Chapter 1: The Pony Named Petrochemical
Snow blew across the wasteland, thick and frigid it was always hard to traverse in this weather, and the clouds on the horizon indicated it was only going to get worse. “P-Petro!” Shouted the stallion, stumbling through the cold, “Petrochem, we need to return home!”
“No!” The mare stubbornly refused to hear any of it, “At this point we’ll never make it back to the village before we get swallowed by the storm!”
“If we die it’s your damn fault!” He shouted back, forcing his way through the cold. In the distance was an ancient building, which Petrochemical had dragged her brother all the way out into the snow to see. The storm was getting closer, Petrochem forced the mask made from tattered bits of wool across her face tighter, not wanting to breathe in a single speck of snow.
They eventually got to the walls of the ancient building, huge, made of concrete bricks coated in a thick layer of snow from centuries in the cold. The windows had been shattered by repeated storms but they were too high up to enter through. “There’s a door around here somewhere, I saw it yesterday, give me a second to find it,” Petrochemical said.
“We really need to get back home, the storm is getting closer, Petro…”
“I know, I know, just give me some more time!” She said as she dug through the snow… But Basalt was right, the storm was getting closer, fast… “We can wait out the storm inside.”
“Are you crazy! The Celestia-damned windows are broken!”
“There’s more rooms inside, ones that don’t have windows.”
“For both our sakes, you better be fucking sure!”
The storm was creeping closer, the two would never make it back now if they simply turned around, “Found it!” She shouted, grabbing the big metal door’s handle with a hoof, “Fuck! It’s frozen closed, Basalt, help!” The stallion was already there, slamming his hooves against the door’s handle as hard as he could, there was the crack of ice breaking, and after a few more bucks the door slammed open.
They ran inside, “Where the hell is this safe room?” Basalt asked.
“F-Follow me,” Petro replied, leading her brother toward the place she remembered. The room was full of snow blowing in from the broken windows, the wind was picking up and the air was growing hazy, even in here, “Storm’s almost on top of us.”
They soon found the door, smaller than the one they entered through but it too was made of cold metal that had been frozen shut.. They thrust it open and made sure to lock it behind them. “T-That was close,” Basalt said, exhausted and freezing.
“I-I know… Damn… Let me get a fire going.” She said, reaching into her saddlebag and floating out a jar of black goo, undoing the lid… It smelled of sulfur and had a strange iridescence to it.
“Fucking gross Petro.”
“It’s just fuel, Bas…” She said, waving her horn she produced a glowing golden spark, placed the jar on the ground and lit the goo inside it alight, it burned quite readily and warmed the air around them
“How the hell you can do that I still don’t understand.”
“It’s because you don’t have a horn.”
“And I don’t want to, floating stuff around, transforming food into burning goo, all that other freaky stuff you do, doesn’t make a lick of sense to me.”
“How about you stop complaining that my freaky stuff saved your life, both of our lives in fact.”
“Yeah, yeah… Wouldn’t be the first time… So, why did you bring me all the way out here?”
“To show you something, something that can help the village!”
The stallion sighed, “Fine, just give me a second to warm up…”
Petrochemical also sighed and rummaged through her saddlebags… More jars of fuel, her wrench, screwdriver, assorted bits of scrap metal, flint, a knife carved from bone, food… Ah, there’s what she was looking for! She drew out an ancient book, must have been over two hundred years old but remarkably intact.
“You still have that… Thing?”
“Thing! Do you have any idea how valuable this thing is! Mom was going to throw it into the fire pit!”
“It’s just paper, it’s meant to be burned.”
“It’s a book, Basalt.”
“Yeah, it’s paper, it’s meant to be thrown into a fire, and burned… That’s all paper’s good for, that and wiping your ass, and then throwing it into a fire.”
“Grrrr, I hate how absolutely braindead you can be sometimes… Scratch that, I hate how braindead the entire fucking village is!”
“Well, from my point of view, I’m stuck with a sister who’s the only pony in the world to have a freaky spooky horn, collects little metal things and mixes perfectly good food with meat, bones, and her own shit, and somehow gets weird ideas from little symbols on kindling.”
“I would try and explain if I knew there was even a slightest chance that you’ll take me seriously… But I know you’re just going to ignore me, aren’t you.”
“You got that right!”
