Give Them An Inch and They'll Take The Miles
Ponies from all over Ponyville gathered in the meeting room of the town hall. Voices and murmurs filled the crowd as they waited.
Mayor Mare walked up to the podium and spoke to the crowd. “Fillies and gentlecolts, Princess Twilight Sparkle has an announcement to make.”
The ponies in the crowd clapped as the young alicorn took the stage, a stack of notes floating in her telekinesis. Thankfully, Twilight had learned from her prior speeches that were far too lengthy. This time, she had prepared a reasonably-sized stack of notes: 153 pages as opposed to 154. Baby steps.
“Thank you all for coming,” said Twilight Sparkle, smiling. The applause quieted down as she began her speech.
“Since I became princess, I have hardly exercised my power at all. I felt that I needed to grow into the role. But now, nearly a year after ascending to become an alicorn and being crowned, I am ready to issue my first royal decree.”
There was scattered applause, the ponies not knowing what to expect. Most of them only knew Twilight as just the town librarian and, now that the library had been destroyed, the town alicorn with the tacky crystal castle. They weren’t used to her ordering them around. Well, except for that one time that she had hypnotized them all so that she wouldn’t be late on an assignment and disappoint Princess Celestia, and then that other time that she had demanded the town be safety-proofed to stop an impending future disaster. Other than that, though, she wasn’t too much of a control freak.
She continued, “For many years, Equestria has needed to make a change. We’ve been putting it off for a while now. As a student, I’m not immune to procrastination, but Equestria now stands alone as the last country to do this. Over the years, my friends and I have saved the land from perpetual darkness, chaos, and enslavement. Now, it’s time to save the land from inefficiency. But this inefficiency isn’t a villain to be blasted with magical beams: it will require every last one of us to alter the way we do things. So, as a princess and a scholar, I believe that it is finally time...”
She paused and took a breath. The room was so quiet, you could hear Pinkie Pie’s rapid, irregular heartbeat.
“...for Equestria to convert to the metric system.”
All of a sudden, the metaphorical valve burst, and noise and chatting flooded the room as ponies muttered.
Twilight motioned with her hoof for everypony to be quiet. “I know that it will be difficult to change, but many other countries have made the switch: Trotland, Oatstralia, even our northern neighbors in the Crystal Empire. Once we are all using metric, we would never want to go back. It’s easy, and there’s no need to remember how many hooves in a mile or how many quarts in a gallon. Everything is just in tens! Sure, it might be an inconvenience at first to learn a new system, but it’s a one-time cost, and we will continue to reap benefits from it indefinitely. But before I use a royal decree to make this change, I wanted to open this up to comment from the public.”
A hoof shot up in the back of the room.
“Yes, Cheerilee?”
Cheerilee said, “I for one, support this change. It’s always a hassle to teach students to use both the Equestrian customary measurements, and metric measurements. When we’re just using one system, then I can spend more time teaching valuable things, like lessons in how to get a cutie mark even though most students in my class already have them!”
A few of the ponies in the room nodded in approval. Another hoof went in the air.
“Yes, Davenport?”
“I’m also in support. As the proprietor of Davenports’ Quills, Sofas, and Rulers, I could sure use the extra business from ponies all coming in to buy new meter sticks.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “You do rulers now, too?”
Davenport chuckled. “Yeah, it was really hard to pay the bills just doing quills and sofas, especially in a small town where most ponies already have both and don’t replace them very often. So I decided to expand my offerings to another obscure, rarely-purchased product.”
“Um… good call?” said Twilight.
Two hooves shot up, from Mr. and Mrs. Cake.
“Sugarcube Corner opposes the change,” said Mr. Cake, his brow furrowed. “All of our recipes are in tablespoons, teaspoons, pints, and quarts. Our oven is in fahrenheit. Our customers buy our goods by the pound and ounce. Do you have any idea how much it would cost for us to convert all of that over? We’re bakers, not mathematicians!”
Mrs. Cake nodded. “If Equestria converts to metric, then we’ll have to change Pound Cake’s name to Kilogram Cake! And he’ll have to grow twice as big!”
“And then we won’t be able to make puns about him ‘pounding’ things, and his name won’t start with P like his sister’s,” said Mr. Cake.
“But what if tourists from a foreign country come to Sugarcube Corner and they're confused? Every other country in the world has already switched over to metric,” said Twilight Sparkle.
“If every other country in the world jumped off a cliff, would you do it, too?” asked Mrs. Cake.
Other ponies in the crowd nodded in approval. Another hoof shot up.
“Yes, Applejack?”
“The Equestrian system is tradition! Y’all can’t just go changin’ things around. It’s our national pride!”
Rarity said, “I agree with Applejack and the Cakes. I also oppose this. When making dresses at Carousel Boutique, I measure my customers’ sizes in inches. I order my fabric in hooves and yards. Ponies are reluctant to change. The system of measurement is much like fashion: it can’t just be updated on a mere whim.”
Twilight threw her hooves up. “But fashion is always changed on a whim! Remember last summer when being unseasonable became trendy, and everypony started wearing scarves and stocking caps even though it was 35 degrees out?”
Ponies muttered in confusion.
Twilight clarified, “Thirty-five celsius, not Fahrenheit.”
“Ohhhh,” everypony in the room said at once.
“I’ll only support the change if I get to make up my own wacky units! Like kilofunnies, or happygrams, or utils!” Pinkie exclaimed.
Ignoring Pinkie, Twilight said, “We have to quit using antiquated units. We’re living in the modern era, the age of science. We need scientific measurements based off of unchanging principles in nature, like the distance that light travels in a vacuum, or the mass of a fixed volume of water. I mean, do we really want to be using measurements based on the weight of Princess Celestia’s crown, or the width of Princess Celestia’s hoof? I think--”
“What’s that about my hoof?”
All the ponies turned towards the doorway. There stood the towering form of the princess, exactly one celestia tall. Twilight Sparkle turned beet red in the presence of her personal mentor: the supreme Princess of Equestria who she would never, ever want to disappoint.
Twilight stammered, “Uh… I was just… um…”
Celestia asked, “Do ponies no longer wish to measure based off of the width of my hoof?”
“Uh… we do! We do! Don’t we, everypony?” asked Twilight, grinning sheepishly.
Everypony in the crowd nodded.
"Yeah!"
"Totally!"
Princess Celestia smiled.
“That’s good to hear,” she said. “I’m glad that my subjects are happy with the measurement system I created for them.”
“Sorry about wasting your time, Ponyville,” said Twilight Sparkle, her head hung low as she left the stage. Everypony filed out of the room.
And thus, Equestria remained non-metric forever.
Author's Note
Thanks, Celestia.
