LIVEWRITING: Miscellaneous (Patreon)

Here's what came out tonight. Don't know when the next live-write will be; I think I'll just wait until CSP editing is done.

CHANGELING SPACE PROGRAM SCENE: BOSSMARE CHERRY

Two hours, Cherry Berry thought. Twilight Sparkle’s been gone only two hours.

And they still keep coming.

“Excuse me, Mis Cherry Berry? Ma’am?”

Number forty-five, Cherry thought. “What is it now?” she asked the changeling who had blocked her path to the administration building.

“I need someone to approve the new guard duty roster.” A clipboard wrapped in sickly green-colored magic floated over to the earth pony, along with a pen.

“What?” Cherry asked. “First, I signed one of those less than an hour ago! Second, take it to Occupant! His whole job is signing things!”

“Standing orders from the queen,” the changeling said meekly. “Anything Occupant signs, she has to countersign. And…”

“Yeah, I got it.” Cherry Berry gripped the pen in her teeth, careful not to bite down hard enough to sever the fountain chamber and get a mouth full of ink. A few strokes later, she spat the pen back at the changeling, who didn’t bat an eye. “Now why didn’t the last roster last an hour?”

“Three guards just showed back up,” the changeling in front of her said. “One of them outranks Rhinohide, so his roster got thrown out, and-”

“Right,” Cherry sighed. “Go write up a special order and bring it back to me in two hours- and not sooner, got it? Special orders, any further guards returning to the center are to report to Occupant for special assignments, and the guard duty roster is not to change until the end of the week! Got that?”

“Yes, ma’am!” The changeling saluted, took clipboard and pen, and left. 

Cherry managed four steps before another changeling got in front of her. Number forty-six, she thought. Unlucky number fifty is going to get an education. “What?” she asked.

“Um… I’m sorry, ma’am…” This changeling was slightly taller than Cherry. It had fins that looked like sawblades. Its fangs dripped continuously. And yet it was cringing slightly away from her, for reasons Cherry couldn’t possibly understand. “I’m just r-returning from as-as-s-s-assignment, an-n-and I was t-t-told to-to s-s-see you.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before,” Cherry said. “Do you work here?”

“N-no, ma’am,” the fearsome changeling stuttered. “‘M-m-m-i’m an infilt-trator, ma’am.”

Cherry sighed. Each sigh was getting deeper than the last, partly because it wasn’t so much a sigh as the sound of her rage pressure release valve. “Don’t you have another changeling to report to?”

“Th-th-they sent me here.”

“Of course they did.” Cherry counted silently to ten, then said, “Listen… what’s your name anyway?”

“Girdler, ma’am,” the changeling said. “I take the place of d-d-dresser aides in M-m-manehattan stores and-”

“Stop. Stop right there, Girdler,” Cherry said. “Your queen and I have a deal. I work for her so long as she doesn’t do anything illegal or really immoral involving me. Are you about to tell me about illegal or immoral things you’ve done on your queen’s orders?”

The fearsome changeling paused to consider this. “Well,” it said, “what happened in the changing booths wasn’t ex-ex-exactly ordered, n-not as s-such-”

“Yes or no?!”

Girdler thought a little more. “D-does mixing lace with p-pl-pleats count as immoral?”

Cherry counted silently to eleven this time. “Go get some paper from Occupant,” she said. “Write up a report, put ‘Burn After Reading’ on the cover, and tell Occupant to give it to the queen when she wakes up. Then do whatever Occupant tells you to do after that. I do NOT want to know, understand? I don’t want to- wait, that’s a lie.” She looked at the changeling, who by all appearances ought to have been a top warrior. “How do you disguise yourself?”

A flash of green fire later, a petite, adorable cream-colored earth pony mare with blue eyes and gray mane blinked up shyly at Cherry. “C-c-can I interest you in our premiere l-l-line of s-saddles for that in-in-in-in-intimate m-moment-”

“NO!!” Cherry bellowed. “I’m sorry I asked! Now go see Occupant like I said!” 

She didn’t even get to take one step this time, because Girdler had given two other changelings the opportunity to intercept her. Forty-seven and forty-eight, Cherry thought. I think somepony is sending these changelings to me for some reason. (313)

“Miss Cherry, ma’am,” one changeling said, “Aphid here has a pony and won’t share.”

