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Chapitre Quatre: A Mostly Honest Business Proposal.

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“Hmm… more litch grass.” I said to myself, taking a taste of the large omelet. Cooking, very similar to alchemy, was something I had become pretty good at since becoming pony, especially since Xanny was one of those ponies who could somehow burn boiled water. Ah Xanny, I gotta straighten things out there….

I sighed and glanced over at the simple planting pot soaking up Celestia’s morning sun on the windowsill. There was probably no patching that up, especially if he recognizes what those seeds are.

“Ugh, my horn.” A very hungover Double Book said groggily shuffling out of his bedroom. Even hungover from what probably was his first drink ever, he still managed to pull on his tweed hat and stuff his hooves into two pair of slippers.

He shuffled over past me to the small table, fixing a small bowl of cereal and grabbing toast on his way, which he collapsed into, slowly slurping the mix through his front teeth.

“Morning.” I said, startling him.

“BAH!, what are you doing here!?” He shouted, startled.

“You let me in. Right before passing out in the hallway. You’re a lightweight.”

He groaned and collapsed back into his cereal. Damn he’s adorable.

“Omelet du fromage?” I said, offering the large frying pan. Oddly enough, while most pony houses had cast iron stoves in Manehatten, few had cast iron cooking implements. Another one of Equestria’s quirks, iron was rather uncommon and expensive. My trusty frying pan was a treasured gift from my tribe, and it always seemed to find its way back to me. My cart on the other wing had managed to turn up on the street on the way back here, ransacked and slammed into a pole. My precious cast iron pan was overlooked in the carnage. Obviously somepony had used it to escape from the raid or stole it afterwards, who knows with these hooligans.

Double extracted himself from his bowl and sniffed the large omelet greedily. His stomach audibly rumbled. Flapping around the kitchen, I tipped the golden nectar onto a plate and served it up to him, where he proceeded to dig in.

“That was the best omelet I’ve ever had,” he said after vacuuming up the whole thing. “I’ve never tasted eggs so good, what was in those eggs?”

“Emu!” I said as I cracked another giant egg into my pan. “There’s an old mare not too far from here who raises them.”

He worked his mouth a couple times before making a very equine huff and shaking his head. “I don’t even care anymore,” He said clutching his head.

Withdrawing a vial from my wing-folds, I dropped two aspirin on the table along with a glass of water. “Take two of these, they’re Bojack’s magic hangover pills.”

He sniffed them suspiciously. “What are they some kind of root from the lava swamps or something?”

“Acetylsalicylic acid, a pinch of caffeine, and some other stuff,” to which he gave me a confused look. “The active thing in willow bark but this won’t eat the bottom of your stomach. Trust me, they work every time.”

Looking wearily at it again, he levitated them up, and dutifully took them. “I don’t feel any better,” He said when they didn’t immediately cure his hangover.

“Give it ten minutes, they aren’t literally magic.”

He grumbled a bit and magic’ed up his paper to float nearby while he ate.

“Princess Celestia to officially crown new princess at summer sun celebration in Canterlot. This mysterious filly was seen briefly along side Princess Celestia this morning as Celestia ushered in the new day. Further details to come,” He read.

He didn’t actually read the paper out loud, this is just for exposition since a scene of two hungover stallions eating emu eggs around a table would be boring.

It was when he got to the finance section that he nearly choked on his eggs. “PANIC IN THE BANKS! Guard uncovers far-reaching gold transmutation scheme. Stampedes expected on the following banks...”

“OH FAUST!” was all that I heard as he fell out of his chair, rolled around on the floor before getting his hooves under him, and charged out the door.

“Some ponies are always in a hurry to get nowhere,” I said, sitting down to eat my own eggs, “Oh new crossword.”

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Many hours later, the poor boy dragged himself back into his apartment, his mane was frazzled, and his face was dour.

“Its all gone,” he said solemnly closing the door behind him. “They came, they took everything, the guard found the books...” He said flopping down on his sofa.

“Bad day huh?” I said from the kitchen where I had begun unraveling the secrets of the star-flower seeds.

“The stock market crashed, pegasi were jumping out of windows, flying back to Cloudsdale, First and Third Stable had been making fake gold for years, selling it to all the banks, and we loaned it out on stock. I cooked our books for years trying to hide our debts, bbbut the guard they have it all now. They’re going after Peterbit, they’re going after Goldmane, all because of what we did last night, all because of you.”

“Well that sounds-”

“I’m an utter failure. Everything I touch crumbles before me. Why did I follow after you? We didn’t need your business that badly, you wanted some stupid seeds. First BARNIAC, now Goldmane. I’m going to have to move back with my father; I can’t go back to Canterlot like this, not after another failure,” He said rambling on and on.

