Aureax Ferri

by Integral Archer

Part II

The Presidential Mansion stands on a road that normally sees very little traffic by regular commuters, the road being used almost exclusively for the visitors of the Mansion’s illustrious resident. This location had been the subject of a furious debate between the government of the Union and the architect who had designed the iconic building. When the architect had learned that his work was going to be located on what was essentially a side street, with the egoism peculiar to architects, engineers, and every other artist, he complained; he had said something about Doric colonnades and the long line of windows needing to be oriented a certain way relative to all the other buildings of the city, or else the fastidious design intended to maximize the majesty of the building would be lost, for he said that the sun would not hit it on the right angle and the Mansion’s proper side was to be hidden while its inferior side displayed openly. It was for this reason that the Mansion had almost not been built and the head of state almost sentenced to live in whatever house he could find in Canterlot, until the architect finally got the government of the Union to agree to install a sidewalk near the front of the building—a privilege not afforded to many buildings in the city.

It was on this sidewalk, near the front gate of the Presidential Mansion, that a blue-green unicorn with a golden-brown mane and a shiny iron band fixed on the base of his horn was pulling at leather straps around his body with his teeth. A leather sash with many pockets was draped across his shoulders, and across his body was a large fabric satchel. On the grass bordering the sidewalk next to him, the same rifle that had been seen earlier at the Department of Magic and Defense was lying concealed, invisible to anypony passing by, and lying beside the rifle was a long black rod. There was a hole in the cavity of the rod, in which could be a seen a spring.

The unicorn’s horn glowed as he moved the latches on the belts into place while holding the straps with his teeth, wincing; and he murmured, through his teeth, as he fastened the last strap: “I devoted my life, my effort, and my energy for my country; and, in return, they humiliate me, ridicule me, and tell me that I shouldn’t have bothered. Well, they will see. They will all see. They thought that they could trod on me with impunity—but I’ll get the last laugh. They will experience my genius personally. I tried the nice way; I tried presenting it to them as a disinterested bystander; and, as I should have expected, the intricacy of the design and the existence of the knowledge that it took to conceive of something as beautiful as this was completely lost on the barbarians. I should have known better: When dealing with barbarians, one needs to speak the language of barbarians; one cannot use arguments of reason—one has to shout; one has to be imposing. So, that’s what I’ll do. It’s not enough for them to see the invention; they have to see the brain and the will behind the invention. They will accept, in one form or another, the gift to the Union that Crystal Miner has created, if it’s the last thing I do!” And, with the last strap of the harness in place, he pointed his horn toward the rifle. The rifle quivered hesitantly for a second, before finally lifting, slowly, off the ground. The rod rose and inserted itself firmly into a hole in the rifle’s breech, locked into place with a snapping sound, before the rifle flew toward the unicorn standing near it. The unicorn had a firm gaze and a brow furrowed in concentration as the rifle attached itself to a small hook on the leather harness around his body.

Crystal Miner stuck his hoof into the latch on the rifle’s underside and pulled it straight. He noted with a grin full of satisfaction, of raw pleasure, the metallic clink in the interior of the rifle, and he brought the latch slowly back into position while watching eagerly what could be seen of a golden-brown case, as golden and as firm as his hair, slide slowly into place in the chamber, until it disappeared under the cover that moved into place over it. He rattled with a forehoof a pouch around his neck, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the pleasant sound of seventy brass tubes full of lead jingling against each other.

Then, he shouldered the rifle and began to march toward the front gate, trying, awkwardly, to emulate the stance and posture of a soldier of the Union Army. The finished tip of the barrel flashed in the sunlight; the iron band on the unicorn’s horn flashed back in answer.

The sentry at the front entrance, a corpulent, aged earth-pony had absentmindedly left the gate open, and he had his hind legs up on the small table in his little shack. Covering a yawn with a hoof, he was fondling the antennae of a shortwave radio receiver on the ground with the other. One could hear “The Good Fight for the Union” emerge tentatively into earshot and then fizzle away into static as the earth pony continued to grope at the antennae. The sentry was staring at the ground, at the radio; he did not immediately notice a blue-green unicorn, his head held high, a rifle harnessed and slung over his shoulders, march right through the front gate, his eye level with the ground, his face expressionless, his pace unhurried and consistent.

When the sentry finally did look up, the unicorn was already thirty yards past the shack and on the threshold of the doorstep of the mansion. “Oi!” the sentry shouted after him. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Shut up!” the unicorn yelled back. “This doesn’t concern you!”

The sentry pushed his cap aside and scratched his head with a forehoof. He squinted after the stranger, and when he saw the gleam of the barrel of the rifle, he scrambled to his feet and threw open the door to his shack. “Stop,” the sentry yelled after the unicorn, “in the name of the Union!” He took off as fast as his stubby legs would carry his obese body toward the visitor.

The visitor’s brisk, determined walking pace was faster than the sprinting speed of the sentry, who, barely three yards out of his gate, panting, out of breath, saw the unicorn disappear through the door to the building. The sentry swore under his breath and kicked up his speed to a yard a second.

Crystal Miner had reached the main atrium of the Presidential Mansion long before the sentry had managed to travel half the distance of the strip of land between the gate and the entrance, but the unicorn was in no hurry. As he walked, he noticed with pleasure, a sense of superiority, the incredulous stares cast in his direction from the ponies scattered around the corridors. The hallways were not deserted by any stretch of the word, but he saw no authoritative figures and no stances of confidence in the bodies he walked by. They looked mostly like curators, secretaries, and low-level office clerks—and the bags under their eyes and their slouched postures told Crystal Miner that they were noponies. They were worthless, he thought to himself, wastes of carbon and oxygen, conglomerates of elements that do absolutely nothing but stand in the way of the heroes and the geniuses, such as himself. But these ones seemed innocuous enough, fully aware of their uselessness, and he could understand why the Union felt the need to keep them around: Unlike many of their colleagues, who bear delusions of grandeur and require a bit more persuasion in order to be molded to the purposes that are required of them, these ones knew they were nothing, strove for nothing, and conceded to their malleability to hooves that knew better for them. As such, he did not deign to make eye contact with them or to smile, nor did he believe they were worthy of his rifle. He simply walked forward, his head held high, his stare immoveable, his pace inexorable. And the sapped onlookers, in accordance with their training and their job descriptions, did nothing to attempt to impede the progress of the implacable soldier walking past with a dangerous-looking rifle slung over his shoulders, a fabric satchel around his body with contents that they knew better than to inquire of, wearing a leather sash with pockets that made an ominous metallic clinking sound as he walked past, and an iron band upon his horn that looked as cold as the rifle he was carrying. They stared at him as he passed in front of them, whispered silently and nervously to each other when he was out of earshot, and shuddered with fear when they saw him ascend the carpeted stairs in the direction of the Horseshoe Office.

He had been here once before, as a young colt, on a family vacation. Unlike his younger brother and his older sister, he had not yawned when their father had taken them to the museum exhibits. He did not yearn for the family room’s worn-leather couch, back in Fillydelphia. In the solemn silence of the National Archives, he had whinnied with delight when he had seen the COMTOIS seated in its glass case, the pen-strokes of the founders still as bold and as fresh as the day on which they were written. Staring through the glass case that ensconced it, his sister had admired President Platinum’s penmanship; but he had admired the words that were penned. In the courtyard to the presidential mansion, his brother had remarked on the coolness of the guns and the bayonets in the hooves of the three soldiers of the Union Army underneath the flag of the United Republic of Equestria, the statue commemorating the Changeling War; Crystal Miner had stood completely still in its presence, looking at the statue almost half-an-hour after the tour group had moved on, hypnotized by the expressions of the warriors’ faces, the bends in the steel that supported and gave life to their muscles, the physical integrity of the structure which represented the integrity of the ideals it supported. Near the end of the tour of the presidential mansion, he was the only one who had gestured inquiringly with a hoof up a long stretch of carpeted stairs, sectioned off by a thread rope. “That’s goes to the president’s office,” the tour guide had said, bending down to look face-to-face at the small blue-green unicorn with a short golden-brown mane, and she had barely said these words before the colt had taken off up the stairs. He had only mounted the first five steps before he had found himself enveloped in a warm aura of magic; his body had been lifted off the steps and pulled back to the bottom. As he fought, his horn blinking impotently, trying to dispel his prison, as he kicked, bit, and twisted helplessly in the bubble, he saw the horn of the tour guide glowing, and he had heard her whiny voice say: “We can’t go up that way! The president is very busy, and she needs her peace and quiet to concentrate. She doesn’t take too fondly to foals.” His dad had grabbed him by the mane and pulled him firmly along with the rest of the tour group. His siblings had teased him. But that had not stopped him from turning around and looking up the steps—and he felt in his bosom a small seed of antipathy being planted in the young soil of his heart.

