Manehattan.
Land of Opportunity.
Where the Friendship Statue stood tall in her everpresent rusty green, slowly withering away in reckless abandon.
Ironic, really. Friendship statue. Here, in Manehattan? A place where money reigns king and labour sweat is worth five bits a liter? Hah, nonsense.
All the city’s worth to me was the dumpsters. Half-eaten burgers, rotting bananas, and the occasional candy. The big cardboard boxes ponies threw away after they got whatever appliances previously stored inside them.
Ponies would sneer and curse me for “dirtying their block”. I would blow them the raspberry and move on, maybe snag their trash, complete with the bin, in the process. What would they do, wrestle me? Hah, they’d sooner bathe in dirt than touch a single strand of my coat.
Friendship, in such a city? Unimaginable, even before the mobilization.
The moonlit night shone dimmer than even the darkest night from five years ago. Walking around really gave you the perspective of size. How big, yet how small. 2 kilometers across, yet only three whole factories. Dark, sooty smoke billowing from their chimney pipes. A young chimney sweep stood above one of them, inhaling the stuff daily, selling a liter of sweat per day.
There was a time where factories such as those weren’t prominent. Only houses and apartments, shops, restaurants. Places one went to spend money on, sometimes without anything in return. Tall office blocks, business headquarters, and more, all erected to accommodate the enlarging pursuit of capitalist profits.
Money drove the city around, and ponies worked for them. Selling things, expertise, and experience. From the most barebones essentials to vanity items worth nothing but their brands.
Now, all of them gone. Swept by the urgent needs of national defense.
My eyes spied one of such shops. A rowshop by the name of Rarity For You. Once a place of dresses and suits, fine tailorings, and uppity ponies, now abandoned and trashed, left to rot. Ponnequins laying under a thick layer of dust. A fellow bum sleeping inside it.
The war needed none of them. All they cared about were weapons. Ponies to build their factories, ponies to stamp them, and ponies to wield them. They have no need for restaurants, bars, entertainment areas. The last shop in the row, right there barely holding on. Flickering neon lights, slowly losing to the depth of darkness engulfing the entire block. Once they’re down, so does the entire row. Probably replaced with yet another weapons factory later on.
Not all failed, however. Some thrived. Those who are lucky, who are smart, and who are clever. Industrialization meant the increasing need for ponies who are well-versed in such crafts. Those who have cutie marks in engineering. Those who worked hard enough to understand the language of gears, thaumatronics, and exhaust fumes. Those who paved the road they walked in the blood, sweat, and tears of others, decorated with their own riches and money. Only they rose up above everypony else.
Those who refused to adapt fell. The war needed no nobility, no riches, no fame nor fortune. The war needed fetlock grease, muscle, and toil. Those who were at the top, and refused to walk down a single stair, ended up falling down to the bottom.
One of such, I saw. A terribly thin pony with a white coat, now greyed as much as my own from all the dust. When you see a formerly famous pony by the name of Coloratura dumpster diving, you know that society has flipped it’s lid.
Her former glory had ended. Some would say that she was stupid for trying too hard in preserving the dying entertainment industry. I’d say she’s a strong-willed mare, that she survived for this long out in the streets, refusing to die under the terms of society.
I always wondered how many else who suffered the same fate as her? Drowning in the dust of rapidly accelerating civilization, forced to walk the dirty road by their own hooves.
Coloratura went with a satisfied smile over her haul. Few blocks more, and she jumped into her own home: a rusty shell of a tank parked in a dark slimy alleyway. They’re nothing but failed marks of successful progress, one of many brown dots littering the once colourful city. The same tank I saw running down the street a few years back, in a parade of mechanical and military might, rousing the masses to work and toil, to build and invent, everything to end the war by Hearth’s Warming.
Instead, the more they toil, the more they fought, the harder the enemies fought back. How long was it, ever since the Changeling Army attacked? Two, four, eight years? It never did matter, for the formula is if the war started X years ago, it was X years too long.
Magic of Friendship, Peace and Prosperity, Love and Tolerate. All those old slogans were replaced with new ones. For the Princesses and Equestria, Keep Calm and Carry On, Work is Liberating.
Why pursue friendship if nopony wants to be friends? Why pursue love if there’s nopony to love? Why fight for Equestria if it never provides? Why even work if you’re not worth hiring?
A figure shot past me, galloping while they spread bundles of paper, screaming “Extra! Extra! Canterlot has fallen!” News at 2 a.m, on a Thursday? For the other ponies, it would be a cause for concern.
Hah, sucks for them.
Contrary to them, concern never was in my dictionary. Not ever since that accident in the weather factory. Lost both wings, and now here we are. Not enough money to do, have, or try anything, so I don’t. You can’t lose what you never have.
Another group of ponies passed by. These ones rode on a carriage of thick steel, moving by itself by means of conjuncted technologies, internal combustion and thaumaturgy. A big truck followed, carrying another dozen ponies on it’s back. Loud engine thumping as it rolled on, gears creaking as the transmission struggled to operate.
Machines, ponies, civilization. Fundamentally they never did differ. Just an orderly set of instructed movements governed by restrictive laws. Pour a tiny sprinkle of war, and they would follow the winds of change. For better or worse. More often than not, ponies ended up suffering anyways.
Ever since the war, ponies all around complained for the lack of food, lack of rest, lack of safety. The war committee groaned when the military requested more weapons. Bosses groaned as quotas were increased. Workers groaned when the bosses announced the news. All of them would regroup in a seedy bar somewhere deep within the arterial alleyways of Manehattan, drinking themselves away, hopefully to death.
Great source of information, but the real treasure laid in their garbage bins. Half-eaten food, half-drunk booze, the whole buffet. Ponies of society cheered inside the bar, forgetting the horrible reality they were thrusted into, even for just a single night.
I cheered outside, happy for my loot for the night.
Borders moved as infantries pushed against each other. Frontlines weaved and flowed as one side advanced. Guns shoot faster as inventive engineering evolved. Tanks thicken as they hold more weight. Plans adapted as it met combat. Machines complexed as systems bloated in quality.
The dumpster? An everlasting constant in this ever flowing world.
My everlasting constant.