Volumetrically Compressing Synergetic By-Products
Status report:
Thirty seconds in.
They still don't suspect you are not a janitor.
Situation... stable.
Over.
*bzzk*
The secret of mimicking a janitor is to walk like a janitor. To breathe like a janitor. To think like a janitor.
Looking like a janitor would also be a plus, but it's not like you could randomly come across a human-sized uniform anywhere on this entire planet so, unfortunately, you have to resort to the next best option: the secret human technique of method acting.
You juggle a dozen images of various janitors in your head, looking for one that would fit your current attire, and settle somewhere between a custodian from a shadowy government organization who radiates such an intimidating enigmatic aura that the security personnel have not dared to check his clearance for the past thirty years, and a Victorian butler who isn’t exactly a janitor but wears a fancy suit and is about as unfazeable as a brick wall. Those are the qualities you will need on your mission. So, with the image solidified, you tighten your grip on the mop and soldier on.
The R&D department floor looks surprisingly colorful for something sealed behind a door probably capable of withstanding a nuclear blast and fits into the overall building’s theme about as well as an indoor playground into a tax office. The design choices seem to reflect the ongoing war between the “no-nonsense” style of a big corporation, and the “we don’t know what to do with the investor’s money” style of a startup company, desperately looking for ways to keep the team’s morale high by painting the walls and the support pillars in random pastel colors and without going into the territory of “competitive benefits,” “sensible work schedule,” and other undesirable measures.
The offices flanking both sides of the broad central hallway seem to have only two proper walls separating the adjacent rooms. The external walls are basically heavily tinted floor-to-ceiling windows, through which you can see evening Manehatten in all its glory, and the only difference between them and the hallway walls is that the latter are fully transparent and happen to have doors in them.
Sandwiched between these two glass panels, the offices could be described with equal ease as mad scientists’ labs, modern art installations, or kindergartens, depending on how seriously you’re meant to take the bizarre contraptions inside them, but that’s the general problem with pony technology. Sometimes it’s really hard to tell whether a complex mesh of tubes, hinges, and counterweights is a fancy telescope, a death laser of doom, or both; depending on the position of a switch.
Halfway through the hallway, you finally notice that the entire floor is covered in a bluish-gray carpet, which makes you look a bit out of place with your mop, but this discovery completely fails to faze you, just because of how strong your method acting is. You certainly know what you are doing, not a single pony would suspect a thing. Wait, what's over there, on the horizon? A tiled floor of the canteen? Hooray! See? Who cares if your plan is full of holes if everything goes according to it anyway?
Although to be fair, the ponies on this floor seem to be too busy to notice a parade float being marched through the office, let alone a suspiciously dressed bipedal alien monster like you. In their glass offices, they are doing something you were dreaming about for months: they are being useful. Writing stuff in notepads and on whiteboards, discussing something in small groups, assembling mysterious installations from wires and assorted sciency-looking gadgets, and doing... whatever they are doing with their horns. Quite a few have dark bags under their eyes, and one pony is napping in plain sight, curled up on top of a large pizza box.
As you walk through the department, you notice that the offices seem to be thematic: some contain more hardware, some contain more desks, and one, possibly a meeting room, is just an empty space with a bunch of bean bags scattered all over the floor, a bunch of ponies lounging on them, and a few markers flying along the two writable walls in colorful levitation fields.
Each second, the walls are getting more and more covered in an increasingly dense web of vaguely familiar diagrams made of arrows, rectangles, and circles, and you wouldn’t be surprised if the current state of the walls is intricate enough to describe pretty much any architecture of any solution any technical company ever worked on. All you'd have to do is to relabel the arrows, circles, and rectangles in a domain-specific way, and possibly wipe off the crudely drawn illustration in the corner of a few panicking stick figure ponies running in a circle shouting “AAAAH!” Although you can name a few projects you were personally involved in where this illustration would feel spot on.
You successfully march all the way to the canteen at the end of the hallway and assess the intel you've gathered so far.
Number of encountered cases of sexism: zero.
Number of encountered cases of tribalism: zero.
Number of times being caught in a magical accident involving gravitational anomalies and tentacles of unknown origin: zero.