And now here he was, twenty years later, a stallion, an inventor, a genius; and there was no force powerful enough in Equestria, on Earth, that would stop him from approaching the Horseshoe Office.

The president had better learn to tolerate noise, he thought, as he stood at the slightly ajar door of the Horseshoe Office—because it’s about to get very loud, very quickly.

He turned, raised a hind hoof, and hit it against the wooden door, which was painted an impeccable shade of white. The door swung open, smashed into the wall next to it with a sharp bang, and caused the glass chandelier on the roof the office to rattle with a clear tinkling noise, almost like a shriek. Before he turned to face the occupants of the room, he heard two voices, one male and one female, yell with surprise.

He stepped over a few splinters of white wood into the Horseshoe Office. He perceived three entities in the room, as he unbuckled the rifle. Two were standing on either side of the large mahogany desk, backed by a large window seven feet high and ten across, and he glanced over both figures—their mouths open in surprise, shock, and fear—immediately without a second thought; on the right of the desk was a tall, navy blue alicorn who Crystal Miner recognized immediately as Princess Luna; the other was an old pegasus pony with a gray mane, which fell in thin strands on fur which was a bright shade of teal, and he was adorned with a black tailcoat and a necktie. For all the unicorn cared, these two figures were two pieces of the same type of alloy, equal in structural magnitude, and they meant nothing to him. He cocked the hammer on his rifle and raised a hoof to take a step forward—and his foot was frozen in place, locked with a power he could not see or describe, and he stumbled hesitatingly as he stared into the eyes of the third.

The third entity was a being unlike the other two. Although Crystal Miner could see him right there, sitting behind the desk with a coy smile on his face, he could feel the presence of this being in every cube millimeter of the room. The creature’s imposition smothered the two insignificant specks that stood on either side of its projection point; and, for the first time in his life, Crystal Miner felt his body, his ego, absorbed by this all-powerful, all-reaching force, such that, despite the rifle in his hooves, he felt powerless, weak, like a small, impudent colt who had lost his way up the stairs in the Presidential Mansion after the tour guide had told him not to go wandering off.

The draconequus had not recoiled. He had not shifted his posture or made any gesture of surprise when Crystal Miner had made his entrance. He sat as he had been, erect, on the chair behind the desk, his paw and claw clasped together in contemplation. As the two ponies on either side of him withered away and attempted to make themselves smaller, trying unconsciously to position the desk between as much of their bodies’ surface area as possible and the unicorn who was now letting the rifle droop from his leg, the draconequus only sat up straighter, while his companions’ lukewarm eyes seemed to drain with the prospect of mortality, his beady red eyes only seeming to sparkle more fiercely with the fire of life, his brain having absorbed the cold, routine, calculating thoughts and methods of the unicorn standing in front of him. And though all the draconequus said was a tentative “May I help you?” Crystal Miner’s face drained of color, and he felt his muscles starting to grow limp and useless as he stared into his eyes, as the unicorn’s being was inundated with piercing thoughts that were transmitted to him through space from this fantastical creature, ideas and concepts that no words would ever be able to describe, notions would never be able to be captured into the beauty of a mathematical relationship—and Crystal Miner felt the iron band encircling his horn begin to grow cold.

“Are you lost?” the draconequus said.

Crystal Miner heard it only as a dull murmur, as if his ears were stuffed with cotton, but as he grasped at the cold metal in his forehoof, felt the finished surface of the metal rifle, his plan came rushing back into his head in an instant. It was so dizzying that he shuddered and shook his head, as if trying to plant his feet firmly into reality once more. He took a deep breath and felt the trigger of the rifle wrapped around his hoof. “Oh no, Mr. President,” he said, bringing his forehoof down and finally completing the step forward he had been intending to make before he had been distracted. “I have never been more aware of where I was and what I was doing at any point in my life.”

Princess Luna and the old pegasus were now almost completely hidden by the desk, and their heads were lifted just enough so that their eyes could peer over the surface of the desk, watching the intruder.

The president looked to a few papers on his desk, breaking eye contact with the unicorn—and Crystal Miner took a sigh of relief—and shuffled through the refuse with his paw and claw. “I don’t believe I have any engagements scheduled for this hour,” the president said. “What was your name again?”

“Mr. President,” said the unicorn, “I have no appointment. But there has been an egregious miscarriage of justice, and surely you out of all realize the paramount importance that such enormities are rectified and the victim compensated as quickly as time permits—even if the proceedings that would follow would not fit conveniently into our schedules.”

“Why, you little wretch!” said Princess Luna, rising to her full height and glaring at the unicorn with the most damning stare she could muster under the circumstances, but because of the trembling of her legs and the twitching of her cheeks, it took everything in Crystal Miner to keep himself from laughing, as a child laughs when he sees an ant trying to defy a magnifying glass. “How dare you . . . how dare you impress upon the president in such a manner—at such a time, during the current state of things! Such actions are absolutely inexcusable and unacceptable, and you can be assured that you’ll—”

“Now, now,” said the president, holding out his paw toward the princess and fixing a curious stare on the unicorn, “this young stallion took valuable time out of his day and walked all the way here carrying such a heavy load just to see me. Whatever he has to say must be important.”

“But—sir!”

The president made a clicking sound with his tongue while still holding out his paw, and Princess Luna reluctantly pressed her lips firmly together, her brow furrowing, and her body strained to keep them shut.

“How in the world did you even get in here?” said the pegasus, who had now garnered enough courage to move his head slightly higher above the desk, such that his entire face and chin were now visible.

“Enforcer,” said the president, still looking at Crystal Miner, “if the vice president has not earned my permission to speak, what makes you think that you have?”

Enforcer blushed and pinned his ears before sliding completely out of view behind the desk.

“I apologize for the interruptions,” said the president, clasping his paw and claw back together, in the same position that Crystal Miner had initially found him in. “You were saying?”

Crystal Miner took a deep breath, ran his hoof slowly over the rifle’s hammer, and took a determined step forward. Princess Luna took a reflexive step backwards. The president did not move at all.

“Mr. President,” said Crystal Miner, and as he continued to speak, the louder his voice became and the more firmly he gripped at the rifle, “for five years, I haven’t slept. My memories of the past five years consist entirely of the sight of eraser shavings and of graphite scratched into the form of equations onto a piece of paper. For five years, I spent every moment I could, missing work at times, to work on this vision, this dream that came to me one night. All my friends, my colleagues, told me that I was crazy. They told me that such a rifle would be clunky, would jam too much, that it would be incredibly impractical, and even if it was good, there would be no demand for such a machine. I didn’t hear any of this. I just saw the equations and the drawings in front of my eyes, the ultimate problem that some power somewhere had tasked me to solve and would not let me have any peace until I had solved it.

“There were times that I truly felt it was impossible. There were times where I on the verge of throwing the mountains of paper I had accumulated over the years into my furnace in a fit of frustration. But, every time that happened, I would slam my head against a wall; and, to my surprise, I would always hear a metallic sound. And that sound would ground me, would remind me of whom I was and what that meant.” He ran a hoof against the iron band around his horn. “Mr. President, do you know what this is and what it means?”

Enforcer wiped the sweat forming on his forehead with his lapel. Not daring to speak, he turned to the president, muttering a silent prayer that he would not say anything offensive or out of place.

The president stroked his goatee. “You’re married?”

“Yes—no! No, that’s not what it means!” bellowed Crystal Miner, his eyes filling with the magma of frustration and rage, which Enforcer could see was on the verge of spilling in a fiery eruption.

