Bronygeddon

by pjabrony

Chapter 3

Bastian walked up Broadway. He had a lot on his mind, which had been the case for several weeks running. A manager always had to be thinking of his job. That was the job. A thousand questions would have to be answered at any given time in order to make sure that the whole enterprise didn’t collapse. Bastian had taken that challenge in his professional life. Now he was volunteering. He was the executive director of FCE, LLC. Most companies were concerned with day-to-day operations. FCE was dedicated to two days of the year. Its sole purpose was to run FimCon, the premiere My Little Pony convention.

Organizing a convention and having it be successful is an impossible task for any person without a dedicated and competent staff. Bastian took a moment for gratitude as he entered the lobby of the hotel next to the convention center. His staff was some of the best. They almost never missed the meetings, and they worked hard between them.

During a convention, the executive was lucky if he got two hours of sleep a night. Bastian had run conventions for gaming and science fiction before, and usually did not sleep at all. He knew that during the next FimCon, he would once again be awake for the whole thing.

In fact, he had not slept for two months.

When the wave of pony powers began to make the news, Bastian was paying close attention. He figured out that it was pony-based before most bronies had, and he kept checking his back for wing buds and trying to move things with his mind to no avail. But every night he found himself going to bed later and waking up sooner. Then the two ends met and he suffered no ill effects. When he realized that boundless energy was his power, he considered it a suitable and useful gift.

The banquet hall was supplied every week with water glasses and carafes and with stationery and pens bearing the logo of the hotel. A moving wall separated it in half to create a cozier atmosphere. Chairs were set up to make it like a lecture hall. Bastian wished they would follow his instructions to arrange them in a circle.

When he arrived, the staff members who were already there were discussing some of the issues that were in the news. All of them had obtained pony powers in one form or another. As he stood aside and observed the room, Bastian smiled at what he did not see. He always expected pegasus people to be clustered together talking about wind patterns, and magical bronies in their own group sharing spells, and earth humans showing off whatever hidden talents they had developed. Instead, they were a mix. He walked up and listened to one of the conversations.

“I’m telling you, the law is on our side. Not one of these convictions has stood up on appeal, and the local judges are starting to listen to magical self-defense arguments,” one magical brony said.

“Maybe, but I’m worried about the cases where there wasn’t self-defense. They still refuse to treat anti-brony violence as a hate crime,” a pegasus person replied.

“That’s a legislative thing. They have to wait until they write that into the law.”

“And when will they get around to that?”

“When it’s politically profitable, of course. That’s why we need more publicity. But trust me, in a year, we won’t even be talking about legal issues.”

They had noticed Bastian and let him in to their standing circle. Now he spoke up. “I think you’re putting the cart before the pony. The problem isn’t the legal reaction to hate crimes against bronies. The problem is that they’re occurring at all.”

He waited for reaction, but got nothing except nods and mumbles of agreement. “Come on, let’s all sit down and get started,” he said.

Bastian was a veteran of meetings and had some set ideas about their purpose. Some managers put out an agenda and stuck to it without alteration. They banged the gavel as soon as anything off-topic was brought up. There was no point to those meetings. Everyone just said what they knew, no one learned anything, and if a vote was taken, everyone’s preference was known beforehand. Useful for recording, but horrible for generating ideas.

Then there were managers let things go too far the other way. Engrossed in the digressions themselves, they set up agendas for thirty minutes and ran four-hour meetings. Those invariably degraded into one or two blowhards telling their life stories.

In Bastian’s mind, a meeting had a threefold purpose. The first was the informal discussions before the meeting. Those were brainstorming sessions where ideas were generated in people’s heads. They might not be on paper, but they were where it counted. The second was the informal discussions during the meeting. That gave a chance for the ideas to stand up to scrutiny.

The third purpose for a meeting was simply to exist. It was to be a deadline that would spur people to do their own work. Bastian didn’t care if a report was sloppy or poorly presented. He cared that the work underlying the report was done well. He was skilled at reading which were merely bad reports and which were good reports of bad work.

A three-meeting cycle for any idea. People brought it up on their own, then it was chatted about at the next meeting, then it was integrated into the structure. It worked.

Bastian called the meeting to order, and he stuck to the agenda for a good while. He changed up the order of the departments’ reports every meeting, but always put his own at or close to the end. In his mind, there was a separate item for open discussion, but he never wrote it down. He wanted everyone to relax, get their reports done, and then shoot the breeze. His own part of the meeting was the least important.

