0001
The sun rose over the horizon in the distance and shone its beautiful light in through my window. It didn’t wake me; I’d already been up for hours before it finally rose. My eyes ached with tiredness, and as beautiful as the sun was, its bright rays didn’t help. I had tossed around in bed for a time, before finally giving up and sitting by the window for the rest of the night. I don’t know what brought on the insomnia, but I knew I had to be rid of it soon. I couldn’t risk falling asleep on the job, especially not if I got mining duty.
A few of the other stallions groaned from behind me as the sun hit their thinly protected eyes and stirred them from their sleep. A couple of them sat up, rubbing their eyes vigorously to remove the tiredness from them. One of the younger stallions sat up so fast and carelessly that he hit his head on the bunk above him, much to the chagrin of the old stallion to whom the bunk belonged. It was then I realized I didn’t know them, not their names or their numbers. You’d think that after sleeping in the same room with a bunch of stallions for the past fifteen years, you’d know all of them. And yet, I only knew a handful.
I stood up from my perch by the window and extended into a long stretch, making sure to hear my knees pop before I released. I returned to my bunk and sat down to wait for the rest of the room to awake. I had barely touched the mattress, or what could be called a mattress by a very optimistic pony, before the jittery young colt who occupied the space above me stuck his head over the side of his bed. Why they had assigned him a higher bunk than me, I have no idea.
“Mooornin’.” He yelped in that cheery, southern accent of his.
“Good morning, 9822,” I groaned, lying back on my bed to try to signal to him that I was tired and in no mood for conversation. He didn’t catch the signal.
“Heard you missed curfew last night,” he chimed. I turned a single ear his way to hear how the story had been twisted. News spreads quickly, a little too quickly, and almost never cleanly. One would have to hear the same story from three different ponies before he could get a clear understanding.
“Yep.” I mumbled. I didn’t want to throw him a bone, but he kept on going regardless.
“You were buckin’ that mare down from 23a, werentcha?” He asked accusingly. I looked at him with a loot of anguish. The damn foal couldn’t be more than ten years old. What was he doing talking about such things? I decided to ask him how old he was.
“Nine and three quarters,” 9822 piped happily before sliding down the ladder to his bunk and standing to the side of mine. Just as I thought. Not even old enough to have his cutie mark removed.
“Well, little one,” I said annoyed. “You are far too young to be discussing such matters.” Then I added, “And besides, you know it is forbidden.”
“Then what were you doing?” He asked, eyeing me suspiciously, as if he was a detective solving a crime and I was the chief suspect. I decided to play along for once and quickly came up with a fantastical answer.
“Well, I was late because I had to finish up my fight with the aliens,” I said as nonchalantly as I could, which added to his look of surprise.
“Aliens?” He asked with interest, his eyes going wide at the prospect. I couldn’t help but smile a bit.
“Oh yes,” I continued. “I had to make sure they didn’t get into the city. I was successful in driving them back, and I made damn sure they won’t ever come back again.” I finished with as much fake pride as I could muster. “Kinen gave me a medal for it.”
“Wow!” 9822 exclaimed with excitement, his tiny wings fluttering as he did so. A few of the other stallions looked at him with annoyed looks at his loudness, but he didn’t notice. “Can I see it?” He asked feverishly. I dug into the bag beside my bed and searched around a bit before I pulled out an old bottle cap, one I think belonged to a grape soda.
“Here it is,” I declared with more fake pride as I dropped it into his eager hooves. He stared it in amazement for a few seconds without saying a word, probably examining every detail of it for his imagination to use later. “You can have it if you want.” He looked at me as if I had just given him a lifetime’s worth of bread, all for him.
“Really?!” he nearly cried, before throwing his hooves around my neck and squeezing me into a hug. It was bit shocking at first, but I quickly recovered a returned it with a pat on his back.
“Sure kid. I’ve got plenty,” I said jokingly. He took the useless piece of metal and looked at me one last time before placing it carefully under his pillow for safekeeping. “Take good care of it, now.”
“I will, 4284!” He assured from above as he placed his pillow over the bottle cap. I swear I saw him kiss it before he let go of it. “I promise!” You know, he was annoying at times, but he’s a good kid. Got a good heart. I hope he doesn’t lose it, even though I know he will.
After a few more minutes of sitting on my bunk, I made the decision to get up and start the day. I remembered I have yard duty today, along with many of the other unicorns in my barrack. We usually got heavy lifting jobs, like working in the yard or helping on the rock farms, since we can levitate things that earth ponies can’t carry and pegasi can’t even hope to carry. We weren’t allowed to learn any spells other than the basic levitation, mostly due to the fact that the books were forbidden. In fact, any book that isn’t a state-issued textbook is forbidden. I’m surprised we can even read with how little of it we do.
Once I had made sure all of my belongings were either locked or hidden, I stretched once more and trotted down the stairs and out into the alley that connected my block to the street on either side. I took a left there towards the yard, heading onto Street 24 and away from the ponies who were heading towards the mines. To get to the yard took another left, and then a long trot down the shallow hill that the capitol building sat on at the end of the road.
The city was arranged like a wheel, with 26 streets equally spaced apart that stretched from the capitol building in the middle. The streets were numbered and connected by alleys, which then led into buildings or stairwells that one could not reach from the main streets. In between the streets, like the space between the spokes of a wheel, were equally sized sectors of buildings. A few were industrial, from Sectors 1-8, a few were administrative, Sectors 9-15, and the rest were residential. Well, all but two. Street 26 was walled off at both ends, and there were no alleys going through Sectors 25 or 26. Those two Sectors served as the prison for the entire city, for the ponies who didn’t follow the law or disobeyed orders. I was always a little shaky on living in one of the two Sectors right next to the prison.
