Spellcraft engineer

Chapters

Proactively Diversifying Mission-Critical Resources
Dynamically Transitioning Distributed Deliverables
Volumetrically Compressing Synergetic By-Products
Opportunistically Prospecting Collaborative Potentialities

Proactively Diversifying Mission-Critical Resources

It's hard to tell whether the spire of the Microspell HQ in Manehatten is so tall that it reaches the clouds, or the clouds in Manehatten are so low that they are touching the spire. Both statements are equally true, even if they drag your mood in two opposite directions. In a way, it fits your current situation, so you allow your mood to be in an odd superposition of optimistic contentment and looming depression. The former is based on the fact that it looks like you are about to get a job. The latter is mostly due to the circumstance that everything in this situation is some sort of a horrible mistake. You take one more look at the clouds outside of the huge wall-sized window of the office you are currently sitting in and focus on whatever misunderstanding is happening inside.

You wouldn't call yourself a mathematical genius, but surely your skills should be sufficient to count the number of zeros in the contract that you are holding in your hands. You've counted five zeros, and the digit before them definitely looks like a two, no matter how you look at it. You are quite confident that together with the zeros this means "200 000", but you are even more confident that this can't possibly be true, so you re-count the zeros a few more times.

The HR mare who is sitting across the table in front of you looks nervous—unless her hooves kneading the large office chair mean something else. You would guess that she needs a toilet break if she didn't also look excited for some reason. Perhaps she is just new here, and you are her first assignment, and she is eager to do her job properly. That would make sense, although her badge says that she is the "Director of Pony Resource Department," which doesn't sound like an entry-level position. You find yourself wondering if this title makes her a PR instead of an HR, and how do ponies call their other PRs instead to avoid the confusion.

As much as you want to sign the paper that is already signed by her and the CEO of the company, your sense of integrity can't allow this horrible clerical error to damage their business. You like free stuff as much as the next guy, but you don't want to be that asshole who signs something like this, and then sues the company when it inevitably tries to fix the contract. Most likely, some intern just wrote an extra zero in the contract form, and no one had noticed. You let a friendly chuckle to escape your lips to make it clear that you are by no means offended by this silly mistake. Even twenty thousand bits per year is a lot more than you had hoped for, considering how your interview went.

"I would be delighted to accept your generous offer, but I'm afraid that there is a typo in the contract. It currently states that you will be paying me two hundred thousand bits per year."

You smile, trying not to show too many teeth, and return the contract to the yellow-ish mare who is steadily turning pale white in front of your eyes. You saw ponies blushing through their fur before, now you see one losing her colors. Ponies. There is something fishy going on with their coats, but you had quit freaking out about minor things like this a long time ago. Heh, you probably just saved her from some serious problems.

"O-oh yes, of course! On behalf of the company, I apologize for the mistake! One moment, please," her horn flashes a few times, and then a few times more after a short pause. The mare nods to some invisible remote interlocutor, blinks with her horn once again and returns her attention to you, "we meant to offer you three hundred thousand bits per year."

You are not sure what's going on here, and why is this mare sweating. As much as you would like to flatter yourself, so far the only two reasons for mares to sweat in your presence were how dumb you can be sometimes, and how deeply embarrassing it can be to answer your stupid questions, such as "how exactly does the plumbing system work in Cloudsdale?"

The mare can't be mistaking you for some senior specialist for at least two reasons. First, she just spent ten minutes talking about your future job before giving you the contract, and the description was so vague and non-binding that by now you are pretty sure that any janitor in the building would outrank you by a few levels. And second, you are a human. You don't know anything about spellcrafting, enchanting, or even the most basic card tricks, and you made it pretty clear during your interview.

Now that you think about it, you are not even sure what had that interview achieved, apart from making it obvious to everyone that you are a living avatar of "uselessness as a concept." You were trying to advertise yourself as a handyman (a term you had to explain to the interviewers) and/or janitor, with a desire to learn more and acquire new skills beneficial for the job. After just a few minutes, it became very clear that not only you have absolutely no idea how to replace a light bulb, you are also unsure what basic principles it works on around here, and how useful your intuition about electricity is going to be when you apply it to the magical and semi-magical equipment in Equestria.

Being a huge alien monster, towering over all ponies including their royalty, you could also, in theory, work as a security guard. Even if it will be hard to find a pony who you can win against (all tribes are stupidly overpowered in their own ways), you do look intimidating, and your mere presence would probably be enough to keep young vandals from painting graffiti all over the company's buildings. Too bad that vandalism is so rare around here that you had to explain what you mean again. Twice.

And yet here you are, with a job offer that is too good to be true.

"Let me clarify something. For some non-specified minor assistance to the staff you are offering me, a human with no experience in your area and no relevant skills, three hundred thousand bits per year, flexible schedule, premium medical insurance, annual performance bonuses in shares, and a possibility to choose between a large sector in the open-space area and a personal office as my primary assigned workplace?"

"Y-yes! Of course, if you can't decide, you can take both, we have too much free space anyway!" ok, this is just ridiculous, but she doesn't stop, "And don't feel too stressed about the bonuses, they are pretty much guaranteed anyway, regardless of your performance. The updated version of the contract should arrive in a few seconds. A-and here it is," she says as a new stack of papers materializes in the air next to her. Even assuming that she was communicating with a secretary a few moments ago, surely making a new copy of the contract would take more time than this, right?