He had flopped on his back in a perfect imitation of Rarity, well I mean he would be if not for the fact that she’s probably not even born yet. Since Cadance is a little filly then that means Rarity, Twilight, and the rest of the mane six haven’t even been born yet, assuming Cadance is in her early thirties by her introduction in the show. Gee I hope I haven’t done anything to disrupt that, there’s no way I’m putting on girly tiaras and saving the world.

Nah. That would probably be a bad idea. Best to stay away from the magical friendship nuke of doom harmony, especially when you’re body is made from void-stuff.

“You’re not a failure, you just need to join the right team,” I said while scribbling notes on my latest experiment. “I’ve been looking for someone with a good head for business.”

“Oh let me just get out my resume here, oh wait, I can’t because I’m going to get tossed into jail.”

“Pff, don’t worry about that, Celestia’s going to have bigger problems to worry about than go after some minor banker.” I said, dumping the solution into a waste beaker.

“What do you mean more problems?” He said, sitting upright and staring square at me.

“Nothing you should be concerned about,” I shrugged.

“What did you do?”

“Promise not to tell?”

“NO!”

“Fine then, I’ll tell you anyways since it’ll make you feel better. That mare last night? Mr. Peterbit might have told you she was the one responsible for everything, and maybe he doesn’t know, but in fact, everypony has been doing it, and for years.” I said settling down on the couch and flipping through my notebook to the right page.

“Some friends of mine were concerned they were being cheated so they came to me a while back to see if I could figure anything out.”

“And?”

“It took about five minutes to prove it wasn’t pure gold. A little longer to prove it wasn’t an alloy either. See if this was pure gold, a flame test would have just melted it. Then aqua regia should have cleanly dissolved it if it were any blend of valuable metals. What I wouldn’t do for a good ICP...” I said trailing off. “Regardless! My best guess is they’re blending and alloying metals together to get the density right with just enough gold to use some alchemy to make it all look homogeneous, something that’s completely possible without any sort of advanced microscopy or analytical chemistry. The problem is its unstable, capable of turning back into a valuable brick at a moment’s notice. Not a problem though when you’ve stacked them up in your vault. Just make sure to rotate the bars out back to whomever was doing the job.”

“Peterbit! We had an account that always had to be closed out every weekend, they took their earnings in gold bars, Peterbit always oversaw it,” He said punching a pillow. “Darn it! They used me, my name is all over those logs, and then our books, the book they ordered me to doctor! GAAAHH!” He shouted to his ceiling, which prompted a thumping from the apartment above. “Sorry!” He shouted in response.

“If you came to work for me it’d be different,” I said.

“Oh lovely, now the only work I can get is from a criminal.”

“Hey I resent that. I’m only a crooked pony because I have to be. Besides, if you worked with me, we’d be equals.”

“Equals in what? Selling fruit juice?”

“Everything. Remember what I was saying last night? No wait, you got pretty loaded after that. Look, see this pill?” I said, holding up one of the aspirin I gave him earlier. “Right now, this would cost any alchemist in Manehatten anywhere between three to five pony hours and two to three bolts to manufacture. Still with me?” He nodded. “Good, now what if I told you I could make this for one sixth of a pony hour, at one hundredth of a nut? What if I could make so many of these that the cost to manufacture each pill is almost zero? In such a market, we could sell this at prices everypony can afford, cheap enough they’d take them for headaches, they’d take them for joint pain, hay, they’d take them just because they thought it might make them feel better. Its all scale. Pills, soda pop, chemicals, furniture, even electric computers can all be made cheaply if you’re building at scale.”

“This country wants to leap forward, needs to leap forward,” needed to because I had to summon an old god and by god I’m not gonna start sacrificing virgins and forming death cults. I can’t drink to that koolaid. “It all starts with one company. Think about it. We could have computers in no time flat. ” And I’ll probably need them too if I’m going to get this all done without blowing up half of Equestria in the process as I suspect.

“Fuff. Computers,” He said, trotting off to his bookshelf and retrieving a thick book. “You’ve been reading too many Buck-Rover comics. Here’s the closest Equstria ever got to A computer,” He said, slamming the book down on his coffee table.

The faded title read ‘BARNIAC, an alternate to magical arithmatic arrays.’

“Ten years ago I tried to build one, it didn’t work at all. Its totally impossible, cannot be done,” he said with certainty as I flipped through the book. “Oh sure I could get simple electronic circuits to work, individual pieces, but it would take a hundred years of machining to build all the parts, another hundred just to assemble it all in any working order. It would take more gold than all the dragon hordes out there just to pay for the whole thing.”

“Here’s your problem.”

“And to what end? The Arithmatic Array took them less than five to build and its been humming away doing their computations for years now. Am I bitter? No, how can I be, I’m just a humble computer, doing my tabulations day by day, what do I know about electronics, or adding machines? I’m just a, wait what?”