So far the R&D floor beats one of the DoE floors you visited two days ago by every objective metric you can come up with. Plus, seeing employees collapsing from exhaustion sparks a twinge of camaraderie with them. You are unsure whether you should consult with a certified psychoanalyst about this mildly concerning observation sometime in the future.
One look around the canteen tells you someone definitely knew what they were doing when they sealed the floor off.
You expected a tiny room with a crappy coffee maker, but ended up in a spacious dimly lit open space area with several moderately-sized white tables and a bunch of colorful chairs around them.
Given the number of offices you’ve passed, there’s not enough space to seat all employees at once. But with a sensible rotation schedule, the research teams can definitely lunch inside for weeks, assuming someone delivers the food to the floor. The large fridge, the decently-looking hob right next to the double sink, and, most importantly, a huge professional-looking coffee machine suggest that with a few minor adjustments here and there one could easily transform this area into a cozy Starbucks-like cafe. Of course completing this image would require at least one full-time employee acting as a barista, but under the circumstances, this doesn’t sound like a big issue.
The entire area is almost buried under dirty mugs, plates, and used noodle cups, so for now you can start by cleaning all this shit up, while observing how the local population is going to react to you doing anything useful around them.
Dirty mugs and plates: washed.
Floor: mopped.
Coffee stains: wiped.
A feeling of satisfaction immediately kicks in, and a silly smile creeps onto your face before you fix your expression to something more serious, reminding yourself that right now you are a secret government butler or something along those lines. The original plan was to scout the area and leave before the real janitor showed up, but let’s categorize what you are doing as “prolonged scouting.”
Every now and then you hear ponies walk by, but no one is interrupting you yet, which feels unexpectedly nice. Eventually, you hear hoofsteps stop right behind you.
You turn around and see your saviour from a few hours earlier standing with a dirty mug floating above her head. Up close and in the dimly lit environment of the canteen she appears to be even paler than before, like a cartoonish ghost. Notwithstanding her bright red eyes staring into your soul a little bit, she looks surprisingly friendly.
Crap, you don’t have time to gawk at her. Say something!
"Tea? Coffee?" you ask in a tone that is about half an octave lower than your natural voice.
"Coffee... please," the mare replies in a silvery and slightly tired voice, floating the mug towards you. "No milk, double sugar."
With a precision that surprises even you, you quickly wash and towel the mug, swiftly press a bunch of buttons on the large industrial coffee machine, and... absolutely nothing happens.
"The left module is... broken," the mare carefully suggests.
You promptly move the mug from the left slot to the right one, press a bunch of different buttons, and once again get blown away by the wonders of Equestrian magic. Through the transparent lid, you can see the machine grind the beans, but no sound escapes. Some of your previous colleagues who were unlucky enough to sit near the break room would kill for a miracle like this.
Unfortunately, now there is an awkward silence that would normally be occupied by loud coffee-making noises. It gives you the opportunity to realize that janitors don't typically offer beverages to people around them. That was probably the ”butler” part of your disguise taking over. Stupid method acting, apparently you are just too good at it. Uhh... This is awkward.
"Sorry, I'm new here. Don't know what I'm even doing, to be honest," you confess while putting sugar into the slowly filling mug.
"That’s fine, I'm sure you'll get the hang of it." The mare offers a reassuring smile, and you smile back. You are not great at elevator talk, but eventually, you figure out how to break the silence.
"Thanks for saving me back there in the cafeteria."
The mare tilts her head in confusion, furrowing her white brow.
"You caught my fork when I dropped it."
"Ah! You are welcome." her levitation field takes the mug of steaming coffee from you, "Thanks, see you around."
Okay, what's up with some ponies completely disregarding your alien appearance? Not that you have anything against it, but if you helped a distressed unicorn on Earth, the only thing on your mind for the next few days—or possibly weeks— would be, "Holy shit, a talking horse!"
Also, you just had the most normal, uneventful, meaningless, discrimination-free conversation since appearing in this world. Absolutely nothing of importance was said, and any sensible person would classify the dialogue as “mundane,” a word that fills you with an excitement that goes against its very definition.
Congratulations, you’ve just found the first experimental evidence that normal social interactions between you and native Equestrians are possible, maybe realistically achievable within your lifetime! And it took you what, just a few acts of trespassing to get where you are?