Petrochem sat down with her book, the front having strange symbols on it that Petrochem somehow understood the meaning of, “A Pony’s General Guide to Engineering”, reading it aloud, knowing her brother wasn’t listening, but doing so anyway out of spite. “In a typical oil refinery, crude oil is passed through a desalter to remove sodium chloride, potassium chloride, lithium chloride, or other salts that are dissolved in the trace water content in the crude oil, before being pumped through a heating unit, preheating the oil to roughly three-hundred-and-ninety-eight degrees celestials before it is pumped into the primary atmospheric distillation column. A cylindrical tower in which high-temperature steam is mixed with the preheated oil as it passes through a series of filters set into the tower. High-density carbon-based chemicals such as residue oil and tar collect at the bottom where they are taken to be further refined into fuel oil and asphalt respectively, while lighter chemicals rise to the top, getting collected by the filters, separating the crude oil into sulfur gas, petroleum gas, light naphtha, heavy naphtha, kerosene, and diesel oil, which is then further taken-”
“Would you please shut up! I don’t need your crazy ramblings right now, whatever the fuck you see in those squigly lines isn’t going to help us get back home, especially with the storm outside!”
“This book is going to save our village, I guarantee you! How much longer do you think that big shed of wood and paper and coal is going to keep us all warm, and how much longer do you think those rusty scraps of metal are going to keep out the storms!”
“If we run out of metal or fuel, we’ll just pack up what we can and move, we’ve done it before, we’ll do it again.”
“Two years ago Velvet and Wildberry got caught in a storm, last year Oxy, Burnbush, Saline, and Moonray all either froze to death or lost their masks and choked on the snow. Just last week Isosphere and Flurry Spark’s foal died… How much longer do you think the tribe can survive… Every time the tribe moves we end up losing dozens of ponies to the cold or the storms…”
“Well we can’t stay in one place forever! How are we supposed to keep ourselves warm without fuel for the fire!”
“I can make more, just watch me!” Petrochemical lifted a bar of dried grass into the air.
“No you don’t!” Basalt said, pulling the bar of grass out of the air, “You’re not wasting our food!”
Petrochem grunted, and sat down, returning to her book, flicking through the pages… She had read through it, and the few other books she had hidden away, dozens of times, everyone in the village thought she was crazy, carrying around what they saw as perfectly good fuel for their fires just to sit and stare at it, but that was just because they didn’t see what she saw… While they just saw strange lines and symbols, she somehow knew that these symbols had meaning, and what they told her was amazing… Huge machines capable of making heat, enough to melt rocks and turn the rocks into metal, moving lots of stuff over impossible distances in mere days, creating some invisible force called “Electricity” and using it to do even weirder things, like make light without needing a fire, or turning water into fuel for fires.
“Alright, I’m getting some feeling back in my legs… Show me whatever it is you wanted me to see.”
Petrochem got to her hooves, picked up the burning jar in her field of golden light, giving them warmth and illuminating the dark corridors as she led Basalt through the ancient building. Looking through the windows on the doors, or, if the doors didn’t have windows, cracking them open just a little bit, to see if the rooms beyond were safe from the storm… You didn’t want to spend too long in the frigid mist that the storms brought, those who got immersed in the mist rarely survived it.
Soon, she had found her way to the room she wanted to show her brother, the door was nice and warm, and the air in the room beyond was warmer, as warm as standing right next to an open fire. “By Celestia!” Basalt gasped, “There’s no fire, why is it so warm!” Chem brought him over to the middle of the room… There was a big machine of some kind, a cylinder of metal with a whole bunch of thin metal plates sticking out from it, a yellow and black marking on it. “What is it?”
“Hold on, gimme a moment!” She opened up her book and flicked to the page where she saw a picture of a machine almost identical to the one she found, “Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator. It produces electricity using a series of thermovoltaic cells inside the fins, heat being provided by the passive radioactive decay of heavy actinides within the center shielded drum. RTG systems can last centuries providing a constant stream of electricity, a unit’s lifespan determined by the particular isotope used as a heat source.”
“What does that mean?”
“Honestly, I don’t really know what most of that means, but I know that this thing will give us lots of heat without needing to burn anything, we can take it back to the village, or we can all travel here and use this room for heat!”
“Not really sure, I mean, the entire village can’t fit into this one room… And the thing looks damn heavy…”
“You’re strong, Basalt, way stronger than me. And I have my horn to help.”