“Found your problem. You’re right, this mess is totally unworkable,”

“See, another pony that doesn’t believe it can work!”

“No see your problem is that you’ve got this thing designed like you’d add and subtract,” I said, flipping to the simplified schematic page. “You’re passing these values around these stacks here and controlling things from here, but its all painfully slow, got a pen? Never mind, I always have one,” I said plucking a feather that I probably didn’t need and flipping the page over. “See you want this to be a black box. All your inputs and outputs are here,” I said drawing several rectangles. “You want your memory to be here, and your computer to be here. All your programming should be loaded into core memory so the computer can quickly jump back and forth between it, and it only outputs when its completed its operations, there like this,” I said, finishing the drawing. “You want a Von Neumancomputer, not ENIAC. Oh and its got to be completely electronic, mechanicals can be used for inputs and outputs but everything else should absolutely be electronic.”

He stared at it speechless for a minute, mulling it over. “But- How-,” He stammered.

“Take up my offer and I’ll let you have a peak behind the curtain,” I said.

“We could build this. But it would take a fortune.”

“A damn fortune. Also more electricity than Equestria has ever generated. But we’ll need to do that anyways.”

“But it would take years to design everything.” He said, talking more to himself.

“At least a decade away in technological development, if we wait to make it out of solid state components. If we stuck with vacuum tubes we could do it sooner but we’re going to quickly leapfrog that technology anyways.”

“But it could be done,” He said, turning to me. “You could do this?”

“Undoubtedly, not all of it, but there’s ponies out there that can,” Many not even born yet. “All I need is someone to keep the business running. I’ll get us the bits, but I need someone who I can trust that will push the limits of Equstria’s tax code, that knows her laws inside and out, someone who can manage the largest most complex venture that has ever been attempted in the history of this world. It’ll make you one of the richest ponies ever to have lived, and bring about fantastic changes in everything. Are you in?”

He paced around for a minute, mumbling to himself before finally sitting back down. “We’re going to build a computer right? Then I’m in,” He said, giving me a hoof to shake.

“Excellent! Now sign right here,” I said, whipping out a blank contract and vial of my own ink from under my wing-folds and quickly setting it on the coffee table and scratched out the terms. “You Double Book are hereby entitled to exactly one half of all profits and entitlements that result from this contract, and assume one half of all obligations of this company,” I said, emphatically. “Those terms good for you?”

He eyed the contract for a moment suspiciously. “Just like that?”

“Just like that. All you have to do is put your John Hoofcock right there.”

With only a hint of reluctance, he took the quill in hoof and began signing.

“Ow,” He grunted as he pricked himself with the quill. A drop of blood dripped on to the line next to his name. “That’s never happened before,” he said with a hint of embarrassment. “Do you want to draw up a new one?”

“Nope, that’s perfectly fine,” I said, rolling the dried contract up and tucking it into my magical wing folds. “Put’er there, partner,” I said, giving him a shake. “I wish we had something to celebrate with but you drank my stash last night.”

“Oh, I think I have some pop or something in the ice chest,” He said, getting up and trotting back into the kitchen area. “So we’re going to change the wor-” Whatever he was going to say was cut off by a loud, very shrill scream, followed by a thud on the floor.

“Double?” I said, trotting into the kitchen. On the floor lay my new business partner, his face frozen in fear and shock.

I looked up at the ice-box and sighed. “Five years and you don’t call, and then you had to pick right now of all times to remind me,” I said to the swirling mass of tentacles and darkness seeping out of the appliance.

It made a sound like an endless avalanche of gravel, with a hint of regret that turned to admonishment.

“Oh don’t blame Xanny for interference,” I said. “Its not my fault that you happened to drop me right in the middle of Zebran Savannah, and by drop I mean, shot me into it at mach 5! I didn’t even know how to fly back then.”

the mass of tentacles responded with the sound of glass in a washing machine, with some of the tentacles jiggling.

“Ya I never would have guessed that’s why I would need the strength of an earth pony and the crash proofing of a pegasus. Look can we do this later? Xanny is out of the picture now, and I need to revive my colleague here before his mind is totally blanked by your horror,” I said, cradling Double Book’s stiff form.

The tentacles jerked in agreement.

“Good. Glad you’re so receptive. I want you to know I'm working as fast as I can but its gonna take time. These dang ponies haven’t built even one third of everything I need to build a gateway. Another decade at least,”

The two of the tentacles clapped in approval. Then the whole mass retreated with a wet sucking sound, with a little one pulling the door shut behind it.

“Honestly that guy is a piece of work,” I sighed, slipping a tentacle out of my fetlock and slithering it down Double’s ear. “Now where’s that reset nerve….”

Author's Note

The story goes on... and on... and on...