The president raised an eyebrow. “Your fiancée is extremely cheap?”

“Mr. President!” blurted Enforcer, unable to contain himself any longer, “it means—”

“No, no, no, no!” screeched Crystal Miner, banging the stock of the rifle harder against the floor with each utterance of the word until the marble cracked. “It has nothing to do with marriage!”

“Of course it doesn’t,” mumbled the president.

Crystal Miner’s face began to turn red. While he was staring at the wall, vigorously rubbing the band on his horn and possibly contemplating smashing his head against one of the expensive paintings on the walls of the Horseshoe Office, Princess Luna’s horn began to silently glow a deep blue, almost black shade. Next to her, a solid gold statue also glowed blue and rose slowly, almost imperceptibly, from its resting point. She focused her gaze on the unicorn who was facing a wall and muttering something incomprehensible to himself, and she took aim—but she was shocked into dropping it back by the firm and insistent motion of a flared paw moving in front of her face. She looked down and saw the president, his paw out, looking right at her; and he shook his head firmly, his brow furrowed in a stare of concentration, of authority, and there was nothing she could do but step back, watch the blue-green unicorn turn back to face them, and let events unfold.

“Mr. President,” continued Crystal Miner, “this ring is worn by all those whose minds and ability are responsible for moving the world. Because we look like everypony else, ponies quite often forget who we are and what we do, taking our gifts to them for granted—we wear this ring to distinguish ourselves, to remind ourselves that we carry this burden of keeping the train of the world moving, for if we were ever to disappear, it would grind to a halt and spray a thick plume of smoke over its passengers; and nopony would know what happened to it, how to fix it, and what the smoke consists of.

“Do you know what this ring is made out of, Mr. President? It’s not a rare metal, like gold or platinum; in fact, it’s one of the most abundant metals on this earth: It’s iron—iron-56, to be exact.

“But it’s not just iron from anywhere. It’s iron from a very special place. You see, Mr. President, a long time ago, there was an engineer named Tangent Tolerance: A great engineer, probably the greatest engineer to ever walk this earth. And rich, too. He was so rich that he could have purchased the entire city of Manehattan and still have had some to spare—but he deserved every single penny. His practices and his methods set the standards then—the same standards we use nowadays—when it comes to almost every facet of civil engineering. The buildings that he erected all those years ago are in better condition than the newest Baltimare skyscrapers, and his buildings will stand until the earth crumbles around them, and then for a bit longer. As a matter of fact, Mr. President, he was a pivotal figure in Unification, and he designed over half the buildings in Canterlot alone—and if I’m not mistaken, the architect of this very building borrowed heavily from one of his designs, if not completely.

“He was contracted by the city of Vanhoover to build a bridge across Galloping Gorge. This bridge would’ve joined up with the road out of Vanhoover and would’ve run straight to Manehattan. Can you imagine that, Mr. President? A road, straight as an arrow, east to west, from Vanhoover to Manehattan! Do you know how many hours of travel time that would cut down?

“When they asked him if he could do it, he responded the same way he always responded when accepting any job. He said: ‘That route looks treacherous. There are many obstacles that will no doubt impede any attempts at industrialization. It seems that Mother Nature threw everything she had to make sure that we would never expand in that area. She’s strong, all right; there’s no question about that. But, gentlemares, I tell you this: there is no will on the planet that is stronger than mine.’

“Then he disappeared. He kept no communications. Nopony saw or heard of him for an entire month. Vanhoover had even started looking for another engineer.

“A month later, he showed up at the city hall. He walked right into their debating chamber—they were right in the middle of a session. His eyes were barely open from fatigue; his mane was completely matted; and across his back was slung posters inscribed with projections, proofs, calculations, notes, and summaries.

“The entire room went silent as this disheveled figure walked into the focus of attention. He cleared his throat and removed a greasy napkin from one of his pockets. He stood in place for a while with his eyes closed—some think he actually fell asleep for a second. And then, all of the sudden, his eyes snapped open; they were as big as dish plates and as red as the sun as he stared at the napkin, and he filled the entire chamber with a thundering voice that commanded: ‘I need two hundred twelve workers working forty hours a week at a wage of one and one-half grams of gold an hour. I need twenty-three cranes, forty-six pulleys, each one fixed with a cable no shorter than two hundred meters and each cable with a maximum breaking tension of no less than four hundred kilonewtons. Oh, and I need eight hundred thousand tons of iron—just iron. I want none of your weird solutions—none of your home-brewed steel. Iron will suffice. The whole operation will cost no less than five tons of gold and will take eighteen months if there are no delays; and, like always, my personal fee will be nine kilograms of gold. We’ll work out the specifics and the logistics on site.’

“He coughed once and tucked the napkin back into his pocket. The delegates of Vanhoover were completely silent; they did not even whisper to one another. He took one look around before leaving to the construction site—the only place where he would be able to be found for the next thirteen months—and said: ‘Gentlemares, let’s build a bridge.’

“And everything went really well for the first thirteen months. He was always there, watching the beams being loaded, calling out to the workers, consulting his plans. Every day, the bridge extended further along the gorge, a brilliant gray strip in the middle of space, reaching out toward the edge of an earth that nopony doubted it would touch.

“On the thirteenth month, the bridge looked complete. Its arches seemed to touch the edge of the sky. The iron seemed brighter than the sun itself. And even those who had no interest in structural design took one look at the bridge and could not help losing their breath at its majesty. Tolerance had been right; even Mother Nature could not have sculpted a rock more wonderful than what he had created.

“To the laypony, it looked done. On the eleventh month, less and less workers started to be seen on the bridge every day and for shorter and shorter hours; until, on the twelfth month, while standing on the side of the gorge, one could see no activity on the bridge. On the thirteenth month—that is, after a month where no activity could be seen from bystanders—the mayor of Vanhoover came up to Tolerance; and the latter was standing motionlessly, a hoof shielding the sun from his eyes, and he was looking at the arches of the bridge. The mayor clasped a hoof on his shoulder and said: ‘Well, Mr. Tolerance, I’d wager you weren’t counting on the expeditious work ethic of the citizens of Vanhoover to complete your project in a time frame you thought to be impossible!’

“He didn’t turn to face her. He said only, in a flat monotone: ‘The project is precisely on time—not a month early, not a second late.’

“She laughed and gestured toward the sea of boxcars filled with iron piled half a kilometer away from the building site. ‘So, I guess we can store the rest of the iron?’

“‘Whatever I don’t use, you’re welcome to as soon as I’m done with this project. It’s your iron, after all. But I wouldn’t count on me leaving anything over; I plan to use every single atom. If anything, I’ve ordered too little.’

“The mayor gasped. ‘What more could you possibly be doing that would warrant such a tremendous amount of the element?’

“This time, Tolerance turned to face her. ‘Did you not look at the plans? Have you never once looked down?’ he said. When he saw the stupefied look on her face, ‘Follow me’ was all he said before he walked toward the bridge. He and the mayor approached the edge of the gorge. When the mayor saw Tolerance wrap a foreleg around one of the wire supports and dangle his body precariously into the gorge, she looked down into the fissure, and she saw what Tolerance had meant.

“In the bottom of the gorge, near the supports of the bridge, nearly the entire building crew were moving iron bars around. Around the supports, they were fixing the long bars to the floor of the gorge. The support closest to the western side of the gorge and the following four supports had already had their iron rail addenda added, and the crew were working on the fifth and the seventh. The mayor could see that, eventually, every support would have these bars, and the entire bridge would look like it was fixed to an enormous train track.

“‘Galloping Gorge was formed by a strike-slip fault,’ said Tolerance, when he saw that the sight of the railings was bouncing off the mayor in incomprehension. ‘Just another way of Mother Nature trying to sabotage our plans. But that old bimbo didn’t count on this brain.’ He tapped the side of his temple with his other forehoof. ‘It took me forever to figure out how to prevent a collapse, but I did it. Oh yes, I did it! When it came to me, I hit myself in the head: It was so beautiful, so elegant, and so obvious. Tracks! Of course! When the fault shifts, the bridge will just slide along the tracks instead of crumbling. Pretty clever, if I do say so myself.’

