“Know your place, know your skills, and know who you are.”

Dry. The air, like always was dry. So dry that breathing it in would make your tongue a piece of sandpaper and your lungs as if they were limestone. It was always like this with Stable 37’s main electrical generators. I knew they were climate controlled to keep the room from being humid but I always felt uncomfortable taking one breath after another in the room full of buzzing electrical instruments. Usually it was a job for a unicorn, but I was called on duty because of the fact that there were high wires that a pegasus could get to easier and not risk being electrocuted from touching them. Being a pegasus is useful for many things, but worthless for others. The ability to fly, is an upside. Not being able to use magic however, was a massive downside.

“Oi Quantum!” the head electrician Piston yelled over the electrical buzzing that slowly grew louder.

My large and pointed ears shifted in his attention. Still in mid-flight, I turned around to face him with a pair of red handled wire cutters in my mouth.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, my name is Quantum. Don’t ask me how I got that name it was my parents idea. Since they were both unicorns they assumed that their next of kin was to be a unicorn as well. Much to my mother’s astoundment, Nova was her name, I was a pegasus. My father, Quasar was his name, was almost if not more shocked at the revelation. My unicorn sister Nebulae, who was only thirteen at the time, didn’t know much better. So since my family had a rather odd history of having single word names that related to either space, time, energy, and or matter, I was named Quantum. It means “a distinct amount of energy equal in magnitude to all things around it”. Still, to this day, I still have no idea why I was named that or what its true meaning is.

I landed in front of the ever impatient Piston and spat the pair of cutters out of my mouth. He was one to not keep waiting. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t push his buttons every so often and make him wait a few minutes and use the excuse of the equipment being too loud for me to hear him. The navy blue coated and silver haired unicorn shot me a glare of disapproval. Oh Celestia what did I do now?

“Yeah Piston. What is it?” I answered as I slid the pair of pliers into my purple maintenance suit.

“What the hell happened a week ago with the artificial lighting in Corridor C?” the blue unicorn growled in obvious anger.

“Corridor C? I don’t know. That was Klink-Klank’s job not mine,” I began, “What happened?

Piston pulled out a manila folder and angrily shoved it in my direction. I grabbed it with my left wing and opened it revealing a very, very thorough report showing how a section of lighting fell off of its support and it nearly crushed one of the Overmare’s associates. I already heard what happened across Stable 37’s PipBuck broadcast. I gave Piston the report back and he said coldly,

“Klink-Klank said that you would be taking the shift. Your lucky that nothing serious happened or else the Overmare and I would be holding you accountable for it.”

“WHAT!? He said that he would have the support columns before I even got there! What else did he say?” I demanded in shock.

“Nothing. He said that you would be wiring and that's it. I guess that he assumed that he would have reinforced the thing before he left.”

Klink-Klank, the orange coated chestnut haired earth pony, was the most recently hired electrician in all of Stable 37’s maintenance only being on the job for about six months and already had a strange and increasingly annoying reputation for leaving a wire or two hooked up in the wrong direction. Usually it was either me, Piston, or my unicorn assistant High Octane that dealt with the problem. Klink-Klank was still learning, but at the cost of currently one thousand bits worth of repair and two thousand five hundred and fifty bits worth of insurance bills. After I was done hearing about what else Piston had to say, I was guessing that I would be the one to go and deal with it.

“I’m sending you to go and deal with the problem and to fix Klink-Klank’s foul up. He’s going to wish that he was taken out with the wires he was working on by the time I was done with him,” Piston mumbled with a livid tone as he stormed out of the generator room with fire in his eyes.

I let out a sigh of annoyance and I too mumbled to myself, “Brilliant.”

***

The Overmare’s associate suffered no physical damage except a few shards of glass piercing her skin and drawing a few drops of blood that stained a few areas of the white tile floor a light pink. Most of the clean up crew was already here to remove most of the larger shards of debris from the surrounding area and cleared a path to allow other stable workers to pass through. I was one of the only other two maintenance workers there. One unicorn with a lime green coat was a structural support engineer, the other yellow earth pony was a bio-hazard removal specialist, and I was the electrician. The only one there without a big and fancy name and the only pegasus in Stable 37. Strange how things fell together sometimes.

The yellow pony then looked at me and gave a slight chuckle. I don’t know why, but he did. He was already almost done with his work and was packing up the few cleaning materials he needed and trotted off. The support engineer then trotted towards me and she asked flatly,

“When are you planning on fixing this?”

I gave her a smirk.

“It would take me about a few hours to fix the supports and few minutes to get the lights working again. All I need though is a few carbon-fiber support railings. That alone would take about a day or two of waiting before I got the delivery.” I answered also adopting the flat tone the green pony gave me.