But let’s not jump to conclusions too early. The sample size is too low, and you have better things to do than to stand around with a silly grin just because somepony treated you like a normal person. There is a suspicious-looking stain inside the fridge that requires your immediate attention. Back to work, chop-chop!
From time to time, you glance at the ponies passing by you towards the bathroom, or to leave a dirty mug in the sink, and most of the time—no matter how tired they are—they would smile at you, or even greet you. Even if what you are doing is nothing more than a ridiculously weird act of deception, for a moment, you almost feel like you actually work here.
More time passes, and the lights in the offices steadily turn off one after another.
It’s been dark outside for quite a while, the dim radiance of the now deserted canteen and hallway dispersing into the Manehattan night sky through the partially reflective glass walls reminding you of late connected flights. It makes you reminisce of some feeling you haven’t experienced in a while. It could be anticipation, or maybe a fleeting premonition regarding something you have no control over, and your only choices are to embrace it or watch helplessly as it happens anyway.
It takes a while to realize that what you feel isn’t about you, or your future career.
What you feel is the motion of the world.
You don’t know where it’s going. You don’t know what parts are moving. But you are sure that in a few years, ponies will remember this time, confused why no one saw the changes coming. You will probably be confused too, unless you stop for a moment and try sorting out your thoughts, so that’s what you do while sitting on the floor in the canteen. You can’t hope to understand everything, but the least you can do is to try understanding where your worries are coming from. All you noticed was that something is in motion, and you don’t even know what it is.
Eventually, something clicks in your mind.
The deeper you dive into corporate life, the less it feels like you are in Equestria. Hundreds of employees swarming around could be doing all sorts of magical things in their daily jobs, but when was the last time you felt the magic with your heart? This morning, when you walked by a flower shop about two blocks away from here. Some random ponies were passing by the stands and saying their sincere “Good morning!” to the flower mare, who was smiling back at them while watering the flowers and humming an uplifting tune. And this was the center of the most crowded and busy city in the country, often referred to as shallow and apathetic compared to the others.
But this true magic ended the moment you crossed the reception door. Turns out, you didn’t find a new job for yourself in Equestria, you simply wandered into the embassy of your home country of Corporate Values and Productivity Metrics, where you were accepted as a legitimate citizen and provided with asylum. This embassy was not founded by you or any other extra-dimensional traveler, it was brought here by time, which simply rushes forward without waiting for anyone, probably trying to meet its own unfathomable deadlines and KPI goals.
And the only reason you noticed something was off is because some overworked R&D mares brought a small part of that external Equestria to work and shared it with you, reminding you how things are supposed to be in this world.
Do ponies in this building realize that they are now tourists in a foreign land with different culture, laws, and traditions? Do they have a switch in their head that flips back to Equestrian mode when they leave the office or do they spread the misery of an endless chase for market growth as a substitute for all other values in life?
You wish you knew the answers. But maybe you are overthinking things. These are ponies, not humans. For hundreds of years, they somehow managed to live without any major wars or revolutions, without burning each other's houses down out of hatred, and without losing the focus on what’s important in life and what’s not. Most of them are even genuinely happy. Surely they won’t repeat all the same mistakes your people made. Right?
While you are busy ruminating on the future of the country you barely understand, another unicorn approaches you, disrupting your train of thought. Her coat is a soft chocolatey brown, with matted black mane tied into a messy bun on the back of her head. A pair of thick-rimmed glasses perched upon her muzzle doesn't suit her face particularly well, like she grabbed the first pair she saw in the shop, and the stretched beige sweater she’s wearing makes her look downright plump, but you are fine with all this. Just like Autumn Leaves promised, the mares around here don’t seem to care about their looks, but for you, it just makes them look more approachable, or, in this particular case, almost huggable.
The mare examines you, sitting on the floor in a contemplative pose, from head to toe and blinks. Oh no, you feel like your perfect disguise is cracking! Time to take over the initiative.
"How may I help you?"
The mare blinks again.
"So... everypony is leaving. Are you alright in here?"
Hah. Everypony leaving? In the middle of the crunch? Wusses. Back in your days, you would spend nights at work to meet the deadline! There is absolutely no reason why you should be proud of this shameful fact, but you are.
