January Writing #1: Changeling Space Program Ch. 12 Preview (Patreon)

Just letting everyone know I'm not dead- it's just nothing I worked on in January got to a completed state for release. (Also, the lack of interest in the live-writing efforts left me cool on trying them again.)

But here's a large sampling of what I worked on last month- some (but not nearly all) of what's been written thus far for the next chapter of CSP!

(Pony space words following...)

The honor of your presence is requested at the Hearth’s Warming Gala

Boilerplate Hall, Canterlot

Hearth’s Warming Eve, 7:30 PM until midnight

With music by the Royal Canterlot Chamber Quartet

fine wines and hors d’oeuvres provided by Fancy Pants

Formal attire requested

Please RSVP your regrets or your acceptance plus one guest

For the nineteenth time that day, Chrysalis wished for three or four Occupants(213) to help her with the paperwork.

One of the advantages of secrecy had been a relative lack of paperwork. All reports were given orally, in person, at an infrequent rate. Paperwork involving her own cover identities in the outside world took all of about five minutes per mail delivery- possibly an hour if there was a legal contract involved. Infiltrator drones were strongly discouraged from creating paper trails unless their cover identity was both permanent and strong. Even in those cases, they were expected not to bother the queen with it.

What a difference a year of publicity made. About a quarter of her infiltrators now worked in the open, and they were sending her all sorts of paperwork- requests for birth certificates(214), credit checks, loan guarantees, criminal background checks(215), employment and rental references(216)… it went on and on. In addition, criminal and civil complaints about her subjects who kept up the old tactics while out in the open kept rolling in, which meant reading through the depositions and deciding whether or not the changeling in question was worth bailing out.(217)

But this pile of paperwork was a mere life raft compared to the grand three-masted schooner which was the hive’s diplomatic and public relations paperwork. Celestia sent at least one letter to the hive every day, and Chrysalis’ delegate to the ongoing negotiations for peace and amnesty between ponies and changelings sent two or three. There were diplomatic insults, compliments(218), requests for anything from missing-persons information to extradition to cultural exchanges to personal appearances, and so on and so forth. 

The once-per-week mail delivery was a thing of the past. The changeling hive now had its own postal bureau, with its own stamps(219). (That had taken a ton of paperwork to set up, including reciprocity agreements with the Equestrian Post.) Each day two teams of two changelings each hauled mail by air cart between Appleoosa and the Badlands. Based on their complaints of aching wings, before long it would be four teams of two. 

Much of this paperwork got forwarded to Horseton Space Center, but not all, and what didn’t get forwarded piled up. Furthermore, after Elytron’s attempt at showing initiative, Chrysalis didn’t dare delegate any of the backlog to anyone else. 

So Chrysalis buckled down to work, as much as she resented being forced to do it. While Cherry Berry, the rocket boffins, and indeed most of her own subjects were enjoying a winter solstice holiday, she found herself trying to write coherent responses to letters while paying attention to whatever drone was giving its after-action report after one mission or another(220). Only her queenly superiority enabled her to perform such an exacting mental task.

“My queen?”

“Oh, are you done? Right, then please convey Our regrets to Baronne Social Climber, and use the Sandwich Slices cover identity to pay the fine for petty theft but not the one for public relations coup, but my schedule is full at Fillydelphia.”

“Er…” The infiltrator shifted on her hooves. “My Queen, are you all right?”

Chrysalis glared at the infiltrator for a moment before her brain caught up to her mouth. She looked at the scroll she’d been writing on, read the nonsense about an invitation to a high-class part-time grocery job in suburban Fillydelphia’s jail, and crumpled up the scroll in disgust. “Starting over,” she grumbled. “Did you get caught?”

“No, my Queen.”

“Did you blow your cover?”

“No, my Queen.”

“Did you bring back concentrated love for the reserves?”

“Yes, my Queen.” 

“Fine. Good job. Store the love and go get some more. Next!”

Chrysalis had just begun on a replacement response to the Canterlot society ball invitation, while carefully ignoring the boring report of the next infiltrator, when the throne room’s telepresence spell activated, popping up an image of Occupant. “My Queen! My Queen! Wait till you hear this!”

A bit of Chrysalis’s mane sprang up out of place(221). “What do you want?” she asked the image projected on the throne room wall.

“It’s great news!” Occupant insisted. “We’ve just got this great new contract that-“

“Will it wait until after the new year?” Chrysalis asked, with a strong tone of it had better hiding behind her words like a disgruntled yak hiding behind a broom.

“Well, it could,” Occupant admitted, “but it doesn’t have to! You see-“

“Tell me,” Chrysalis asked, “do you have a calendar on the wall in your office?”

“Yes, my queen. It’s the one with the adorable kittens speaking broken Equestrian.” Occupant’s image gave the queen a confused look. “Is that important?”