“The mayor stared at Tolerance with her mouth open. ‘How long have the workers been down there?’

“Tolerance looked at her as if she had just asked him why the iron of the bridge was shiny. ‘Since the beginning! Did you not read the schedule? I spent a week drawing up the events of almost every single day! In fact, I’ve been using that part of the job as an incentive for the workers; the workers that work the hardest get a few hours of labor down there, in the shade.’

“The mayor scratched her head as she counted the number of supports. She began to go cross-eyed, and she remarked: ‘Every single support? You’re going to need a lot of iron, then—an absurd amount of iron!’

“‘Tell me about it!’ said Tolerance. ‘Nearly half of the iron I requested goes to the tracks alone. Not a perfect solution, but I’m quite proud of it.’

“Now, for whatever reason, the mayor was not happy about this. She didn’t like how much additional time and iron that Tolerance wanted, and she thought that he wanted it simply to satisfy that paranoia and obsessive-compulsion peculiar to engineers. I think she might have been up for reelection, and the completion of the bridge would’ve really helped her campaign, or something like that. I’m not entirely sure, but it’s not important to the story. In any case, she wanted it completed quickly, and she felt that eight supports—four on the west side, four on the east side—should be plenty.

“‘Do I come down to where you work and tell you how to make engineers’ lives difficult?’ said Tolerance, after she suggested that. The mayor stared at him confusedly and didn’t have a chance to speak before Tolerance continued: ‘No. So don’t come down to my construction site and tell me how to build my bridge.’

“She whispered with a few of her advisors before turning back to Tolerance and asking: ‘When was the last time the fault moved?’

“Now, Mr. President, you must understand that Tangent Tolerance was an engineer and, unlike the mayor, not a natural public speaker. Everything he had ever said in public—and I believe his entire conversation with the mayor up until this point—had been rehearsed countless times in his head. And this question had caught him off guard. ‘It . . . it,’ he stammered, ‘well, I mean . . . judging from the air photographs . . . and from what I’ve seen, of course . . . I think . . . I mean, I know that the fault . . . the fault hasn’t moved for . . . for about . . . twelve thousand . . . well, maybe thirteen thousand years—give or take . . . a few hundred years.’

“‘Thirteen thousand years?’ the mayor said, with a smile. ‘So, you’re telling me that the fault is dead?’

“‘Now . . . now, hold on . . . I never . . . I never said . . . said that. I said . . . I said . . . I said that the fault . . . the fault hasn’t moved . . . hasn’t moved for . . . for thirteen . . . twelve . . . ten thousand years . . . give or take—’

“‘So, in other words, the fault is dead.’

“‘Ms. Mayor . . . please don’t put . . . put words in my . . . my mouth. I hate . . . I mean, I don’t appreciate . . . I don’t appreciate when . . . when contexts . . . contexts are dropped. I said . . . and this is all . . . all I ever said . . . I said that the fault . . . the fault hadn’t moved . . . hasn’t moved for a long time. I . . . I never . . . said that the fault . . . the fault was dead. It’s very . . . very alive. There’s a big . . . there’s a big difference between . . . “dead” and . . . “dead” and “hasn’t moved.”’

“‘I don’t understand,’ said the mayor. ‘How can a fault be active while not having moved for millenia?’

“Tolerance’s hoof was getting so sweaty that he had to pull himself off of the wire and onto solid ground, next to the mayor. The workers had stopped, and they were staring up at him, as if awaiting for him to say something, as if they had heard the entire conversation. He panted, clutched a hoof to his heart, before saying: ‘You see . . . you see, Mayor . . . faults don’t always . . . they don’t always slide . . . slide quickly. They creep . . . they creep, you see . . . over decades. They move slowly, and . . . and . . . ’ And, all of the sudden, Tolerance exploded. ‘This is ridiculous. I’m not arguing this with you! I’ve done the math; I’ve drawn the diagrams; I’ve worked everything out. The bridge needs these tracks—and that’s it! You’re wrong! I refuse to have my skills questioned by somepony who probably wouldn’t know how to put the chain back on her bicycle if it fell off!’

“The mayor gave an amused smile, one with the clear intent to deride, though easily deniable if she was called out upon it. ‘So, you’re telling me,’ the mayor said, ‘that if I were to put a train upon that bridge right this second, it would collapse?’

“‘Also not what I’m saying.’

“‘So, it wouldn’t collapse, then.’

“Tolerance glanced at the bridge and tried to explain, not being able to help his stutter. ‘There are a lot . . . there are a lot of factors . . . factors that control the breaking weight—speed of . . . speed of the train . . . weight . . . then there’s—’

“‘Speak up, my dear,’ said the mayor.

“‘Then there’s of course subtler things . . . things like resonance. Things . . . things like that.’

“‘“Things like that”?’ said the mayor, smirking at him. ‘I must say, Mr. Tolerance, that you’re not presenting your product like a businesspony. In other words, you’re not inspiring consumer confidence in me.’

“Tolerance closed his eyes and clenched his teeth together. He thought much faster than he spoke. He took a deep breath, his head bowed in a sort of meditation, before looking back at the mayor, and his irises had reassumed their sharp gray color, as gray as the iron of the bridge behind him, and he said clearly, without any of his previous stuttering: ‘Look, Ms. Mayor, I’m sorry for snapping at you earlier. That was wrong, and I apologize. But I’m telling you—and I would not hesitate to bet my life on it—that that bridge needs the tracks. I’m not asking you to believe me; I’m asking you to see. Over there is my cabin, and inside you’ll find all the proofs, all the calculations, all the models I’ve ever made for this project—everything you’ll ever need to see into my mind and to understand my thought processes. You’ll see that no matter how many times I approach the scenario, I keep coming back to the same problem, and there are many solutions to this problem; but I’ve decided, in my professional opinion, backed up by decades of experience, that the best solution, given our time frame, is the railings. If I had more time, I might have come up with something better. I’m not making excuses, Ms. Mayor; I’m confident that the railings will suffice, that they will perform their duty as long as the bridge stands, and it is the absolute best solution when all things are considered.’

“The mayor nodded thoughtfully. ‘And how long would it take for you to finish?’

“‘I said eighteen months for the entire project, and that time frame has not changed. It’s been thirteen months, so that means that the bridge will be done in five months.’ And when he saw her glance at her advisors with a look that said too much, a look that made his heart sink, he added: ‘Ms. Mayor, it’s not a question of if the bridge will break; it’s a question of when will it break and how many will die when it happens.’

“The mayor shrugged, in the way that a parent does when saying ‘You should have known better’ after punishing an insolent foal, and said: ‘Well, I’m sorry to inform you, Mr. Tolerance, that the government of Vanhoover has reviewed the progress of this bridge and has learned that the last building code required to deem this public structure safe for general use had been fulfilled one month ago. Although we do appreciate the intimate work that you, Mr. Tolerance, put into every single one of your phenomenal pieces of architecture, the government of Vanhoover has decided, begrudgingly, that it cannot justify the price of the additional amount of iron you’ve requested for personal touches to the structure. But, because the bridge adheres to every single one of Vanhoover’s building codes, we are proud to call this year-long project finally concluded.’

“‘“Personal touches”?’ said Tolerance, staring at her wide-eyed and in disbelief. ‘“Personal touches?” Since when—’

“‘And it is only thanks to you, Mr. Tolerance, that such a monumental task was completed in such a short span of time. You have our everlasting gratitude. And, in your honor, I, the mayor of Vanhoover, dub this structure to be the “Tolerance Track”, and—’

“She didn’t have time to finish her speech, for she was hit directly in the face by a wet plastic object. When she peeled it off her face with a forehoof and looked at it, she saw the construction site ID card of Tangent Tolerance, P. Eng., Project Leader. Tolerance had torn the card off the thread around his neck with his mouth and had spat it in the face of the mayor.

