Gunner in the Works

by Hyperaggressive Porridge

Chapter 2 : Tea, Taboos & Technology

Dave pried his eyes open. The ceiling looked unfamiliar. His whole body ached.
Fragmented memories danced in front of his eyes - arriving at the new workplace, Boris being Boris, the uptight representative getting ready to unleash yawnfest of the century...

"Sheesh, I haven't partied this hard since graduation."
He shifted uncomfortably.
"What did I even drink yesterday? I can't recall the party at all. Did I pull off cocktail-from-rocket-fuel thing with Boris again? Jeez! We need to stop doing that."

In a slow zombie-like fashion Dave rose in the bed and lazily looked around.
It appeared that he was in some sort of hospital. If nothing else, the x-ray images hanging on a glowing screen were a dead giveaway.
There also was new and somewhat uncomfortable detail: he was stark naked, save for bunch of band-aids covering various scratches.
"Not even a patient gown, what a bunch of cheapskates!"

Dave jumped to his feet and after a short search confirmed his worst assumption - dang medics didn't leave his clothes - or any of his belongings for that matter - in the room.
The only thing on bed stand was glass of water, which he immediately emptied, but no trace of any sort of clothing.

"So be it!"

Some fiddling later Dave fashioned a sort of toga from the bed's blanket.
For a second, Dave entertained himself with a thought that it might be more didactic to tell off guilty party while being angry AND butt-naked, but on the other hand, he didn't need public indecency charge.

Rubbing his eyes he headed for exit.
The door out of ward was strangely low, with door frame beam gently brushing strands of Dave's bed hair.
"Jeez, how cheap does it get?"

---

Once out, Dave strode down the corridor ready to angrily complain to the first staff member he finds and, more importantly, to get them to give his stuff back.

Or so he thought.
"What the?!"
Two colorful equines with strangely big and expressive eyes just stood there looking as surprised as he was.
Dave was the first to put surprise into words.
"Alright, now what the fresh heck is this?! What are you doing here? Horses don't belong in a hospital!"

Dave's eyes finally focused on the duo - one appeared to be of amber color and wearing a stethoscope, and second one was purple unicorn with pink streak in the mane.

"You can talk!" Happily blurted out the unicorn.

Dave nearly jumped out of his skin.
"YOU can talk?!"

"Of course I can talk-" unicorn remarked "-and so can everypony else."
Engineer just stared off in the space for a second before returning to reality.

"You know what? I'm just gonna roll with it. Not even gonna question it. No. Just no. Let's start anew. Hi. My name is Dave."

"Hi! My name is Twilight Sparkle and this is doctor Greymare."

Dave caught himself staring off in the distance again, trying to process what the heck is going on.
He had one hypothesis. It was ugly, but it explained everything perfectly.

The doctor pony just shook his head and asked matter-of-factly "Is that... a blanket?"

Dave's mind snapped back to the problems at hand.

"Well, if somebody didn't steal my clothes, I wouldn't be cosplaying Julius Caesar right now!"

Unicorn and doctor exchanged looks and doctor Greymare spoke again.
"Can you just... Not wear anything, Dave?"

Dave just stood there dumbfounded. It didn't seem that they had a concept of modesty.
"No!"
He pointed at the two to further emphasize his point.
"NO! How to put it? In my culture it's taboo to show up naked where other people might see you! It is forbidden! It is ILLEGAL! And also disgusting and dangerous! Now give me back my clothes!"

Twilight suddenly beamed and rubbed hooves while shaking in excitement.
Dave recoiled slightly, unsure how to react to that.
"What's her deal?"

"What a peculiar culture! This calls for a full scale research, and papers, dozens of papers. Oh, maybe even a book!"
Unicorn bounced up and down excitedly doing some sort of trot-in-place, much to Dave's confusion.

"Okay, okay! Twilight, was it? I'll help you with research, but, please, I NEED to get my things. Where are they?"

