it stopped the open door on the railcar was lined right up with us. I think that the conductor told the engineer where to stop, so we wouldn't have to go as far.

We got aboard and as soon as all our bags were inside, the train started moving again. I guess they didn't want to spend any extra time waiting at the station.

After he'd closed the door, the conductor led us upstairs to our rooms. Because we'd gotten on the train partway through its journey, we didn't have rooms that were beside each other, but instead we were at opposite ends of the car.

My bed had already been folded down by the conductor, and I was more than ready to be in it, so I dropped my saddlebags on the floor and snuggled up under the covers and it didn't take me very long to fall back asleep.

It was light outside my window when I woke up, and I looked out the window and tried to guess where the train was. Wherever we were was kinda big, because we kept passing houses and buildings and we were going kind of slowly, and then we crept through a big railroad yard.

There was a long train made up of flat cars that had fingers on them to hold rails, and I also saw some strange flat car pairs. One end had an octagonal piece of steel on it, and then the next car behind it had a little shed with and angled roof, and they were all coupled together in pairs like that.

The conductor announced that we were stopping in Kansas City, so I guess that's where we were. The train went over a wide river, and then it slowed down some more until it finally stopped.

We had twenty minutes at the station so we could get out and stretch, and so I did. I trotted up and down the platform and then flew up a little bit to exercise my wings a little bit.

I didn't see Mister Salvatore or Miss Cherilyn on the platform, so I guess that they were still sleeping. I could have flown to the other side of the train and looked through their window but I didn't think I was supposed to fly over the tracks; besides, I couldn't remember what room was theirs. I hadn't been all the way awake when he told me.

When the conductor said that it was time for the train to leave, I flew back and landed on the platform at the back of the line of people boarding, and hopped aboard and once the train went out of the station I went to the dining car to get breakfast. I didn't think that Mister Salvatore or Miss Cherilyn would mind if I ate breakfast without them.

I had a biscuit with a crab cake on it for breakfast, and then I went to the Viewliner car and watched the scenery go by. It was starting to be kind of familiar to me, since this was the third time I'd taken this train.

Miss Cherilyn came by after a while and watched out the windows with me. We were in Missouri and it was not as flat as Kansas and had more trees.

We had an early lunch which for Mister Salvatore was breakfast, and as we were finishing the train was running alongside the Mississippi river on its way to Fort Madison. Mister Salvatore said that when he was a boy he'd read Tom Sawyer and he'd always wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and I thought that might be fun, too. I guess you'd have to be careful, though, because there were a lot of big barges that we saw and at night I don't know if you'd be able to see them at all.

It was kind of sad to leave the river behind because after we left Fort Madison it wasn't too long before we were back in farmland.

When we got to the edge of Chicago, he told me that I'd better get to my room and pack my bags, but I didn't think I needed to because I hadn't unpacked them and besides the train made its last stop there, so we wouldn't have to be in a hurry to get off of it.

He said that we were going to have to get on another train when we arrived in Chicago but that it would be a few hours before it came so we could do a little bit of sightseeing in Chicago. He told me that if I wanted to drive anywhere that wasn't too far from the station to let him know and he could have a car waiting for us.

Well, I couldn't think of anything in particular that I wanted to do in Chicago, so we decided we'd just go walk around the park for a little bit and then go back to the station.

Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn put all their luggage in special lockers and then we walked over to the lakefront. I saw the peninsula that I'd flown to and asked if I could fly there again and he said I could and it was too bad that I didn't have my airplane radio, so he told me to stay low and not spend too much time out there, so I flew off and over all the boats, then flew around the whole perimeter of the island before coming back.

We walked around and looked at the flowers and there was a little courtyard where a man was doing magic tricks even though humans don't have magic at all and so I thought that maybe he was using enchanted props but Mister Salvatore said it was all sleight of hand. He said that a lot of it was pretty simple tricks and maybe they were but I couldn't figure out how he was doing them.

Since it was a nice day, we got ice cream from a man with a cart and sat at a bench to eat it, and then we had to go back to the station to get our next train.

Our luggage was still in the locker, and it took Mister Salvatore's key when he'd gotten our baggage. Then we went to the train platforms and found our new train, which was called the Capitol Limited. It was a two-story train just like the Southwest Chief had been, but it didn't have as many cars on it.

This time we got two rooms that were right next to each other and had a little door between them. Mister Salvatore said it was so that he could keep an eye on me and I said that I could make sure he got up for breakfast.

I'd gotten settled in and unpacked my saddlebags so that I could recharge my airplane radio and my GoPro, because even if I wasn't using them they lost their charge, and I was hoping that tomorrow I'd be able to fly some.

