A Trip North: Greenock
A Trip North: Greenock
Admiral Biscuit
There was a string of hopper cars on the other side of the station platform, and a boardwalk path with a set of short crossing gates to close the way when trains were moving. A spur track led off to the west, and I looked both ways to make sure that there were no trains coming, just in case I was wrong about the purpose of the gates.
The inn was just down the main street, a spreading three-story building with a thatched roof. That was my first stop, even though there likely wasn't much of a rush to get a room. I'd been the only person to get off the train at Greenock, after all.
Then again, maybe they also rented rooms by the month.
What I could see of the village had a boomtown feel. I couldn't tell if that was because it was a boomtown, or if that was just how the ponies had felt like building it. While there was surely some sort of rhyme and reason to their architecture choices, I'd never been able to make any sense of it. Things ranged from somewhat modern, to traditional European, to straight-up fantastic.
It would be like seeing a Rolls Royce and the Weinermobile both for sale at the same dealership—that was the best comparison I could come up with.
But then I got to thinking that the start of the Industrial Age on Earth had produced similar results, at least as far as I could remember. I probably should have studied up on my history a little bit more before coming to Equestria.
Inside it was inviting and what I'd consider conventional pony. It wasn't as fancy as my hotel back in Manehattan—there wasn't much in the way of furnishings, and the front counter was just unfinished wood. The stallion at the front counter was trying to lend an air of high class to the place that it hadn't earned: he was wearing a waistcoat with golden pinstripes.
He took a step back before recovering and smiled politely. “Good evening, uh, sir. Are you looking for a room?”
“For a couple of days. I'm traveling.”
“Very good.” He glanced down at a book on his desk, which I assumed was some sort of reservation book. Or maybe it was his first day on the job, and that was the book of employee guidelines. Inkeeping for Dummies.
That was a rather uncharitable thought, but for some reason I had gotten stuck on the thought of John Cleese in Fawlty Towers. He'd have a long-suffering wife who tried to rein him in. . . .
“Would you prefer an upper floor or lower?” he asked, interrupting my thoughts.
“Either is fine.”
“Mm-hm.” He glanced back down at the book. “I have a room on the north side which I think will suit your needs. We have a dining room where you can take your meals if you like, and each floor has its own toilets. There's a spa to the west of the hotel for your hygienic needs as well, or a bath can be brought to your room.”
Said bath would likely consist of a washtub and a pony with pails of hot water which in some way was kind of tempting and I wasn't sure why. “I think that the spa will be fine.”
“Very good.” He wrinkled his muzzle. “There's also a public house down the street, if that's something you're interested in.”
It was, but I didn't want to press him on the issue. Maybe it was cliched, but it was a great place to meet ponies, and I was fully intending to go there as soon as I put my bag away in my room.
***
The bar had the same kind of boomtown feel to it, but at least they weren't trying to pretend that they were something else. Interestingly, instead of having art or decorative woodwork to liven the place up, they had flowers. Some of them were cut and in vases; others were in small pots.
I took a seat right at the bar where I could keep an eye on the entrance, in case any interesting ponies came in.
That was a good choice—I'd barely taken a sip of my beer when a cluster of mares came through the door. They were all wearing hard hats with little lights mounted on front, and all of them looked like they'd just gotten done with a hard day's work.
I turned enough to see them out of the corner of my eye. Unfortunately for me, they'd chosen a table a bit closer to the back.
It didn't take long at all for them to get in an argument with the waitress. “How come we can't pay in gems?”
“That's the rule here.” The waitress had that slightly exasperated note in her voice like she'd had this same conversation dozens of times before.
“We've got rubies.”
“Yeah. A whole bucket of 'em.”
“You're not the only ones to try and pay in gems, you know.”
That conversation was getting my interest. A bucket of rubies? They probably weren't paying any attention to me, so I turned around to get a few view of the developing situation.
They did, indeed, have a bucket, and I was immensely curious, so I quickly finished my drink and walked over to their table, where their conversation with the waitress was becoming more heated.
As promised, the bucket was full of rubies, some of them nearly the size of my fist. Probably a million dollars worth or more . . . at least, back on Earth.
“Do you have any actual bits?”
“Back in Pit Town.”
That perked my interest even more. What was Pit Town? I didn't remember seeing that on the timetable, although there was ‘pit’ in the railroad name.