"No worries, ma’am, just taking a short break. Have a nice evening!" you say with as much confidence as you can muster. The mare smiles and nods, putting your worries at ease.
"You too, have a nice holiday!" she replies, fighting back a yawn before leaving you alone.
You have to admit that you liked all interactions around here so far. You really hope that the reason is not something stupid like "Your shirt makes you look more feminine in ponies' eyes," and the mares here are just... more normal. Or less normal, by the standards of this company. Still, tomorrow you are going to catch your boss and somehow convince her to assign you to this floor.
With a sound of the floor door closing far away, you stop thinking and take a moment to enjoy the silence.
The entire floor is yours.
No one is telling you to go home early.
No one is annoying you with an overbearing attitude.
No one is disrupting you while you finish your self-imposed duties and leave the canteen in the cleanest state it has ever been since its inception.
With a feeling of deep satisfaction settled in, you contemplate whether you should wipe down the offices too.
Hmm... Nah. That would overstep some boundaries. You don't want to trip on a loose wire and destroy a few weeks of somepony's work by accident. Plus, there are probably tons of personal items indistinguishable from random junk, and you definitely won't be that guy who desecrates a productive environment by throwing something important away. That's a job for the actual janitor, who doesn't seem to be showing up for some reason.
For today, your work here is done.
With your trusty mop in one hand and equally trusty bucket in the other, you walk down the hallway towards the exit, whistling a jaunty tune. You feel content. Absolutely nothing can ruin such a perfect and productive evening.
Putting your equipment on the floor, you move your badge closer to the lock.
Blop.
Wait, what was that? You blink a few times before understanding slowly creeps into your empty skull like a hermit crab into a vacant seashell. With shaking hands, you move the badge closer again.
Blop.
Pony locks. Your only weakness.
Blop.
And this is the second time this month.
Blop.
How could you be so incredibly dumb?
Bonk.
And that was the sound of your forehead hitting the door in frustration. Yep, a normal facepalm won't do.
Sigh...
You know who your true enemies are? Equestrian fire inspectors. Because the ones from your home planet would never allow this bullshit to happen. So what if ponies have magical fire suppressors, while your planet has to resort to the old and boring dihydrogen monoxide—commonly known as "water"? So what if these systems convert smoke into breathable air, while on your planet the CO-alarms are only good for waking up the entire city block when you try cooking in the oven? These are not valid excuses for allowing doors that can't be opened from the inside without a pass!
Surely there must be some way out. There are tons of other reasons why someone might accidentally lock themselves inside—besides being an alien spy of course—and someone else must have considered this possibility while making the door in front of you very thick, very robust, and very enchanted. There are no visible buttons on the surrounding walls, not counting the light switches, so you sit down and carefully inspect the lock.
Aha! There is an arrow pointing to the side of the box, where you see a long and thin button, probably designed to be pressed with the side edge of a hoof, labeled "SECURITY." Understandable. Must be hard to avoid accidental presses otherwise if the entire population doesn’t have fingers. Now you wonder how many Equestrian buttons like this you have failed to notice so far because you didn’t know where to look.
You move your hand to press the button, but then stop yourself. What are you going to say? How are you going to explain your current situation? "Sorry, ma’am, I just wandered into a restricted access area without a pass, assumed the identity of a janitor, and accidentally cleaned the entire canteen after everypony left." Doesn't sound good, does it?
But wait. What if, hypothetically speaking...
"Am I seriously considering…?"
Yes you are, and stop talking to yourself. Hypothetically speaking, what if...
Bonk.
No-no-no, listen up. What if you just stayed here until morning? Then tomorrow—when somepony shows up—you pretend that you just came in earlier to finish your business, and then you'll sneak out the same way you snuck in!
Yep, sounds like a plan.
Although... didn't the last mare say something about having a nice holiday? Today is certainly not a Friday, so... wait, are there any upcoming national holidays you are forgetting about?
Bonk.
Okay, you deserved this one.
There must be a calendar somewhere around here... and yep, there it is, through the glass door of one of the offices. The upcoming four days, including the weekends, are marked in bright red. You can't make out what the fine print says from here, but if you remember correctly, it was something about the unification of tribes?... No, that one is sometime during winter. Unification... with friends or something? Maybe?
