Chapter 5: Daily Work

Grant's Stationary Company.  District A.  Office Block One-Dash-One.  The front lobby.  Room “zero zero”.

Ampere made his way to the office.  A security guard, the usual, stood outside the entrance of the stone building.  It was an older building that originally housed a brewery.  Competition.  The owner of Grant's Stationary Company, the unscrupulous Grant Ganache, had bought it out a couple of years back.  It was the oldest office in the entire company but ironically was the nicest.  The newer, cheaper, and quickly made offices lacked a strong structure and were terribly stifling.  Air conditioning only existed for the wealthy elite.  But Office Block One-Dash-One, commonly called the "Black Box" for its unique black marble as a building material, was more comfortable than its contemporaries.  Blocks of ice, enchanted by the early brewers, melted slowly underneath the building in an underground refrigerator.  The magical enchantment also allowed for the ice blocks to not cool the building during the winter thus preventing the office from turning into a virtual ice box.  This insulation magic was one of the very few instances in which magic showed its fading face in Dust-at-Dawn.  The building proved to be one of the last relics of history that the dynamic Dusk-at-Dawn preserved.  In a rapidly industrializing and a technologically advancing environment, the Black Box survived the march of the machine.  Dust-at-Dawn was always changing but the Black Box proved to be a rare case.  The populace actually wanted it demolished and replaced with another “Model Five Living Quarters Space Conserver” but the stubborn Grant Ganache disagreed.  "For the preservation of our history and for the enjoyment for our posterity" was his reassurance.  A hint of gold could be smelt from those words.

"Hey Ampere!  How ya doing?" the security guard asked.

"It's all right," Ampere replied.  He displayed his I.D.

"You're a bit late, aren't you?"  The guard took his I.D., did a brief identity check for resemblance (he was familiar), and gave him back his I.D.

"It's a long story, C-L-17," Ampere sighed.  C-L-17 was the guard's call sign.  His name badge read “Doubt Fall”.

"All right then.  You're free to go.  Take care."

"Thanks," was the stale response.

Ampere opened one side of the large double doors and closed it as he entered.  The front desk clerk, timid little Sodia Lyte, looked up briefly - as if expecting somepony - and saw Ampere enter.  Quickly, she looked down at her day planner and blushed.  Ampere walked casually to her desk and said, "I'm checking in."

The young filly, in her late teens, adjusted her glasses in a jumbled manner and said, "T-time?"

"8:40 A.M.," he said coolly.

Surprised, Sodia stared at him blankly.  She softened her face when she looked at his eyes.

Slightly angered by a lack of action, Ampere demanded, "Is there a problem?"

"Oh n-no sir!"  She quickly wrote down the time.  She had never asked for his name, only once, the first time she met him, despite her job requiring to do so.   She could never forget his name.  At the 8:40 A.M. row, she wrote "Ampere Van Current" to the right of it.  She took extra care in writing his name.  She liked it.  It was perfect.

"All righty then.  That's it!" she said cheerily.  "You're checked in."

Ampere turned to the left and walked up the flight of stairs.  But Sodia didn't want him to leave her.  It was too soon.

"Oh!" she called out to him.  Ampere looked behind him and then fixated on her.

"I-I forgot to say this.  Good morning."

Ampere looked at her for a few seconds, then at the floor, and then finally he looked forward and resumed walking to the stairs.

Sodia wore a sad countenance but it hastily transformed into a lustful trance as she stared dreamily at his body.  The young pegasus was soaring.

When Ampere reached the second story, his office door faced him.  He entered his office, closed the door, and looked around.  Same old.

He was lucky to have a windowed office.  Though truly he could have done without it, it had helped passed the time.  From this post, he could view the ponies about their day.  The Black Box overlooked a food court and the many different outlets that the pedestrians visited.  He liked that.  Just watching over ponies, seeing society at work.

