The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

Karma Industries

The tunnel grew brighter around Starlight and her companions as it rose, warm yellow lighting shining down a staircase at the end several dozen hoofsteps away. Slowly, they crossed the distance... and climbed up to the world above.

Starlight blinked from the glare. Mismatched wooden floorboards aside, they had emerged in a room constructed of right angles, a flaky white material set in flat sheets to form the walls and ceiling. It was ever-so-slightly reflective, and her eyes were drawn to the dark lines at the edges where the surfaces didn't quite meet, the holes to the woodwork beyond providing a welcome contrast after the darkness of the depot and tunnel.

"Good evening," a huge yellow mare droned systematically from a nearby desk, barely giving them half a glance. "Welcome to Karma Industries. I see some of you have been here before, so mind the rules and have a nice stay."

Maple stopped, staring. "Okay... I don't know what I expected, but the Earth District is weird."

As the receptionist looked back to the papers on her desk and sipped from a mug, the room's single, point-source light glinting off her broad back, Valey chuckled. "Yeah, they follow their own rules. But hey, DK isn't here to grill us on why a whole squad of volunteer vigilantes just came strolling through with their leader ditched and bananas thieved, so who cares?"

"So..." Maple looked between the room's several exits, each of which lead to similar rooms, or else were side doors to corridors. "How do we get out of here?"

"First off, that depends if you want to," Valey said, pointing a hoof back down the staircase to the tunnel. "Remember him? You don't want us to be model citizens and go let his boss know he met an unusual and well-deserved fate?" She winked. "I mean, I'm fine with that, of course! I just thought you had a higher opinion of me than that."

Howe cleared his throat, reminding everyone that he was there. "If the great Howenator could voice his opinion..." He bowed humbly. "You didn't say where you want to go, but if it's outside Grand Acorn? We should find a spot that forgot to put up a 'no loitering' sign, because that rain is nasty."

Starlight perked her ears. In the distance, the rainstorm's pounding was as alive as ever.

"Ironflanks?" Valey looked up. "You good with that?"

As Maple agreed, Starlight inwardly huffed that nobody ever asked her. It wasn't as if she had any better ideas, of course, or that she particularly wanted to talk. It just seemed... less fair than it could have been.

"Cool, cool, cool." Valey nodded, starting toward a doorless frame. "Let's go, then. And hey, maybe we'll run into something interesting on the way!"

---

"I'm having trouble believing this is really a fortress," Maple said as they paced through a hallway, made of the same flaky whitewall that never quite touched any of the edges it was supposed to. "It looks..." She tapped the stuff with a hoof. "Kind of fragile."

"It's what it looks like on the outside that counts," Valey replied, at the forefront of the group. "This place is older than all the stuff in the Sky District. Its point has always been taking visiting merchants and convincing them to buy Ironridge goods. Mind you, there's not many other places you can go to import this much fruit... but still, looking awesome doesn't hurt. You can't tell from here, but this place has towers, ramparts, a town at its base with gated walls... all that good stuff."

"Seven stories, too!" Howe added. "It actually makes Blueleaf look kinda wimpy, if you can see it from far enough away."

"Huh," Maple breathed, sweating as a hot yellow light passed over her coat.

They emerged at the end of a long, rectangular room filled with two rows of desks, ponies of all colors hunched studiously over stacks of paper, scribbling with quills. Starlight caught one or two of them stealing a peek at the group, but for the most part they ignored the intrusion and kept working, possibly deliberately to avoid Valey's attention.

"Why does growing fruit involve so many papers?" Maple whispered, as if in a library. "What are they all writing?"

"Math," Valey replied, not bothering to keep her voice down. "You don't realize how much bureaucracy there is behind day-to-day things until you've messed with it to keep the Defense Force where you want it, but it's actually kinda important. These dudes? They're probably, like... crunching sales data to track trends and predict where to ship how much fruit so as little as possible doesn't get sold, to maximize profits. Or maybe they're figuring out what to prioritize next harvest, or trying to find some more efficient way of packing it for shipping... or they could just be tracking the workers who get paid to pick this stuff to see if any of them are having troubles, deserve a promotion, all that good stuff. You never know!"

"Or making reports on power consumption," Howe helpfully added.

"Yeah, that too." Valey shrugged. "I guess they have a lot of lights, or something. And they don't just export whole fruit. Making stuff like jam? Takes heat to cook that stuff down."

Starlight squinted. "But how hard is it to get power? Don't you just stick a beam into the ground, or something?" She looked to Valey. "You said that in Blueleaf."

"Beats me." Valey shrugged. "I only follow new stuff. As far as I know, Ironridge's power grid hasn't been changed in years. I mean, speaking of Blueleaf! Breaking down like crazy, and still nobody will fix it! Crazy, huh? Anyway, I care about what ponies are doing."

Curious, Starlight glanced at Howe. Valey was obviously fishing to see if he would react, or whether he knew what Neon Nova had been up to... but his cheerful, carefree expression betrayed nothing.

They pressed on, leaving the paperwork room and passing through two more like it. At one point, the corridor became slightly more refined, the floorboards interlocking better and wooden trim covering the cracks at the edges, before it passed by a series of large windows overlooking a metal-lined factory room filled with pipes and canning equipment. Then the windows ended, and after another turn the decor went back to its previous standard of what could generously be called aged class.

Another room passed, this time set with empty luncheon tables that looked suitable for a public event. Several times, smartly-dressed couriers and scribes hurried by, scrolls of paper protruding from saddlebags or even clutched in their mouths.

"Shouldn't be too much further," Valey muttered, voice bouncing off the plain, maze-like walls of the place. "At least, I'm pretty sure we're not lost... Wait, hold up." She spread her wings, blocking the path. "Hear that?"

From somewhere around the next corner, a familiar voice was arguing passionately. "I know you said it wasn't a real job; I'm just trying to get a letter of recommendation or something I can put on my resume for applying to the skyport!..."

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[RoboRed]