You can start celebrating the unification of whatever by getting your shit together. As of right now, it's obviously apart, and that just won't do.
Let's work the problem. What does a human need to survive for a prolonged period in a hostile environment like this one?
1. Water.
2. Food.
3. A place to sleep.
4. A place to poop.
Taking full stock of your surroundings, there is a tap, a fridge with a bunch of leftovers, a toilet near the canteen (unisex, for obvious demographic reasons), and... well, if a pizza box is a good enough substitute bed for a researcher, it's gonna be good enough for you too. The beanbags from the meeting room are also an option, even if you aren’t sure what’s going to be worse on your back. No shower anywhere, but you can probably keep yourself clean with a wet towel.
Are you forgetting something? Hmm... Ah, right. Protection against natural predators, which in this situation would be security guards patrolling the floors. If they exist at all in this building, of course. You saw this trope multiple times in movies, when a dude in security uniform walks through a pitch-black hallway with a heavy-duty flashlight, looking for intruders, but would something like this be common for Equestria? Better safe than sorry. You should probably sleep in the storeroom just to be safe.
Now that you sort of know what you are going to do in general, it’s prudent to think about what you are going to do right now with all the free time that you suddenly got.
Hmm... You could read a book or something. Your knitting equipment is still in your bag, so that's another option. Or, you can try being productive and doing something useful, like repairing the coffee machine. All you need is to find a spare screwdriver—which shouldn’t be difficult considering where you are—and then wing it.
Day 0.
Dear Journal,
When did this madness begin? Did it begin with the question "What can possibly go wrong if I unscrew the back panel of a highly complex magical device I know nothing about?" Or the exclamation "Oh nice! I wonder what this glowing thing does?" Should we laugh at ourselves? Or sob about how dumb we can be?
Either way, it's 2 AM already, and it's quite clear that putting the left module of the coffee machine back how it was is literally impossible without bending space, time, or both. You know what does sound like a great idea, though? Grabbing a few pizza boxes and making a bed out of them inside the storeroom. It's important to cut your losses before it's too late.
Day 1.
Dear Journal,
What happens to us between sleeping and waking? Every night, when the moon rises, we voluntarily go into a comatose state in order to vividly hallucinate for a few hours in hopes of restoring our energy and cognitive abilities for the following day. If sleeping truly does all those miracles, why do we wake up in an even dumber state than we were before?
Opening the other, working module to see how things are supposed to look like in the assembled state was a mistake. The left module's a lost cause, but maybe it's still possible to revert the damage you did to the right one.
Day 2.
Dear Journal,
What makes a dumb person hopeless? Is it an inability to learn and evolve from their mistakes? Or the lack of awareness of their own incompetence? Irrational optimism? Failure to accept the sad truth?
The coffee machine can go buck itself, but maybe if you stay on top of the table until help arrives, the eldritch tentacles currently wriggling around the canteen floor will stay away.
You knew something bad was going to happen when that glowy thingy started smoking after you poked it with a screwdriver, but you can't say you expected it to be this bad. Thankfully, you reacted just in time, before anything unspeakable could happen to you.
Day 3.
Dear Journal,
What does it mean to be alone? Truly alone? Knowing that help is not coming, and no one will save you from being in the same room with a dangerously incompetent person who just happens to be you?
The eldritch tentacles evaporated during the night while you sat hunchbacked on top of the table wide awake, but at least now you know there aren’t any security ponies checking the floor. You spent two other nights inside the storeroom for no reason. Good job, you.
It's pretty clear that you lack the critical information required to fix the mess you started, and if you admitted this to yourself from the beginning, the disaster could be easily avoided. You could’ve just read a book or knit something nice, but noooo.
Speaking of reading, there is a bookcase between the canteen and the toilet, and judging by the location and how abandoned it looks, it’s probably one of those bookcases where companies keep useless books accumulated over the years which no one wants to take responsibility for throwing away.
At your previous job, there was a similar bookcase with unnecessarily thick and hopelessly obsolete tomes from the time before the internets. There you could find anything from books about COBOL, FORTRAN, and other capslock-intensive programming languages that were popular before you were born, to detailed manuals about technologies that no one has used for decades. To be fair, the bookshelf also contained some useful stuff, just not useful enough to anyone qualified to get the job, like basic books about algorithms that everyone knows anyway. If ponies and humans are equally susceptible to hoarding, maybe you'll find something that's not too far beyond your reading abilities?