Greymare thought for a second and replied
"I do believe they were taken to the laundry."

"Oh no. OH NO!"

Doctor pony lifted one eyebrow
"Is there a problem with that?"

"YES! No time to explain, where's the laundry room?"

---

Dave burst inside the laundry room.
It was cramped and full of stacks of washed fabric, which permeated the air with characteristic smell.
Several washing machines were humming in unison at the back of the room.
Dave immediately started sweeping the room. The dirty laundry bins, much to his horror, were completely empty.
Finally his gaze fell on the table in the dead center of the room.

All of the things he had in his pockets were lined up on said table.
"Thank goodness," Dave exhaled with relief. His wallet, ID, wristwatch, headphones and engineering calculator were safe. Caliper and knife probably could have taken a rough wash, but Dave wasn't complaining.
Twilight and Greymare still were observing him from the doorway with same puzzled look.

"These things-" he pointed to the stuff on the table "-can't be washed. Don't know why I assumed nobody would take them out of the pockets."

Now that immediate crisis was resolved, he could go back to the original plan: getting his clothes back, finally dressing up as a civilized human being and stop parodying ancient Rome.

Seeing that Dave was eyeing the washers suspiciously, Greymare cleared his throat and said
"You've been here for a day and a half, Dave. Check the dried stacks for your... possessions."
Indeed, Dave could spot familiar socks with lambda-prints all over them sticking out from one of precarious clothe-towers.

Dave could practically feel the uncomfortably inquisitive stare burning his back. He turned around and sure enough, Twilight was there, peering at him with unhealthy amount of curiosity, interrupting observation only to jot some notes down.

"Sheesh, a little privacy?"

"Oh, right. Cultural thing!"

The door closed, leaving him alone in the room.
Dave sighed with a hint of a relief. Without colorful horses around, things almost started to make sense. Almost.
Now to find rest of his actual clothing in these stacks of freshly-dried stacks of bedding, towels and, surprisingly enough, other clothes.

---

"Okay, I'm done!" Dave called out, stuffing the last of his material possessions into their rightful pockets.
There was no answer. Dave rolled his eyes. Of course there wouldn't be. He obviously was tripping balls this entire time and now was beginning to come off whatever it was.
Swinging door wide open, he stepped outside.

Right beside door purple unicorn levitated a whole stack of paper and quill, scratching new notes with mind-boggling speed. The doctor, however, was nowhere to be seen.

"Nope, still tripping!"

Twilight was so absorbed in intense note-taking that she only noticed Dave when he leaned in and started talking right into her ear.
"Mind tel-"
"AAaaah!" Unicorn jumped a few feet into the air, sending papers all over the corridor.
"Sorry! I didn't mean to startle you."
It was a straight-faced lie, but Dave did feel a prick of guilt for startling her.

After she was done picking up all runaway papers in purple glowing stack, he repeat the question.
"Mind telling me where am I exactly?"

"Well, you see, strictly saying, before answering that question one should consider..."
Twilight's voice immediately took on an unmistakable tone of a lecture.
The reaction of Dave's brain was instantaneous, powerful and on-point; hardened by years of university practice, it zoned out droning sound of Twilight's descant fully and completely.

Some navigational fiascoes later, they finally found the door leading outside.
The sun was setting.

Seeing the sunset made Dave realize that despite only recently crawling out of bed, he was feeling really, really tired.

Twilight practically dragged him through some sort of town, never stopping talking even for a second.

They were heading to some sort of tree.

---

Twilight alarmedly zipped across the library, looking into every nook and cranny.
"Oh no, what will Princess Celestia say about my hospitality when she knows?"

Exerting a great effort to keep his eyelids open, Dave shot a question
"What is so inhospitable about this place?"

"I completely forgot that library doesn't have another bed!"

Dave briefly inspected room through half-shut eyes, spotting a place to sit down with least amount of books hanging dangerously above.
"I'm a-okay with sleeping on the floor. Just give me a pillow." He yawned and listed to the right.