She rolled her eyes and left after the bio-hazard pony leaving me behind to deal with the mess. The separation of the fixtures from the wiring was going to be a project all in its own. Stable 37 had a special lighting system that functioned off of the Overmare and her magical talents in order to create light and power our gardens where we grew most, if not all, of the food we need to survive. Meaning when a magical light system failed a unicorn would be called in to repair the cables that moved the Overmare’s magic throughout the stable with as minimal of energy required to maintain its use. Electricians were also called in to repair the emergency lighting that ran parallel with the magic lighting just in case either of them went down. Since Klink-Klank somehow took out both the magic wiring and the emergency lights, I had to be sent down to help with the problem.

I facehoofed. I honestly can't wait until that fool gets fired. This is the fourth screw up he accomplished in two months. I let out a groan and flew back to the main terminal near Stable 37’s generator room. The wall was covered in massive black breakers that maintained the flow of both magical and electrical power in Stable 37. Each one, except for the two or three that were always in “SHUTDOWN”, were switched into the “ENGAGED” position that allowed power flow. One switch however, was in the “STANDBY” position. Next to it, on a piece of masking tape written in fading black letters, read “Stable 37 - Corridor C - Electrical Lighting”. The breaker that was next to it, still in “ENGAGED”, read “Stable 37 - Corridor C - Arcane Magic Lighting”. I let out a sigh of relief.

“Good. The unicorns have one less job and I have one less headache,” I thought to myself.

After writing an unnecessarily long and detailed report to Piston and sending it to him via the access terminal in the generator room, I trotted back to the wall covered in breakers and began to shut many of the unnecessary ones down. With it, he forwarded the report to Arcane Maintenance and the small group of about four or five unicorns were pleased to hear that they did not need to make any repairs. Piston, my unicorn apprentice High Octane, and I however were not so relieved. I shut down the terminal and trotted back to the wall of breakers. I threw at least six of the other electrical systems that ran parallel with Corridor C’s Electrical Lights into “SHUTDOWN” in order to prevent a power surge. The little gauges that monitored electrical flow to and from the generator room gave a short lived but sporadic spike and then returned to normal levels. After grabbing a few extra tools from my slightly rusted grey locker in the work ponies quarters I left the generator room and in a few flaps of my wings I met up with High Octane who was already there examining the damage.

High Octane was a blueish-green coated unicorn mare with a dark grey mane and tail. Both of which had a small tip of white at each end like certain hound dog breeds. Her ears too had that strange coloration that proved to be very useful when finding her when the power was out and it was nearly pitch black in the room/maintenance shaft/ventilation ducts we found ourselves in a lot of the time. She, like myself, had a PipBuck on her right hoof was we were both left hoofed. Pistol, Klink-Klank, and about ninety-nine percent of all other residents of Stable 37 were right hoofed so it was always relieved to find out that someone had the same kind of hoof manipulation that I had despite her being a unicorn and me being a pegasus. Her cutie mark was of a voltmeter and she got it almost two years ago. Since then, when Piston hired her along with the fact that I was the only other electrician in this field, she had been my apprentice ever since. And, other than me, she was the best electrician in the field.

While pacing the room, waiting for me, she already took a damage claim. Every time she said that it made her sound like a damn tax collector and he knows it. That is probably why she continues to say in a non-emotional and an almost monotone voice,

“I’ve already filed a claim”.

This time was not different. I rolled my eyes and let out a sigh of disapproval. She let out a slight grin as she floated me a flashlight in a veil of her telekinetic purple magic aurora that small cylindrical thing was blanketed in. I grabbed it with my right wing; bottom three of the four feathers in each wing grasped the metal tube loosely and the feather on the top pressing a button on it and switching it on. The brilliant glow of the LED white light exploded from the glass plate in the flashlight and a beam of pure light sliced through one of the wiring pipes that was pried open with delicate manipulation. The pipe itself was fine but the wires in it were melted, fried, or both. Only one or two wires remained intact.

“Bloody hell,” I mumbled under my fogging breath in the climate controlled wire terminus that was Corridor C, otherwise known as Maintenance.

“Yeah,” High Octane agreed catching my comment, “It would be a miracle if we scraped off the melted insulation by the end of next week. All of the wires were… um… are dead. The surge essentially made them nothing more than scrap copper.”

Instead of a sigh, I let out a groan of disapproval.

“Please tell me that this is the only wire with any hint of a problem,” I said flatly as I knew that it was most likely that there was going to be at least more than five other pipes that their insides were already coated in a rubbery frosting of red, black, blue, yellow, and white.