You walk towards the bookcase and browse through the titles. Hmm... Too technical. Too weird. Too thick... wait, what's that?
"Magical engineering for dum-dums."
Woo-hoo! Look, a whole book just for you! You have a ton of time and absolutely nothing to do, so why not?
Day 4.
Dear Journal,
Who’s the dum-dum now, huh? HUH?! Look at this beauty. A coffee machine with two, TWO working modules. You press the left button, and the left module works. You press the right one, and the right one works. You press both, and BOTH work!
Some would say it’s impossible, but nothing is impossible for a person who actually spent time reading the bucking manual!
Best part? No eldritch tentacles anywhere.
It's almost the morning of the next day, but you don't care. Tears of pride and happiness are rolling out of your eyes. Turns out, you weren’t just fixing a coffee machine. You were fixing your identity as an engineer as well, and you did a damn good job at it too.
Your shit is finally together, and it hasn't been this densely compressed since that time you saved the release schedule by doing two weeks’ worth of work in two days. Maybe this time you won’t get a bunch of gift cards from the company as a reward, but at least you learned something new from the experience.
Glowy magical tubes and sparkly magical gems are not that different from normal circuits if you first understand what does what, then ignore the fact that what it does couldn't possibly happen in your previous reality.
The only mildly disappointing part is that the entire book didn't mention flux capacitors even once, and you are still curious about what the heck they are. One day you'll figure out what you were supposed to say during that deeply humiliating interview a couple of weeks ago.
Now that you are proud of yourself and cleaned up all the mess that you created with your own hands, you think about how you are going to sneak out tomorrow. You don't have an alarm clock, unfortunately, and it's sort of important to be awake before the first pony arrives, so you decide to skip sleeping altogether. You have a knitting kit to keep you busy, so you sit down on one of the chairs in the canteen and relax. Staying awake for a few more hours shouldn't b...
"Ahem."
Someone pokes you with a hoof.
You open your eyes and find yourself half-sitting at the table, half-napping on the scarf you were knitting moments ago. An unacceptable amount of light in the canteen is hurting your eyes, and your whole body is sore.
Beside you, a small gray mare in a janitor's uniform is hiding behind another, dark purple mare. But something feels off about your depth perception and sense of scale, so you wipe your eyes.
Ah, much better. Correction: there is a normal-sized gray mare in a janitor's uniform hiding behind an exceptionally tall dark purple mare, with a vertical scar on the right-side of her face, who is standing with an unreadable expression and manages to look intimidating without even trying. To say that she has an athletic build would be an understatement. She sort of looks like she can outrun a train, and possibly bench-press it afterward.
You quickly glance at her back: no wings, whew. Then you glance at her horn, and somehow become even more intimidated than before, because either this is the most radical cyberpunk cosplay you've seen in your life, or the mare is the lead actor of the pony version of the Terminator movie.
Her horn was clearly broken at some point, but now it continues with a horn-shaped amalgamation of matted metal, asymmetric chrome inlays, and dark runes. A single red diode—or whatever ponies use instead of them—on the left side of the horn already looks menacing, but it’s nothing compared to the deeply engraved Microspell logo on the other side, which makes you physically shiver.
This reminds you that due to various scheduling conflicts among the management, you missed some crucial parts of the onboarding procedure, like the interview with the security team. Looks like the time has finally come.
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It’s alive!!!!!!!
Hmm... Broken horn unicorn? Dark Purple? Is this who I think it is...?
glad to see this is not dead, and trying to bs tempest will be fun
Stack the caffeine high enough and everything becomes reasonable.
Hey how about that, the man is actually capable. Now to see if he can bluff his way out of this little misunderstanding.
It lives! And is that Tempest Shadow I see? Can't wait for the next chapter
You do of course realize you've just given a human engineer a working understanding of magical engineering?
There is nothing more dangerous than a pissed off engineer, except a drunk engineer, or a pissed off drunk engineer... and now he can add magic engineering to that repertoire?
Whatever happens from the unholy synthesis of those two fields is going to be interesting.