“As long as you promise not to drop it on me…”
“Well… Just get some rest, we won’t be able to go anywhere until the storm passes anyway. I’m going to explore this place some more, see if there are any other machines that can help us.”
“Petrochem… Just, don’t get yourself hurt, ok?”
“Ok.”
She left the room and began looking around. It was wonderful, she found a series of huge cylindrical machines with big black rods sticking out of their tops, “Electric Arc Furnace” she read in her book, “Produces heat using electricity, I wonder if I could use the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator to give these electricity?” She said to herself before moving on. There were large metal capsules of some kind mounted to the ceiling, “Casting Ladle, huh, doesn’t sound too useful,” there were even more wonderful machines all around, even if she didn’t really understand what they did, even with the book’s help… Strand casting machines that took up entire rooms, banks of rolling mills, electrical power hammers that towered above the rest of the machines, and stamping dies which looked like smaller versions of the hammers.
Petrochem barely understood what all the machines were for, something having to do with making metal she guessed from her book, but most of them sounded useless to her, regardless, most of them were frozen solid, rusted to the point of uselessness, or broken and scattered across the floor. But the furnaces attracted her attention… They made heat, at least that’s what she could gather from the book… But they needed electricity, the RTG made electricity but she didn’t know how to get this electricity from the RTG into the furnace.
Moving on, keeping the idea in her head to get the furnaces working, she stumbled into a room, it was colder than the others… There was a hole in the ceiling, outside she could see the storm passing overhead, billowing dark clouds filling the sky, the air just outside thick with freezing fog. That wasn’t what attracted her attention, it was what presumably smashed the hole that attracted her attention…
It was a machine of some kind, a large metal rectangle with a door on the back and a series of broken crystals mounted to the side. Petrochem wanted to see what was behind those doors, but the hole in the roof made her worried… She pulled her mask tighter around her face and sprinted, holding her breath as she reached the doors, they were frozen shut but with a hard buck that hurt her legs, she managed to get them unstuck and slide them open, and quickly shut them behind her, allowing herself to breathe again.
The inside of the rectangle machine was weird, the first thing she noticed was the smell, one she had never smelled before, it was oddly both repulsive and somewhat nice, kinda like the black goo she could make, but the smell itself was quite different. Then she noticed the ponies… There were at least a dozen, all strapped to the wall. At first she thought they were corpses, frozen to death and preserved by the frost for the past three or four hundred years… But no, these were different. On closer inspection, she saw they weren’t ponies at all, they were machines made to look like ponies. Pipes ran along their necks and they didn’t have any fur, just a hard and smooth material that was nothing like skin, their eyes were all open but pitch black. Some were missing limbs, revealing messes of wires, rotors, and pistons… Stranger still, they seemed to all have horns just like herself, and even weirder, wings on their sides, although most were missing a wing or two and those that weren’t still obviously had severe damage to their wings. One of the machine corpses had part of his or her breast crushed in, Petrochem pulled off the plate of cracked material on this corpse’s breast and saw inside… There were a series of boxes and cylinders all connected together with a bewildering array of pipes and cables, all centered around a fin-covered metal cylinder that radiated warmth, a smaller version of the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator that Petrochem had found earlier… Markings on this one saying “Am-241/Co-60 Mixed-Oxide Charge, boron-shielded, est expiration date: 1622”
One particular machine pony attracted her attention… This one looks almost completely intact, if partly frozen and slightly rusted at certain parts. There was a blinking light on its side, just to the front of its flanks… Petro was unable to resist the urge to touch it. At that moment, she lept backward as a humming noise erupted from inside the machine-pony, its eyes lit up bright green, several cables and a series of straps holding the pony to the wall suddenly clicked and then fell away, the pony falling over face-first to the ground. It twisted and writhed for a second, the sound of ice being cracked and crushed filled the small chamber as the machine-pony worked its frozen joints. Petro was ready to kick the door open again and run right before the machine pony pulled itself to its hooves and stared at her.
“Unicorn,” it… She? Petro assumed it was a mare based on the voice, said, “I thank you for activating me, it appears that the transport hovercraft has suffered some form of crash… I assume you have notified the proper authorities? My short-range transponder appears to be non functional.”
“Ummm, uh-”
The machine pony noticed the other machine ponies on the walls, “My comrades appear to all be suffering from severe damage, many beyond repair, this is problematic, I will need to contact the CIRDD as soon as possible, assuming they have not already been informed of this disaster.”