“For once, this is the only one,” High Octane gladly answered with a grin that I could even hear forming on her face.

“Thank the goddesses,” I mumbled a bit louder than I probably needed to.

High Octane lifted her right hoof to check his interface on her PipBuck. It was a later model as she refused to get the thing upgraded and it usually took a minute to pull up the menu screen in order to even begin working with it. The only reason why she didn't want to get it upgraded was the fact that the color of the interface was quite rare color and an upgrade would possibly change from the light blue lettering and light purple background back into the default green and yellow color scheme that every mare and stallion who had a PipBuck was tuned to. She tapped one of the three thin orange buttons on the device and let out a satisfied beep. Her gaze not straying from the outrageously thick bracelet she said to me with a smirk on his face,

“As far as I could see, we only need to replace about twenty feet of duct. That would only cost…”

“83 bits,” I interrupted as I got back onto my hooves and brushed some fiberglass dust and burnt wire insulators off of my Stable 37 electrical barding before I could look up the cost of wiring duct.

“I still find it odd how you know that,” she answered with an eye roll.

“You just don't because you haven't been doing it as long as I have. You’ll get it soon enough,” I replied calmly.

“That's the scary part,” she added.

Using some light blue magic that encompassed her horn and the damaged wiring, High Octane carefully unbolted the metal pipe and removed it from its now damaged mounting. I then left her behind and walked back to the Resupply Dock in Corridor E near the PipBuck Technician’s office. That was the room where Stable 37 put its surplus of industrial grade steel and thick copper wires. Enough was in the room that the entire team of electricians (me, Piston, Klink-Klank, High Octane, and about six other unicorns) that we could rewire two thirds of the entire stable in about a week. Not that any of us wanted to, it's just that we have the materials that we could. The only thing that we rarely, if ever, had was the exact part that me or High Octane needed in order to fix the problem. It was normal, but it would never not be annoying. In order to actually get the part was to custom order the part and how much of the part we needed.

After interfacing the one and only terminal that was in the Generator Room I had waited about a week before the measly twenty feet of pipe that High Octane and I needed had finally arrived. Because of how uneventful the time spent waiting was, I decided to leave that out of the story. I imagine that you did not want to read about the mind numbing boredom that is waiting for a part that you needed to get your hooves a hold of in order to do your job properly. Though wandering a stable, especially one on the massive scale as Stable 37, might sound interesting I left it out anyways. Your welcome by the way.

After the long and dull week, the part finally arrived. Twenty feet of electrical duct that was needed to fix the problem. The only real reason why it would take so long was because the unicorns actually had to make the metal with their magic and thus further proving that unicorns are completely overpowered. They never think about the pegasus or the earth pony who has the misfortune of having to be the ones that handle their dirty work. Regardless of that, the earth ponies don't seem to mind much as they continue to do the work they were told in a diligence that only I wish that I had. I couldn't say much for the average pegasus though since pegasi were not so average in Stable 37. Despite being one myself it was the matter of the fact that I was the only pegasus in Stable 37. Another reason why the Overmare worries a bit too much about me at times which was only another thing that managed to get on my nerves very quickly.

Grabbing the detachable metal handle on the duct, I hauled it back to High Octane who, like usual, was waiting for me. She removed some of the remaining rubber stuff and had it all ready for the duct's new installation. Grabbing it in her field of telekinetic energy, she floated the now weightless pipe into place and began to float the eight bolts needed to properly secure the thing to the was and the other half of the non-damaged pipeline. All eight spun into place and I flew up to finish the job by using a socket wrench to tighten them and tapping the bolt heads on with a cast iron hammer further providing strength and support for the new electrical line. When the job was done, and it took about three hours to do might I add, High Octane and I went our separate ways and trotted back to our living quarters.

I pressed the small green key icon on my PipBuck and the door to my room slid open. I cantered in and set my saddlebags and my tool belt on the couch nearest the door. Stable living quarters were like apartment rooms in the sense that they were small and very close to other rooms making it highly recommended to keep the room clean in order to prevent a fire hazard. My neighbor didn't follow that rule most of the time as the stench of alcohol and burning cigarettes somehow penetrated the floor's ventilation systems and filtered second-hoof smoke into most, if not all, of the rooms on this floor and a few on the floor directly above him. I could only imagine the weird things that he does in there. Most of the time though, I tried to ignore it. The smell of my afternoon iced tea hung in the air helping to drown out the smell of burning ash and tobacco. I grabbed the plain white, with a few reddish-brown tea stains on the sides and the bottom, cup full of the dark red and slightly watered down cup of tea and took a few sips of it before I took off my electricians barding and flew to the shower with a few flaps of my feathery white wings.