He fixed the coffee machine. To R&D he's now their new god. I give it one week until he's directing the mares with a knitted-mitten'ed fist.
Doesn't seem like an inprovement at all. Is he actually going to TALK to people and get an ACTUAL job there or just try and sneak things without ever being included? Because if he doesn't at some point demand to be treated right there isn't any point in him not being just another pony stallion bitch. At this point I'm hoping he says "Fuck everybody here" and quits while calling the entire place speciest and sexist.
10289378
That's what I thought.
Man this story is solid, I cant wait to read more!
Trapped. Alone. With no help.
Priority #1. Fix the coffee machine.
Oh great, things just beginning to resolve, storywise, and the old NO MORE CHAPTERS does the fish slapping dance on my head. I like it so far tho :) (Next up, the von neumann architecture as applied to unicorn magic?)
It looks like we have our first canon character, and with the benefits of the raised technology level to boot.
10289435
Which is his out. Regardless of whether it was technically his job, he was pure benefit to the company and is on their payroll.
As a representative of the fimfiction community, I would like to hereby inform you that we require MOAR!
Ö̸̱́͌U̸͓̯͔̠̓̉̚R̸̹̆͗͛̑ ̷̯̜̝̀́̓H̶̩̾̋̓̒Ȗ̴͚͎̗N̵͚͐̓̈́Ǵ̶̱̲̇Ȩ̵̿͌̋̿R̸̯̾̆͘͝ ̸̲̩̼̈́̈́W̴̧̢̓̊I̶̢̛͔̲̅́L̴͎͒͗̂̕L̸͖͑ ̵̛͓͔̀̄N̶̪͍͗̑͜E̷͔͙̞̍̓̀V̴̝̰̜̍͛̕E̵͖͗̽̏̚R̴̦̯͕͕̉̾͒̇ ̷̖̰̂̆B̶̳̠̻̙̔̕Ẻ̴̳̕ ̸͖̳̖̒̇̒͂S̴̥̩̍̅A̴̫͕̗̜͑́̌͘T̸̨̧͑̕͝E̸̫̫̍̒̚D̷͓̬̾͗̈́
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Even if he's the new mom of R&D, he really is finally contributing.
Can't wait to see where this rabbit hole goes, nice work!
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I̻̠̥̳̰N͍̰̣̗͔͍͢ͅD̵̝E͏̫̫͔͍E̷͖̙̱̙D̮̪̟̪͠,̖̣ ̠̟͔̺͔̼̖W̳͕̰̮͖̗͚E͏̝ ͚͇̖̪̩̝R̙E̺̥Q̸̫͉̼̪̫͚U͖̕IR͞E͡ͅ ̩̰̼͙̙̣̗M͔͇͢OR̠E͕̫̯̰̠ ̯O̩̮̼̜̲̗̯F͉̻̺̣͎̻͝ ̸͔͙͓̦̬̪̤Y͍̝̫̭O̢̥̲͉U̢̱R̮̝̥̣̳̹ ̣̟͚͠T̯HO̲̳̟̬U̝̖̖̱̳̭ͅG̟͚H̦͚T҉̫ EN͎͘ͅE̘̝R͏͕G͍̮̩̰̀Y͇͇̻̫ ͎̺̤͓͉I̢̙͚̫͖̩M̠̭̝B͕̗̖UE̡̖͔̹̪D̘͍ ̠W̬͎͔̪O̦̗̰͓̥̘̹͟R̖̘̫̞̭D̴S͏̜̜̟̮̥̫͕!̴
̢
̝F̮̞̥͞ͅE̦̗̙̕E̼̱̼D̵͎̣͓͎͚̦ ҉͈̗͚̜̪̠ͅU̠̰͇̮̤̬̖S͖̪͎̜
As an engineer, I want to see an engineer character written by an engineer.
You wanted a nursemaid?
Meet Mary Poppins.
He managed in a day to fix a totally unique piece of magitek gear he never seen before that the rest of the department either couldnt or didnt see the need to due to it still working good enough?
Did he see ways to improve it as he went, and did he implement any of them?
No CoffeeWorks bootup sequence?
Sanity check, pass.
Discharge nozzle, pass.
Boiler element, pass.
User Interface,pass
Safety interlocks, pass.