"Are you really going to sleep on the floor in all your clothing?"

A small pillow fell on the floor beside him, which he immediately stuffed under his head. His eyelids seemed to grow heavier with each passing second.

"Eh, ain't no thang. I've had it worse," he slurred in sleepy haze before giving a jaw-crunching yawn and falling into slumber.

---

The morning light barely made it in the window, but Twilight was already up and toiled away, adding more meticulous notes to a piece of paper that at this point was more ink than paper.
Dave could be seen below, waving his hand before his eyes groggily.

"Is anything wrong, Dave?"

"You know, I kind of expected all this to go away."

"Why?"

Dave stood up and handed her back the pillow.
"I presumed whatever happened yesterday to be hallucinogen-induced trip and a part of huge prank from robotics guys."
Seeing Twilight's bewildered gaze, Dave hastily added
"Well, they haven't drugged anyone for their pranks YET but I wouldn't put it past them..."

The pause lengthened. Twilight tried to understand if this was a subtle joke or if he was being serious. Dave simply was reminiscing about the past.

"Good ol' Prank Wars at the campus..." he clapped his hands "Anyway. I don't know what is up with this place, nor do I particularly care. I'm missing the job and I should get home. How can I do that?"

"Good question! Do you remember how you got here?"

Engineer rubbed his chin in thought.
"So, I remember being at the job, then... something happens which I don't quite recall, then I remember some forest, some missing details again and then I woke up in hospital in this place. What is this place anyway?"

Twilight rolled her eyes "Didn't I go over this with you already? Maybe you have some memory-affecting ailment?"

"To be honest, I zoned out during your explanation yesterday, so you might need to give me a refresher on... just about everything."

Twilight looked nonplussed.

"I'm sorry, okay? I was tired!"

"Hey, you also told me that you'll help me with research!"

"That... I did. See? I remember! My memory ain't THAT bad! So research it is then - but! Make it quick, I still need to get home, somehow."

The prospect of research seemed to instantly cheer Twilight up. And also made copious amounts of paper and inkpots appear from the least assuming places all over the room, floating towards her.

"Whoa, how do you do that?"

Twilight lifted one brow. "Unicorn magic. Didn't you see me doing that yesterday? You took it in stride and didn't even ask me about it!"

"Look, I know better than inspect things too closely when tripping balls!" Dave pointed at flying pieces of paper "But really now, this is so freaking cool! Levitation! Real magic or not, this is cool nonetheless!"

Twilight barely managed to stop herself from rolling her eyes again.
"Of course this is real magic! You've never seen magic before?"

"Where I come from we DON'T HAVE magic. Of course there's so-called stage magic but that's just-"

Dave bit his tongue, seeing that his words gave Twilight a minor eye twitch.
"UGH! This is what I get for going with assumptions!"

Twilight practically jumped at her records and started crossing out entire pages in frustration.

Engineer silently observed Twilight's frantic destruction of hoof-written text, but that wasn't what was bothering him.

He had just got a nasty suspicion out of the blue, and currently was mulling over it, investigating it from every side. The implications were... nasty, to say the least. With all this magic and talking pony business, this place was unlikely to be on planet Earth. By this time just about every landmass bigger than palm of hand has been photographed by myriad of spy and commercial satellites. If place like this existed on Earth, it'd be known and flooded with either research teams or tourists. Likely both. Thus, he was unlikely to be on Earth, however gravity and air felt completely ordinary. A parallel dimension maybe?
He glanced at the various writing implements and sheets of paper floating in the air shrouded in some sort of glow. At this point parallel dimension explanation wasn't even that far-fetched.
Getting back home might be harder than expected, let alone getting to work on time. Maybe with the help of magic?

"Argh!" Twilight sent entirety of all paper with even slightest hint of a note into a huge crumpled paper ball and dunked it into a bin. Stacks of fresh paper appeared from the writing table.