“What page is it on?”

“The last page, my queen, you know that.”

“Yes. I do. I was wondering if you forgot.”

The menace no longer even bothering with a pretense of hiding would have warned an average changeling to back off. Occupant, unfortunately for him, was in the grips of his enthusiasm, and he missed it completely. “No, my queen!” he said. “I have to keep track of what day it is very carefully, so I put the right date on all the paperwork, just like I did with this new-“

“So you are, in fact, aware,” Chrysalis said coldly, “that the space program is on vacation until after the new year, correct?”

“Yes, my queen, but that’s what-“

“And the space center is not currently burning down?” Chrysalis asked(222). “Nothing exploded? No tidal wave? No monster attack? No invasion of seaponies? Earth hasn’t opened up and swallowed the VAB, has it?”(223)

“Er… no.” Occupant hadn’t gotten the hint yet, but he was coming to some vague understanding that something was wrong. “What has that got-“

“So everything is running just fine?”

“Yes, but-“

“THEN GET BACK TO YOUR WORK AND DON’T BOTHER ME UNTIL THE NEW YEAR!” Chrysalis roared, sending paperwork flying and servants scurrying for cover. “I am on vacation, which means I’m working too hard to be bothered with your brainstorms! Understand?”

“Yes’m!” Occupant gasped, saluting with one forehoof, then the other, then both at once, and finally cutting the connection.

“Honestly,” Chrysalis grumbled, levitating the paperwork back into its stacks, “whatever it is, it can wait until I get back.” She lifted up the letter she’d been writing and re-read it until she had her superior mind back on track. 

By the time she finished writing her bread-and-butter note to Social Climber, she’d entirely forgotten about Occupant’s interruption.

Footnotes:

(213) A year prior- one short, ephemeral year- if someling had told Chrysalis she would ever want more than one of the simple-minded, mail-order addicted door guard, she would have ordered them cocooned until some smart pony invented a cure for deranged changelings. 

(214) Prior to the space program the changeling hive had never bothered with birth certificates or any record of the sort. Chrysalis had fought like a tiger to avoid having to fool with them, and when she gave in she hired a pony to do them for her. In three months she’d gone through four ponies; the first had fled in terror after one day on the job, the second resigned after three weeks due to claustrophobia, and the third had stumbled into the brood pit, thought the larvae absolutely adorable, and became the hive’s new preschool teacher. The fourth one had lasted forty days thus far. Chrysalis could just about tolerate her, except for her unfortunate bad habit of insisting on knowing the “sire” and “dam” for each and every certificate…

(215) Chrysalis at least had a form letter for this one: “The changeling drone (insert name here) has never, in a lifetime of faithful service, been caught breaking the laws and ordinances of the Kingdom of Equestria or any municipality therein, save for incidents covered under the laws of war.” It seemed to work; at least, no pony had ever sent a follow-up inquiry.

(216) Chrysalis couldn’t decide which was more stupid; the changeling who listed her name as a character reference, or the pony who followed up on it, read Chrysalis’s response, and then hired the changeling anyway.

(217) One particular drone fell firmly in the “not” category. Parasol was an excellent infiltrator, mimic and harvester, but she had a streak of kleptomania. She stole things without realizing she’d even picked them up- never big or important things, but little things that appeared, for the moment, to be abandoned or unwanted. This habit eventually blew her cover sky-high. After four trips through the Trottingham justice system and dozens of complaints, it had become standard police procedure, any time some item worth less than five hundred bits went missing, to find Parasol and shake her until it (inevitably) fell out. Some wit at the local jail had hung a sign from one barred window reading RESERVED FOR PARASOL- which wasn’t far from the truth, since she spent a week in, then two to three days out, then a week back in. Two parts of this arrangement confirmed Chrysalis in her belief that all ponies were either hopelessly naive or outright insane: first, that Parasol was still allowed to live in Trottingham; second, that Parasol seemed to be harvesting more love inside the jail than out of it.

(218) The best diplomats, of course, write in sentences that work both ways.

(219) Occupant technically headed the post office, and it was his idea to issue more than one kind of stamp. The newly-drafted hive flag was the default letter-mail stamp design, but Occupant had also sold a larger denomination stamp with Chrysalis’s likeness, a limited edition stamp for every achievement the Changeling Space Program did first, and a slightly less limited but still collectible series of stamps featuring the sun, moon, and various planets of Equus’s solar system. Chrysalis had put a hold on the stamp to commemorate the Battle of the Canterlot Wedding; she wanted to save it for whatever moment it would annoy Celestia the most.

(220) For those wondering why Chrysalis didn’t demand written reports instead of spoken ones, bear in mind two details. First, the changeling education system is limited and tightly focused on matters of survival. Second, there is a word for written records of actions which range from the clandestine to the outright felonious: “evidence.”

