Well, I was in a spot.

"Sir?" Tight Fit was watching me with a concerned look on his fuzzy face. "Sir?"

"Sorry." I sat up, one arm resting on the table next to us. "Celestia gave me a project and it has my head spinning."

Tight squinted at that. "A project that confounds even you? I admit I have a hard time imaginin' it. You seem to know everything. What did she ask for?"

I gave the electric motor that had started it a little twirl, watching its blade spin around. "She wants the power of electricity brought to this castle, and I'm not sure I'm up for that."

"You are the one teaching me of this magic." He raised his hooves just to gently press them together. "Who else would be better qualified? Why, you made that. You know how it works. What stands in the way?"

I flicked the blade with my finger, keeping it spinning. "This is the easy part. Taking electricity and turning it into basic movement. Going the other way, especially reliably, especially distributed, especially over the long term, now there's a trickier part."

He crossed his arms, hooves dangling. "Well, what is it you want to do?"

"You understand how this works?" I gestured at the motor. "We need to do it backwards. We need to make the motion of magnets cause electricity to flow, but we need to do it at an even level, so the electricity is always flowing at the same strength. At about the same speed and depth, to describe it like a river."

His eyes narrowed at the magnet. I could almost seem him tossing the problem around. "When you spin the motor like that..." He reached and batted the blade with the end of his hoof as I had with my finger. "Does that make electricity?"

"Yes, but--"

"Not a lot," he cut in. "What goes in, comes out."

Why were ponies so quick on these things? "Basically, yes. If you attached this motor to another motor and turned this one around and around, the other would move slower than this one."

"Something is lost during the exchanges," mumbled Tight, looking so thoughtful. "It's like water."

"Like... water?" Water was his thing, but... "How is this like water?"

"Water flows down." He pointed down. "But you can use water to push water back up." He pivoted his hoof. "But never as far as it came down." It turned around again. "Something is lost. Something is always lost. Same thing."

That middle-aged father of a pony! He deserved a medal. "Yes! Yes, exactly that. Write that down. You deserve credit for being the first pony to really put that thought together." Conservation of energy, as proposed through liquid dynamics. Why the heck not?!

"Credit?" He inclined his head softly. "Who would be giving me credit? I mean, besides you, Sir Langerman. I do appreciate your kind words."

"Right..." I took a slow breath as I stood up on my hooves. "That needs fixing more than Celestia needs her lights."

"Pardon?" His left ear went up. "Nothing I need... quite gets in front of Princess Celestia's direct orders, barring the council standing against her. I do appreciate your sentiment, but I don't want you gettin' into any trouble fer me."

"This is still what she wants, but she doesn't realize it yet." I pointed right at the center of his head, through his horn. "The light she wants is in there."

His eyes crossed at my finger as he blinked rapidly. "I can glow if ya want, sir. I don't think--"

"Not literally," I cut him off, waving a hand. "You have ideas. Good ideas. I think a lot of ponies could have good ideas, but there's no infrastructure for these ideas to come together at all. A pony has good ideas, dies, and the good ideas go with them until some other pony has a similar idea, and we repeat."

"You've brought that up before." He began walking towards the door. "Don't rightly understand it, not really. Ah get yer goin' fer somethin'. Maybe somethin' big... It just ain't... sittin' right."

I took one step after him. "Hold on a moment, Tight. Imagine, please, it's long in the future. You're dead. I'm dead, we're all gone."

"Not a happy start," he grumped, turning back towards me. "What then?"

"A classroom, a group of foals crowded around a teacher who's telling them about a little fact. Energy can't be destroyed or created, only changed, and always at a loss. She tells them a bright pony called Tight Fit came up with the idea, and published it so other ponies could know it, and refine the idea."

He sank to his haunches, one of his forehooves dancing as if he were counting something. "I wouldn't know none of these foals, right?"

"Not a one." I lifted my shoulders. "But they'd know you."

"They'd know... me..." He licked over his lips, turning and raising in one motion. "I need to think about this. I ain't sayin' no, Sir. Just give a stallion a moment to figure through this." I didn't stop him as he left. Pressing just then felt like a good way to make him more mad than receptive, so the door closed behind him.

Not that I didn't have other things to do.

I walked down a corridor of stone and earth, glowing crystals embedded in the walls casting back the worst of the darkness and allowing us to see where we, Easy and I, were going. Ahead of us strode a large diamond dog, their leader. "We dig good," he explained as they walked. A sheet came up, held over his shoulder. "Look."

I took the sheet. It was the plan Tight had made of the major pipes of the city. Some were blue, some were red. "What are the colors for?"

"Blue mean dug. Red mean dig. Dig Red. Blue dug. Good dig." He nodded firmly, arms crossed over his chest. "Happy?"