"I am going to start over. This time, my approach will be methodical and scientific!"
The mere thought of methodical approach seemed to erase any hint of frustration and cheer Twilight up to the point of worryingly strong enthusiasm.
"Finally we're going to clear a lot of things up! To think, I don't even know what you are! I've never seen a creature like you! Let's start with this."

It was Dave's turn to look nonplussed. Going by the signs, it was going to turn into a biology lecture with him as unwilling lecturer. Best make it short.

He pointed to himself. "I am human."

Twilight's scribbling intensified and went on for much longer than Dave would assume would take to write that short sentence down.
Once the writing fit stopped, he continued "My species evolved from apes over course of millions of years. Do you even have apes here? Gorillas, chimps, monkeys?"
Twilight stared in the distance, then nodded before going back to furious scribbling.

"I still have no idea how you guys manipulate things with hooves, but monkey descent is where we've got our-" he displayed his hands in front of him, clenching and unclenching them "-opposable thumbs."

"Whoa, dude, you got, like, five fingers! That's freaky!"

"No it isn't!" Dave remarked offhandedly before realizing that wasn't coming from Twilight "Wait, who da heck is in here?"

Some purple short-stack creature jumped on the table and pointed it's thumb towards itself, "I don't think we're acquainted. I'm Spike. Spike the Dragon!" He sneezed up a small cloud of greenish flame, as if in proof of his words.

Leaving Dave to question his own sanity again, Spike turned to Twilight "Twilight, aren't you forgetting something?"

"Forgetting what exactly?"

"The tea party?"

"What tea party?"

"The tea party you planned a week ago? Right here on your schedule? With Rarity, Applejack, and, you know, rest of your friends?"

"Oh no!"
The stack of papers that previously majestically levitated hit the floor with dull thud and spilled in every which direction.

"But don't worry! This guy here-" small dragon pointed to himself with slightly smug expression "-took care of preparing snacks! So, just be sure to clean up your, heh, research environment, they'll be here any minute now."

---

It indeed didn't take long for guests to arrive. Dave watched as five more ponies arrives practically in the span of one minute, each more colorful than the last. They kinda cautiously bunched up at the other side of the room, at least until Twilight motioned them to take places.

Frankly saying, guests were unnerved by the odd creature that currently was awkwardly trying to sit down at the table.
It had strange proportions - wiry and gangly; it stood on two legs tall enough for it's chest to be at the eye level of your average pony.
It's muzzle was almost flat, save for it's oddly-shaped nose and disconcertingly small eyes that sat receded in the skull, as if they hid from something.
To make matters worse, it had no coat, except for patch of jet-black hair on top of it's head. The rest was smooth skin of the color that even Rarity couldn't place - it was this strange middle ground between light-brown and pink. As for clothes - Rarity gave them a once-over and averted her gaze - the clothes on that creature were a fashion disaster and a half.

Luckily, the uncomfortable moment was interrupted by Spike; he barged in, balancing quite a stack of various sweets and snacks and started placing them on the table with surprising speed.

---

Twilight looked at the Spike with a hint of a smile.
"Spike, aren't you forgetting something?"

"Like what?"

"Did you forget to prepare the tea for the tea party?"

Spike giggled nervously before squeezing out "Whoops" and evacuating the room post-haste.

Twilight smiled apologetically "It looks like tea will arrive a bit later. Help yourself to sweets, though!"

The awkward silence settled in. Everyone was intent on not addressing the elephant, er, human in the room.
Thankfully Dave had an extensive experience in breaking up awkward silences and turning them into awkward conversations.
He winked at Twilight and whispered loudly "Twilight, you might want to introduce me to your friends. Or something!"

It seemed to do the trick, snapping Twilight out of mental paralysis.
"Ah, right. Everypony - this is Dave-"

"Dave Smith, to be exact."

"-Dave Smith, and he's a human."

"What's a human?" the pony in a cowboy hat inquired in a rather straight-from-the-shoulder manner.