After a few minutes, I passed the checkpoint at the end of the street and continued a bit longer until I finally came upon the steel yard. Steel was such a big product of the city that they couldn’t fit it in one of the manufacturing sectors, so they had to stretch it around the outside of the city circle. The place was already teeming with activity, ponies running giant presses and boilers, some of them carefully levitating buckets of molten iron from one machine to another. The guards made their rounds to each machine and made sure each pony was doing his job right. It was nearing the end of the night shift, and more often than not a pony or two would fall asleep on the job. I made sure never to make that mistake, because you knew what would happen to you if you did.
I trotted down into the vast steel yard and made my way over to my Sector’s building, a little concrete bungalow that featured a place for us to sign in and little else. I entered the building after a brief hello to a couple unicorns on their way to work at the furnaces. Inside, a small line of workers stood along the wall and waited for their turn to swipe their card. I joined them and, after a couple of minutes of waiting, I swiped in and exited the building with my designated helmet. I had barely even put it on before somepony smacked the back of my head, pushing the helmet down in front of my eyes. I pushed the helmet back into the position and glared back at the pony responsible.
“Hello, 7765,” I sighed, unsurprised. The earth stallion was always messing with me, and always smiling at me with that irritating, cocky smile of his.
“Hey there, sport!” He exclaimed, smacking me on the shoulder. “How’s your day going?”
“It hasn’t started yet,” I glared at him, “and don’t call me ‘sport’.”
“Whatever you say, sport.”
If it weren’t forbidden, I’d slug him.
The alarm for the shift change rang throughout the yard, blaring over even the loud banging from the machines and the hammers across the yard. As soon as the alarm ended, a flood of ponies breathed a sigh of relief and stepped down from their posts on the machines and allowed our shift to take their place. One stallion to the left of me dropped to the ground almost immediately after the siren went off. I waited for a few seconds for him to get up, but he didn’t move in the slightest. A couple of the other workers even stepped over the poor colt. 7765 half trotted, half meandered over to his station once the alarm had sounded without another word to me.
Soon enough, I had reached the press I was assigned to for that day and stretched once more. A guard strolled by and eyed me suspiciously, as if stretching was against the law or something. I’d have to check if it was after work to be sure, just in case. My press was press number 7, in a line of ten identical presses with three stallions stationed at each one. It was almost always stallions; mares were rarely, if ever, stationed to work in the yard.
The other two unicorns assigned to my press took their position on either side of it and began moving the red-hot steel through the machine. With a couple of lever pulls and the turning of the lowering wheel, the machine creaked and groaned and molded the lump of metal into a usable ingot. It was then enveloped in a magic grip and plunged into a tub of water off to the side of the machine. The process repeated once the new ingot had been added to the pile made by the night crew, and so did the repetitive day start.
“So 4627,” 3995 began after we had manufactured several ingots. “Did you hear about 6621?”
“Yea,” 4267 replied, adding our latest ingot to the pile and turning back to the machine to grab another one. “Poor kid.”
“What happened?” I asked. I had to raise my voice above the sounds of the machines for them to even hear me.
“Poor colt got his hoof caught in the grinder over at the forge,” 4267 explained. “Tore his whole leg off with it.”
“Shit,” I replied after turning the lowering wheel once more. “Can’t imagine 3301 was too happy about that.”
“Well, if you were Sector manager, would you be?” 3995 asked. He levitated in another chunk of steel before continuing. “He couldn’t use him for anything, not even cleaning detail. Had to shoot the poor bastard.” With his last sentence came a long silence, at least as silent as a steel yard can possibly be. We did our tasks almost robotically, with the occasional guard coming by to make sure everything was going as it should.
Around 1:00 we got a half hour break to eat while the ingots we had produced were hauled away to the forge. I stared down at the slop sitting on my tray with silent resentment. If you wanted to eat anything other than reprocessed, tasteless, and otherwise unappetizing slop, you’d have to pay quite a bit for it. Hell, a loaf of bread was more than ten bits, and it was usually more than a week old if it was that cheap. The crude spoon levitated into my mouth with a full load of the slop and sent it sliding into my stomach. I guess I could attribute it to eating the color grey. I wouldn’t be surprised if it actually was the color grey, come to think of it.
“Hiya, sport!” A voice approached from my left. I groaned in an anticipation as 7765 strolled on up to me, and threw my tray into a nearby furnace to be smelted back down to base metal.
“I swear if you call me sport one more time…” I threatened, leaning back against the side of my press.
“Oh, come on 4284!” He said, slapping me on the shoulder like an old pal. “It’s all in good fun.” I glared at him as glaringly has I could glare.
“Whatever you say, shithead.” I retorted, to which he gave a small laugh/snort. I couldn’t tell which it was.
“Fine then, I guess you don’t want to know about tonight,” he taunted cryptically before looking around for any guards. Content with not finding any nearby, he leaned in a bit closer and whispered, “Booze in Barrack 12.”
I raised an eyebrow, “How’d you get it?” I asked, to which he simply shrugged.
“Friend of mine knows a zebra on the outside,” he explained, “Apparently, he’s got a tunnel under the wall at the edge of the yard.”
“What time?”
“Half a hour after shift’s end.” He said just before the alarm sounded to signal that lunch had ended. “Be there?” He asked as he began to stroll back to his machine.
“Maybe.”