The mare immediately signs the new contract without reading it; you also notice that the signature of the CEO is already in place. This can't be real. Nothing in this situation can possibly be real. But what are you supposed to do now? Argue with the HR (PR?) about the absolutely unimaginably good offer? You know that there is no television, and therefore no reality shows in Equestria, so this is unlikely to be a prank. Maybe an experiment of some sort then? "Emotional reaction of extra-dimensional lifeforms in impossibly beneficial circumstances, by Horse M.D." Eh, probably. Oh well, may as well sign this, why not. Ponies are not exactly known for their sinister plans, and according to the few neighbors you've asked, Microspell is a big and well-respected company, so there is probably no fine print in the new version that is talking about stealing your kidney or something like that. Whatever this joke is, you are rolling with it. Even if they will fire you after a week, that would be the best week for you in many months, you are too tired of wasting days and doing nothing.

Just in case, you quickly re-read the contract (for some reason, the idea of unicorns stealing your kidney doesn't want to leave your mind), which looks almost identical to the previous one, except that now the new amount of money is spelled out right after the numbers. After double-checking everything, you take a very expensive looking phoenix quill in front of you and sign both copies. The mare across the desk looks like someone had just removed a huge boulder from her shoulders.

"Splendid! Even if the contract says that you can start tomorrow, feel free to take a few days off and start whenever you like! Here in Microspell we always value the work-life balance of our employees, so if you feel stressed, just take your time. I can't thank you enough for accepting our offer, I promise you that you won't regret it! Minty Breeze will help you to find the exit. I'm looking forward to working with you!"

That was... weird. Ponies are weird. Equestria is weird. Everything is weird. But especially ponies and their society.

Almost everything in Equestria is run by mares. Almost all jobs, from farmers to researchers, from construction workers to magicians, and from security guards to military generals are taken by mares. Stallions, who are quite rare, and pampered from their birth to their last days, are not really enslaving the mares or making them work for them, they are just... useless, mostly, with a few notable exceptions who almost automatically become celebrities of some kind. There are a few famous stallion actors, dancers, and singers. In Equestrian history, several stallions became famous poets, novelists, and painters, even though you don't really get what's so special about their works, and you know that there is an ongoing scandal about some stallion's novels "secretly being written by a mare." The majority of stallions, however, are just fussy and whimsical weaklings with vague ambitions and hedonistic lifestyles.

It's rare for a stallion to get a "real job", usually they just do whatever their cutiemark tells them to, and while sometimes it generates some amount of income, more often it's just hobbies that stallions entertain themselves with, mostly because they rarely take their jobs seriously. For example, a stallion with a cutie mark of a baker is likely to be a decent baker, but will probably work no more than one or two days per week. Nevertheless, mares treasure them unconditionally, fight for the place in the herd of the best ones, and, to be honest, don't have any actual respect for their skills most of the times. Not in a "stallions are worthless" way, but in a very condescending and annoying way, which is arguably worse. You've lost the count of how many times you heard random praising phrases about stallions and young colts such as "strong as a mare" or "smart as a filly." Most stallions don't find these remarks offensive, they are actually flattered by these compliments, which makes you sick a little bit. You don't find mares superior to yourself (not counting their bullshit magical superpowers), but you have to admit that stallions feel quite underwhelming. Whether it's something genetic or a consequence of the lifestyle, stallions sort of suck.

Your place in this picture is weird. On one hand, as far as you know, you are the only human in Equestria, and ponies don't really have a lot to compare you with (even minotaurs are quite different), so they shouldn't have any prejudgements regarding your abilities. On the other hand, they seem to have no difficulties with identifying you as a male at first glance and treating you accordingly. "You just look very coltish," your neighbor told you when you asked her about it, and you really hope that she didn't mean it as "you look like you totally suck." As a result of this, even if mares are not actively looking for your company, they are always willing to help you, just because that's what their instincts and their mares' honor are telling them.

Want to move that furniture you bought with your Universal Basic Stallion Income (UBSI) into the apartment provided by the government? Sure, not a problem. A few strong mares will carry it to the third floor and install it for you. Want to borrow a hammer to fix the shelves? Don't worry, a mare next door will do all the work for you, for free. Pfft, of course she understands that you are not a pony stallion, and of course she agrees that "you can do it by yourself" (the way mares say this phrase makes you uncomfortable), but come on, you are not suggesting that a male, of any kind, will have to do the work when there is a mare nearby? Stallion or not, a male is a male. Same is true for the griffons. Same is true for the minotaurs. Seaponies, dragons and even changelings have roughly the same gender structure, so no mare is going to allow you to suffer through the frustrating experience of aligning the shelves and then the horrors of hammering a few nails into the wall just because you are some kind of an extra-dimensional monkey.

Generally, you like Equestria, but you don't like this status of a weird bio-trophy of some sort. You are pretty sure that even the most unfair patriarchal societies back on Earth never treated their women how Equestria treats their stallions, but then, neither gender on Earth was scarce. If you ended up here as a mare, you would enjoy your every moment in Equestria. Endless possibilities in a beautiful magical world, what not to like about it? How can anyone be anything but awestruck by a world where "an adventurer" is an officially recognized profession, perfectly compatible with insurance and pension plans? As long as you are a mare, of course.