"Applejack! Don't be rude, at least introduce yourself!"

"Oh sorry for that. I am Applejack, this here is Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and-"

"PINKIE PIE!" practically exploded pony who was, indeed, pinkest shade of pink.

"I've never seen anypony like you! Did you come from far away land? Oooh! Do they have ice-cream? Do they have cupcakes? Do they have ice-cream flavored cupcakes?"
Dave was slightly taken aback by the onslaught of questions from motor-mouthed gal, who also somehow managed to approach him in a blink of an eye.

"Pinkie, please!.." Twilight pushed the overly-enthusiastic pony away from Dave and back to her seat.

"But yes, as Twilight said, I'm human and I'm new to these parts. Neither of us is sure of how exactly I got here, or how I can get back to my home. But oh well, enough chatting, let's dig in!"

---

Dave held the cookie in his hand, turning it, staring at it intently all the while.
Twilight, who kept a close eye on him all this time, was first to notice.
"Is... Everything okay?"

Dave pointed to the cookie "I sure hope my chemistry is compatible, 'cause boy, these smell and look tasty! And I'm STARVING!"
He promptly took a large bite out of it.
"Deeee-licious!" The rest of the cookie followed the same fate, and Dave reached out for a second one.
"Here's hoping that I won't face any of this sugar chirality mumbo-jumbo side effects stuff. Just imagine," engineer held second cookie high "Here lies Dave, he died to a cookie!"
He gave off a hearty laugh.

No-one in the room laughed with him. In fact, everypony, even including Twilight, looked more concerned than anything, if not downright harrowed.
Dave finally noticed the quiet. It would appear that these ponies didn't have the concept of dark humor, or, maybe they lacked whatever it took to find it funny.
He shrugged "Well, hopefully that won't happen!"

At this precise moment Spike emerged, precariously balancing the platter that barely fit the towering tea set.
Twilight overtook with magic before the inevitable could happen - floating entire tea set up in the air and filling all the cups with tea in turn.
Once done, teacups slowly floated each to it's recipient.

Dave's teacup floated a bit too slow for his liking.
He reached out, but the teacup unexpectedly fell down and spilled it's contents on the floor.
"Ah!" Dave instinctively yanked his hand away, gathering looks of everyone in the room.

He held hands up apologetically "I didn't even touch it! Somebody, hand me a towel, please!"

Twilight floated neatly folded towel to Dave. Following teacup's lead, it fell on the table, just short of reaching Dave's hand.
Dave said nothing, staring at Twilight with silent inquiry.

She shook her head "I'm not doing this on purpose!"

"It's just like that time," Applejack pointed out.

"What time?"

"You know, when you were hanging off a cliff, Twilight tried to float you to safety, and, well, it didn't work."

Dave scratched his head. His eyes went wide with some sort of realization.
"I've got an idea. Twilight, can you unfold the towel and hold it in completely flat formation?"

Once the spread out towel stopped moving, Dave started slowly moving his hand towards one of its corners. Suddenly the corner sank, despite being still covered in magical glow.
He moved the hand away and the corner restored itself to its former position.

Dave let off a short laugh "Looks like I'm so non-magical that magic refuses to work near me! Or at least levitation..."

Twilight gasped and brought out the papers again. "We need to test this more!"

Applejack shook head in disapproval, "Goodness, only Twilight can turn a tea party into a scientific experiment!"

Twilight abashedly put the papers back, but not until she scratched a small note. Taking the opportunity, Dave wiped the spilled tea with towel and put the cup back on table.

"Darling, what ever do you mean, 'non-magical'?" Rarity chimed in.

"We don't have magic where I come from."

Rarity gasped in surprise, "No magic at all?"

"Aside from fairy-tales, pretending and wishful thinking, no."

"But dear, how do you... survive without grace of magic?"

"Just like we do without wings or supreme work ethic. Science, technology and industry."