(221) Chrysalis, being proud of her appearance, took great care to ensure that her mane had the perfect greasy coating to cling together like Velcro and hang heavier than steeple-bell ropes. Having a bit of her hair stand up at this particular moment was not a mere indication of stress; it was a significant violation of the laws of physics.

(222) Because, no matter how much you want someone to ring off, it pays to be certain about such things.

(223) It pays to be very, very certain, especially where changelings are concerned.

Y’ALL COME

Appleoosa’s 3rd Annual

HEARTH’S WARMING HOOTENANNY

Music! Dancing! Games! Gifts!

EVERYPONY WELCOME 

(even changelings, but don’t push it)

Occupant and Marked Knee stood in the throne room of the space center’s administration building, staring up at the image of an empty office. 

“How long can it take to find one old griffon?” Occupant asked. 

“Dr. Goddard is surprisingly spry for his age!!” Marked Knee noted. “Possibly he is spreading his wings above Appleoosa as we speak!!”

Before Occupant could point out just how unlikely it was that Goddard the Griffon would exercise solely for its own sake, a voice began to come from the image projected on the wall, faintly at first but rapidly growing in volume. “… and one more thing, you tell those idiots, fifty percent, you got it? Not one bit more than fifty percent! The clamps aren’t built to hold the thing at any higher setting? Got it? Good, go tell them that!” The owner of the voice, Goddard himself, stepped into view within the image and glared back at the two in the administration room. “What?” he asked.

“Dr. Goddard!!” Marked Knee bellowed. “I trust you are having a good time in Appleoosa??”

“Oh yes, loads,” Goddard snarled, slathering every word with sarcasm. “Just me and a bunch of know-nothings who keep blowing up my experiments every time I turn my back. Which makes it even MORE fun to be interrupted in the middle of a test on a heavy-lift rocket motor. Three miles out of town, because the ponies here, NOT being idiots, don’t want a live rocket test right next to their precious clock tower!”

“Good to hear!!” Marked Knee said. “We’re having fun as well!! In fact, we want you to come back to-“

“Come back??” Goddard snapped. “What for, some stupid Hearth’s Warming party? I could attend one of those here if I wanted!” The old griffon threw his talons in the air and shouted, “For this you drag me away from vital work for the space program, leaving an experiment in progress in the claws of some of the most-“

A dull rumbling sound echoed over the magical projection, causing Goddard to stop in mid-rant. A moment later the rumble became a loud explosion. “They went to full throttle!” he gasped. “Those idiots went to full throttle! Wait until I get my claws on them!”

“Er, Dr. Goddard,” Occupant said meekly, “we’re sorry about your test, but-“

“You!” Goddard roared. “You idiots just go do whatever you want, but by Godfrey’s golden tea-tray, LEAVE ME ALONE!”

The connection to Appleoosa went.

“I believe we caught the good doctor at a bad time!!” Marked Knee said.

“He wouldn’t even hear us out,” Occupant noted.

“Perhaps we should call him back in an hour or two!!”

“Er… no,” Occupant said, “I think that would be a very bad idea.”

EQUESTRIAN UNION TELEGRAM

From: Horseton Space Center (HAY-CSP)

To: Cherry Berry c/o Golden Harvest (EVR-PVL)

BREAKTHRU IN ROCKET TECHNOLOGY STOP

OPPORTUNITY FOR MAJOR ADVANCE STOP

REQUEST YOU RETURN HSP AT ONCE 

SGN OCCUPANT EOM

EQUESTRIAN UNION TELEGRAM

From: Cherry Berry (EVR-PVL)

To: Horseton Space Center (HAY-CSP)

RECOMMEND YOU OPEN DICTIONARY READ DEFINITION “VACATION” STOP

SEE YOU THREE WEEKS AFTER NEW YEAR AND NOT BEFORE STOP

HAPPY HEARTHSWARMING

SGN CHERRY BERRY EOM

Marked Knee took the telegram printout from Occupant, whose head lay slumped onto the astronaut quarters dining table. “This is disappointing,” the minotaur said in an uncommonly subdued tone.

“Any hope of a message to your friends?” Occupant asked without much hope.

“They’ll still be on their ship at least another two days,” Marked Knee said. “Even if we sent a messenger by air it would be over a week before they could return.”

“It’s such a shame!” Occupant moaned. “We’ve got your remote control system-“

“Shotputnik,” Marked Knee corrected him.

“-and we’ve got enough rocket parts in stock to put a big rocket on the pad,” Occupant continued. “At least as big as Thirteen and Fourteen were.”

“With a lighter payload, we should be able to fly past the moon,” Marked Knee said. “If only we could get either Miss Berry or your queen to sign off on it!!”