We left Chicago on time and I got an occasional look at the downtown and all the skyscratchers as we left town. And the first part of the trip was the same as if we were going back to Kalamazoo, but then the train took a different track and went almost due east.

We ate a late dinner and then went forward to the Viewliner car but all the seats were taken, so then we went back to our rooms.

I watched Indiana go by outside my window, and it was pretty flat and mostly fields. When the conductor announced that our next stop was South Bend, I saw the flashing beacon of an airport off in the distance and that was the South Bend airport which is the one I talked to when I was flying to Sunny Haven.

There were a couple of college-age people on the platform at South Bend and I wondered if they were on their way back to college. I would be, soon—it started next week. And it was going to be kind of sad that I wouldn't have as much free time, but it was going to be nice to see everyone again. And maybe meet some new people, too.

It was starting to get dark after we left South Bend and I was getting a little bit bored of watching farms go by, so I wrote in my journal for a while (which was kind of challenging, since the train would bump around) and then I got out my Bible and read more of Ezekiel.

God kept telling Ezekiel how bad all of the Israelites had become, and He told Ezekiel about two prostitutes and one of them liked having her breasts fondled and lusted after men who had donkey dicks and ejaculated like horses and I thought that was strangely specific. But I guess if there was a company which sold toys like that maybe lots of people liked them.

I wondered if Meghan would like having sex with an actual stallion. Or maybe she preferred girls and mares and just had the toy for fun.

God told Ezekiel that his wife was going to die, and told Ezekiel not to mourn her, and I thought about how many bad things had happened to Job and I hoped that wouldn't happen to Ezekiel. And then God started telling Ezekiel about all the bad things that were going to happen to all the other nations to punish them for being wicked, even though He said that He took no pleasure in the deaths of the wicked, and that He wanted them to turn from their evil ways and become good. He said that if they turned from their evil ways and became good, then their past deeds would not count against them.

He told Ezekiel to warn the shepherds that He was mad at them for losing all of His sheep, and said He was going to take them back and herd them into a safe pasture, which was wise of him. Sheep aren't too smart and can't really be trusted on their own.

He promised Ezekiel that He was going to bring back all the people and wash them clean and then rebuild their houses and cities and never let them go hungry again, and He said that when He did they were going to be ashamed of how bad they'd been.

That made me happy that He was bringing them back like He'd promised, and hopefully now everyone would have learned their lesson and they would follow God's rules like they were supposed to.

I put away my Bible and pushed the button so that the attendant would come and make my bed for me—I could have done it myself but he might be mad if I did.

He asked me if I wanted the top bunk or the bottom and I thought that the bottom would be better because I could see out the window and it didn't look like there was much of a view from the top one. So he folded it out and put on the sheets and blankets and pillows for me, and I thanked him and then curled up in my bed.

It would have been nice if Aric or Meghan could have come along with me. It was kind of lonely in the train car all by myself.

Comments

[Dan]

We need more Female Human x Stallion romance fics.
I know a few, with and without clop.

[Booster Spice]

At least one advantage of long train journeys in a long country, is that you have room for long trains with long beds for sleeping in.

After analysis, approximately, the energy used in transport has a transition point at about a thousand km, thousand miles. Below this, trains are the most efficient. After this, sub orbital balistic are most efficient. Then again, I dont try and save on fuel by mass, I tend to design things with that extra mass as a safety factor. Mainly against accountants.

just did a quick check, The total power consumption of the US in 2015 was about 4000 TWh, or an average of 500 GW. Thats over 1000 singular nuclear reactor cores if 400 MW designs used. Its also equivalent to building a pair of water tanks 1 km tall, on top of each other, that cover 1000 square km. Then letting the water run from the top tank into the bottom.

Or, in lukewarm water and nano OTEC per house, roughly equivalent to each accomodation needing a water tank holding 16 thousand tons of water. say 40 metre by 40 metre by ten metre. Not too difficult out in the expanses, then again Lake Mead is 32 cubic km, which is almost a fortnight of total country power before its drained? Or is its head far less than 1000 foot?

Strange how throwing those antievapourative plastic balls on reservoirs can actually reduce their solar thermal energy capture and storage capabilities. Or that a dam could end up generating power without letting water out.

And I really shouldnt reply late, but gaming means not much time tomorror and dentists morning after. Oh dear.

I wonder if Mr Salvatore likes Red Dwarf.

[CatCube]

It's not often I'm stumped by railroad cars, but I can't figure out what "One end had an octagonal piece of steel on it, and then the next car behind it had a little shed with and angled roof, and they were all coupled together in pairs like that," is describing.