Twilight, much to everyone's chagrin, whipped paper and quill back out. "But how do you advance science without work ethic?"

"I never said we don't have ANY work ethic at all. We're just not guaranteed to have any. Some people have it in spades. Some have very little- besides, laziness advances progress like nothing else!"

Met with glares of disbelief from all sides, Dave continued
"Don't believe me? Think about it. Lazy person wants to do the least amount of work. It just so happens that usually that's the most efficient way of completing the task at hand. Many things have been automated 'cause someone somewhere was feeling too lazy to do it all by hand!"

At this point the quill was moving so fast that Dave expected it to burst in the flames from all the friction any second now.

But it abruptly stopped and Twilight gave Dave look full of suspicion.
"Wait, how do you know about the traits of earth ponies and pegasi?"

"Well, I may have zoned out during your explanation yesterday, but I'm not a deaf amnesiac! I remember bits and pieces."
He turned to the rest of the guests.
"Oh, and talking about bullet points of yesterday's lecture - we also don't get these, what do you call them? Cutie marks?"

Twilight nodded.

"Yeah, those. We don't have 'em. We don't know our strong sides, nor if we have any at all. It's all trial-and-error, but most of people figure out something decent sooner or later."
He suddenly smiled.
"I was lucky. It became evident pretty early on that I am both mechanically inclined and have fondness of insects-"

Previously silent yellow pegasus, who has been introduced as Fluttershy, perked up with enthusiasm "You're good with insects?"

"You bet I am! Arachnids too, well, pretty much any kind of creepy-crawly. Kept a whole terrarium full of 'em, dorm regulations be damned! I especially adore the bigger ones! It's sad that they can't appreciate being cared about, but that has never really stopped me! Hah, by this time I can semi-consistently pet tarantulas without being bitten. I know, I know, they don't like it but sometimes I just can't help myself..."
Everyone exchanged somewhat uncomfortable looks but Dave and Fluttershy were too caught up in conversation to notice.

"If you come by, I'll be glad to introduce to all of my insect friends. They appreciate a good company."

"Wow, really? Thanks! I can't wait to actually meet them!"

By this time uncomfortableness at the table became so palpable that even Dave started picking it up. Clearing his throat he diverted the flow of the conversation.

"But yeah, entomologists don't earn much money, so my parents pushed me to become engineer, and, well, here I am!"
He frowned.
"Wait, do you guys even have a concept of money?"

Everyone besides Twilight rolled eyes at the question.
Dash held out her front legs "Of course we hav-"
Dave interrupted "That's fine, I'm asking just in case. Never know where the important differences between my home and here are going to crop up..."

He grabbed another cookie.

---

Amount of the food present on the table diminished significantly. Dave was practically picking cookie crumbs at this point.
"Man, I'm hungry! Cookies are all good and fine but I could sure go for a steak right about now!"

"What's a 'steak'?" asked Applejack.

"Why, it's well-cooked and seasoned cut of the finest-"
Dave stopped abruptly. The wickedness of asking herbivores for meat has dawned upon him. He was about to paint himself a Hannibal flippin' Lecter.
"-organic products. But now thinking about it, it's a rather specific recipe to ask for. What you guys get when you feel like you could eat a ho-"
He repeated the mental equivalent of slamming breaks.
"...er, a whole table worth of food?"

Dave carefully gauged reaction of everypony at the table. He was in luck: it appeared that his tell-tale shifty looks and suspicious stuttering went right over everypony's collective heads.
He really had to consider his words carefully from now on.

Meanwhile the guests managed to get themselves in the midst of arguing about which food joint would fit best. There were bunch of tasty-sounding suggestions, and also bunch of things that definitely weren't fit for human consumption, like hay or flowers. And then there was one suggestion to gorge himself on gems in jewelry store.

"I, uh... Well, I can't eat hay, grass or flowers. Gems are completely out of question!"
Hearing some actual factual information, Twilight produced writing implements, eliciting collective groan around the table.
"I'm not opposed to good salad, as long as it's nutritious," continued Dave.