Half of the supplies were standard issue, provided by the company.  Ampere brought his own business ledger, journal, and coffee mug - a bright yellow that contrasted heavily with his demeanor.  Papers and pencil were, however, on the house.  Like there was a choice.  Grant's Stationary Company held a tightening monopoly on stationary.  Ampere walked around his desk and sat down on his own-bought leather chair.  He sighed in relief, as if exhaling his angers of poison from his body.  He opened his accounting book which kept the records of the company’s transactions.  If the Brown Gold coffee shop wanted paper sleeves with advertisements on it, Grant's Stationary Company would supply them the paper - plus they would print the advertisements or whatever Brown Gold wished.  It was Ampere's job to record the transactions - time, amount, parties, etc...  In this sense Ampere was a valued worker.  He was given decent treatment by the manager and Grant made a couple of visits to make sure he wasn't going to forge numbers and take a dishonest cut of the money for himself.  Dusk-at-Dawn did not call their accountants "accountants", rather the title "treasurer" was bestowed onto those whose job it was thereof.

Ampere sat down in his leather chair comfortably.  He relieved a miniscule sigh as his rear adjusted to the cushion.  He opened his leather bound ledger (Accountant’s Ledger L-88-a Model III Recording Booklet, Silver Edition), provided by the company of course, and then found his bookmark.  Putting his bookmark off to the side he scanned through the grid of lines.  Page twenty-seven.

“Date:  May 24th.  Nature of Transaction:  Purchase.  Amount:  700 bits.  Buyer:  Grant’s Stationary Company.  Seller:  United Lumbering Corporations.  Notes:  None,” Ampere read silently in his mind.  He sighed again and then looked at the ceiling.  It was a dull grey.

Transaction forms were sent to Ampere via a drop in box.  It was situated at the left corner of his office.  A conduit ran vertically and horizontally throughout the building like a lattice.  The conduit possessed an intricate technology that allowed air to push and pull papers from one location to another.  The technology, developed by Aerway Communications, was still in its early stages.  Only forms would be the items to be sent.  Aerway Communications’s public relations department was building hype about their new conduits that could send larger items, perhaps even food, and that their infrastructure would spread throughout the city.  Building hype wasn’t unique to them.  Many companies did this.

Ampere got up and checked his inbox.  Nothing.  He went back to his desk and sat down.  It was a three-part desk.  There was a front portion and a left and right portion on his respective flanks.  On days such as these he was bored.  It was nothing unbearable, however.  It was the usual.

He pulled out a book from his drawer.  “A Tale of Two Ponies”.  He opened the page to where the attached bookmark rested and read where he had left off.  Twenty minutes passed.  He checked his inbox again for forms.  Nothing.  He returned for his desk and read on for forty more minutes.  The book kept him occupied.   Historical fiction.  His favourite.

It was 9:40 A.M.  Relatively early.

“Well, better get working on that report for the Council.”

Ampere picked up a random pencil from his utensil cup - it never mattered for such a mass-consumption society - and titled the paper “Report from District A.  Office Block One-Dash-One, Series 109”.  It was a biannual report in which the treasurer of each office branch had to submit to the Head Treasurer - a position that was a part of the elite, decision-making body of the company called "the Council".

Ampere opened the drawer on his immediate right and obtained a piece of paper.  "Let's see... five hundred plus three thousand is..." he mumbled to himself.  Ampere, not a brilliant mathematician but capable, jotted down symbols on the scratch paper as his mind did mental exercising.  He did this for about an hour.

10:40 A.M.  "Well, that took shorter than I expected."  Ampere sighed and looked up at the ceiling.  "Twenty minutes to lunch..." another low-volume utterance.  He looked outside the window and saw the same Brown Gold that greeted him every day since its construction.  It had recently been built, about a month ago, and although he wasn't big on coffee, Grant's Stationary Company's employees received a ten percent discount on any item.  Ampere's earnings were honest, perhaps a tad on the high side, but he believed in saving.  The occasion to go there had never struck him.  "Guess I'll go there this time."

Ampere took the finished report and placed it into the outbox.  It was immediately sucked into the tube network in which it traveled down to the transportation department.  He checked himself over for he preferred to be groomed (a sign of his philosophy of being a civilized pony).  Also, there wasn't much to do and everything he could do to pass time he would do.  He examined the length of his pencils, flipped through the ledger without much attention to the actual contents, checked the time, tapped his rear right hoof on the floor, sighed and looked at the ceiling, checked the time, etc...

Looking at the clock again, Ampere gave off a small grin, "Finally."  He got up, walked to the door, and proceeded downstairs.  Sodia had already left for her lunch break.  C-L as well.  It was quite the coincidence that the three of them had the same break period.  Sodia's shift was covered by another pony and the same with C-L.

Walking to the door, Ampere said, "I'm going on break" to the filling-in desk clerk.