Chapter 15
Tracy watched a few seconds more, gauging the pony’s reaction. But he’d barely been in contact with her for the last few weeks, ever since her first attempt to get him… arrested? Whatever the ponies would’ve done to someone who didn’t belong. Maybe nothing, if Discord was telling the truth.
“Do you not have ice cream here?” He settled both on the kitchen counter, then went for bowls and a scoop. He placed one there, not waiting for Rose before filling the bottom of his bowl and making a little space at the edge of the table.
Strange things could happen in another world, including his body trying to trick him into enjoying bugs. But his favorite flavors still tasted as fantastic as he remembered. He savored each bite, even if he had to balance a spoon with a wing while he did.
“No time,” Rose croaked, shaking herself free of the small mountain of pages. They scattered all around her, and she rose to her hooves. “I only have until tonight to… make the final order. If I get it wrong…” Was she so tired she’d forgotten how much she hated him? Tracy settled the spoon back into his bowl, though some part of him didn’t care if he spilled.
But it was hard to look at a creature in so much distress, no matter how much she’d done to him. How long could he hold a grudge? “You look like you’re having some trouble,” he said, keeping his tone as neutral as he could. Anything less, and she might think this was just another attack. “Do you want some help?”
She glared back at him, and Tracy half expected her to at least try at an insult. Then she looked away, apparently too exhausted even for that. “What would you know about business?”
Not very much, but I know a lot about data entry. “It wouldn’t even take that long,” he continued. “Toss my ice cream in the freezer for me, I’ll grab my scanner from upstairs. Your forms all look the same, so this shouldn’t take more than an hour.”
“What are you talking ab—” He hurried past her up the stairs, through the open door to his bedroom. Most of his crap was still packed in boxes, but at least he’d sorted enough to know which had technology and which didn’t. He tore open the portable scanner—a relic he’d inherited from his father’s old things, nothing he’d ever expected to use. His inability to throw anything away was Rose’s gain.
Nothing had changed as he hefted it downstairs, balancing it in his wings and one hoof. He nearly tripped more than once but managed to set it down beside the entertainment center.
“My ice cream, I said…” he groaned, but fell abruptly silent. Rose was crying again, staring down at her oppressive mountain of accounting as though it were a beast about to devour her. You should’ve gone for help sooner, Rose. You’re stubborn about more than just your paranoia.
Tracy took a few minutes to set things up on the couch—his laptop would be a pain to use down here without the modified keyboard, but his dexterity had made great strides in the last few weeks. He could manage a touchscreen, anyway.
He took a few sheets at random off the table, carrying them over to the form-feed drawer on his printer.
Rose barely noticed. She was in a daze, staring down at her binder and occasionally scratching at it with a pencil. It didn’t seem like she’d made any progress for some time. Maybe days, if Tracy was right about how familiar that page looked.
The process was painful at first, since he had to manually map scanned input to columns and rows. By the third sheet he only had a few things to enter, and by the tenth he just had to correct smudged numbers or unreadable writing. Tracy might not know very much about running a business, but the data spoke clearly enough. He piled up the scanned sheets on the empty recliner, gathering up anther wing full to bring to the scanner.
“What are you…” Rose remained at her chair. She didn’t even try to stop him, much less get up and look. “What kind of… weapon is that?”
“It’s called a scanner, and it’s running OCR on your accounting. I’ll admit I was a little optimistic. More like… three hours.” He glanced back to the kitchen and winced as he saw the slime dripping slowly across the floor. Right. Didn’t put that away. He could always buy more tomorrow. When he got hired, he could buy more than any human or horse could eat.
“That doesn’t… mean anything,” Rose groaned. But she didn’t have the energy to keep arguing, or do anything else for that matter. She flopped back onto the kitchen table, and soon enough she was snoring.
Tracy could feel a little of that tiredness himself, though he felt no pressure to rush to bed on a Friday night. He could keep awake for a good cause. Already there were more pages piled up on the couch than scattered on the table. An hour passed, until the table had been completely cleared and all he was missing was the binder. Probably the oldest of Rose’s records were in there, based on the dates from what he had scanned, but even so… getting that information into the database would at least give him some idea of what had gone wrong.
It was probably noon outside, or midnight in the world that made any sense to him. Too bad he hadn’t ever properly moved in, or he could’ve put a pot of coffee on to help keep him awake.
“I need your binder,” he said, prodding at it with a hoof. “I’m assuming you care about your records earlier than a year ago. At least I won’t have the scanner jamming on half the pages with the stuff you actually took care of.”