“She stared at him with her mouth wide open, and the only sound that escaped was a pathetic little cry of surprise. He was looking at her, his lips firm, his nostrils flared; and with narrowed eyes with dilated pupils that did not quiver, did not dart, that only stared at her mercilessly, pitilessly, as if there was not a crime worse than the one she had committed against him. ‘Do not name this bridge after me,’ he said, and he did not raise his voice, nor did he let any fluctuations of tone reveal that the fact that he had not been holding any of his tools was the only thing that was stopping him from killing her in cold blood, right then, right there. ‘This is not my bridge. I had no part in its design and no part in its conclusion. As such, you will not send to me, or my bank, the nine kilograms of gold that would normally be my fee for a project of this scale; I will not deposit it, and my bank will refuse to serve you. You will not name this bridge after me, because this is not my bridge. And I know this, because I know that I would never, under any circumstances, design such an intricate and expensive contraption of death such as this.’

“And he immediately made off toward his cabin. A moment later, the mayor saw its chimney venting hurriedly away a thick, black smoke and saw him leave the site, with empty hooves. They ran into the cabin only to find, too late, that he had thrown all of his notes into the furnace. Everything that he had worked on for months, the proofs, the models—all gone, destroyed.

“And, despite everything, they still called it the ‘Tolerance Track’ and started running trains on it immediately. When a reporter came to Tolerance’s expansive mansion in Canterlot and asked him how he felt, shortly after the first train, moving at a speed of over a hundred twenty kilometers an hour, went over the Tolerance Track, he responded with only: ‘I don’t know whom they named that bridge after, but I know it wasn’t me. I had no part, at any point, in the making of that bridge. Any attempts to tell anypony otherwise is a blatant, slanderous lie.’

“Many contractors tried to get Tolerance to build things for them, but nopony ever saw him outside his house, other than that one time when he opened the door once to answer the reporter’s question. There were not even sightings of him at corner stores, or even at his favorite gentlecolts’ cigar club. When the contractors finally gave up on him, a shadow fell over the industry and the neighborhood where his house stood. You don’t understand, Mr. President; Tangent Tolerance had set the industry standard for virtually every single thing he did related to his work. A few contracting firms had even gotten rid of coffee pots in their offices at one point, after Tolerance had said, a while back, that he never drinks coffee while working, as he thinks it interferes with his concentration. With him gone, the industry, though it did not die, seemed sluggish. Things didn’t go at the speed ponies expected them to go during the Tolerance days. Although, outwardly, everypony dismissed Tolerance, after one year and no sighting of him, as an eccentric madstallion, each and every one of the them felt that there was something wrong. Even the passengers of the train traveling over that bridge—though none of them feared the bridge per se—they always felt something unsettling as they felt the crossties shudder under the weight of the train, like there was a presence that they couldn’t see or hear, but could feel, cursing each one of them, silently, judgmentally.

“And exactly ten years later—literally, exactly ten years later, same day when he left the project and everything—at the precise moment the nine-thirty train’s center of mass was directly in the middle of the bridge, the fault shifted for the first time in thirteen millenia. The bridge, in the blink of an eye, was split in half, and the train was swallowed up by Mother Nature, who had been fasting for a while, waiting for the ponies who thought that they were above her to get complacent, only to seize the opportunity to snatch them up in her ravenous jaws. Anypony who, by some miracle, had survived the fall to the bottom of the canyon, most certainly was killed by the rain of iron that followed afterwards. It was as if a bomb had exploded on the bridge—one might as well have exploded—and it could be heard from Canterlot. Many citizens had thought that there was some sort of foreign invasion.

“The train had six hundred seats and always carried exactly six hundred ponies. On that particular day, three hundred seventy-nine stallions, one hundred twenty mares, and one hundred one foals were traveling from Vanhoover to Manehattan; and on that particular day, at approximately 9:31 a.m., three hundred seventy-nine stallions, one hundred twenty mares, and one hundred one foals were killed when their train slammed into the bottom of Galloping Gorge.

“What Vanhoover should have done was to confess and take the blame as soon as possible. But that would have been honorable—would it have not been?—and we certainly can’t have that! Immediately, the government of Vanhoover announced that they were ‘investigating the matter immediately,’ and within the hour, they announced that six hundred charges of Criminal Negligence Resulting in Death had been placed upon—whom else?—Tangent Tolerance, P. Eng., former project leader of the Tolerance Track, who had not been seen for over ten years.

“And then, in another hour, the police obtained a search warrant to enter Tolerance’s mansion. There was a throng of spectators—or, as I prefer to say, voyeurs—who watched as the police broke down the beautiful wooden door of Tolerance’s mansion and entered, swiftly, as if there were hostages.

“For ten minutes, Equestria gritted its teeth as they waited to see Tangent Tolerance emerge from his house for the first time in ten years—and I do believe there’s a picture of the exact moment the captain stepped out of the house after the raid. It’s quite grainy, but it’s such a powerful picture for a number of reasons. She’s facing the crowd, and they are desperately begging her—you can’t see it, but you can feel it when you look at their postures—to let them know the answer to the mystery. You can see the pure despondency in her cheeks as she faces the crowd, her eyes sunken back into her skull underneath a large helmet sitting on a furrowed brow, and her mouth is open as if she’s saying ‘Why?’—and Tangent Tolerance is nowhere in sight.

“I’m sorry to say, Mr. President, that this story does not have a happy ending. Tangent Tolerance was not in his house. His relatives were as informed of his whereabouts as the rest of Equestria. He was nowhere. It was like he had disappeared off the face of the planet. He, until thirty years ago, was Equestria’s most wanted fugitive of all time, despite the fact that he had certainly died long ago from natural causes.

“The destruction of the bridge has always hung over the city of Vanhoover as a massive scar of shame that ponies rarely talk about. Haven’t you ever wondered why there is no bridge across Galloping Gorge? For the longest time, engineering students at the University of Vanhoover never studied the case. It was only until thirty years ago—that recently!—that the government of Vanhoover issued a formal apology toward Tangent Tolerance and his kin, rescinded the warrant for his arrest, and posthumously awarded him the Key to the City of Vanhoover. At the same time, the Department of Engineering at the University of Vanhoover offered Tangent Tolerance’s nominal fee—that is, nine kilograms of gold—to anypony who can bring in his body; and this request has yet to be filled.

“The only thing that was left of him was the bridge—the whole of the pieces of which are now referred to, lovingly, as ‘Tolerance’s Requiem.’ All the iron is cleared out now, obviously, but it hasn’t been repurposed into tracks and sewer gutters, as it typical of iron from destroyed buildings; it hasn’t even been put in a museum. No, Mr. President, where it is now—or, what remains of it now—are spread out in multiple specially-made storehouses at the University of Vanhoover.

“At the end of every April, the end of every school-year, some of Tolerance’s Requiem is removed from the facilities. The iron is then melted and then poured into molds—molds of jagged, plain rings. These iron rings are shipped to every university in Equestria and are given to each engineering student, along with their diploma, at their graduation ceremony. Tangent Tolerance was a civil engineer, but the principles by which he lived, by which he performed his duty, those fundamental principles which, when strayed from, result in machines of life being distorted into those of death, hold true in any discipline of engineering.”

And Crystal Miner touched the piece of Tolerance’s Requiem on his horn. “Mr. President, this is the mark of an engineer, a disciple of Tangent Tolerance. I move the world. And though the world needs me desperately, it, at times, forgets it, and it treats me like an expendable. That’s why engineers hold these iron rings, Mr. President. My ring reminds me of who I am, what I do, and whom I work for. When times get tough, I remember Tangent Tolerance, and I remember what I’m up against—I remember that my enemies are the very ones whom the machines I breathe life into are for, and I remember what will happen should I grow complacent, disillusioned, and begin to think that they’re the ones who give meaning to my work, and I begin to think that they’re the ones on whom I am dependent. Well, Mr. President, I say no! This iron ring reminds me that I’m the master of nature, not them; this iron ring reminds me that I feed the coal into the furnace of the train of the world, and the ones on board who do not stand at my side along the fires should be grateful that I am its conductor. This iron ring reminds me that what I build is my life, and that I’ll die before I see that it’s used for anything other than the purpose for which I designed it or before I see it wallow in neglect!”

A pervasive silence, save for the muffled sounds of some hurried boots and urgent voices a few floors below, reigned supreme. In the Horseshoe Office, a disciple of Tangent Tolerance was locked in a duel of will with the ideological son of President Platinum, their eyes their weapons, the light between them their battlefield.