[TheTownCrier]

Early risers. *shudders* truly an ungodly hour to be bright eyed and bushy tailed.

[Zaveryn]

7699560

Oh, if I went by your world's logic then I'd be the same age as Apple Bloom as well. I could be dating a pony in college too, just like Meghan! Haha

[jxj]

7699505

True. They might be immune to all human/equine diseases, or only some--what would keep me up at night, were I a epidemiologist in this universe, would be if they could carry and transmit a disease even if they themselves didn't get sick. Take the case of the tick-borne illness; maybe it doesn't affect ponies at all. But maybe they carry the parasite in their blood and are happily passing it along.

that's true, but the most dangerous diseases are cross species (a parasite that kills its host probably won't be successful), but you'd expect them to go through human immigration, not livestock.

Part of the reason why I came up with some of those odd bits of headcanon was because (despite the show's models) I didn't like the idea that a unicorn was simply an earth pony with a stick on her head--there are some biological differences between the tribes, some of which are obvious and some of which are not. Another one (which I can't remember if it's come up in this story) is that pegasi generally keep their canine teeth, while the unicorns--if they have them at all--generally file them down.

I'm a sucker for non human behaviors in fics. No matter how close they are to us, ponies aren't human and I like stuff that points that out (coincidentally, I don't like anthro) I was taking about a fic called The Chase earlier (I think it was with you, but i'm not 100% sure). The author did a really good job of making all of the different tribes feel really different both physiologically and psychologically. They came across as nonhuman and in some cases, downright alien. Some of it was kind of predictable, avian behavior from pegasi, but in some other cases, it came across as ... alien is the only way I could describe it.

See, why I didn't add the parents was because it's a reasonable assumption that you need a mare and a stallion to produce a foal, so of course there would be one of each--there'd have to be.
Obviously, it's hard to draw good conclusions from the data we have, because they're not always consistent with background ponies, they now use more character models than they did, and even in my above example the ratio would change dramatically if we find out in season 7 that Rainbow has six brothers.

true, but the adults should be included in any overarching statistical study. In this case, I was tired and didn't realize that if you use a male/female ratio, the problem goes away. So I included the parents to get rid of the divide by zero issue. And yes, it's hard to make good conclusions from this data, that was the point of me doing the calculations. Concrete numbers tend to really drive a point home (and theses calculations are a lot less conservative than I'd like). It's one thing to just say that it's bad. It's another thing to really see the range of values that it could be, especially when the mathematical values are physically impossible (you cant have a ration below 0). The best way to calculate this would be to draw small groups at random from a list of every single mlp character. But I'm still hesitant to do that. you hit mathematical accuracy way before i'm comfortable saying we have a group that represents equestria. I actually counted all the characters added in the season 5 premiere and there was only 2 more females than males. And you make a point with adding characters, in fact that happened recently with zephyr breeze.

[jxj]

7699672

Yeah, I think all the long-haul routes are now Superliners or equivalent. Shorter runs are more conventional cars, like the run from Kalamazoo to Chicago, for example.

i've only been on the 6-7 hour trips so no short runs for me.

[M1Garand8]

I wondered if Meghan would like having sex with an actual stallion.

Well, depends whether it was an Earth stallion or Equestrian stallion, I guess?

Maybe Meghan is Silver Glow-sexual.

[Lord Legion]

This day was interesting in more ways than one.

[Isshiki Kotonashi]

said it was all slight of hand

Sleight of hand

[KMCA]

7699799 Hey, there's nothing wrong with loving mornings... I just wish they happened later in the day

(although since I work nights, sunrise is bedtime for me so they DO happen late in the day)

[TheTownCrier]

7700165 You and me both. I've done nothing but nights for a dacade.

[Sollace]

7698237
OH! I thought it was-- Never mind.

[QueenMoriarty]

slight of hand

sleight of hand

[SPart]

But I guess if there was a company which sold toys like that maybe lots of people liked them.

I wondered if Meghan would like having sex with an actual stallion. Or maybe she preferred girls and mares and just had the toy for fun.

hahahaha Silver should ask her hahaha

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

Stick in my 2 cents on quarantine & border inspections. This is a 2 way street people! Maybe EQ Ponies can get Earth diseases. Maybe Earth animals can get EQ diseases. From the point of sheer number & population density EQ probably has more horse diseases than Earth. Plus with 3 types of Pony (& maybe Zebras), EQ diseases are probably better at jumping species barriers. What would Pony Pox or Feather Flu (for instance) do to Earth horses? Pegasi get them, could Earth birds get them? IDK & I have ZERO interest in finding out the hard way.