She stared up at him, pulling it closer to her chest reflexively. “I don’t…” She finally seemed to see him then, and the empty table in front of her. She stared around, until her eyes settled on the organized piles across the room. “It’s not about getting them straightened, Tracy. I need to… I need to know what to order, and how much. If I can’t give the bank a… profitability estimate, they’re not going to give us the bits.” She shook her head once, and a little of the glaze vanished from her eyes. “I don’t know why I’m even telling you this. There’s nothing you can do. Not even Lily and Daisy can help, and they’re in the stall with me every day. But just knowing how to arrange flowers or how to keep them alive… it isn’t the same thing as actually running the stand.”
“I know.” He crossed the room towards his laptop, resting a hoof on the lid. “I scanned everything. I know how many of each item you sold, I know how much you paid each time, and whether you made a profit or a loss. If we generalize, we might be able to guess which flowers sold best at which times of year.” He lowered his voice to a mutter, tapping the screen to scroll through the reports the accounting software had spat out. What would work think about him using their license to run the books for an alien florist in another universe? “The only thing I can’t figure out is why the hell I’m helping you.”
“You can’t.” Rose dragged her hooves as she crossed the room, staring uncomprehending at his laptop screen. “I’ve been working on this for weeks now. Ever since I gave up on the last—doesn’t matter. I’ve been trying to get the festival numbers for weeks. What did you even… do?”
“The same thing every company does nowadays,” he responded, pointing at the screen. “Know your numbers, know your business. I’d like the rest of your records before you make predictions based on this.” He slipped past her, opening the binder and flipping past her garbled attempt to correlate all this. More than one separate attempt based on the number of crumpled pages.
He slipped the other pages out, then settled them into the scanner. By now the computer barely even stopped him for input, just an occasional confirmation on which way to read a character. Through reasons that defined all explanation, it handled alien handwriting no different than any of the others it could reference from its online OCR database.
Should we even be speaking the same language? But he was getting into details again, and the more he tried to figure out the less sense any of this made. Discord might strictly enforce his contracts, but he didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Rose settled onto her haunches, watching silently as the printer scanned her accounting. The graphs shifted a little each time, expanding the time horizon back and showing exactly how her little company had become insolvent. Finally, he’d gone through the last sheet, and he tabbed over a few times to the general inventory report. It was basically the same thing she’d been trying to create herself, only… without all the mistakes and starting over.
“This what you wanted?” he asked. “Wait, hold on. I’ll just…” The printer hummed, and a few seconds later spat out a stack of pages. He settled them in front of her, then finally let himself sit down. “That’s what you wanted, right? Three years of inventory. You didn’t keep great information about how long your inventory lasts, or else it would probably be able to give you more precise waste calculations. I just guesstimated three weeks for everything based on how long my mom used to keep flowers before they went bad.”
Rose backed away, taking the sheets and spreading them on the floor in front of her. She snatched the binder back, tearing her own graph paper right out and holding it up to the printouts. “H-how…” Tracy couldn’t guess how she could confirm much of anything from the state of her own books, but apparently the numbers satisfied her. “I thought we were having trouble with the petunias. I just thought that, fractionally…” She trailed off, looking back at him. “How?”
“You’re not the first company to switch to digital. Everybody does it, and they all have different books. I just… made some guesses about what you wanted, and scanned it all in. You’re way better off keeping it digital from now on, by the way. You can get your day’s numbers added in a few seconds.” Except you’ll need to borrow my computer each time, and I’m not sure why I’d let you.
Rose flung her forelegs around his neck and started sobbing all over again, right into his shoulder. Tracy let her do it, body stiff and awkward. “It’s… okay?” Was it? Those numbers were bleak.
“You can’t… know what this means,” she sobbed. “I was wrong… about you.”
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I think those pictures gave me diabetes.
I love that particular picture. Tracy looks like he's still trying to figure out what Rose did to him
Pony-way did a great job with the final picture
"We lose a little on everything we sell, but we make it up in volume."
You'd be amazed at how many real companies believe this.
(and I can tell this is a fantasy story at this point, because a female just admitted she was wrong.)
Oooh, he's blushing!
----
Really wondering about his Cutie Mark...
----
Yay! He's helping!
This was cute
They'd think that the alien now owes them money for benefiting from their software, most likely.
Should be defied.
You'd do it for tiny horse snuggles, of course.
I can picture Archer reading about how they left the ice cream out and saying, “Do you want ants!? Because that’s how you get ants!”
Dammit, that last picture gave me mega-diabetes. I'll need to go get some insulin befo--URgFEGFLGDMg
That last picture. Something tells me Tracy's computer will be used to help Rose more often than he thinks. Though this might cause problems for Tracy's career prospects. And there's no telling if Rose would reciprocate despite being thankful.
10221831
You might want to resize that to fine print proportions. Don't want an angry mob visiting you.
10221840
Give it some time and he'll be doing it for a different kind of horse snuggle.
Heh, called it on Rose starting to sing a different song once Tracy basically helps save her business.
But it is pretty cool how much just a little organization can help sort out finances. I'm no financial expert myself, but I know enough to know disorganization is one bane you want to avoid.