The president was the first one to speak. “Do you want to know what I think, honestly, what I think?”

“That’s why I’m here, Mr. President,” said Crystal Miner.

The president could see Enforcer, out of the corner of his left eye, trying to discretely wave his two outstretched forehooves to him, as if urging him to stop. The president pretended not to notice him and instead said: “I think you, along with every other engineer, are a bunch of megalomaniacal, deranged cultists.”

Enforcer let out a high pitched cry of distress. Even Princess Luna could not suppress a choked sound from within her throat.

But Crystal Miner simply smirked. “That’s your opinion, Mr. President. You’re certainly entitled to it, and I encourage you to morally judge all who come your way; however—and if I may be so audacious to paraphrase a rebuttal you employed in one of your debates—I will not stand here while you attempt use an ad hominem to stall for time, nor will I ascribe any intellectual value to your moral judgment upon me, which you so dishonestly and so slyly attempt to employ as a substitute for an argument!”

Crystal Miner could almost hear the hinges of the jaws of Enforcer and Princess Luna as they swung open as widely open as they could. His eyes widened along with the president’s, and the unicorn’s ears perked up when he heard the president begin to laugh, quietly at first, but growing louder by the second until it resounded in a torrent of explosively powerful force; and the president, in his fit of laughter, violently slammed his curled up paw against the surface of the desk. Enforcer and Princess Luna felt their hearts begin to curdle into black holes of despair and emptiness as the president’s laugh reached their ears, curling itself in the recesses of their brains, suffocating them with its opacity—but Crystal Miner’s smile only seemed to grow unsettlingly wider as the laugh got louder. He couldn’t help but force his lips upwards into the dark curl of a smirk.

The president turned toward Princess Luna, who was looking at a spot on the floor with a completely blank stare, and said, gesturing with a talon toward the unicorn standing in the middle of the room: “I like this kid.”

“Yes . . . yes,” said Enforcer, meekly, almost inaudibly, struggling on wobbly knees to his feet, “he’s a fine boy. I like him, too. Why don’t you put the gun down then, son?”

“All’s well,” said the president, turning back to Crystal Miner, “but I fail to see what any of this has to do with you—you, standing in front of me, right here, right now.”

Crystal Miner cocked his head to one side, like the hammer of a rifle, and stared at the president sideways.

“You still haven’t explained,” said Princess Luna, “why you’ve forcibly entered, armed, caustic and belligerent, and insolently insisted that you see the president. I demand an answer!”

Crystal Miner turned to Princess Luna, and unlike the way he had been looking upon the president earlier, he looked at her as a statue looks at a tourist from on top of a pedestal, imperiously and judgmentally, only needing a further nudge to fall over and crush the impudent observer. Princess Luna took another step back.

The unicorn turned to the president. “Mr. President, I am here, because I feel that lives are on the line. I am here because, like Tangent Tolerance before me, my genius and my intellect has been disregarded, casually thrown away, not appreciated for what they are. I went to the Department of Magic and Defense, and I prostrated myself before them, asking them openly—and now I realize naively—to see the great gift that I had brought before them. And you know what they did? They threw me—literally, threw me—onto the sidewalk, after insulting me and my work. I had not been allowed to ask them to elaborate on their ambiguous arguments. But, Mr. President, I will not stand by and watch my rifle sit in my closet collecting dust, when it could be in the hooves of the most elite soldier to ever walk this earth; I will not sit and do nothing at home while that soldier is killed, defending me and the country I love, when that death could have been avoided if he had had my rifle; I will not roll over and accept the abuse that my creations, which are produced by my mind alone, are given by ignorant bureaucrats as long as I have any say in the matter!”

The president nodded thoughtfully and stroked his goatee. “You’re quite wordy, sir; I’ll give you that. And I think that had you not gone into engineering, you would’ve made the perfect politician. But you’ve forgotten one thing: due to deliberation, or most likely due to the fact that you were caught in the heat of the moment, you spoke volumes about your feelings—but I still know nothing about you or your rifle.”

Crystal Miner blinked. The president continued: “Your conclusions are all very nicely put, no question about that, and they unequivocally seal whatever argument you tried to make—provided one accepts your premises.”

“My . . . my premises?” said Crystal Miner, stammering his words, his voice slowing for the first time in the conversation.

“Yes,” said the president, “you said that it would be a crime to allow the soldiers of the Union Army to die when they could have been holding your life-saving rifle. I agree; it would be a crime—provided that your rifle is truly deserving of the merit you ascribe to it. But, sir, you have not demonstrated to me that this is the case, and you certainly haven’t demonstrated that to the Department of Magic and Defense. For all I know, your machine could be as worthless as the remains of the Tolerance Track.”

Crystal Miner clenched his teeth together and bared them. As he tightened his hoof around the trigger of the rifle, a large vein in his temple begin to visibly pulse with the adrenaline of rage, and he shouted: “My rifle is not worthless! It’s brilliant!”

“Then defend it!” snapped the president, suddenly rising to his feet; and, in a voice that had a volume and tone that Princess Luna and Enforcer had never heard him use before, a voice with a maniacal fervor that made them shudder and question who in the room was, at that moment, more dangerous, he shouted: “I’m sick of sitting here and listening to you talk about yourself, you arrogant foal! Have the rectitude and the moral fiber to stand there and defend your work with an argument, instead of cowering behind verbosity and intimidation like a mindless brute!”

And it was at that point that Enforcer finally saw the volcano of Crystal Miner’s eyes erupt. The pegasus pressed his body against the window behind him as the unicorn walked—marched—angrily, with heavy stomps, toward the desk. When he closed the distance between him and the desk, when his face was mere feet away from the president’s, he raised a forehoof and, with a violent, crazed movement of his leg, swept the papers, the pens, and the sculptures sitting on the mahogany desk to the floor. The clatter of quills and the loud crash of paperweights slamming to the ground rocked the room with an echo that seemed to reverberate through the entirety of the Presidential Mansion.

Enforcer saw Princess Luna recoil with fear, as she saw Crystal Miner’s horn begin to glow, raising the rifle to the president. And though the president had a fully loaded rifle pointed at him, he never sat down; he never relented; he never broke eye contact with the unicorn—whose horn was now beginning to glow brighter.

With sweat pouring down his temples, the unicorn strained with a supreme effort, and his horn burned with a light that had an intensity of no less than a kilocandela. The rifle twitched in front of the president’s face. A click was heard within the interior of the metal—and, with a blinding flash of light, brighter than his horn, the rifle exploded.

It exploded, in the way that Crystal Miner and his fellow bearers of Tolerance’s Requiem explode objects when trying to accurately describe them when projecting them on two dimensions. When the president blinked, clearing the spots from his eyes, he no longer saw the rifle; he saw pieces of metal, assorted levers, and springs floating, engulfed in a blue light, in front of his desk. Scattered intermittently around the parts were small brass cylindrical tubes. Behind the debris, the president could see the unicorn, his eyes closed in concentration, his lips pressed firmly together in a strained effort.

The strap on the fabric satchel on Crystal Miner’s undid itself when the magic reached it, and out of the satchel flew a rolled up piece of poster paper. It unfurled briskly and set itself down on the table, spending a few seconds orienting itself as soon as the president started looking at it. Three pieces of the rifle—the lever that had been fixed to the underside of the stock, the receiver, and the barrel—positioned themselves on blank spaces on the paper. The rest of the pieces were gently laid on the ground.

On the paper, the president saw thick black graphite strokes, outlining what he could tell to be various views of the rifle. Aside from the silhouette of the firearm that bordered all the drawings, he could make nothing of the various dashed lines inside the body of the drawings; the arrows that seemed to point at nothing, with multiple numbers that specified dimensions that did not seem to exist; and the various diagonally solid lines.