When you started to ask around about your employment options, mares were quite confused by your questions. "What do you mean you just want to work normally?" they asked. "You mean, not just do what you want, but do what others tell you to? You mean, like a mare?" If you had a cutiemark that demands to be expressed in some artistic way, mares would happily assist you and point you in the right direction, but since you don't have one and also don't have any skills relevant to the Equestrian society, mares didn't really know what to do with you and just suggested you to try finding a new hobby, like knitting or cooking.

Eventually, you just went to the central public employment office, the place where mares with useless cutiemarks are becoming janitors, delivery mares and minor office clerks, and registered yourself there, after explaining a few times to different employees there that you understand that you don't need to work to receive the UBSI and that you just want to be useful. It was hard to convey the message, so in the end, you had to make up an explanation about how it's "like an invisible cutiemark for humans, and yours demands you to work."

To your surprise, a week later you've got an interview appointment from the Mircospell Corporation, of all places, the largest Equestrian spellcrafting company. The interview was a total disaster, not only because you had to admit that you don't have any skills for the job you were applying for (even as a janitor) but also because you apparently couldn't understand the kindergarten-level terminology the interviewers were using. How are you supposed to know what a flux capacitor is? Ah, because it's an essential part of almost all modern household equipment, and most fillies generally know about it by the age of five? Of course...

The mares there were friendly and caring, but it was pretty obvious that they have chosen your CV by mistake. Probably the same mistake made it so that you got the second letter from them the next day, and after contemplating whether you should just ignore it or go there and resolve the clerical error (just in case somepony else was supposed to receive the invitation instead of you), you put on your best black suit with a red tie and went to the main office. This is what makes you different from stallions! Unlike them, you do stuff!

And here you are, leaving the main building with a contract with an unimaginably huge number written in it, and an offer that can't possibly be real. Passing by a newsagent, you notice a tabloid with the word "Microspell" on its front page. You buy the newspaper and read the article as you go home.

"Microspell is facing multi-million charges for discrimination against minorities.
"The NBI investigation had concluded that despite the previous claims made by the ex-CEO Flashy Sales, who was forced to resign last week and is currently under trial, it is virtually impossible for a zebra, a yak or a stallion to be hired, regardless of their skills, cutiemarks or glyphs, for any position in the company. Highly qualified NBI agents, under military-grade illusions disguising them as various representatives of minorities, committed several attempts to get a job in Microspell's offices all over the country. None of them got the offer, in nineteen out of twenty-six attempts there was no technical interview, and the results of the remaining seven were obviously misinterpreted.
"This proves that the Diversity and Inclusion score, that was always too low in Microspell Corporation, cannot be explained by the lack of fitting candidates alone, and likely represents the company's bias towards unicorn mares with pure bloodlines. The bias is especially obvious with 73% of the company's maintenance positions being filled by unicorns, even in the areas mostly populated by earth ponies and pegasi. Among the researchers and management, this number is close to 100%.
"But don't be too fast to judge the ponies working for the company. According to multiple sources, the bias is being imposed by the top management, has no support among the workers and originates mainly from Flashy Sales herself, who, quoting one of our sources, "thinks that filthy z***ers should go back where they came from." The new CEO, Double Effort, had promised to the investors to raise the D&I score to the national average level before the end of the financial year, but is it possible? Unless they are willing to fire half of the researchers and replace them with pegasi and earth ponies, they will have to find a bunch of zebras and yaks interested in spellcrafting. Maybe even a few stallions?
"If you know a smart colt with a cloud mana capacitor on his cutiemark, tell him that it could be his chance."

You sigh...

Oh well, that explains a few things. You wonder how much an extra-dimensional non-ungulate male adds to that D&I score. Probably a lot. Considering how many different races are represented in Equestria, you wouldn't be surprised if the metric somehow tries to take into account the distance to your place of origin. In that case, you alone could probably make this score to skyrocket. Of course they want you to work for them no matter how useless you are, so long it pleases the investors and protects the company from the legal charges. The world of Equestria may be filled with harmony and magic, but the world of business is apparently always filled with bullshit like this.

So what, you'll be bringing coffee to the mares who do the actual work, knowing that you are making more money than any of them? And that without you many of them may eventually lose their jobs because of the bigotry of their top management? Fine! If they are hiring the world's most expensive useless intern, they will get the world's best useless intern! Or a maintenance guy! Or even a janitor! You'll find a way to be useful there! You'll show them what a human male can do! You'll even find something to work overtime if they won't be impressed by your effort! You will be the...

You trip on your shoelace and tumble. Some random young earth pony mare is hurrying to check if you are ok and to help you stand up. She offers to carry you to your home if your leg is hurt. You know she will do it in a heartbeat.

Ok, this doesn't count. Technically, you are not working for Microspell yet. Tomorrow everything will change.

Dynamically Transitioning Distributed Deliverables

The large machine in front of you resembles the product of forbidden love between some sort of retro-futuristic tentacle monster and the warp engine of an alien spaceship. The unreasonable number of thick transparent tubes that are coming out of it fork into even more tubes, before disappearing into the floor, the walls, and the ceiling of the infrastructure hub you are currently standing in. The tubes originate from a large spherical core, which produces some faint otherworldly sounds and looks more menacing than anything mechanical in Equestria has any right to be.