.....
.....
I love this story, but I agree that it's about time for our human to transition from narrating his life in his head to actually talking and interacting with the living beings surrounding him.
Time to finally begin the integration process because as fun as its been, just having our protagonist comment on things and make observational insights from afar makes the world around him feel detached and disconnected. I get that that's how he feels himsrlf right now, but hopefully this will change for the better now that he's been caught.
I don't know when but while I was reading I began reading everything in the Narrators voice from Stanley Parable and it fit quite nicely with some of the inner dialogue/description of the surroundings.
Yay!!!
Don’t panic. She’s reformed. She will likely only shoot to wound.
I’m digging it! Please keep it up!
Nice
Great chapter!
good read
Option 1: the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. (Hard pass)
Option 2: I was fixing the coffee machine without a permit and got locked in here for the holiday. (Maybe)
Option 3: I was cleaning up the place, like the janitor I am, then got locked in here because my key card stopped working. (Unless I can bluff the ACTUAL janitor behind the menacing cyberpony, no dice)
Option 4: Pray to god one of the R&D mares walks in to discover I fixed the coffee machine. (Hope for the best)
Very nice, I'm glad to see some updates to this. I look forward to see him actually doing what's in the title!
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the 4 definitely the 4.
I'd be worried for him but the company is likely going to just be focused on begging him to not sue them when they find out he was locked in there over the holiday.
He is just a weak man after all and what even are consequences.
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But I don’t want to talk to the pony things...
Tempest traded working for one tyrant organization, for another. She makes great choices in life.
[Everybody liked that]
This is just evil
Both previous and this episode have ended on a cliffhanger and the updates are slow.
Why must good fanfics always be incomplete, abandoned, or cancelled.
The journal and the nod to Background Pony was hilarious. I wonder if there are any more references in previous chapters that I missed, beside the FoE one.
I'm calling it now.
Flux Capacitors don't exist and it was a test to see if you would bullcrap your way in.
Also rip anon but also anti-rip coffee machine
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A worthy sacrifice.
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This posted a long chapter after just a couple months when the previous hiatus was a year. That’s what we call “a good sign.”
Don't worry -- the ponies will be all apologetic and horrified when they find out you were locked in for four days. You might even get a raise for using that time usefully and fixing the coffee maker. Heck, knowing research a bit, you probably just upped their productivity 20%.
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Option 5: This nice mare from DoE told me she was going to have a friend interview me here in the R&D department late Thursday, but she never showed up.
Who said that? I dunno, she had like a whiteish-bluish red coat on? Or maybe it was greenish? Definitely a light color. Or mostly light? Not the best with colors.
How did he get in? Said I'm here for an interview.
Why is the mop here, and why is the place clean? Ask the janitor why the mop is here, and I had to find something to do while I was trapped in here.
A skilled corporate peon knows how to redirect problems for maximum effect, and even the DoE would believe one of them did it.
R&D would probably give him an interview after that story, and would sign him on for the department when he said "I fixed the coffee maker".
At least he's being paid quite well regardless if he's dicking around. Perks of being the office pet.
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This actually reminds me of that guy who hacked into the office coffee machine from his work station computer and wrote up a program to, while accounting for the exact time it took to brew it and to get from his work station to the machine, have it brew him a cup of coffee by the time he got to it.
I believe that he also automated the excuses he'd need to send to his wife for staying late.
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Makes me think of what the equivalent was in Aincient Greece. Guy uses the vase earthquake detector for random selection, it releases teh homing dove, wich when it lands on the perch, triggers the latch, which releases the scroll, with the excuse on it.
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actually a flux capacitor is merely a name for an inductor, like calling water DHO...
I'm quite pleased to see an update and a good one at that. I look forward to reading the next one.
I am absurdly pleased to see this next chapter. It had me chortle, chuckle, guffaw, giggle-snort, snort giggles, and at one point, I even laughed.
Thank you.
I really hope there's more. I'm loving this!
More soon?
I really hope this will be continued, this story have so much potential!.
... I would imagine it might have to withstand something like that... from the inside...
More. This needs more. I'm in fucking love with the thing. I'm going to marry it, and then we're going to spend wonderful, wonderful nights reading technical manuals and science-fiction.