The idea that had percolated up through the people, and which would be talked about at this meeting’s open discussion, was one of debate. The con had a deal in place to show a special “inter-season” episode of My Little Pony. The production company had made no promises in terms of quality, length, or whether or not it was “canon,” as was so important to bronies. They would be live-streaming it at the same time. But since just about every brony would be paying attention to this, some people wanted to accompany it with a panel, a statement of purpose that would address how bronies should deal with their new powers and the society around them.

The head of registration was talking on the subject. “We’re not a movement. We’re not a society. We don’t have a purpose, so we can’t make a statement of it. Not only is it incredibly presumptuous for us to think that we can somehow be leaders of a movement that isn’t, but if bronies become their own society, they’re just asking to be put in a ghetto, literal or metaphorical.”

The guest liaison responded, punctuating her sentences with an occasional sparkle from her fingers. “Like it or not, we are a society. Or at least a sub-culture. We chose to watch the show, but we didn’t choose what happened to us. Now, I could pass if I wanted just by not using magic, but you can’t hide your wings, and I don’t want to pass. So we’re going to have to deal with the people who don’t watch. We’re going to need a unified voice, and that means we need leadership.”

“But a leader can’t speak for every brony. Anyone who tries is going to be hit with so many arguments and complaints that it will drive him right out of the job.”

“All right, so we need strong leadership.”

The public relations director spoke up. “Even if we do, that’s a double-edged sword. Even if we had real leadership, and every brony listened to them, that would be problematic. We should think of ourselves as people who happen to be enhanced bronies, not bronies first.”

“But that still leaves us with the problem of dealing with haters, and with those who just don’t understand us,” said the guest liason.

“I don’t see the problem,” said the head of the art department. “Just make everyone watch the show, bronify them all, and then we won’t be unique and alone.”

“It’s not that simple,” said Bastian. “Researchers and governments have tried to just force the show on people to make them into supermen for their own purposes. It hasn’t worked. Even if we could make people watch—and how can we force it on them?—most of them would end up the same way they started, and quite irked about it.”

“So what do we do?”

For a minute, no one spoke. The question echoed through the room as everyone just thought about it. Then Bastian stood up.

“I think we’re making a mistake here. It doesn’t have to be either-or. There is a problem with sub-cultural leaders, and it’s the same problem with any leader: power corrupts.

“The reason we won’t have that problem is that we don’t have any power. We can’t tell any brony what to do. We could try, we could go for money and influence, but that’s exactly the road that we don’t want to go down.

“Let’s have the panel. Let’s put it before the episode so that people stick in. Take suggestions from people at the con, people on the live-stream, and anyone who wants to send something in. But add some restrictions.

“No one, and that includes us, suggest anything that can’t be done on the individual level. We’re not trying to change the world. That’s already happened. We’re looking for how to react to the change. And that’s a personal thing. No suggestions for laws to be passed or projects that we all have to be in on. No running off to an island to start Bronytopia. But anything that I can do on my own, or that you can do, or the average brony on the street can do, is welcome. That’s the only way I can see to get through this.”

No one applauded, but they wanted to. The rest of the meeting was moot. Their course was chosen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Did you put in for the time off?” asked Julie.

“I did. Earlier this week,” said Luke.

“I can’t remember the last time we had a vacation.”

Luke and Julie sat overlooking their backyard. They often liked to relax in the evenings with a glass of wine. Their plans for the summer had included a patio or deck to sit on, but they had decided against it. Instead, Luke had gone into the garage and modified some lawn chairs and a table so that they could be bolted to the roof. Since they could get up so easily, they figured it was worth it to save the money on the home improvement and go to FimCon instead.

“You realize that we’ll probably be the oldest people there?” said Julie.

“No, I don’t think so. Among the older, but I imagine we’ll see people fifty or sixty. Besides, ever since we started flying, I’ve only felt younger.”

She smiled. “It doesn’t matter, I suppose. Wild ponies couldn’t keep me away.”

They clinked glasses and just watched the breeze in the trees for a few minutes.

“You know what’s going to be really annoying?” said Luke.

“What?”

“Flying to the convention. On an airplane. It just seems so. . . “

“Beneath us?”

“It could be, I think. I’ve never gone up to thirty thousand feet,” he said. “We could probably make it there on our own if we didn’t have any luggage to carry. But I’m sure we’re going to load up on merchandise as well as having our clothes and toiletries, so coming home would be a strain on our wings.”

“You’re right. And yes, it’s going to be annoying. Waiting on line for security. Having to show our licenses half a dozen times. Ordered seating. Bad food. And all the time we’ll be looking at each other thinking, ‘We could step outside the door and meet them there.’ But we’ll do it anyway, and we won’t grumble.”