I read that the Australian government introduced Tularemia (Rabbit Fever) in the 1950s & killed an estimated 95% of the rabbits in Australia. No interest whatsoever in seeing if EQ can do likewise with chickens. Border inspections are a pain but a SENSIBLE procedure is clearly needed (& arguably not there yet)

One thing. It is my Head Canon that Pegasi take the attitude that borders are for ground pounders & custom inspections only happen to the other guy. They are all born smugglers. I reckon Silver got picked in part for her tolerance for this sort of nonsense.

[JimboTex]

and He told Ezekiel about two prostitutes and one of them liked having her breasts fondled and lusted after men who had donkey dicks and ejaculated like horses and I thought that was strangely specific.

What, Aric never taught you the phrase "hung like a horse," Silver? This is the (probable) origin of it.

[arancaytar]

I've been waiting for her to get to that verse forever.

[Winter Quill]

7699771 It's the train cars Boeing uses to transport 737 bodies to Renton. http://trn.trains.com/~/media/images/railroad-news/news-wire/2013/02/boeing-middleton.jpg

[CCC]

he might be made if I did.

I'm pretty sure that should be "mad".

[Admiral Biscuit]

7699762

We need more Female Human x Stallion romance fics.
I know a few, with and without clop.

I put up one a couple weeks ago, although it did have clop in it. Well, it was mostly clop and not much romance.

7699768

At least one advantage of long train journeys in a long country, is that you have room for long trains with long beds for sleeping in.

They do, and if people are more friendly you can fit even more rooms in. IIRC, when they transported troops in WWII, the sleeping accommodations had triple bunks.

After analysis, approximately, the energy used in transport has a transition point at about a thousand km, thousand miles. Below this, trains are the most efficient. After this, sub orbital ballistic are most efficient. Then again, I don't try and save on fuel by mass, I tend to design things with that extra mass as a safety factor. Mainly against accountants.

Hard to convince people to go on a quick, suborbital trip, though. I'd guess that an Amtrak train and a jet flying from Chicago to LA use probably a similar amount of fuel, but it's a lot more luxurious on the train, and if you packed people in as tight as you do on an airplane, you could put a lot more people on the train.

Strange how throwing those antievapourative plastic balls on reservoirs can actually reduce their solar thermal energy capture and storage capabilities. Or that a dam could end up generating power without letting water out.

That's actually a pretty clever thing. Lakes lose a ton of water to evaporation.

7699771
It's not often I'm stumped by railroad cars, but I can't figure out what "One end had an octagonal piece of steel on it, and then the next car behind it had a little shed with and angled roof, and they were all coupled together in pairs like that," is describing.
Yup, 7711769 got it right. I assume the the octagonal piece of steel is used to clear anything that might damage the fuselage--railroads also sometimes have special cars to break ice in tunnels and whatnot.
rrmodelcraftsman.com/extraboard/cm_extra_dec1973/dec1973-02.jpg

7699799

Early risers. *shudders* truly an ungodly hour to be bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Well, we know from canon that not all pegasi are early risers. I'm looking at you, RD.

7699867

I could be dating a pony in college too, just like Meghan! Haha

You could be! Well, if there were actually ponies on Earth in our universe.

[Admiral Biscuit]

7699874

that's true, but the most dangerous diseases are cross species (a parasite that kills its host probably won't be successful), but you'd expect them to go through human immigration, not livestock.

I would assume that before they came to Earth, they already had to go through a comprehensive process to make sure that they weren't bringing any dangerous Equestrian diseases to Earth, so at this point the only worry would be ones that they might have picked up on Earth.

I'm a sucker for non human behaviors in fics. No matter how close they are to us, ponies aren't human and I like stuff that points that out

Yeah, me too. I just read one a little bit ago that really felt like a human fic where the author had just substituted pony terms, and it was kind of disappointing because of that.

The author did a really good job of making all of the different tribes feel really different both physiologically and psychologically. They came across as nonhuman and in some cases, downright alien. Some of it was kind of predictable, avian behavior from pegasi, but in some other cases, it came across as ... alien is the only way I could describe it.

It's been recommended to me a time or two, but it's like a zillion words and right now I just haven't got time to read it. But I do like that; I think that the three tribes are fundamentally different and were not always united either, so of course they'd all have different ways of looking at things and doing things and seeing the world, and that would also be exaggerated to a point because some cities are fairly tribal (and of course pegasus cities obviously are). Not to mention that different living situations lead to different outlooks; in Ponyville fending off monster attacks from the Everfree might be a fairly common situation, where in Silver Glow's village, S&R over the ocean is more of their thing. And, potentially, sea monsters.