A soda bottle-sized capsule with a blue marking on it flies through one of the tubes into the core, then out through another tube a few moments later. Darn, that was exactly the kind of capsule that you need. Blue means it's for the maintenance team.

If any one of the old xenophobic ponies that you were unfortunate enough to encounter during your stay in Equestria had any idea of what you are about to do, they would be prancing around in circles shouting, "I told you so! I was right all along!" for hours. Because from the legal point of view, you are an immigrant, and at this moment literally trying to steal somepony's job.

You had hoped you wouldn't have to go this far, but the overbearing mares had basically forced you to resort to burglary by the middle of your second week.

At first, they tortured you by making you do absolutely nothing. For years, you had practiced procrastination as a hobby, but you were not ready to do it for a living! It wasn't like there was absolutely nothing you could help the mares with, it's just that the mares actively refused all your attempts to help. Turns out, somepony had started a rumor that you are a poor lost alien creature, unable to return to your numerous alien monkey wives back home. With no other options, you were forced to work to save up enough money to hire a bunch of grand sorcerers who would find a way to beam you back to your home planet. The least a mare can do in this situation is to protect you from any kind of hard work out of pity.

Sigh...

So you were sitting on your chair and watching the seconds of your life tick by. Unfortunately, the behavior of office plankton is more or less the same on Equestria and Earth and provides about the same barely measurable amount of entertainment.

One half of your floor belongs to the accounting department (part of which overflows from the floors below), where mares successfully waste their work time between the several water coolers, the canteen, the bathroom, and occasionally their desks, not staying in one place for more than fifteen minutes.

The other half of the floor belongs to the marketing team and is more or less deserted due to a significant part of its population being evenly distributed between the five meeting rooms on the floor. Every once in a while, some meeting room would release its prisoners, only to absorb the next group immediately after that. The only mildly interesting object in the entire open space is a large maquette of some upcoming ads installation. In the center of it stands a billboard with a poorly drawn mare holding a rectangle labeled as "Product S73" in her hoof, and her speech bubble says "I feel empowered." Numerous sticky notes around the sketch list the proposed improvements, such as "more confidence" or "shorter mane", as well as the ponies responsible for the suggestions and absurdly delayed due dates.

You wandered around the floors directly above (more marketing!) and below (more accounting!), and by the end of it came to the conclusion that your first day kind of sucked.

The next day, as an insult to injury, the mares brought you a few soapy novels about endless love and stuff, so that you'd have something to entertain yourself with and distract your thoughts from your alien monkey wives waiting for you back in Humanlandia. How nice of them. Your patience had reached its peak when some bossy looking mare brought you a mug of hot chocolate.

"Umm, you look tired, and it's Friday anyway, so if you could leave early today, that would be great. Mmm-kay?" she said with a pitiful expression. The saddest part for you is that even this suggestion didn't sound like a proper assignment.

So, here is the problem. You can't get any assignments, because you don't belong to any team in particular. You are lacking about five to six managers above you in the chain of command, and this technically means that your line manager is the head of the whole Manehattan branch. You've managed to catch her during the lunch break the next Monday and ask her what to do. Apparently, the mare understands the absurdity of the situation but doesn't see a reason to fix it in fear of you interfering with somepony else's work, which would be undesirable.

Naturally, that's exactly what you tried to do the next day: interfere with somepony else's work by actively offering your assistance, starting from the ponies around you, and eventually moving farther and farther away from your throne of boredom. The maintenance team is just three floors below, so surely you should have been able to find some random tasks there. Turns out, it's not that easy. The scheduled periodic activity, such as cleaning the bathrooms, requires a signature from the pony who had performed it, and no mare would want to take the responsibility for your actions.

There are also unique assignments, but they are not distributed manually. In case of emergency, any employee can send a request without wasting any manager's time via the network of pneumatic tubes, which is automatically delivered to the first available maintenance mare who had inserted her badge into the slot near her workplace, indicating her presence there and the absence of more critical tasks. "Cool," you said and tried getting one of those. Unluckily for you, the bonuses are distributed in proportion to the number of closed support tickets, and the team is overstaffed anyway, so nopony was particularly impressed by your generous offer to do some of those tasks. The mares would actually prefer if the randomized assignment system would pick them more often, getting them closer to the promotion.

Fine. If the mares won't give you any work, you'll take it yourself. If a random assignment just happens to end up in your hands, no one can become upset about not receiving it since it was supposed to be random anyway. And you can always blame the mail delivery system if anypony starts asking where you got the assignment in the first place.

The first half of today was spent talking to random ponies and gathering the required pieces of information. Once you knew where to go, you patiently waited for the mare inside the infrastructure hub room to leave for lunch. Making sure she wasn’t coming back, you snuck in and closed the door behind yourself.

Click. Ding!

That was precisely the moment when you realized that your plan had derailed. With fading hope, you brought your badge closer to the lock that just made a sound you had hoped it wouldn’t make.

Blop.