“Miss Cherry,” the other changeling, presumably Aphid said, “please explain to Styletto here that it is possible for a pony to be a voluntary food source, and at the same time, unwilling to be fed on by more than one changeling.”

Cherry wondered, idly, if the pain in her right temple was a blood vessel about to pop and relieve her of all this stupid stuff. “Aphid,” she said carefully, “is this pony on the grounds right now?”

“No, ma’am,” Aphid said. “After the invasion she went to Trottingham to make sure her parents were okay.”

Cherry looked at Styletto. “And you make this a problem… why?”

“Well… the pony’s gonna come back, right?” Styletto asked. “So why can’t we share? Sharing is the pony way, right?”

So is bucking changelings right in the chin, and although I don’t do that, it is becoming VERY tempting… “Have you considered… I can’t believe I’m asking this… have you considered getting your own pony? In a consensual, no disguises, no cocoons, no venom way?”

Styletto cocked her head. “How do I do that?”

“Try asking them,” Cherry said in a cutting, ironic tone that echoed Chrysalis almost perfectly. 

“Oh.” Styletto cocked her head the other way, then looked at Cherry and said, “Ma’am, will you let me suck your-”

“NO!!!” Cherry roared. “Go find ANOTHER pony! And when you ask, don’t use the word ‘suck’!!” She turned her rage on Aphid, shouting, “And you go take a week off in Trottingham and quit bothering me!”

Two changelings saluted smartly, then bolted off in opposite directions. The path to the administration building finally, finally lay open. 

Except for changeling number forty-nine.

Footnote:

(313) They were. In addition to the various changelings who thought they could do a better job of leading the hive than Chrysalis, there was a large faction, particularly among the space center changelings, who thought Cherry Berry had queen potential. And, after all, there were those old rumors about ponies being turned into changelings… you wouldn’t get stories like that if there wasn’t something to them, right? Never mind that none of the Cherry Berry promoters had a clue how you’d go about changing an earth pony into a changeling, never mind into a queen… they thought it was an option, so they were quietly testing Cherry to see how she would rise to the challenge. What rose, mostly, was Cherry’s blood pressure.

LEE GOES NORTH: THE INSPECTOR GENERAL'S CONVERSATION

A little explanation: in our history in 1860 Robert E. Lee was pro tempore commander of the Department of Texas, about twenty tiny emplacements with about 2100 soldiers scattered among them- one-fifth the strength of the entire US Army pre-war. He was superceded by the return of General David Twiggs, who was in very ill health and, furthermore, a secessionist; he surrendered the entire department to secessionist militia without a fight in February 1861, before Texas officially seceded. Lee Goes North is about what might have happened had Twiggs died, leaving Lee unrelieved and still commanding the district… and what he would do when the time came.

In this scene, Lee is facing disaster in every direction. He has resolved to march federal troops out of Texas, without orders from Washington, along with all the public property he can carry off; this, he fears, will be the end of his career. Texas’s secession convention is due to sit in less than a week; that convention’s members have been hand-picked by the radical secessionists, but the state legislature has voted the convention full powers to do as it likes. And that morning Lee has learned that his home state is to convene a secession convention- which would force him to the decision he’s hoped to avoid for months.

On top of all this, the inspector general of the army, Joseph Mansfield, is in San Antonio inspecting the departmental headquarters. However, Lee learns suddenly that the inspection is suspended indefinitely...

Lee stood to attention as Colonel Mansfield, the inspector general of the army, stepped into his office. The older man, to Lee’s shock, looked pale and shaken. “General, sir,” Lee said, “pray be seated. You look quite unwell.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” Mansfield replied, carefully lowering himself into the chair in front of Lee’s desk. “After what I have heard… yes, I am quite unwell.” He leaned forward in the chair, looking at his clasped hands for a moment, before pulling himself together and straightening up. “I must inform you, colonel, that I am cutting my inspection tour short and returning to Washington by the swiftest conveyance I may find. I regret not being able to complete my report as I had wished.”

This was a surprise to Lee, who had expected the inspection to last only three or four days more in any case. After that Mansfield had the northern chain of forts to inspect- Lee’s line of retreat, not that Mansfield knew that- which would only take a couple of weeks at most, and thence on to the Indian Territory. “Truly, sir?” he asked. “Might I ask what prompts this unexpected decision?”