Easy suddenly popped up between me and the paper, her head shoving up against my belly so she could peer at it. "Hey, most of this is blue! That means it's dug already, right?"

"Yes," agreed the dog, reaching back without looking to grab the paper. "Almost done. Time small dig. We do job."

"You've done a great job." I didn't resist losing the paper. He had more need of it than I did by far. "Let's have a tour."

"Yes, we look." And he accelerated, eager to show us all their work. As we went, I could see they had put in obvious care into their digging. Each tunnel ran smoothly into the next, with clear trenches for the water to flow, but also raised platforms for future ponies to come through if upkeep was required, which it would be.

There wasn't any such thing as a sewer that was entirely self-reliant forever. There wasn't any such thing at all, sewer or not, on second thought. If you want something to keep working, you have to work too. Ah, the blessed law of entropy. Still, that appeared to be a really good start. Light suddenly spilled down on me as I walked and I stopped.

Craning my head back I could see the tunnel lead up towards light in the distance. "Where does this go?"

The dog turned and stalked back. "Road. Dig for air. No air, no work. Dead dogs. You want dead dogs?"

"No! Of course not... But..."

"But?" He leaned in, his acrid breath washing over me.

"Could you..." I worked my fingers as if walking up one another hand to hand. "Put in some ladders? Some big heavy metal rungs, so ponies could climb down these holes later?"

The dog shoved me right out of the way and looked up the hole that reached for the sky so distant above. "Huh... You give metal, we use metal." And off he stalked, apparently satisfied with that answer.

Easy dashed into the available spot and peeked up as well. "Say, that is clever, Boss. Then ponies can come down here if we ever need to, in case something gets clogged or whatever."

"It's not a new idea, for me. I won't take clever points there." I felt, in fact, a bit stupid not considering it ahead of time. But it was something we could fix. "Easy, do you feel confident ordering the rungs for them to install for a pony to climb up and down?"

"Yeah sure." She bobbed her head softly. "Should I use the blacksmith you went to last time? She knows you."

And she knew I'd pay. "Yes, good idea. I'm sure she'll like the business too."

"I would, if I was a smith." Easy shrugged softly. "But I'm a manager. You are my business, not the rungs I order. Want me to get right on that or keep with you for this inspection?"

"I think we're almost done." I hurried to catch up with the foredog. "I'm really liking what I'm seeing. You all did fantastic work." Part of me wondered again if I should try harder to turn diamond dogs to a productive force. Surely they could be such a great tool for civilization in general, enriching both pony society and themselves instead of the sad place they'd end up if I remained quiet.

But that wasn't my place, right? "I'll be sure to include your cooperation in the report."

"Good. We get land after this. Yes?"

Easy suddenly saluted. "That was the promise. We ponies keep our promises! Usually." She inclined her head. "They'd better or I'll get really mad."

"I will stand at your side until you get your land." Even if I wasn't able to redirect their course, I could at least get them what we promised. They had to go there anyway. "I'm not seeing a single thing out of place. How long do you think it'll be to finish?"

He looked over his shoulders, still moving forward without pause. "Longer. Need make stairs. Day, seven day. Two." He held up seven fingers, closed them, then two fingers, then nodded firmly as if that was clear english. "Hey!" A bunch of dogs poked their heads out from around corners and in holes. "They say good job!"

A rough cheer erupted through them, and more shouts echoed the news away, causing more cheers from further away. All the dogs would soon have that news.

He waved back at me. "Work. Get metal." And he moved to leave me behind. I had seen all that I really needed to see, so I let him go and instead turned to Easy.

Her horn glowed softly. "Want a lift to the surface?"

"You've really grown fond of teleporting." Was she somewhere in Twilight's past? Starlight? Sunset? Maybe she was just a random talented spellcaster. Equestria certainly had more than its share of those and they didn't all have to have genetic ties to future talented spellcasters. "Go on."

She squeaked with joy and leaned against me before we both promptly ceased to exist. We were standing on a street in Canterlot, not at the castle. One thing that jumped out at me was how... cleaner it was than when I had first arrived. "And I haven't gotten the water flowing yet." The air was much cleaner. The city was transformed.

Easy waved it off. "The war's over, so guards are back to actually managing a city instead of trying to keep failing at finishing that war." She began to trot in a weaving path towards the castle only to pause. "Right. I'll go order those rungs. You heading to the castle?"

I made a note to check how, say, London handled its policing force over the years. "I'll head back and talk to your father some more. It'll be time for him to get his hooves dirty. Without his step, we won't get water anywhere but major fountains."

While that'd be nice, it would be a pale shadow compared to what I had set out to do.

Author's Note

Phew, late in the day update here, had so many things to do today! Ian knows what it's like to be busy, and I bet a lot of you do too.

Written early for patreons who got this ahead of everyone else. Want to get early chapters, or even your own story written? atreon!

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