And that was the sound the magical locks make when they don't want to become unlocked. Oh well, may as well do what you came for. You spotted the large mail distribution machine humming ominously in the far corner of the room, so you cracked your knuckles and started working the problem.

...

And here you are, half an hour later. Your incredibly convoluted, multi-step plan for getting the mail out of the machine without stopping it, which would make Rube Goldberg proud and green with envy, is rendered unnecessary after you had discovered the Operations Manual for the machine tucked on the shelf (silly you, of course there is a manual), and quickly piece together how to override the routing. There is literally a button for that in case some tube becomes blocked. The only issue is that there has been no mail since that first one.

Probably because everypony is on lunch break.

Well...shit.

Right before you lose all remaining hope left, the machine starts to hum a bit louder. Your whole body tenses. Wait, which button was that? Your fingers shift towards the blue “Override” button and press it, but it doesn't move. That wasn't in the manual! You scan the panel for any hints and find a manual mode switch, which is currently off. You flip it and press the override button again, right before the large capsule flies into the core.

And stays there.

The door makes a "Bleep" sound, which is frighteningly different from the "Blop" sound it made for you. You press the override button again, flip the switch back where it was, and catch the capsule that lazily rolls out of the slot below the control panel before diving behind the machine.

The young maintenance mare walks in, plops down on her chair and belches loudly, the lamp on the ceiling vibrating a little in response. Sometimes, you forget that the mares instinctively tend to act "gentlemarely" around you, and this was a good reminder. The mare sighs and stares at the wall in front of her. A boring, gray wall. For some reason, you find yourself thinking that this wall needs a mural.

Exactly like you would have expected from a bored maintenance worker, the mare puts her hind hooves on the table, leans back on her chair and dozes off. You have to give her the credit; she manages to casually balance the chair on two legs and look about as relaxed as you would be on a king-sized bed. If you had to hazard a guess, you would say that she has been practicing this technique for at least a decade.

After waiting for a while, you slowly sneak towards the door which is left locked. You have a mini heart attack when the mare lets out a snore behind your back, but in the end, you successfully crawl out of the room prize in hand.

Time to open it? Of course not, you know how things like that work. You learned long ago to never do anything compromising in a company corridor ever again, even if your Equestrian colleagues don't have cell phones to immediately take pictures of you from five different angles. Thankfully, Earth is exactly as far as it needs to be for you to finally escape from your past life’s embarrassment.

You can't return to your workplace; the mares there know that you can't possibly have anything to do. There is a janitor's room nearby, and that's one of the places which you are sort of allowed to access, so that's where you are going.

You shiver in anticipation. This is it. Your first assignment. The first step in your long and successful career in Microspell. The deed you will be remembered by. The task of epic proportions. You open the capsule.

Inside you find a stack of weird schematics, rolled into a tube. They are full of weird circles, arrows, and squiggly symbols, and have no human-readable text whatsoever, not counting the numeration on the pages. With doubt, you look at the capsule.

It has a yellow marking on it.

Apart from the slight chance that you were secretly colorblind all these years and the marking is actually blue, nothing stops you from concluding that you've managed to fail your first task before you even started it. Good job, you. And if the marking is indeed yellow (it sort of looks as yellow as it gets), this capsule is supposed to be sent to the logistics department, which is located on the ground floor below maintenance. Such messages are typically sent by punching in the code of the recipient, and the capsule itself has no indication about who sent it nor who was supposed to receive it, which is weird, but who are you to judge the laziness of others? Your options consist of:

Asking around the logistics department if someone is waiting for the message that you just ransacked.
Asking everyone else in the building if someone had recently sent a bunch of complicated schematics.
Keeping the schematics and hope that either they aren’t of significant importance, or that you'll eventually figure out who you should deliver them to.

As much as your sense of integrity demands you to do the right thing, you just can't lose the job over something as stupid as this. What if you'll get a permanent record somewhere? What if no one in Equestria will ever hire you again after this? You’ll die of being useless, that's what will happen. Or worse, you’ll give up and accept your position as a passenger of the train of life which you have no control over.

The realization that your impact on the company's business just became negative dawns upon you with irrefutability of a falling anvil. Feeling exactly how you should feel in the situation like this, you just plop on the chair in the janitor's room and sit there. What if the mares are right? What if here in Equestria, every male is destined to be eternally useless? Now that you think about it, Equestrian sun is all weird, maybe it also radiates some magical shit that suppresses your abilities to be worthy?

"Gonna sit here all day, huh? This is not a place for young colts," says a creaky voice. You are so out of it that you don't even have the power to be startled. A very old light brown mare in the janitor's uniform is standing in the entrance and looking at you with disapproval. It feels appropriate.

"I just wanted to be useful," you mumble.

"Then take that bucket and be useful. The visitors are leaving, and the conference hall needs to be cleaned in two hours. Who do they think I am, a racer? If they want it to stay clean, they should stop inviting them damn nobles."

The mare pulls the trolley with cleaning equipment out of the room and trots away. Meanwhile, you can’t believe what you heard. Did you just get an assignment? An actual, honest assignment? A janitor mare just threw a metaphorical rope into your bottomless well of depression. Of course, you grab it and climb up.

You take off your suit jacket, roll up your sleeves, take the bucket and the mop, and follow the mare.