The best way to calculate this would be to draw small groups at random from a list of every single mlp character. But I'm still hesitant to do that. you hit mathematical accuracy way before i'm comfortable saying we have a group that represents equestria. I actually counted all the characters added in the season 5 premiere and there was only 2 more females than males. And you make a point with adding characters, in fact that happened recently with zephyr breeze.

You'd have to draw from a specific place, too, and eliminate character where you don't know where they actually live. Plus the show's creators often re-use BG ponies, so that screws up your data. That's why I think that the Apple Family Reunion and the Mane 6's siblings are the most useful, because in that case we have a known sample set . . . it's just small, dammit, and they could all be outliers.

And then it keeps changing when they add new characters, too. Which doesn't help.

[Admiral Biscuit]

7700005

Well, depends whether it was an Earth stallion or Equestrian stallion, I guess?

She's not terribly interested in an actual horse.

Maybe Meghan is Silver Glow-sexual.

Or maybe last year she was chasing Action Shot all around campus, hoping to hook up.

Also, why has nobody ever TVTroped any of my stories?

7700032

This day was interesting in more ways than one.

7700086

Sleight of hand

Oops, correction made. Thank you!

[Admiral Biscuit]

7700165

Hey, there's nothing wrong with loving mornings... I just wish they happened later in the day
(although since I work nights, sunrise is bedtime for me so they DO happen late in the day)

Man, I remember when I used to work nights. Wintertime was bad, because I could go a week or more without ever seeing the sun.

7700216

OH! I thought it was-- Never mind.

An actual crab tank in the biology department where they researched crabs getting it on?

7700307

sleight of hand

Correction made; thank you!

7700603

hahahaha Silver should ask her hahaha

Sooner or later she will.

[Admiral Biscuit]

7700989

What would Pony Pox or Feather Flu (for instance) do to Earth horses? Pegasi get them, could Earth birds get them? IDK & I have ZERO interest in finding out the hard way.

If I worked for the CDC, this is the kind of thing that would keep me awake at night.

One thing. It is my Head Canon that Pegasi take the attitude that borders are for ground pounders & custom inspections only happen to the other guy. They are all born smugglers. I reckon Silver got picked in part for her tolerance for this sort of nonsense.

Oh yeah, in general the pegasi probably have no use for land borders. I'm sure that they have their own territories in the sky, but those wouldn't necessarily correspond to anything on the ground at all.

7702818

What, Aric never taught you the phrase "hung like a horse," Silver? This is the (probable) origin of it.

It hasn't had a chance to come up in conversation yet. Maybe if they watch Labrynth together. . . .

7703002

I've been waiting for her to get to that verse forever.

7713765

I'm pretty sure that should be "mad".

Correction made; thank you!

[Luna Aeterna Solutae]

7736119
On "The Chase". I've just never liked Kudzu.

[Admiral Biscuit]

9269736
I haven’t read enough of his stuff to form an opinion.

[Herald of Opera]

I'd assume the first couple of ponies were paid for by James Randi's iconic challenge. Preemptively, because he doesn't need laboratory conditions to admit defeat here.

[Admiral Biscuit]

11126986

I'd assume the first couple of ponies were paid for by James Randi's iconic challenge. Preemptively, because he doesn't need laboratory conditions to admit defeat here.

Be interesting to know if his challenge included an exception for aliens. He was a smart guy, he might have thought of that. Canada’s already set the precedent that Martians can’t sue in Canadian courts (and only Martians, AFAIK, but the same logic could apply to any non-Earth creature).

[Herald of Opera]

Be interesting to know if his challenge included an exception for aliens. He was a smart guy, he might have thought of that.

Nah, if aliens can do it then we can do it, and his basic premise is that we can't do it.

[Raine_Lionheart]

Miss Cherilyn was awake but not much more than I was. She had an old t-shirt on that said Montclair College Prep, and a pair of lounging pants. Mister Salvatore looked like he was wide awake, though, and he was wearing nice clothes.

I'd love to learn more about Mr. Sal's background. Was he a bad boy who had his trouble catch up with him, so he turned straight and became a fed? Or was he always aiming for a federal gig?

[Admiral Biscuit]

11342664

I'd love to learn more about Mr. Sal's background. Was he a bad boy who had his trouble catch up with him, so he turned straight and became a fed? Or was he always aiming for a federal gig?

Hmm, that's a good question. He seems to me more like the type of guy who was always aiming to be a fed, and who probably turned down a few office promotions so he could stay out in the field.