“Of course not. When do you want to pack?”

“It’s not for a while yet. But let’s start tomorrow.”

***

Luke looked at the large wheeled suitcase that Julie had laid out on the bed.

“Honey, the trip is for four days. You’ve got almost two weeks’ worth of clothes here.”

“Actually, I was going to talk to you about your packing. You’ve got enough books to stock the library.”

Luke’s suitcase was in the closet and out of the way, but he went over and opened it anyway. “I like these books. I don’t want to lose them.”

“Why would we? We’re going away for a long weekend, and then we’ll come back to them.”

“That’s right. Although, for some reason I wasn’t thinking of that when I was packing. I felt like something inside of me was saying to gather everything that I couldn’t bear to lose.”

“I didn’t feel like that,” said Julie.

“It was unconscious. And if you didn’t feel anything, then why did you pack our wedding album.”

“I. . . I don’t know. I thought of it like the old lady from Titanic, who said she always took her pictures when she traveled.”

Luke had picked up a habit of reaching over his shoulder and scratching between his wings when he was nervous or thinking. He did this now.

“Julie, I think that after the trip we should plan to move.”

“Why? No, wait. Don’t answer. I’m feeling it too, now that you’re talking about it. Like this house is somehow tying us to our old lives, before our wings.”

“That’s right. That’s what it is. We can’t stay here any more than we could stop them from growing. We’ll start house hunting as soon as we get back. Agreed?”

Julie put the wedding album back in her bag. “Agreed. Although, maybe we’ll see something we like while we’re at the convention.”

“In New York? You must be planning on winning the lottery while we’re out there.” He gave her a kiss.

“Just a thought. You never know what you’re going to see when you travel,” she said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lisa sat on her bed with her monitor blaring the latest in the series of re-dubbed My Little Pony episodes. The breaks between seasons were always trying, but at least the brony community put out plenty of new content to tide her over. As the video finished and the credits rolled, she saw one line that said, “Meet the cast and crew at FimCon!”

“What’s FimCon?” she said.

One Internet search later, she was on the phone to Olivia.

“Did you hear about this convention thing in New York?”

“Um, yeah,” said Olivia. “It’s been announced everywhere. Don’t you read the pony blogs?”

“Not carefully enough. Between studying and magic practice, when I do get free time I want to watch ponies, not read about them.”

“They advertised it during the commercial breaks on the live-stream of the season finale!”

“I watch it on TV,” said Lisa.

“Well, yes, there’s a convention. What about it?”

“Let’s go! And if you knew, why didn’t you ask me to go?”

“Because of simple arithmetic,” said Olivia. “Four hundred dollars for a round-trip flight plus one hundred dollars a night for a hotel times three nights plus fifty dollars for the convention itself—close brackets—times two people equals ‘we’re not going.’”

“No, it means we have to raise fifteen hundred dollars! Wait, don’t double the hotel. That’s three hundred dollars less. See? Not ten seconds into the project and we’re already twenty percent of the way there!”

***

“Why do they even bother printing new newspapers?” said Lisa. “They have the same job listings as yesterday’s!”

“That is to say, none that we’re qualified for,” said Olivia. “Tell me again how we’re supposed to fund this trip when we don’t actually have any funds.”

“I don’t know. I thought it would be easier. Walk in and say, ‘Hi! We’re two girls with magical powers looking to earn money. What do you have for us to do?’”

“The problem is that people don’t want magical employees. They want hard-working ones. Not to mention the fact that all we’ve got is telekinesis and teleportation.”

“And my teleportation is inconsistent,” said Lisa.

The two of them had split their time away from school between continuing to practice their skills and hunting for jobs. They were walking home from school as they discussed their strategy.

Lisa smirked at Olivia. “I still say that if you would only—“

“No. I’m not going around betting people that I can lift more than them. We don’t have the money to put up, it’s not honest, and if we lose, we’re cooked.”

“All right, I guess. I just can’t help thinking that there has to be a way to use magic to make money. Honestly.”

They strolled past the library. Lisa was deep in thought and didn’t see the notice posted on the free-standing bulletin board. Olivia did, and thought long and hard about ignoring it, but couldn’t do that to her friend. In any case, it was serendipity.

“Take a look at this! A city-wide talent show with cash prizes! Five thousand for first! We don’t even have to win. Even third prize is twelve-fifty.”

“Haha! This is how we’re going to do it! Who can put on a better magic show than us?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Alex ate his cereal slowly, as he had a lot on his mind. He concentrated on putting just the right amount of nonchalance into his voice.