“I don’t think-”
A beeping sound came from the machine pony’s head, and one of her eyes flashed a series of symbols that Petro vaguely remembered from her book, but forgot the meaning of. “This is alarming,” The machine pony turned back to face Petrochem, “The air appears contaminated with trace quantities of ozone, mercury vapor, chlorine and fluorine compounds, dioxin compounds, and nitrogen dioxide, I would recommend that you equip a respirator, subsequently evacuate from the area, and contact the nearest unicorn trained in air purification magic.”
“Air purification magic?”
“Yes, allow me to escort you to an area free of contaminants.” Petrochem let out a squeak as she was grabbed in a strange field of green energy, much like the power she used to lift stuff with her horn, “Apologies if you feel any uncomfort, my thaumaturgical fine-manipulation drive is damaged, and so my control over thaumic energy is somewhat impeded. I am sure the CIRDD will compensate you for any harm caused in this disaster.”
The machine-mare opened the door… And then closed it again, putting Petro back on the ground, “T-That doesn’t make any sense… The levels of contamination are greater outside the transport, and the ambient air temperature… It is negative thirty-two degrees, that is not correct! The transport must have been diverted, the intended destination was Appleloosa.” She paused, “Let us wait until CIRDD or the local emergency response personnel arrive.”
“I… I really don’t think that’s happening.”
“... Explain?”
“You’re the one who needs to explain shit! What the hell are you!”
“I am a Canterlot Industrial Robotics Development Division Model MK5 C2, I am a fifth-generation autonomous worker drone designed to aid ponies in the construction, maintenance, and operation of industrial machinery, particularly those dealing with hazardous materials, with the goal of eliminating worker casualties in such high-risk fields of work.”
“You’re… A machine pony who makes and uses other machines?”
“A very simplified but correct analysis of my purpose. You still have not explained why you believe an emergency response crew is not en-route… Is it a case of a biological pony’s pessimism ignoring logical reasoning?”
“No… It’s because there is no one coming at all, you’ve probably been sitting there for something like a hundred years or so.”
The machine pony cocked her head, “I believe you are displaying your organic tendency to exaggerate… But…” She said, looking at the wrecked interior of the transport, “Upon further investigation, it appears that some time has passed since the initial crash, I do believe you may be correct, in that we have been forgotten by the local authorities and the CIRDD” She paused again, “I will return to the CIRDD headquarters and report this bureaucratic failure to the logistics department. Once we find some way to survive the chemical contamination outside.”
“Let’s just wait for the storm to pass…They can last anywhere from a few hours to a few days, I have something of a camp set up not too far from here, follow me and I guess I’ll introduce you to my brother.”
“Understood, with the lack of any government personnel I can contact in the immediate vicinity, I am programmed to declare you my defacto administrator until we come across someone of higher qualification.”
“Ok… Well, follow me.”
With that, Petrochem tightened her mask again, took a deep breath, and threw open the door, holding her breath as she sprinted for the end of the room, reaching it, and locking the room’s door behind her as her new mechanical follower made it through. Pausing to catch her breath once again as the machine pony investigated her surroundings, “It appears this steel mill has suffered years of neglect, we should be careful, we do not want this facility to collapse upon us.”
“What’s a steel mill?”
The machine pony looked somewhat baffled at Petrochem, “You… Are unaware of what a Steel Mill is?”
“Uhhh, yeah.”
“It is a facility that produces steel, steel is primarily an alloy of iron and carbon, but commonly features other elements mixed into it, most commonly nickel, to produce invar, chromium to produce chrome, boron to produce ferroboron, tungsten to produce tungsten steel, and a variety of others. The steel production process includes taking raw iron ore, primarily magnetite, hematite, or goethite, and grinding it up into a fine powder, the iron is separated from the other elements in the ores through a variety of chemical processes, the resulting material, known as pig-iron, is then mixed with a powder comprised of crushed graphite, anthracite, or coal coke. This mixture is then placed into a furnace… In this facility’s case, an EAF, and heated to above two-thousand degrees celsius-”
Petrochemical listened, her attention entirely on what the machine pony was talking about… She didn’t understand most of it, but she planned to ask this machine pony more questions once she had a way to write it all down! They walked back toward where Basalt was resting.
She opened the door, “Basalt! I found a few things which can help the village!”