---

The guests were getting ready to leave, Spike was going through final motions of cleaning the table, and Dave was just sitting there, unsure what to do.

"I assume you'll spend the rest of the day glued to his side," teased Dash.

Twilight wasn't even going to deny it, "It's a once-in-a-lifetime research opportunity! To observe and document something that has never been observed and documented before!"

Applejack was her usual level of blunt, "I dunno, you might be overdoing this, Twi. At least eat him eat somethin' first."

Dave's stomach started growling traitorously.
Taking it as a cue, Twilight motioned Dave to follow her.

Dave's expression soured.
"Look, before we go any further, I'm not comfortable with others paying for me. But it's not like I have any options to make it up to you, unless..."
He snapped fingers and started rummaging in his pockets.
"I know how to remedy this and give you some great research material!"

Dave took out wallet and fished out a hundred dollar bill before handing it to Twilight.
"This is how our money looks like. Depending on the state you're living in and prices, this could feed you for about 8 to 10 days, if you're careful with your spending. More, if you go full frugal mode. As for food - well, since it's a bit too early for icecream and hay is off the table, I guess I could go for a good salad or something. Do you know any good joint?"

"S-Sure, what kind of salad would you prefer?"

Dave didn't feel like playing guessing games with all these strange salad names thrown around just recently, so he shrugged, "Any salad, I don't care."

---

"Servings are kinda small..."
Dave was not exaggerating: the miniature bowl with salad could easily fit in his hand.

Twilight just smiled apologetically and went back to inspecting the ol' Benjamin.

Dave shook his head.
"I hope this isn't one of these posh restaurants where itty-bitty dishes like these cost a fortune, 'cause I'm going to need quite a few more of these to actually sate my hunger. Oh well."

He took fork and attacked bowl, practically inhaling it's contents.

Suddenly Dave grimaced and spat out some of the salad.
"whu-humbews! feit wwem!"

"What?" alarmedly blurted out Twilight, dropping the bill.

With considerable effort Dave swallowed and repeated.
"Cucumbers! Hate them!"
He contorted a grimace of disgust, eyeing green disks on the table.
"They're like the only vegetable I hate with a passion, and they just had to be in the first food I eat in days! Ugh!"

He spent next several minutes trying to fish out every single piece of cucumber out of the salad. Satisfied with the result, he wiped the fork with a napkin and dug inside the salad once again.

---

As Dave was gorging himself on one mini-salad after another, this time without sneaky cucumbers, Twilight continually bombarded him with various questions, filling in various blanks in her notes.

Dave readily responded, but often in the foggiest terms. He was on high alert, on the lookout for questions that could bring up anything even remotely potentially incriminating. He also carefully considered his choice of words, as even one word slip-up could be potentially catastrophic. Nothing screams 'friendliness and trustworthiness' like having dedicated word for systematic eradication of entire species.

After all, he absolutely needed to stay on the locals' good side if he was planning to ever get home.
Speaking of which.
"Twilight, tell me, who's the most powerful magician-"

"Wizard", corrected Twilight.

"-wizard in Equestria?"

"That would be princess sisters. They possess alicorn magic, which is much more powerful than regular unicorn magic!"

Dave gestured with a fork, "Hopefully powerful enough to send me back home. How can I meet them?"

Twilight almost choked at the question. Once coughing fit subsided and she regained her composure, she answered.
"It's a... slow process. I'll fill out necessary forms for your appointment, which has to be filed way ahead of time, and then there's chance it won't go through."

Dave winced, "Ugh, really? Bureaucracy exists here too? Looks like I might be stuck here for a while."

Twilight exhaled with relief. Dave took it at the face value. It was a lie, sure, but she needed to ascertain that it was safe to have him around princesses. Even though he seemed friendly, she needed to do more research first. Yes, more research...