I pressed the red colored button that allowed hot water to fill the shower room at a pace that I was not normally accustomed to. Within a course of six minutes, the shower was covered in a thick layer of steam.

"YES! They finally fixed the water pressure!" I internally said celebrating but also trying to not slip and crack the back of my skull open on the metal railing surrounding the shower door.

At least the water pressure would wash away all the blood that would be spilled from my celebration that would have certainly been my death if I did slip and fall. I chuckled to myself as I remembered that I was a pegasus and I could flap my wings a bit in order to save my life from an incredibly embarrassing demise. The unicorns and earth ponies did not have the luxury of having wings and having the ability to fly so I felt equal parts glad and annoyed that I, once again, remembered that I was the only pegasus in Stable 37. Brushing my black and blue hair out of my right eye, I finished my shower and trotted up to bed feeling better now that all of the oil and grime that was an occupational annoyance was washed off leaving me as clean as I will ever get and a little bit chill from the temperature difference in my bedroom. I tapped a red button on the side of my PipBuck turning on my built-in alarm clock. I pulled the many blankets over me, closed my eyes, and drifted to the dark tranquility of sleep.

***

I was stirred awake by a soft groan coming from somewhere in my room not even four hours before I was actually supposed to wake up. I looked around the slate grey room and found nothing that could have possibly made a noise as alien as this was. Then, feeling a bit stupid, I realized that it was my stomach. Figures. It seems as if the universe wanted to hate me. That and gravity. Gravity and I have a long standing hatred. He wants me on the ground and I want to be in the air and not on the ground. Its a back and forth thing. I was reminded how much I hated gravity when I tried to pull myself out of bed by my wings and I ungracefully fell to the floor with a hollow thud making the empty porcelain tea cup I have beside my lamp stand every night for when I wake up jerk an inch to one side making it want to hang perilously off of the end of the dresser for which is was situated upon. I got back onto my hooves and wrapped the cup in one of my wings as I waddled my way down the stairs of my "apartment" and into the kitchen where I started to brew a pot of tea in order to wake me up.

"Might as well get ready," I thought to myself with a yawn, " 'cause I aint gonna get anymore sleep now."

I then pulled my maintenance uniform off of the coat rack nearest the metal door leading to the rest of the stable and put it on. With a sniff, I realized that I didn't wash the thing last night and its already starting to smell ripe. I rolled my eyes. Of course it smelled bad. Why couldn't I have a day where I didn't need to wash the thing? I let out a slight groan and undressed myself out of the barding and threw it on the couch. The tea kettle was letting out a scream as the water in it was ready to be brewed into the reddish-brown drink. I galloped over to the burner, turned it off, and poured the now boiling water into my white tea cup where a small tea bag was waiting to greet it. The water then began to change into it's distinct reddish-brown color almost instantly.

While I waited for the tea to cool off a bit, I went back up to my room and put a clean uniform that hung in my closet on. Even if it was clean, it still held the slight smell of oil and grime that was impregnated into the fabric itself. Think of it as putting on another pair of skin except for the fact that the skin was dark purple and had a large "37" embroidered into the grey collar with bright yellow thread. I slipped on the yellow undershirt and then the purple barding making sure that a small portion of the shirt was showing as a safety precaution. Then, with a soft "click" the heavy duty belt that held most of my wire cutters and jumper cables locked into place around my waist and my back just below where my wings begin and my body ends.

My ear then twitched a bit as they tried honing in on a sound. It was dull crackling noise too faint for most ponies to hear, but it was there. They swiveled into the direction of origin and I soon found myself outside of my "apartment" as the large audio receptors on my head tried to pick up the sound. It was obvious that no one else heard it as the corridor was empty of everyone but myself. As if I was in a trance I followed the noise continued to gain volume further peeking my curiosity. I passed nearly half the main areas of the stable trying to find it.

The origin of the noise came from the large stable door. The solid steel monolith of a prewar time stood sentinel against the outside world and the inside of the stable. Its haunting authority was always there as the numbers "3" and "7", particularly in that order, that were painted on with yellow paint that only Celestia knows how old it is kept close. It was a large safe door, holding the unknown secrets from the outside to itself. I wanted those secrets.

Then a pop of static snapped me back into reality. I turned to face a seemingly inconspicuous plate of metal near the door override controls that seemed to be firing sparks from the small cracks in the metal. With the overwhelming urge to understand, I pulled out a flathead screwdriver and a hammer out of my tool belt and look for the weakest part of the metal. Satisfied that I found such an area of fatigue, I jammed the screwdriver into the crack in the plate and gave it a fierce strike with my hammer. The sound was overwhelming as it reverberated through the steel and concrete covered walls making it worse than nails on a chalkboard to my overdeveloped and outrageously large ears even though the sound lasted for less than a second or two.