Crystal Miner began to point to various scribblings; and he said, his words coming out in rapid-fire and moving faster than his hoof was able to point to the parts he was referring to, an explanation which the president only caught bits of: “The Miner Repeating Rifle: Here are the orthographic projections, third-angle, front, right, and top views. All dimensions are in millimeters. There’s a general tolerance of a tenth of a millimeter. All fillets and rounds have a radius of two-point-two millimeters unless otherwise specified. All holes are on the basic hole system, and the two shafts here have an allowance of negative point-one-five millimeters. All holes are finished, of course, as are these surfaces, here and here. Here’s the section view of the whole lever system; as you can see, the movement of the user operating the lever moves one of the seven cartridges from the magazine, located in the breech—this hole in the stock, right here—into the chamber. Oh, the section view of the feeding system is right here. Anyway, they’re held in place by this rod, by this spring in it. So, like I was saying, the downwards movement of the lever by the operator ejects the shell of a cartridge in the chamber from this hole here—if there is one—and allows one of the bullets, pushed forward by the spring in the rod, which must be inserted into the magazine after loading and prior to firing, to be deposited into this chamber here; the upwards movement of the lever brings the cartridge into firing position. The hammer is then cocked by the user, and then it’s ready to fire. Actually, this is just one of two designs I have for the rifle, the other being one with a smaller barrel which I call the ‘Crystal Carbine,’ and . . .”

The president was not looking at the drawings. He was looking at Crystal Miner’s mouth, watching his chin move up and down. Eventually, he could not hear the words anymore, but the engineer’s chin and tongue kept moving and tongue moving, as if they were still forming sounds. Crystal Miner spent a minute after he had finished speaking mouthing words that he did not say, looking at different parts of the poster, still pointing.

After some time had passed, the unicorn nodded thoughtfully to himself and looked up at the president. When he saw the president looking back at him, Crystal Miner held his head high, took a step back and said, solemnly and full of conviction: “Omnia locutus sum.”

The president looked at Crystal Miner; and the draconequus’s eyes narrowed in deep thought, in cold analyzation and judgment, but his cheeks rose in a curious, approving smile of recognition, and he said, softly, smoothly, and with the trace of the light tones of humor: “Omnia locutus es.”

And when he heard those three words, Crystal Miner realized in an instant that, regardless of what the president would say next, he had defended his work to the best of his ability—and it was standing on its own integrity, standing firmly, as firmly as the alloy with which it had been made, as firm as the iron that composed entirely the ring on its creator’s horn, and the creator was seeing the physical instantiation of his idea as clearly as how he had seen it in his mind, and it appeared to him exactly as how he wanted it to appear; and he knew that the president knew this too, that the president understood that the machine was being presented to him fully, openly, as the creator intended, that it was not an inferior job by a lesser engineer, the kind of which who would attempt to excuse and pass as acceptable faulty design choices by pinning his ears in the attempt for sympathy and by giving the nebulous explanation that he struggled with bringing his ideas to light—and Crystal Miner saw, could feel, that the president understood this, that the machine had earned the right to sit on that desk in the Horseshoe Office, ready to receive a judgment by a sound mind, a judgment that it would deserve. The Miner Repeating Rifle was complete, five years later—the engineer knew it; the president knew it; and both of them felt, through this machine, that each one of them had given and gotten exactly what had been expected.

Just then, heavy, slow, thunderous footsteps were heard outside the room. Crystal Miner spun around and recognized the obese sentry from the front gate, standing just outside the room. His head hung to the ground in fatigue, and sweat poured from his every pore. He stood there panting for a few seconds, too exhausted to look at anything other than the floor. Between wheezes, he barely managed to choke out: “You . . . stop . . . in the . . . name . . . of the Union.”

“Mr. President!” came a voice from an unseen pony around the corner of the archway. “Stay calm. Nopony’s getting hurt today. Just listen to what he says, and we’ll get you out of there soon!”

“I assure you,” the president yelled back, “I’m quite safe.”

They saw the head of a helmeted pony stick out from around the corner. Her brow was raised in confusion as she said: “What? You’re—you’re alright?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” said the president, with a laugh. “Come in, Lieutenant!”

The pony moved the rest of her body into the room. Crystal Miner was taken aback when he saw her: The tall earth pony was wearing a full suit of gray body armor that rattled as her limbs moved. A Stallion Army revolver was sitting in a complexly assembled leather holster on the thigh of her right hindleg, and a blunderbuss was slung across her shoulders. She looked fully equipped for war, which is why it struck the engineer as odd that she was speaking in such a surprised voice.

“We heard that a madstallion with a gun had entered the building and was heading to your office!”

“I am not in any danger, if that’s what you fear,” replied the president.

The lieutenant used a forehoof to press firmly on her helmet and moved it across her head, using the fabric lining underneath it to scratch her scalp.

The president gestured with his paw toward the unicorn. “Lieutenant, I’d like you to meet—”

“Crystal Miner,” said the unicorn, finishing the president’s sentence.

“Crystal Miner,” continued the president and then, gesturing to the pieces of metal scattered on the floor, added: “He’s been showing me the plans for a machine he designed, which he believes would be of great service to the Union.”

The lieutenant looked back to the security guard. The security guard shrugged. She looked back to the president and said: “So, there was nopony here trying to kill you?”

“There is nopony here trying to kill me.”

“I see,” said the earth pony, looking into space. She stood there silently for a few seconds, as if she was disappointed, before curtseying politely and saying: “I’m terribly sorry for bothering you Mr. President. I do hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Oh, not a problem at all, Lieutenant! I’d much rather have a vigilant police force than a complacent one. Send my regards to the station, would you?”

The lieutenant nodded before turning lugubriously toward the door and shuffling away, slowly. The joints in her armor seemed to sigh with dejection as she moved. At the threshold, she stood facing the sentry, who was smiling at her coyly, before slapping him across the face with a forehoof. The sentry stood in place, rubbing his face with a frown that expressed disappointment at the gesture but with a recognition that it had been deserved.

The lieutenant had disappeared around the corner, and Crystal Miner was about to turn back toward the president when he heard: “So, what’s the situation, Lieutenant?”

He turned back around. This was a new voice, a male voice, but it had not been that of the sentry. It was coming from around the corner, in the direction that the lieutenant had walked. “There’s no situation,” he heard the lieutenant say.

He heard muffled whispers down the corridor. “What do you mean?” said the first voice.

“I mean that the president’s fine. It was a false alarm.”

He heard the outburst of a collective groan, as if an entire crowd had gathered in the hallway outside of the office.

“Can you, maybe, check again?” said another voice. “Because, you know, I was kind of hoping that I could tell my family that I saved the president today at work. I have a dinner party in a few days, and—”

“No, I’m not going to check again! Come on, let’s get out of here. We had a report of an armed robbery that we had to blow off for this; we can go get that now, alright?”

“It’s not the same,” grumbled the first pony. Crystal Miner heard the shuffling of armor and the thud of many metal-plated boots against marble growing quieter as it moved down the hallway. The steps were not firm or fast, nor in unison like the steps that had approached; they were more like the trudging of feet, like the movement out of a theater after a bad performance.

When Crystal Miner turned back, he saw the president looking at the plans on his desk. “What’s this?” the president said, pointing his talons at something on the poster.

Crystal Miner leaned over the table and saw that the president was looking at the drawing of an elongated tube. The tube with tipped with a cone, and little black dots were clustered in the middle of its body.

Crystal Miner gave a smile full of pride. “That, Mr. President, is one of the many ways the Miner Repeating Rifle distinguishes itself from the muzzle-loaders; that is the section view of the rifle’s cartridge.” His horn flashed and the brass tube, represented by the projection in question, floated in front of the president.

The president immediately seized it with his talons and, after flipping it around a few times, inserted its base into his mouth and bit down firmly. “Not very forgiving to the teeth,” he said, rubbing his paw against his gums. “How do I open it?”

Crystal Miner took a deep breath, allowing the feeling of satisfaction to sweep through his body. “Mr. President, to answer your question, I must explain what makes this cartridge different from the paper ones that charge the muzzle-loaders. You see, this cartridge—whose body, as you can see, is made completely from metal—like its paper counterpart, has a premeasured amount of gunpowder and has been prepared in advance by the factory whence it came. But, unlike the paper cartridges, this one needs no more preparation by the soldier before the bullet it contains can be fired.”