The only thing i dont like abbout this chapter is, that its way to short.
Need more updates T.T
I can feel the sheer confusion radiating from Tracy in that last picture and it's hilarious.
Now how long until Tracy introduces some of the more creative accounting/tax tricks used by humans to Equestrian accountants?
Speaking of which, I wonder if there were any accounting firms in Ponyville who might have been able to help Roseluck.
Behold, the mightiest weapon of the Thunder Monkeys, Excell!!!
*gasp!* Noooo! I never would have guessed with all the not-hostile but clearly hostile to the right eyes (red and white flower pone) behavior being exhibited by your roommate!
I swear, the flower pone posse needs to get some grass. Like, some grass.
Perhaps the first time in history Clippy was actually welcome.
By design, yes.
That may be the most romantic use of a spreadsheet I've ever seen... other than how Twilight Sparkle's parents met. In any case, yeah, saving her business will convince Rose even if nothing else will. What kind of invasion makes you fiscally solvent?
10221831
And some other fantasy ones too!
Hurray! Thank ya, Oh miGhty Microsahft!
When this story is over there should be a compilation of all the images
Now THIS is progress! Goodbye paranoia, hello SHIPPING.
At least Rose is willing to admit that she was wrong about him.
10221902
Excel is a bitch to do this.. why everyone so focused on microsoft. There way better solution for this task, including Smartsheet, and specialized services like one he mentioned in other chapter.
And the pencil drops!
Naturally, just putting the data into the facts tables won't solve all the problems, but at least it will highlight them and let her finally come up with an actual plan of action for improvement. Hopefully that's good enough for the bank, and whoever is her account rep will be floored by her (hopefully changed) demeanor.
RIP Ice cream, you would have been so delicious...
Keep going! ;)
Now we're getting to the tender bits!
10221990
It's a more known reference. Specially when you don't know any others and/or want to make a joke that most will understand.
Who knew that making a fuckin excel spread sheet was the way he’d get her off his case
What fun is there in making sense?
Romance tag activate!
Now those pictures are wonderful.
And they are starting to actually interact with each other!
Also, really, really good pictures.
wow the artwork in this story is just amazing.
it just makes a grate story totally awesome.
10221996
The icecream shall be remembered, in the halls of Valhalla!
That they should pay him for advertising fee.
But you are the FIRST company in Equus to switch to digital.
Thus began the first wave of the Digital Invasion of Equus.
At the end of the day, I can see Twilight screaming about disecting these miraculous gadgets to get to know their secrets - for science.
Your artist is magnificent! And did (s)he use a real screenshot of Windows 10 with Excel open?
Some bored accountant deep with Tracey's organisation is going to
rubber stampdigitally sign off on cloud costs for running a flower stall in Equestria, mark my words.And this is why my OC florist has a bouquet of flowers wrap up in a spreads sheet as her cutie mark!
The ladies love a man who knows Excel like the back of his hand
10222848
Bah, it's easy. He's in appdev.
This is a pony buying and selling flowers via a currency of gold coins with small-value transactions in an integer-only currency. He can say it's a test data set, and nobody is going to think anything strange about it since the data couldn't possibly be from a real business. He'll be able to issue her a valid license, no question.
10223063
"Hey Tracy, we were going through the data in your test environment and it's pretty good - found two corner cases. We're going to need lots more by thursday before we push to prod on monday"
10223080
"Sorry, that would break the testing protocol. Just clone it and keep feeding that its own projections as new data."
10221894
Quick! Someone bribe his posting bot again...
This chapter is a crime against ice cream.
Does he not have an old laptop he can donate? Hell I’ve got 20 years of obsolete tech in my junk closet.
An Excel tutorial to wooing your special somepony.
10221907
Don't forget about Twilight and Cadance mapping out Shining Armor's shipping compatibility in IDW Issue #12.
10223211
He only has what he could fit in his car to move. He might have an old laptop as an emergency backup but it wouldn’t be surprising if he doesn’t.
Wow. Tracy is just a somewhat naive but genuinely good person isn't he?
I guess he WILL fit in rather well in Equestria.
Full digital conversion of all their records, and maybe Tracy can take Rose to Earth and they pool their combined funds to buy her a laptop of her own.
Ahh in that picture at the bottom with the laptop, the laptop's brand is Pegasus. Classy, that's a reference to ASUS brand laptops, which I heard are the best Windows laptops around.
10221863
Me too.
10221907
A smart one actually. Cause if you wanna take over the best way is to be helpful, think long term and make them want to have you there. Its the ones that need it NOW and get their jollies off the unhappiness of others that get defeated.
10225824
Just don't die before you invent psychohistory.
The artwork on this one really stands out. Who made them?
10222568
The fact that's a brand of Icecream around here, only makes that comment all the sweeter