“So, Mom, I’ve been thinking,” said Alex, “that it’s been a while since I’ve seen Aunt Toni and Uncle Marty. What do you think about me taking a trip out there this summer?”

“This summer, huh? Any particular week?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ll look at the calendar. See which I’d like to go.”

“And it’s because you miss your relatives?” his mother asked. “And not because their home is convenient to New York when FimCon is running?”

“Heh. You knew?”

“Of course, dear. And it’s perfectly natural for you to want to go. It’s just a question of the money.”

Alex said nothing. In a single-parent household, money was always tight.

His mother said, “You could still sell some of your produce.”

“I won’t say I’m not tempted, but it would be wrong. But listen, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. All I would need is the transportation. If Uncle Marty and Aunt Toni will let me stay with them—and I do want to see them, that wasn’t just an excuse—and I can volunteer at the convention itself to get admission free, and I won’t take any spending money more than I have to, can’t I go?”

Alex’s mother looked at her son making puppy-dog eyes at her. She had had so few opportunities to give him what he wanted, as opposed to what he needed. She was starting to wilt. “Well. . . “

“You can make this my birthday and Christmas presents.”

“All right, I’ll figure out a way to get you there.”

“You’re the best, mom!” he said, and kissed her.

“You’d just better tend your garden before you go. I don’t want everything shrinking or disappearing or something if you’re not around to make it grow.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Is this your card?” asked Lisa.

“Yes, it’s my card. It was my card last time. It was my card the time before that. It has been my card every time you’ve tried this trick. We know it by heart now.” Olivia stamped her foot.

“We’ve got to practice though! The magic is easy, but the showmanship, that’s what we need in order to win the contest!”

“And that is what we don’t have, nor are we getting,” said Olivia. “We need to face facts. Magic shows have a high learning curve. There’s the good stuff that makes it on television, and there’s the really amateur high-school shows. If people are entertained at all by that kind, it’s to laugh at it. And getting people to laugh isn’t going to get us to FimCon. We’re not the Cutie Mark Crusaders; we’re not getting an award for comedy.”

Lisa threw down the pack of cards. She wanted desperately to argue with what Olivia had said, but couldn’t think of anything to say. They had been practicing in Lisa’s back yard by the new shed that her father had put up a month ago.

As the cards hit the table, they slipped and flew everywhere. Lisa was able to grab most of them magically and put them back on the table, but a few went into the shed itself. Since she had not yet mastered moving objects she couldn’t see, she went in.

“I guess you’re right,” she said to Olivia. “I was just sure that this was the right path. Now we’re not going to get to go to the con.”

“It’s all right. We’ll find a way to make it next year.”

Lisa found the last of her playing cards. It had fallen among some of the outdoor games that the Changs kept for summer parties. There were lawn darts, horseshoes, and a bocce ball set. Lisa held out her hand and summoned the card. It flew right past her.

“That’s it!” she said. “We’re not going next year. We’re going to win this talent show and go this year!”

“What are you talking about?”

Lisa came out of the shed carrying the bocce balls. “We’ve been completely on the wrong tack. No one wants to see a magic show with real magic. But they’ll go ape over our juggling act!”

“Juggling?”

“Sure! You know how good I am at precision telekinesis. I’ll be able to keep these eight balls in the air in a moving pattern easily!”

“You think that will be impressive?” asked Olivia.

Lisa wore her sneaky smirk again. “It will. That’s the best part. We won’t tell anyone we’re using magic. You’ll be the one juggling the eight balls, but I’ll be doing the magic from the other side of the stage.”

“That’s dishonest. I told you, we’re not going to lie to get the money.”

“We won’t. If anyone asks, we’ll tell the truth. But if they don’t, we’ll stay mum. Come on, girl! This is our chance!”

“I suppose.”

“And since you have the pure physical power, you can use your magic on me. I’ll only juggle three, but they’ll be bowling balls!”

“Lisa, you are crazy. Absolutely nuts. But I’ll do it, because I want the challenge of magically holding up three ten-pound objects.”

Two weeks later, Lisa and Olivia were twenty-five hundred dollars richer, having come in second. They were on their way to New York.

Comments

[Nexidava]

Oh god, I can just FEEL the foreboding...

Great job so far!

[book_burner]

Intuitive pony precognition telling them to cut ties to pre-pony-mutation life?

CREEPY ALARM! CREEPY ALARM!

[RedvsBlue327]

2527312
Detach yourself from all remains of the lesser times. They only weigh you down next to the inferiors.

[chrismonteith]

:)