“W-whut, ah! Fuck!” He sputtered, shaking himself awake, he had been napping right next to the RTG and banged the back of his head against one of the fins. Luckily neither the RTG or the pony in question were hurt. “What did you find?”
“First, I’d like to introduce you to… This mare!”
In walked the machine-pony, “Greetings, I am-”
“What in Celestia’s holy shits is that!” Basalt shouted as he backpedaled and ended up slamming his flank against a machine mounted to the wall, breaking some of the bits of glass on it.
“As I was saying, I am a Canterlot Industrial Robotics Development Division Model MK5 C2, I am a fifth-generation autonomous worker drone designed to aid ponies in the constr-”
“Y-Yeah, whatever, but what the fuck are you!”
The machine pony just stared at Basalt, “I am a Canterlot Industrial Robotics Development Div-”
“No, seriously, what are you?”
“I see you somehow have a general intelligence level lower than that of my current administrator… In that case, I will load up my explanation reserved for foals,” There was a pause, “I am a machine made to look like a pony, I am made to do stuff that would be too dangerous for regular ponies to do, I was created by the Equestrian Government by the big factories deep inside Canterlot Mountain, I am an improvement over the other older machine ponies, I am the great-great-great grandfoal of those very first pony-shaped machines, the ones that looked just like boxes with legs and a brick for a head,” She paused, and then whispered, “Just like the so-called pony in front of me”
“Ahah, yeahhhhhh… Alright, pony-shaped machine… Petrochemical, how the fuck is a pony-shaped machine supposed to help us?”
“This mare over here knows a whooole hell of a lot more about machines than I do, so that means she can help us get old stuff working again, right?”
“That is part of my intended purpose, yes.”
“Uhhh, alright,” Basalt said, still wary of the machine mare, “So, machine-pony, what’s your name?”
“Name?” She replied, “I do not have what you organic ponies would call a name, my serial number is 5-5-12, as I am a fifth-generation worker drone, the twelfth to be produced in the fifth production run.”
“Yeah, I’m not calling you that,” Basalt replied.
“Hmm, in that case,” Petrochemical said, “How about we give you a name?”
“A-A name of my own? I-” She paused, “I never thought about having a name, it’s just a thing for you organics, why would a machine like myself need one?”
“Because I agree with Basalt, I’m not calling you five-five-twelve, nor do I just want to call you machine-pony… Feels a bit… Insulting to me.”
“Umm, very well then… As my administrator, I suppose whatever you wish to call me will be my new designation.”
“Well…” Petrochem paused, “What do you want to be called?”
“What do I-” The machine pony was silent for a few seconds, “I… I don’t… I’m a machine, I’m not supposed to think for myself unless my duty requires some creative thought, but nothing more than that… I’m not supposed to, come up with something like that.”
“Well, as your administrator, I order you to think for yourself as much as you want!”
“I- Well… Ok then. Perhaps… Call me Ethylene. It is one of the most useful chemicals to be produced, and that is my purpose after all, to be useful. So, it is fitting in a way.”
“Heh, I guess that makes you kinda like me in a way!”
“... Explain?” Ethyl said.
“Petrochemical ain’t my sister’s real name,” Basalt said, “She just chose it because of the stuff she read in that book of her’s.”
“So… What is her real name.”
Petrochem glared, blushing from embarrassment, “Bubblbub…”
“Bumblebee,” Basalt said, “Because of the black coat and yellow mane.”
“Petrochemicals are also yellow and black! At least that’s what the book shows!” She said, still embarrassed and angry, holding up a page in the book showing a picture of what the book called “Crude Oil” and “Diesel Oil”
“The administrator is correct, petrochemicals are much more important to society than bumblebees are, the insects serve little purpose beyond producing an edible sucrose-rich slurry, while petrochemicals are used to great effect in the production of plastic, adhesives, asphalt, fuel, sulfur, many other chemicals that are critical in modern society.”
“Thank you, Ethylene, also you don’t need to call me administrator, Petrochemical or Petrochem or Petro is fine.”
“Very well admin-, I mean, Petrochemical.”
“So…” Basalt began, “What was the other thing you found?”
“Something called an Electric Arc Furnace!” Petrochem replied, “A big machine that makes heat using electricity! We could heat up the entire building with it! All we need to do is somehow get the electricity from the RTG to the furn-”
“Wait,” Ethylene responded, “You mean to tell me you plan to use an EAF as a heating unit? And you intend to power it using a single RTG, one that seems to have surpassed its life expectancy if the radiation it is leaking is any indication.”