Crack!

Crack!

Crack!

SNAP!

The metal finally gave up its resistance and tore away from the wall. I honestly had no idea what I would expect to find in the small indentation in the wall, but it certainly wasn't this. I large lever, much like the ones to operate the winch on a crane, was situated in the negative space in the wall. It was covered in dust over maybe centuries of it being forgotten behind a sheet of metal. I brushed some dust off the lowest point of the handle and it said in bright red letters,

"STABLE 37 EMERGENCY DOOR OVERRIDE MECHANISM"

I backpedaled. There was an emergency override to Stable 37? By the looks of it, no one else knew that the device existed either. The lever was now taunting me. It seemed to whisper,

"Pull me Quantum..."

Right. I'm officially losing it. I turned on a dime and began to trot away trying to dispose of the switch from my memory banks. I stopped and glanced back. It was there. A way out. Out of the stable and out into the real world. A world beyond the dreary concrete asylum. A world untouched by ponies after the zebras decimated it some two centuries ago. Would it be safe? Maybe it wouldn't hurt to just...

"No Quantum," I said to myself trying to keep the little pony in my head from seducing me into pulling the lever, "Not gonna happen."

Then I realized something. If there was an emergency "OUT" lever, then logically there must be an emergency "IN" lever on the outside that no one else knew about. Either that or my knowledge of electrical equipment was trying to paint a false picture of there being a possibility of getting back in when I knew there was no way in or out of Stable 37. Now there was a way out, so there had to be a way in right? I shook the image out of my head and was somehow once again muzzle to muzzle with the override lever with my hooves around the red rubber handle. Finally realizing it, I tore my hooves away from it and turned away and out of the hallway still having the thought of the damn thing in my head.

I was away from the lever for no more than thirty seconds before I galloped back into the room, threw my hooves around the switch, and pulled it towards me with all of my might. For a long few seconds, nothing happened. Then two little red lights on each side of the lever erupted into life finally being activated after however many years of dormancy. A loud siren, one I have never heard before, blasted to existence signaling the stable door to be opened. A large worm gear thing dropped out of the ceiling and the shaft slid into place. With a metallic protest, the stable door was pulled open and swung to its side revealing a black emptiness that seemed to stretch out for an eternity. Stunned, I fell to my haunches. Stable 37 was open. After the chaos of the door opening, there was a brief second where all was silent. Then the same speakers that the siren used broke the silence and said,

"ALERT! Stable 37 door opened. Begin emergency evacuation of Stable 37 Personnel!"

Aw crap. They were going to find me and, quite possibly, arrest me. Two options. One, fly back to my room and pretend that nothing ever happened and lie if they come to my "apartment" and ask why I was messing with the door controls. Or two, venture out into the unknown and avoid severe punishment because of the fact that I messed with the door controls without the permission of the Overmare or any one of her associates. There really was no other option. There was never an instance where someone had access to the door controls and it was very likely that no one even knew about the emergency override switch so it would be safe to assume that the punishment would be pretty severe. Probably involving something relating to not living anymore.

I turned to the open space and ran. Ran faster than I ever had before into the dark and humid unknown. I ignored the sound of something being crushed underneath my hooves as I galloped at top speed until there was no where else to gallop to or if I could find somewhere to hide. In the darkness, I noticed the ever familiar glow of a green PipBuck screen. It was faint, but it was there. I ran to it, switched it off, switched mine off, and hid from the guards that would be closing in on me. There were no guards however. There was only the metallic whine of a large door and the scream of ancient hydraulics as the door to my old life was closed behind me and I was unable to do anything about it. Finding the area around me semi-comfortable, I closed my eyes, reactivated my PipBuck alarm clock and went to sleep completely ignoring the dark and unknown around me. For some reason, one that I could not understand, I felt the dark very... comforting...

Author's Note

LEVEL UP

NEW PERK EARNED

SCRAPPER LV.1

Waste not, want not! You can salvage uncommon components like screws, copper, and aluminum when scrapping or repairing weapons and armor.

QUEST PERK ADDED

SONAR TUNE UP

You are more aware of your surroundings and can pinpoint a conversation or a sound that most others can't hear. You can hear traps before they go off and you can hear the breathing of an enemy in a close enough range. Also allows rare dialogue options with specific characters. This ability however can also cause harm to the user if something loud or high pitched noise is near the proximity of the user.