“I could do it myself,” Occupant sighed. “I’d get into big trouble for doing it, but I sign everything around here anyway, so what’s one more thing? But I can’t fly it and run the launch both. I don’t think I could fly it, period.”

“I could probably put together the rocket,” Marked Knee murmured, “but I’d need to watch the readouts and tracking to test the system. I couldn’t either fly the rocket or oversee the launch.”

“So we need a pilot,” Occupant groaned. “We also need permission, but we don’t have that either, and if we had that we’d also have a pilot.”

“A knotty situation!!” Marked Knee agreed, a bit of his gusto returning. “Will the contract wait until springtime??”

“Possibly, but that’s not the problem,” Occupant said. “This is a Royal Astronomical Society contract. If we accept the contract, they’ll make a public announcement, and we’ll be committed, and we’ll look bad if we wait to the deadline to launch. If we wait, some other program might pick it up just to say they tried.”

“What other program- pardon me!!” Marked Knee’s attention switched to the pair of changelings levitating a large black cabinet with a rose-colored pony painted on the side. “Where are you going with that??”

“And what is it?” Occupant asked, lifting his head from the table. 

“It’s a video game,” one of the changelings said. “There are a couple of others in the recreation room.”

“This one’s been out a couple years,” the other changeling said. “I was an infiltrator when it first came out, not long before the invasion. A lot of ponies were talking about ‘Pink Mare.’ They said it was the hottest thing since ‘Saltlick.’”(224) The changeling shrugged and added, “I never saw the appeal, myself.”

Marked Knee snorted. “Video games,” he rumbled. “A waste!! A travesty of the potential of electronics!! No, not even electronics- it uses a magic array!! Only the logic structure is the same!!”

“Logic schmogic,” the first changeling porter said indifferently. “All I know is, Dragonfly bought it and asked us to bring it in here and plug it in.”

“Dragonfly??” Marked Knee asked, jumping to his hooves. 

“Yeah, she’s the only one who plays these,” the other changeling said. “She owns two of the other three games in the rec room- Changeling Invaders and Gorgge.” 

“She doesn’t own that Saltlick cabinet?” the first changeling asked. 

“Nah. Carapace bought that one for the tourists. And of course they never touched it.”

“Figures. Well, let’s get this plugged in.”

“Wait!!” Marked Knee bounded over to the porters. “I meant to ask, where is Dragonfly??”

“She said she was going to Manehattan,” Occupant said.

“Well, she’s back,” the first changeling porter said. “Told us she was looking for you.”

“Now do you mind, guys?” the second changeling asked. “This ain’t a rocket, but it’s not light, either.”

“Sorry,” Occupant shrugged, waving the workers on. 

“This is excellent news!!” Marked Knee cheered.

“How’s that?” Occupant asked. 

“We have a pilot!!” Marked Knee cheered again(225).

“Oh,” Occupant said. “Well, yeah… but it’s Dragonfly.”

“Yes!! The pilot is Dragonfly!!”

“Whose enthusiasm for flying is tied to how dangerous it is,” Occupant explained. 

“So??” Marked Knee’s grin threatened to decapitate him. “She’ll be flying a ship with nobody in it!!”

Occupant’s eyes widened. “She’ll be flying a ship with nobody in it!”

“Yes!!”

“I can sign the papers!”

“I can build the rocket!!”

“And she can fly it!”

“We have a mission!!”

“We have a mission!!!”

Dragonfly walked in on a changeling and a minotaur doing a celebration dance around the mess table(226). “Hey, guys,” she said casually. “Am I interrupting something? Because I want to talk to you about getting an orbital mission when we start up in the spring.” She looked at the two of them frozen in mid-dance and added, “But that could wait until you’re sane.”

“Oh, I don’t think you need to wait that long,” Occupant said.

“Good,” Dragonfly said. “If I had to wait until you were sane-“

“No!!” Marked Knee bellowed. “We mean you don’t have to wait until spring!”

Dragonfly blinked, then looked from Marked Knee to Occupant and back. “You two really are crazy,” she said.

“So what if we are?” Occupant asked. 

Dragonfly considered, and answered, “Then sign me up for a padded paddock. What’s the deal?”

Footnotes:

(224) The writer is not responsible for this one. A “Saltlick” arcade cabinet appears in “Hearts and Hooves Day” and “Slice of Life.” Your guess as to how a video game about a saltlick would work is as good as anyone else’s, especially the writer’s. If it wasn’t for how it was being used in “Slice of Life”, the writer would guess it was a pony version of “Tapper”.

(225) Oblivious to both the blatantly obvious nature of his statement and, at the same time, the fact that his audience was in turn oblivious to the fact being stated. This is as close as minotaurs ever come to Zen.

(226) For the historical record, it was the Hustle.