“Yeah, we just need to get the electricity into the furnace, right?”
“It would take far too long to explain all the reasons why this will not work, and even if it did it would take longer to explain why that is a terrible idea.”
“So… You don’t think it will work?”
“No. Firstly, an electric arc furnace of the kind we saw outside requires two-hundred-and-thirty megawatt-hours of electricity to run, and would produce over two-thousand degrees celsius, it would incinerate any pony within in a matter of seconds, and opening it up to use as a heating unit would make the interior of the building uninhabitable for long periods of time, even with the frigid temperatures I’ve recorded outside. Furthermore, the furnaces outside are not in any condition to run, even if we did have enough electrical generation, just from a cursory inspection I can tell that they would require weeks of maintenance, it would be cheaper to scrap those and replace them with new models. Finally, that radioisotope thermoelectric generator, even brand new, would produce no more than a dozen watt-hours, we would need thousands of them to power an arc furnace, and this particular RTG unit appears to have long outlived its lifespan, it doesn’t appear to be producing any electrical energy, just heat, and the shielding is partially damaged, I would not recommend spending more than a few hours in its presence.”
“Great,” Basalt droned, “Now I’m stuck with two eggheads.”
“Mhm…” Petrochem nodded, “Well, all we need is enough heat to keep this building safe from the cold, any idea how we could do that?”
“We simply need to find a working radio transceiver and contact the CIRDD or Equestrian Government, they will be happy to escort you ponies out of this contaminated area and back down south to a warmer climate.”
“I don’t-” Petrochem responded.
“You serious?” Basalt said, “The old world is fuckin’ dead! Equestria is gone!”
“... Explain?”
“No one knows how it happened, but one day, everything just froze, some big disaster happened in that big castle-city up on the mountain, and one-by-one all the ponies except for our tribe are dead!”
“That does not sound possible, I highly doubt the Equestrian Government would collapse in such a way, I am sure that there were contingency plans in place for any kind of disaster-”
“Well it doesn’t matter if there were or not because clearly, they didn’t work! We. Are. All. That. Is. Left.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“Let me show you!” Basalt said, wrapping his mask tight around his face and grabbing Ethyl by the hoof, his strength was enough to drag the machine pony with him.
“Bas!” Petro responded, “Don’t go out there, the storm!”
“I’ll only be out for a few seconds to prove a point to this braindead egghead.”
Soon Basalt had pulled Ethyl just outside of the old steel mill. Ethyl froze, figuratively not literally, although she was in danger of literally freezing as well… The place had one been some small village made of nothing but big factories, but even through the storm there was a good view of the mountains in the distance, once covered in cities but were now crumbling and frozen. “T-That’s… That’s Canterlot.” Ethyl said, “But… It’s-”
“Frozen, dead.”
“And, this, judging from a rough estimation from its position in relation to Canterlot… This is Ponyville Industrial Park! How did-”
“We don’t know how everything went to frozen shit but it did, now I’m going back inside before the storm kills me, spend as much time as you want out here, machine pony.”
With that, Basalt walked inside to catch his breath, and cough up the toxic snow that he had inhaled. While outside Ethyl stood, had she the ability to do so, she would have been crying… Everything ponies had achieved, and everything she was made to improve… It was all frozen and dead.
Back inside, over twenty minutes passed, and Petro and Bas started to get worried about the machine pony Ethyl, but right as they were about to go outside and find her, she stepped back in, “I have come to a conclusion,” She began, “It is clear that CIRDD and Equestrian Government likely do not exist anymore, and if they do then they are clearly not in any state to provide assistance to you and your tribe… I am a machine created to serve ponykind and improve Equestria, and in accordance with my primary mission, that means keeping you and your tribe alive. I will aid you whatever way my administrator deems necessary as long as it does not contradict the laws of robotics.”
Petrochem nodded, “Alright, we need to get this radioisotope thermoelectric generator back to my village, we are in desperate need for a long-term source of heat.”
“Very well… First, we must repair the RTGs shielding, the easiest method would be to submerge the machine in a container of water, as water is one of the highest quality radiation shields you can attain, however that would be counterintuitive to your goal of using it as a heater as the water would be acting as a heat-sink, thus, instead we need to find lead, gold, osmium, iridium, concrete, or any material that can be applied to the machine to act as a radiation shield.”
“Alright, what’s this lead stuff?”