“Give us a break, we didn't know.”
“Maybe you could keep the bucket, like for insurance that we'd come back to pay.”
“I don't think so.” The waitress flicked her tail. “If you had something worthwhile.”
“I'm hungry,” one of them grumbled. “I don't wanna walk all the way back to Pit Town.”
“Ask real nice and I'll let you ride back in the wagon.”
I reached my decision. It was a dumb decision, in the grand scheme of things, but I was utterly confident that I would never in my life be able to buy that many gems that cheaply. So what if I could never take them back to Earth? Maybe I could trade them for something back in Manehattan, and if not, I could just enjoy the experience of holding a king's ransom worth of jewels.
“I'll buy your bucket, and pay for your dinners in exchange. And one beer each, if you want.”
“Only one?”
“Shut up, Lignite.”
“Have you got bits?” The waitress narrowed her eyes.
“Yeah.”
“You'd better.” She took her order pad back out of her apron and looked around at the table. “Okay, who's going first?”
***
Naturally, I got invited to stay at their table for the meal. They were all pit ponies who worked in a coal mine, and apparently the gems were something that they found frequently and had no particular use for.
The foreman—forepony—was named Longwall, and she was accompanied with Assay, Gytta, Overburden, and Lignite.
We spent all of our dinner swapping stories, them about mining and me about life on Earth, and I was having so much fun talking to them that I relaxed my one beer rule. Only a little bit, though. I'd heard about roughnecks on Earth and their legendary drinking prowess, and I didn't want to wind up being bankrupted by them.
They also had a room at the inn for the night, and they said that they were going to spend tomorrow at the spa before going back to Pit Town. They invited me to join them; Assay said that she could put me temporary on the mine payroll as a consultant as a way of saying thank you. I politely declined that offer.
They were, however, insistent that I come and visit the mine, which they were quite proud of. And I had to admit, I was curious about it myself. I wasn't sure what I'd get to see; at least back on Earth they'd just show you the visitor's center for safety reasons, but Longwall was insistent that she'd give me a tour of the mine.
Gytta had an objection. “He's kind of tall for it. He’ll bump his head unless he walks on all fours.”
“He can ride in a cart,” Lignite said.
“You get to pull it.”
“Fine. I don't mind.”
***
It was a lot later than I'd planned when I finally got back to my hotel room with my bucket of rubies. I set them in front of the nightstand, dropped my shirt over the top of it so it wasn't too obvious—not that I thought that anyone would bother them—and stretched out on the bed. I figured I'd get up early, look around town a little bit and then follow them back to Pit Town and their mine sometime in the afternoon. It’d be a nice day trip, and I wouldn’t have to pack anything.
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The journey continues!
The innkeeper seems a bit aloof or even snooty, but maybe he just doesn't get a lot of humans and is out of his comfort zone.
Are you sure those are decorations and not bar food?
Go on, try; I'm sure the customs ponies will find your attempt hilarious.
Oh, look. Rubies from the Red Glass vein. (snicker)
(all of my 'scam' red lights lit up when they produced the bucket)
I am genuinely divided on whether the gems are real, but super common and not very valuable (after all, Rarity seems to have an easy time getting huge cartloads of them and even Maud comments that Ponyville's gem cave is filled with common gems), or that these ponies are totally scamming Joe.
9007369 I just had a thought... the Gem Homeworld would be freaking the hell out if Equestrian dragons showed up.
Somebody make a dark comedy crossover of this. (Don't look at me, I work.)
9007412
I'm pretty sure I've seen one with Maud wrecking face...
Intresting to see rubies in there, Chromium doped aluminium oxide. The local coalfield is intermixed with layers of fireclay and high alumina shales, used for making Ultimate Engineering brick. On the top of the hill on the older maps are marked Alum mines, that is aluminium sulphate that I assume has been formed by water interacting with the sulphur in the coal, and the aluminium compounds in the shale, then depositing elsewhere. Throw in an alkalie interaction, maybe halite intrusion from the sandstone era, and get geode style crystaline formations in the fluid interface between shale and sandstone?
Well, one possibility for local conditions, maybe there was more sulphate, halite or carbonate from the limestone layer?
9007338
It does indeed!
Maybe he really is reading through Innkeeping for Dummies.
They certainly could be both.
"What's in the bucket, sir?"