The conference hall is indeed quite messy. There was a banquet of some sort, and the floor is littered with food, wrappings, and cocktail straws. All this mess looks like a lot of work.

You like it.

You clean and fold the tables, stack the chairs and clean the floor. Even though the second law of thermodynamics implies that your actions do not decrease the overall entropy, and technically you are still making everything worse, for the first time in months you feel a sense of contentment.

"Ah like your attitude. Finally, a stallion who talks less and works more," says the creaky mare. She works slowly but steadily, with monotonic efficiency on an asphalt roller. Who knows for how many years she had been keeping this building clean?

"I aim to please," you reply. This was probably the first piece of appreciation you received for doing something, instead of just being something, in a long time.

"Back in my days, there were more colts like you. My father, Faust save his soul, used to work on the farm from dawn to dusk until his last day. He would laugh at y'all city folks and punch any stallion who whines in front of him out of principle."

"Huh, what changed, then?" Even though you don't entirely understand the Equestrian society, it doesn't feel new or unstable to you. It seems like the mares were always running the country and deciding the flow of history, but what if you don't see the whole picture?

"Equestria went to Tartarus, that's what changed. Damned glossy magazines had screwed everypony's head. Condition your mane every day, or you're not a stallion! Hit the gym, or you're not a mare! Follow them standards, or you're nothing!"

The mare spits on the floor and immediately cleans it again with her mop. You are curious, though.

"Who makes these standards?"

"Idjits."

You can't argue with that. You notice that the mare doesn't seem to have a horn. One of those few percents of diverse employees, it seems. You are done with your half of the conference hall and help the old mare with hers. Eventually, you tell her how you ended up here and how difficult it was for you to find anything to do. The mare looks amused.

"You seem to like hard work. Used ta live on a farm?"

"Far from that. It's just quite normal for males to work back where I'm from. Used to love my old company too."

"What were you doin' there?"

"Writing software, mostly," ah yes, here it comes, the confused face, "that's like... to-do lists for computers. Which are machines that can think. Hard to explain; you don't have anything similar around here," you sight, "sorry, it just hurts to know that all your years of education and skills are suddenly worthless."

"Not all of them," replies the mare, "look, the hall is all clean. Ah couldn't have done it in time without your help."

She isn’t wrong, actually. Menial labor still isn’t much of a step up from doing nothing, but looking at how you just made a difference in Equestria, even if on a laughable scale, you can’t help but smile.

"Autumn Leaves," the mare raises her hoof. You sit down and bump it with your fist.

"Anon. It was a pleasure to meet you."

"I'll tell you what, Anon, these floors are not for you. The mares here will eat your brains out with a spoon and put horseapples in instead. You need some ponies closer to the ground."

"Like, the logistics department?" They seem to be a hardworking bunch, and their floor is right below you. Can’t get any closer to the ground than that.

"Nah, like R&D," says the mare pointing her hoof up, "they are crazy, nerdy, don't care about how they look, don't run after stallions, have no social skills, no taste, and no common courtesy."

"I don't get it," you say.

"Allow me to repeat myself. They are Crazy, Nerdy, Don't care about how they look, Don't run after stallions, have No social skills, No taste, and No common courtesy," says the mare exactly the same thing, now with the emphasis on don'ts and noes. This time you get it.

"They won't care that I am a male?" you ask with a twinge of reignited hope.

"Oh, they will, but not the same way as these screwheads. And if your boss doesn't like it, tell her that Autumn Leaves approves."

Huh, why would your boss care about some janitor?

Oh well, you might as well give it a try. Not like you have anything better to do here anyway.

Volumetrically Compressing Synergetic By-Products

Status report:

Thirty seconds in.

They still don't suspect you are not a janitor.

Situation... stable.

Over.

*bzzk*

The secret of mimicking a janitor is to walk like a janitor. To breathe like a janitor. To think like a janitor.

Looking like a janitor would also be a plus, but it's not like you could randomly come across a human-sized uniform anywhere on this entire planet so, unfortunately, you have to resort to the next best option: the secret human technique of method acting.

You juggle a dozen images of various janitors in your head, looking for one that would fit your current attire, and settle somewhere between a custodian from a shadowy government organization who radiates such an intimidating enigmatic aura that the security personnel have not dared to check his clearance for the past thirty years, and a Victorian butler who isn’t exactly a janitor but wears a fancy suit and is about as unfazeable as a brick wall. Those are the qualities you will need on your mission. So, with the image solidified, you tighten your grip on the mop and soldier on.

The R&D department floor looks surprisingly colorful for something sealed behind a door probably capable of withstanding a nuclear blast and fits into the overall building’s theme about as well as an indoor playground into a tax office. The design choices seem to reflect the ongoing war between the “no-nonsense” style of a big corporation, and the “we don’t know what to do with the investor’s money” style of a startup company, desperately looking for ways to keep the team’s morale high by painting the walls and the support pillars in random pastel colors and without going into the territory of “competitive benefits,” “sensible work schedule,” and other undesirable measures.

The offices flanking both sides of the broad central hallway seem to have only two proper walls separating the adjacent rooms. The external walls are basically heavily tinted floor-to-ceiling windows, through which you can see evening Manehatten in all its glory, and the only difference between them and the hallway walls is that the latter are fully transparent and happen to have doors in them.