“With this recent discovery of the lack of a central government, I will forgive your ignorance as it's clear you’ve regressed to a more primitive tribal state, so allow me to explain… Lead is a dark silvery metal with a slight blue tint, when tarnished it appears a dull grey, it is also toxic so I would not recommend consuming it, but touching it is perfectly fine… However, I will be the one to identify the target metals, I have several in-built spectrography devices, some magical and some conventional, that allow me to scan matter for desired elements, you need not concern yourself with finding it, however an extra pair of hooves and horn will be of much help, so accompany me and do what I say to avoid personal injury.”
“Got it, where should we start looking?”
“Let’s inspect the mill’s floor, I’m sure we’ll find some traces of lead in one of the machines. Also, stallion,” She said, turning to Basalt, “I would recommend keeping something solid between you and the radioisotope thermoelectric generator, the radiation leakage is minor and unlikely to cause you any harm assuming you do not spend several hours in its vicinity, but you can never be too safe.”
Basalt grunted and halfheartedly obeyed, giving one of the machines in the room a hard buck, caving in part of the outer plating, and allowing him to pull it free and use it as a big rigid blanket to place over the RTG, now using it as a kind of bed. “I suppose that will do for now,” Ethyl replied.
With that, the two mares walked back out to the factory floor to find some lead to repair the RTG. They started with the arc furnaces, and Petro watched absolutely fascinated as Ethyl slowly took apart the machine, explaining what each part did, “That book of yours,” Ethyl said, “Is merely an overview and basic description of common industrial and scientific machinery, it is meant for students just getting into the field. I am programmed with in-depth knowledge of any kind of machine we are likely to encounter, it is my duty after all to construct and repair these devices,” She explained.
They soon collected enough lead and returned to where Basalt was sleeping, “Get up, we need to fix this thing,” Petro said, pushing her brother off his makeshift metal bed.
“Fuck you,” Basalt half-heartedly replied as he pulled himself up off the floor.
“Alright, what do we do?” Petrochemical asked Ethylene.
“First, we need to remove the fins, they were merely for power generation, and this machine cannot be used for power generation in its current state, they are not needed and will get in the way of our repairs.”
“Got it, how do we do that?”
“Do you have a screwdriver?”
“Yeah, in my saddlebags.”
“Unscrew the fins.”
With that, Ethyl pointed out the screws and Petrochem went about removing them, it was tedious work but one-by-one they removed the RTG’s fins, once they were done Ethyl retrieved the lead, “Can you hold this, I am limited in that my horn can only cast a single spell at a time.”
“Uhh, yeah, sure…”
“Spell?” Basalt muttered, sitting in the corner and watching the two work.
With Petrochemical levitating the chunk of lead in a golden field, Ethylene pointed her horn at it, a bolt of golden yellow energy that matched the color of Petro’s perfectly struck the lead, and it started to warm up and turn into a shiny liquid in Petro’s grasp. “Woah.”
“I will take the lead from here,” Ethyl said, wrapping the molten liquid in golden-yellow energy and smearing it across the RTG, holding it in place as it cooled back to a solid. “I suppose that will do for now.”
“If you can just heat stuff up like that, why do we even need the RTG as a heat source?” Basalt said.
“If you were a unicorn you would understand the reason I cannot warm you all… You cannot create energy from nothing, that is the first law of thermodynamics, magic is a form of energy, and it took a great amount of power from my batteries to cast that spell.”
“You know…” Petro said, “I do feel kinda tired if I spend too long carrying stuff around, or turning plants and meat into fuel…”
“Exactly,” Ethyl replied… Then she looked down, “I have come to something of a realization while casting that spell.”
“What is that?”
“My battery, I myself am powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator unit inside my breast, but I believe it has reached the end of its lifespan as well, I cannot regenerate power… When my battery runs out, I will no longer be functional.”
“You’re… Dying?” Basalt said, suddenly concerned.
“In a way… Assuming we find no source of power for me. I estimate, assuming I do not have to perform any intensive spells such as the one I just used, that I have a week of battery life left.”
“Is… Is there any way to fix that?” Petrochem said.
“We need a source of electricity… Let me calculate,” She said, pausing, “A steam-driven turbine would be too difficult to construct in the allotted time, and we are unlikely to come across a working one… Photovoltaics are difficult to produce, and with the atmospheric conditions I saw outside, they would be extremely unreliable… A wind power-source would work well…”
“So, how do we build this wind-thing?” Basalt continued.