Mansfield looked over at Whipple. “Would you ask your lieutenant to leave us, Colonel?” he asked. “So that we might speak freely.”

Lee nodded to Whipple. “Lieutenant, please make sure we are not disturbed,” he said. He hoped he did not need to add, Or eavesdropped upon.

Once the office door closed with Whipple on the other side of it, Mansfield leaned closer to the desk. “Last night, in the common room at the Menger,” he said, “I was accosted by a Texan who claims to be of high standing within the Knights of the Golden Circle.”

Bickley, no doubt, Lee thought. Or no, probably not. Mansfield ought to recognize Bickley’s face. Possibly Wilcox? His followers have been playing the ruffian throughout the city of late, but I thought better of him.

“He said that the Council of War was preparing to march on Washington itself,” Mansfield murmured. “He claimed that Jefferson Davis is one of their number- a high officer in the KGC. As is, he said, Vice-President Breckinridge. And Cobb of the Treasury, and John Floyd at the War department. They have arranged matters so that the whole of the federal installations in the South shall fall into their hands without a fight- having erred only with Major Anderson at Sumter and with the late General Twiggs. Even so, they expect to have this place without a struggle, and Charleston after a few cannon shot through Sumter’s walls.”

Lee nodded. This was the same nonsense Bickley had bragged of in his rooms, almost to the word- except for the details about the surrender of federal property in the South being prearranged. That he had not heard. That worried him.

“This done, the Knights would then march on Washington,” Mansfield continued. “They hold off only because the upper South is not yet secure. The political leaders do not want to push them to a bloody decision yet. But this man, whoever he is, said that there were twenty thousand men in arms ready to see to it that Abraham Lincoln is not inaugurated. ‘By this time next month we shall be in Washington and Breckinridge shall be President,’ he said. ‘And if the Yankees don’t like it, by this time the month following we shall be in Boston, our flag flying over Fanueil Hall, and we shall dictate terms.’ Those were his precise words.”

“Sir…” Lee thought about passing off this as rodomontade, as drunken bragging… and couldn’t. The phrase our flag over Fanueil Hall had been spoken to his face by a couple of acquaintances, and he’d heard whispers of the same thing for the past month here and there. It couldn’t happen- obviously it couldn’t happen, for the North would rise to arms in much greater numbers before any armed rabble like the Knights could reach New York, never mind Boston. But there were many men in Texas who believed otherwise. “Sir, the man, whoever he is, speaks of a military impossibility.”

“Is it truly impossible?” Mansfield sighed. “There is no spine in Washington just now- you know this as well as I do. That creature Fernando Wood controls New York City, and he is three quarters a secessionist himself. And if Lincoln lives to be inaugurated, then what?” Mansfield cast up a hand. “What kind of man is he? Nobody knows, Colonel. Will he have the courage to stand? Will he have the ability? Or will he be another Floyd or, God help us, a Fillmore?”

Lee shook his head. “I dread the day when this union must be held together by bayonets,” he said. “But if the Knights seek conquest as you describe, the North shall resist. If their leaders fail, they will throw them over and pick new ones. But the people of the North are men as worthy as the South, and they shall fight just as bravely.”

“Perhaps,” Mansfield said. “But they are not ready. Nothing is ready. Nothing is being done. Someone must tell the North!”

Lee had every idea that the North was being told by the thousands. The Southern newspapers were read in the North, surely, and too much of what so-called General Bickley or whoever had said originated in those papers. And there were a thousand Bickleys across the South, filling the ears of Northern visitors with bourbon-fueled threats, ending with a threat that a Northerner’s life was no longer safe south of the Ohio. 

As, he had no doubt, Mansfield’s conversation in the Menger had also ended.

“Sir,” he said, “what shall you tell them about this department?”

Mansfield shook his head. “That it must either be strengthened or withdrawn,” he said. “For the past month, everywhere I have gone, the talk is of secession. Only here, in San Antonio, have I found any loyalty to the Union outside a Mexican’s hut or a German’s cabin. Until last night I thought it nothing more but the same talk we’ve heard every election since 1850, but…”