He pointed on the full section view of the rifle to a long, tubular region running up the length of the stock of the rifle, which was identified by the lack of diagonal section lines though it. “The soldier places the cartridges into this hole, this ‘magazine.’ The magazine can hold seven of these cartridges before the soldier must charge it again; what this means in practice is that a soldier can fire seven times before having to bring the rifle around to load—eight times if a bullet is already in the chamber prior to completely loading the empty magazine.

“Mr. President, do you realize the tactical implications of this? With this, if a soldier misses his target, he won’t have to bring the rifle down and spend agonizing seconds reloading before he can fire again, by which time the target is probably out of sight. All it takes is two flicks of the hoof, the forward and backward cocking of the lever; a tap on the hammer; and it’s ready to fire again—and the soldier, who is presumably still looking through the sight, can see where the bullet landed and correct his shot appropriately, relative to the sight.

“The invention of the percussion cap, contrary to popular belief, was not without its drawbacks. With the flintlock firearms, the cartridge was used to charge the pan directly—a single, quick action—before continuing with the loading process. With the switch to percussion caps, the soldier now has to carry a separate pouch, in addition to the one that holds the cartridges, and after the ramrod has been returned, he needs an additional three movements to place the cap, three movements which the musketeer did not need, which means that the musketeer can actually fire slightly faster than the riflepony. The percussion cap, though its water-resistance and its reliability compared to the flintlock was revolutionary, did nothing to help the speed of the loading process. But all that changes with me.”

Pointing to various parts on the cartridge, he continued: “This gray part, on top here, is the bullet, as usual. Seated underneath it is the gunpowder, also as usual. But the key part is right here.” He pointed to the circular stubbed end at the bottom of the cartridge. “This is the percussion cap. In the chamber, the rim of this part is struck by the hammer, igniting the gunpowder and propelling the bullet.

“Look at this, Mr. President! Cap, ball, and powder—all in one. To answer your earlier question, I can’t open it; I sealed it when I assembled it, and I do not have the tools on me to unseal it. Why would I want to? It’s ready as it is.

“Do you know what this means? This means that a soldier no longer has to fumble with the painful assembly of a cartridge; all he has to do is slip it into the magazine, cock the lever, and prime the lock, and it’s ready to fire. This is the cartridge of the future! No more dropped bullets and spilled gunpowder, no more bits of paper stuck between teeth, no more mouths full of gunpowder.”

“I actually like the taste of gunpowder,” said the president, picking at his teeth with a talon. “I add a bit of it to my breakfast cereal every morning. I find it gives me a nice kick to my day, if you know what I mean.”

“If that’s the case,” said Princess Luna bluntly, suddenly, and unexpectedly, staring absentmindedly at the ground and avoiding eye contact with the president, “then, should you be killed by the rebellion—which seems to be growing larger by the hour and increasing the number dead by the day—I’ll be sure to keep the Union Army’s explosive squad on standby outside the crematorium, in case anything disastrous should happen when they start the flames.”

Enforcer and the president turned to Princess Luna, their eyes wide with incredulity. Enforcer felt his heart sink in his chest. Crystal Miner pretended to look at an equation on the poster.

“I am appalled,” said the president. “That was unusually dark and sarcastic—even for you!”

Princess Luna said nothing and continued to stare at the ground.

Turning to the engineer, the president said: “I apologize for the vice president, Mr. Miner; she’s under a lot of stress, with the rebellion and everything. We’re all under a great amount of stress, I especially; I’m just capable of hiding it better than the rest.”

“Hmm?” said Crystal Miner, looking back at the president, “oh, I understand!”

“I only understood half of what you said,” said the president, “but I must say that I’m impressed by the way you presented it, if not by the machine itself. What were the reasons given for its rejection by the Department of Magic and Defense?”

Crystal Miner groaned. “Now, Mr. President, I’m not a military tactician, so take as you will my opinion and my disgust for their reasons—”

“Don’t hold back for the sake of social expectations,” interrupted the president. “I’ve never liked them anyway. They deserve all the criticism they get and more.”

“They told me that, in addition to not wanting to retrain all the soldiers, they thought the ease of loading and firing the repeating rifle would cause the soldiers to not take care when aiming, and they would instead fire as fast as they could, sending bullets haphazardly to and fro, hitting nothing and wasting money.”

The president scoffed. “Now I know that you’re making things up. That can’t be what they said.”

Crystal Miner put a hoof over his chest. “I swear on everything, Mr. President, on my life and on my rifle, that that was the reason they gave me.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense! It riddled with contradictions.”

“There are a lot of problems with the argument, I know, but—”

“No, I don’t think you understand. I read the Union Army field manual; they teach their soldiers to fire quickly, not accurately. It baffles me. Despite the fact that rifles have been around for decades now, they’re still stuck in the mindset of the musket. Do you know that they still stand in lines? Out in the open, no cover, in lines, firing intermittently, as fast as possible. What was the point of buying all those rifles if they were not going to appreciate their accuracy? In fact, the general of the Union Army prides herself on how fast her soldiers can load and fire. Why, just a few weeks ago—you remember when I presented the title of Colleague of the Union to that songwriter?—we had a soldier of the Union Army there, a young specialist who entertained us by loading and firing a Trottingham Rifle four times in a minute.”

Crystal Miner opened his mouth and raised a hoof; but all that came out of his throat was a strangled, grunting sound, as if his mind had aborted in mid-flight the point it had wanted to make. He moved his hoof to his face and pulled on his cheeks in bemusement. “I have nothing to say to that.”

The president leaned back in his chair. “Well, Mr. Miner, you’ve made your case. I must complement you on your thoroughness; however, it may disappoint you to learn that I’m not convinced as of yet.”

“What!” exclaimed Crystal Miner, and his right foreleg twitched and grabbed the sash around his body. When they felt no rifle stock, the engineer jerked his head left to right, looking for the machine until he saw it, too late, disassembled and lying in pieces around the Horseshoe Office.

“Theory is one thing,” the president went on, “but implementation is something completely different. Your theory is remarkable, to be sure, but I haven’t seen anything that would confirm its efficacy in reality.”

“But I explained everything! How are you not satisfied? I showed you the cartridge, the receiver, the plans, the—”

“Now, hold on,” said the president, waving a paw at him, urging him to stop. “all I said is that your argument isn’t over just yet. What I was going to say is that I’m willing to see the second part of that argument.”

“What . . . what are you suggesting?”

The president smiled. “I have a few things to do first, some telegrams to send, some ponies to talk to. Can you meet me in the courtyard in about three hours? Or, is that too short of a notice? I presume you live somewhere nearby; perhaps we can schedule a time in the future where—”

“No!” Crystal Miner interjected. Then, clearing his throat and assuming a lower tone of voice, he added: “No, I mean, three hours from now is fine. I’ll see you there.” He closed his eyes and strained his horn, and the rifle parts on the carpet and on the desk began to glow, and they lifted themselves off of their resting surfaces. Slowly, they approached one another; and, after another flash of light, the rifle appeared in front of him, the pieces all in their appropriate positions, and clipped itself onto the harness around his body.

He turned and was about to leave the office when he heard the president’s voice behind him: “Bring the drawings, and bring the rifle. Oh, and Mr. Miner?”

Crystal Miner turned around, and the weight of the rifle on his body seemed to pull him upwards with elation rather than downwards with gravity. He looked at the president. “Yes, sir?”

“Bring as much ammunition as you can carry.”

In a second, the rush of adrenaline to his brain made Crystal Miner’s eyes light up in realization. He felt a bead of sweat fall off his temple and onto the floor as he bowed swiftly toward the president.

He straightened himself upright as quickly as he had bent and turned smartly on his heels toward the exit of the room. He stepped across the crack that he had made in the marble, under the archway of threshold, and out of the room, taking care to close the door behind him. As soon as he was out of sight, he pressed the side of his head against the wall of the corridor in an attempt to cool his face; clasped his hoof to his chest, trying to calm his rapidly beating heart; and took rapid, deep breaths. He had not noticed how stuffy the atmosphere of the Horseshoe Office had been.

Comments

[Soge]

This is pretty interesting so far. I like the engineer story, and it can pretty much stand on its own.