Sandwiched between these two glass panels, the offices could be described with equal ease as mad scientists’ labs, modern art installations, or kindergartens, depending on how seriously you’re meant to take the bizarre contraptions inside them, but that’s the general problem with pony technology. Sometimes it’s really hard to tell whether a complex mesh of tubes, hinges, and counterweights is a fancy telescope, a death laser of doom, or both; depending on the position of a switch.

Halfway through the hallway, you finally notice that the entire floor is covered in a bluish-gray carpet, which makes you look a bit out of place with your mop, but this discovery completely fails to faze you, just because of how strong your method acting is. You certainly know what you are doing, not a single pony would suspect a thing. Wait, what's over there, on the horizon? A tiled floor of the canteen? Hooray! See? Who cares if your plan is full of holes if everything goes according to it anyway?

Although to be fair, the ponies on this floor seem to be too busy to notice a parade float being marched through the office, let alone a suspiciously dressed bipedal alien monster like you. In their glass offices, they are doing something you were dreaming about for months: they are being useful. Writing stuff in notepads and on whiteboards, discussing something in small groups, assembling mysterious installations from wires and assorted sciency-looking gadgets, and doing... whatever they are doing with their horns. Quite a few have dark bags under their eyes, and one pony is napping in plain sight, curled up on top of a large pizza box.

As you walk through the department, you notice that the offices seem to be thematic: some contain more hardware, some contain more desks, and one, possibly a meeting room, is just an empty space with a bunch of bean bags scattered all over the floor, a bunch of ponies lounging on them, and a few markers flying along the two writable walls in colorful levitation fields.

Each second, the walls are getting more and more covered in an increasingly dense web of vaguely familiar diagrams made of arrows, rectangles, and circles, and you wouldn’t be surprised if the current state of the walls is intricate enough to describe pretty much any architecture of any solution any technical company ever worked on. All you'd have to do is to relabel the arrows, circles, and rectangles in a domain-specific way, and possibly wipe off the crudely drawn illustration in the corner of a few panicking stick figure ponies running in a circle shouting “AAAAH!” Although you can name a few projects you were personally involved in where this illustration would feel spot on.

You successfully march all the way to the canteen at the end of the hallway and assess the intel you've gathered so far.

Number of encountered cases of sexism: zero.

Number of encountered cases of tribalism: zero.

Number of times being caught in a magical accident involving gravitational anomalies and tentacles of unknown origin: zero.

So far the R&D floor beats one of the DoE floors you visited two days ago by every objective metric you can come up with. Plus, seeing employees collapsing from exhaustion sparks a twinge of camaraderie with them. You are unsure whether you should consult with a certified psychoanalyst about this mildly concerning observation sometime in the future.

One look around the canteen tells you someone definitely knew what they were doing when they sealed the floor off.

You expected a tiny room with a crappy coffee maker, but ended up in a spacious dimly lit open space area with several moderately-sized white tables and a bunch of colorful chairs around them.

Given the number of offices you’ve passed, there’s not enough space to seat all employees at once. But with a sensible rotation schedule, the research teams can definitely lunch inside for weeks, assuming someone delivers the food to the floor. The large fridge, the decently-looking hob right next to the double sink, and, most importantly, a huge professional-looking coffee machine suggest that with a few minor adjustments here and there one could easily transform this area into a cozy Starbucks-like cafe. Of course completing this image would require at least one full-time employee acting as a barista, but under the circumstances, this doesn’t sound like a big issue.

The entire area is almost buried under dirty mugs, plates, and used noodle cups, so for now you can start by cleaning all this shit up, while observing how the local population is going to react to you doing anything useful around them.

Dirty mugs and plates: washed.

Floor: mopped.

Coffee stains: wiped.

A feeling of satisfaction immediately kicks in, and a silly smile creeps onto your face before you fix your expression to something more serious, reminding yourself that right now you are a secret government butler or something along those lines. The original plan was to scout the area and leave before the real janitor showed up, but let’s categorize what you are doing as “prolonged scouting.”

Every now and then you hear ponies walk by, but no one is interrupting you yet, which feels unexpectedly nice. Eventually, you hear hoofsteps stop right behind you.

You turn around and see your saviour from a few hours earlier standing with a dirty mug floating above her head. Up close and in the dimly lit environment of the canteen she appears to be even paler than before, like a cartoonish ghost. Notwithstanding her bright red eyes staring into your soul a little bit, she looks surprisingly friendly.

Crap, you don’t have time to gawk at her. Say something!

"Tea? Coffee?" you ask in a tone that is about half an octave lower than your natural voice.

"Coffee... please," the mare replies in a silvery and slightly tired voice, floating the mug towards you. "No milk, double sugar."

With a precision that surprises even you, you quickly wash and towel the mug, swiftly press a bunch of buttons on the large industrial coffee machine, and... absolutely nothing happens.

"The left module is... broken," the mare carefully suggests.

You promptly move the mug from the left slot to the right one, press a bunch of different buttons, and once again get blown away by the wonders of Equestrian magic. Through the transparent lid, you can see the machine grind the beans, but no sound escapes. Some of your previous colleagues who were unlucky enough to sit near the break room would kill for a miracle like this.