“I believe that there is enough material in this building, I will collect it, and we can build a wind turbine at your place of residence, I simply require copper, iron, steel, and aluminium.”
“So, how can we help?”
“Build a sled, we cannot carry all the material and the RTG, all at once… We need a mode of transport, and with the ambient temperature and abundance of snow, a sled will work well.”
“I can do that easy!” Basalt said.
“You are an earth pony as well, you will aid me in pulling the sled.”
“No need to strain yourself,” Basalt replied, “I’m one of the strongest ponies in the village, and as you said, you’re dying, I’ll pull on my own, you can rest.”
“Additionally, Admin- I mean, Petrochemical,” Ethyl said.
“Y-Yeah?”
“Find a medical kit, a facility like this should have several, they would be marked with The Rod of Asclepius, a symbol resembling a rod with a serpent wrapped around it.”
“A-Alright, why do we need this thing?”
“It should contain a respirator or two, you biological ponies will need it, my spectrometers detected an abundance of toxic chemicals in the air outside, even the air inside this building would not be recommended to breathe for long periods of time. A respirator is a device that you place across your muzzles, it has a disk-shaped filter on the side.”
“Alright, weird mask with a disk-thing inside a snake-box.”
With that, the three went off to explore the building on their own, each gathering what they needed.
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It's a very enjoyable concept, I'm fond of post-apocalyptic Equestria fics.
I find the structure is off many times, and some things could be worded better.
You seem passionate about engineering but go over the top in some areas outside of Petro reading a book or Ethylene listing information.
But it has promise. I personally think that Ethylene too-constantly switches between 'BEEP BOOP I AM ROBOT.' to 'Oh hey there I'm a cool robot that can have feelings and stuff.' It seems odd that she should find she hasn't been credited with a name in old Equestria or that having one is unthinkable when she has such a personality as to lightly engage in bantz with Basalt, so that tone needs sorting IMO.
On the whole, it's nice. I would suggest an editor to help you cut things down and put them in the right place.
11115927
Yeah, an editor would be really nice, unfortunately, I have really shitty luck trying to find editors who will actually help me in a timely manner. And yeah, I am REALLY into engineering and physics so expect a lot of that. Also, partial spoilers for later on, but the reason why everything froze and the cause of the apocalypse is a really unique one that I've never seen anyone else try before.
11115931
Well I would suggest trying to curb your enthusiasm and keep things steady within the fic. Try to keep the tone even, go over it several times to ensure all structure and grammar is in place. Extending words like 'Wooooow this place is huuuuuge' can very fast become an annoyance when the story has a semi-serious tone to it. Using emphasis with italics is far better than using CAPITALS as that implies shouting rather than a stressed word.
I would also recommend not spoiling anything.
I don't often offer advice as I kind of hate everyone and everything that isn't me or things I like, but I like what you've done and you don't seem completely hopeless. Just a tad more improvement to structure, flow, and punctuation, and I think you'll do rather well for yourself.
I'll follow this too as the concept grabs me a little.
11115938
Well, I do try to justify my enthusiasm for science by having Petrochemical and Ethylene being really smart and curious ponies who like to inspect every bit of machine they come across, but I will try and keep my explanations of stuff limited to only when the story demands it.
As for my lack of grammar... I've never been good at that, (you can blame an absolutely horrible childhood where I never went to school or was taught anything for that, my first ever English class was when I was something like 12 or 13, so I missed a bunch of stuff I should have learned when I was younger and have had to haphazardly learn it second-hand... So.)
11115941
I think you have an issue with over-sharing, but I'm glad you'll take what I've said into consideration.
Also it may just be a 'me' thing, but I'd suggest another title for your story, possibly based on the entire thematic of your story. There's no issue in having your main character be your titular character as well, but the title and initial chapter name are mostly the same, and I think it works best for the chapter, as to introduce Petro beyond just the synopsis.
11115931 Try https://www.grammarly.com/ It's not as good as a human editor, but it's passable. The pro version is almost as good as a human editor.
11116177
I have it... It doesn't help me much with punctuation, and sometimes it actually gets in my way as it tries to correct words and sentences in ways that just don't sound right to me.
11116180 Yeah you need the premium version and have to select "tell a story" and "Creative" in the settings for that to work perfectly.
Welcome to frost punk pony addition