"Oh, it's just my toiletries bucket because that's where humans keep their toiletries and there's certainly not a king's ransom of rubies in there."
9007339
That's because you're a cynical human. Ponies--especially miners--can easily get buckets of real gems.
Whether or not they can trade them for anything is of course a different issue.
Manehattan
9007369
The first--the gems are real but practically worthless. Dinner and beer for five ponies is about the value of the bucket.
9007412
Since it seems that they grow when they get a hoard, it's possible that the first Equestrian dragon there would grow immense, and there probably wouldn't be a second to successfully claim it.
Not that it would really change things for the Gem Homeworld.
9007639
Oops. That was a really silly mistake.
9007650 I read one with a pretty obvious title that fits your description just a few minutes ago, so I think I'll go with that for now.
9007732
If the word 'spuds' is on your mind, you read the right one.
9007338
I kinda feel like the pony customs wouldn't really care, but the human customs would care a lot.
9007641
Makes you wonder what ponies would think of DeBeers and the wedding ring industry, doesn't it? Man we're dumb sometimes.
9007822
I have an idea what they might think.
9007894
Ha! Why am I not surprised you wrote a story like this.
9007627
"Man, these humans get up to the weirdest tricks. Remember that girl who tried to disguise herself as a pony?"
I know it made them easy to identify but I'm surprised they were still wearing their helmets as it didn't sound like they were straight from the mines, it sounded a bit more like they were on a day trip.
I guess the spa probably has extra services but certainly around where I grew up (Somerset in the south west of England) the pits mostly had their own bath houses built near their entrances although they were built within in my fathers life time so probably not until the 40s so rather later than you normally set the process of your pony stories. Before that it was each individual house having a tin bath in front of the fire.
9007637
I imagine the bar doesn't take gems because they're still trying to figure out what to do with the last bucket of gems they got.
Well, if nothing else, our hero has snacks available should he meet a dragon.
Also, the mine tour should be interesting. Not like he'll be in there long enough to get a souvenir case of black lung.
9007412 9007433
Oh, she does more than just wreck face...
9007641 I wonder if the value goes up for a certain size and clarity.
They'd still be cheap, but perhaps the largest and most flawless might be akin to gem-quality quartz on our world. Semi-precious at a certain level.
9008121
I'm in some ways kinda predictable. And amusingly enough, it could have been planning for this story that caused that story (this one's been in the works for quite some time, but it took forever to actually write it).
9008137
I thought we'd decided that Meghan was going to smuggle herself into Equestria in a duffel bag.
<missing image*>
(*I am 99% sure there is an image of Tara Strong in a suitcase, but my google-fu is weak, and I can't find it).
9008352
Sometimes I wear my work shirt and work hat outside of work, because I can't be bothered to take it off or worry about hat hair (you can't see it when it's under a hat). So that's my justification.
I'd say that they have company showers for daily use, but that's not the same as a spa, with scented mineral water and hoof-filings and maybe a massage, too. Certainly, they don't have to go all the way to Greenock for basic hygiene.
9008366
It's very likely that the bar did take gems, until they got more than they'd ever want in a lifetime of bartending and even their suppliers got tired of taking buckets of gems in exchange for barrels of beer.
9008786
Which could potentially save his life one day. Everyone who wanders around Equestria should always bring a bucket of gems, in case of dragon encounter.
Although for a small extra fee, that might be available at the gift shop.
9009028
Presumably, and potentially also for spell value.
Even if they're as common as quartz, certain gems might be worth far more simply because of their rarity, or their usefulness. As I'm sure you know, there was a time that aluminum was more valuable than gold, despite the fact that it's about the most abundant metal on Earth.
I suspect paying for things with a bucket of gems are to ponies what a bucket of coals might be to us.
9040274
Pretty much, yeah. Although coal is more valuable.
When I visited Japan back in the late 80s, I wasn't looked at as an anomaly...while I was in Toyko. Once I ventured out to the smaller towns, I was gawked at by practically everyone who saw me.
I think that's how our protagonist should be treated once he reached the smaller towns. They may be used to seeing Humans in Manehatten, but he'd be an oddity in a small town.
9792531
My uncle stood out like a sore thumb in China, but then he went when it was barely open to the West. Early seventies, I think.