After all, he was a strange and previously unseen creature with even stranger views. How he laughed at the possibility of own demise, it just gave Twilight shivers. And then there was this un-explainable magic cancellation anomaly. Never once has Twilight read about something like that, let alone experienced it first-hoof.

---

Dave wiped his hands and pushed a whole stack of bowls aside.
"Now I have a list of questions for you, Twilight."

Twilight raised one brow, but didn't answer.
Dave took it as a signal to continue.
"What is the currently considered to be state-of-the-art in science in... this place?"

The question took Twilight by surprise.
"What do you mean?"

"Well, the question is incorrect, I guess. What would be the most advanced field of study that exists here?"

"That would be Mathematics."

Dave facepalmed.
"Of course it is. Let's approach this from another angle. I'm an engineer. I use technology to make things and solve problems," Dave decided to omit his exact specialty in engineering.

"For example," he picked up an empty candle holder off the table and held it for Twilight to observe.
"See these lines? It means that his candle holder was turned on an industrial lathe."

He moved the candle holder around, getting feel for it's weight.

"From the color and the weight I'd say that this is most likely aluminum - which is a terrible choice for a candle holder by the way - or maaaaybe titanium or some alloy with similar density. Definitely not steel. Unless this thing is hollow."
Dave inspected bottom of the holder, then put it down on the rightful place.

"All of this tells me several things. First of all, that there's obvious need in steelworks to produce lathe parts and tool bits, precision machining tools to create transmission parts for lathe to carry out finish turning this smooth, and decent chemical industry to actually get enough aluminum from it's natural state back to being actual metal."

"Uh-huh," Twilight was still unsure where Dave was going with this.

"These are all pretty much things I work with, professionally. Except chemistry, I'm bad at chemistry."
It wasn't exactly the truth, though. He knew a thing or two about things that could burn or explode violently, but that was mostly 'cause he spent way too much time with Boris, who just wouldn't stop flexing his chemistry prowess.

Dave drew the bottom line, "So I guess my question is: which technologies are available here for, well, engineering things?"

Twilight squirmed in her seat, desperately trying to summon at least some semblance of memory, even if only remotely related to the topic. But alas - the industry was by no means her field of expertise.

"Hey, if you don't know, it's no big deal. After all, where I come from only handful of people bother finding out how most household things are actually made. Maybe you got some books on it?"

"I'll take a look," squeezed out Twilight almost apologetically.

"If you don't mind, I'm going for a walk, wanna see around the town."

---

Dave's scouting endeavor turned up a mixed bag of results.

On one hand, the residents were surprisingly friendly and helpful, considering they saw a human for the first time. Dave's appearance did earn him some strange looks on the streets, but that was to be expected with his admittedly alien anatomy and, more specifically, his height; with him towering over pony folk he stuck out like a sore thumb and naturally drew eye to himself.

On the other hand, there was not a single half-decent hardware shop in the town. Sure, you could buy hammer or a screwdriver, but when it came to power-tools Dave yearned for so much - they had none. Bummer!

Luckily one of shop owners mentioned that he could find more advanced tools in a bigger city. It was by no means a big lead but it was something.

And by now, Dave itched to construct something - anything!

---

Dave found Twilight half-embedded in the pile of books, quickly looking over books before discarding them in slightly smaller pile of books.

"No dice?"

Twilight just shook her head.

"Then don't bother, like I said, it's no big deal. Just drop it and let's clean up this mess."

Dave spun around, estimating total count of the books strewn about and whistled, "Wow. This is a lot of books. I hope you have a decent cataloguing system."

Noting the suspicious silence, Dave turned around.
"Twilight, why do you smile so devilishly?"

Comments

[Thegrohingnation]

And by now, Dave itched to construct something - anything!

An engineer that actually builds something himself. Impossible

[RDDash]

Dave didn't feel like playing guessing games with all these strange salad names thrown around just recently, so he shrugged, "Any salad, I don't care."

I can see her just ordering something he can't eat anyway.