Some of that would really depend on how much the ponies got news from bigger towns, I think. Another factor is how many sapient species there are in Equestia--I honestly think that that could be a tempering factor in how a human would be viewed. That’s one of those things that could go many ways, IMHO. In this particular story, I’m intending to avoid the “OMG a human” trope, although in other stories with different purposes, I do use it.
9007491
Senku Ishigami lives!
9010199
This is an interesting reverse of the California gold rush. During the gold rush, prospectors would have to carry around gold nuggets to pay for things because the local economy got so overinflated from all the gold that came in.
I wonder what ponies use for very large sums of money?
10950561
I mean, the same principle does apply, I think—when you’ve got too much of something, it isn’t valuable any more. Whether that be that you’re just digging gems you don’t want out of a mine, or have figured out a way to cheaply refine aluminum (which back in Napoleon's time was worth more than gold, now we use it for disposable beer cans).
I assume they’ve got a banking industry, so probably letters of credit. That’s how it was often done historically . . . or banknotes, which I think historically were kind of the same but not exactly.
Interestingly, and my memory might be fuzzy on this, but when I was in Scotland around 1999, the Scottish bank printed one-pound notes which were valid in Scotland but nowhere else in the UK.
We get better at growing corundum (crystals of aluminum oxide). Sapphire and rubies are corundum; so now, the price will drop. In the 2000s, we started having lense-covers for cameras, with screen-covers for smartwatches in the 2010s, screen-covers for smartphones now. This trend is because corundum has a hardness of 9 on the Scale Moh with only diamond with a hardness of 10 being harder. As the cost of corundum drops and we can grow larger crystals, we could have houses where each pane of each window is a single crystal of corundum in the 2030s. Cars with corundum-windows, would have windows much less susceptible to scratching, cracking, and breaking than glass-windows.
11418496
Automotive glass has some complex requirements. It needs to be strong, obviously. In the case of windshields, it needs to not alter vision in any conceivable situation, and needs to be able to deal with cracks. If automotive regulations are still the same as they were some years ago, it also needs to keep an unbelted human inside the vehicle. Depending on the application, it also needs to absorb crash energy (Tesla's glass roofs also absorb a huge amount of impact energy when they break in a collision). It needs to be UV stable and not suffer pitting from sand or dirt over many, many years of use (I had a truck with a sandblasted windshield that caused some visibility problems). When it does break, it needs to do so in a way that minimizes the possibility of injury--automotive safety glass breaks into little cubes which aren't very sharp, and probably won't cut you too badly as they're flying around after a collision. It needs to deal with broad temperature swings, and it also needs to be reasonably affordable for the mass-production process.
While I don't know if there are better alternatives to the windows used now, given the sheer amount of things it has to do it's a complex engineering challenge. Depending on the circumstances, 'unbreakable' isn't the best solution; modern cars are designed to sacrifice themselves to protect the human occupants.
11419229
Keeping the passenger in the cabin is marginally better, for the passenger, than letting the passenger fly out the window, but the passenger would be an order of magnitude better off buckled down. It might be better for everypony else in the vehicle to let flankholes refusing to buckle up go flying out the window:
One has to ride with "Uncle FreeDumb" as he screams "¡Stop The Steal!". He refuses to buckle up because of FreeDumb. His ranting distracts the driver causing an accident. He becomes an uncontrolled missile, causing severe HeadInjuries and breaking the necks of the other 3 passengers. By refusing to buckle up, he murders the other passengers, but escapes with only minor injuries himself after bouncing around the cabin. The other passengers died for FreeDumb.
Corundum meets these requirements. The others, not so much.
11419589
In general, people are safer inside a vehicle than outside of it when there's a collision. Even if seatbelts aren't worn (which they should be), the interior of a vehicle offers some protection with soft, yielding surfaces, vs. most of what someone would land on outside the vehicle. Also, in rollover collisions, an unbelted occupant can be ejected, and then have the vehicle roll over them, which is often fatal.
Yes, unrestrained passengers flying into restrained passengers is a problem. Some forms of transport where seat belts aren't used (such as trains, large busses) have seats which are designed to help compartmentalize and keep people where they should be. That can be effective, but of course it only works in certain types of impacts.
There really isn't one size fits all restraint system/airbag system that will always work in all situations, but what we have now is a lot better than what we had ten years ago, or twenty years ago. In general, automotive deaths have been trending down in the last 20 years, although in the last couple years they've gone back up and as far as I know the people who research that don't know exactly why this happened.