Unfortunately, now there is an awkward silence that would normally be occupied by loud coffee-making noises. It gives you the opportunity to realize that janitors don't typically offer beverages to people around them. That was probably the ”butler” part of your disguise taking over. Stupid method acting, apparently you are just too good at it. Uhh... This is awkward.

"Sorry, I'm new here. Don't know what I'm even doing, to be honest," you confess while putting sugar into the slowly filling mug.

"That’s fine, I'm sure you'll get the hang of it." The mare offers a reassuring smile, and you smile back. You are not great at elevator talk, but eventually, you figure out how to break the silence.

"Thanks for saving me back there in the cafeteria."

The mare tilts her head in confusion, furrowing her white brow.

"You caught my fork when I dropped it."

"Ah! You are welcome." her levitation field takes the mug of steaming coffee from you, "Thanks, see you around."

Okay, what's up with some ponies completely disregarding your alien appearance? Not that you have anything against it, but if you helped a distressed unicorn on Earth, the only thing on your mind for the next few days—or possibly weeks— would be, "Holy shit, a talking horse!"

Also, you just had the most normal, uneventful, meaningless, discrimination-free conversation since appearing in this world. Absolutely nothing of importance was said, and any sensible person would classify the dialogue as “mundane,” a word that fills you with an excitement that goes against its very definition.

Congratulations, you’ve just found the first experimental evidence that normal social interactions between you and native Equestrians are possible, maybe realistically achievable within your lifetime! And it took you what, just a few acts of trespassing to get where you are?

But let’s not jump to conclusions too early. The sample size is too low, and you have better things to do than to stand around with a silly grin just because somepony treated you like a normal person. There is a suspicious-looking stain inside the fridge that requires your immediate attention. Back to work, chop-chop!

From time to time, you glance at the ponies passing by you towards the bathroom, or to leave a dirty mug in the sink, and most of the time—no matter how tired they are—they would smile at you, or even greet you. Even if what you are doing is nothing more than a ridiculously weird act of deception, for a moment, you almost feel like you actually work here.

More time passes, and the lights in the offices steadily turn off one after another.

It’s been dark outside for quite a while, the dim radiance of the now deserted canteen and hallway dispersing into the Manehattan night sky through the partially reflective glass walls reminding you of late connected flights. It makes you reminisce of some feeling you haven’t experienced in a while. It could be anticipation, or maybe a fleeting premonition regarding something you have no control over, and your only choices are to embrace it or watch helplessly as it happens anyway.

It takes a while to realize that what you feel isn’t about you, or your future career.

What you feel is the motion of the world.

You don’t know where it’s going. You don’t know what parts are moving. But you are sure that in a few years, ponies will remember this time, confused why no one saw the changes coming. You will probably be confused too, unless you stop for a moment and try sorting out your thoughts, so that’s what you do while sitting on the floor in the canteen. You can’t hope to understand everything, but the least you can do is to try understanding where your worries are coming from. All you noticed was that something is in motion, and you don’t even know what it is.

Eventually, something clicks in your mind.

The deeper you dive into corporate life, the less it feels like you are in Equestria. Hundreds of employees swarming around could be doing all sorts of magical things in their daily jobs, but when was the last time you felt the magic with your heart? This morning, when you walked by a flower shop about two blocks away from here. Some random ponies were passing by the stands and saying their sincere “Good morning!” to the flower mare, who was smiling back at them while watering the flowers and humming an uplifting tune. And this was the center of the most crowded and busy city in the country, often referred to as shallow and apathetic compared to the others.

But this true magic ended the moment you crossed the reception door. Turns out, you didn’t find a new job for yourself in Equestria, you simply wandered into the embassy of your home country of Corporate Values and Productivity Metrics, where you were accepted as a legitimate citizen and provided with asylum. This embassy was not founded by you or any other extra-dimensional traveler, it was brought here by time, which simply rushes forward without waiting for anyone, probably trying to meet its own unfathomable deadlines and KPI goals.

And the only reason you noticed something was off is because some overworked R&D mares brought a small part of that external Equestria to work and shared it with you, reminding you how things are supposed to be in this world.

Do ponies in this building realize that they are now tourists in a foreign land with different culture, laws, and traditions? Do they have a switch in their head that flips back to Equestrian mode when they leave the office or do they spread the misery of an endless chase for market growth as a substitute for all other values in life?

You wish you knew the answers. But maybe you are overthinking things. These are ponies, not humans. For hundreds of years, they somehow managed to live without any major wars or revolutions, without burning each other's houses down out of hatred, and without losing the focus on what’s important in life and what’s not. Most of them are even genuinely happy. Surely they won’t repeat all the same mistakes your people made. Right?

While you are busy ruminating on the future of the country you barely understand, another unicorn approaches you, disrupting your train of thought. Her coat is a soft chocolatey brown, with matted black mane tied into a messy bun on the back of her head. A pair of thick-rimmed glasses perched upon her muzzle doesn't suit her face particularly well, like she grabbed the first pair she saw in the shop, and the stretched beige sweater she’s wearing makes her look downright plump, but you are fine with all this. Just like Autumn Leaves promised, the mares around here don’t seem to care about their looks, but for you, it just makes them look more approachable, or, in this particular case, almost huggable.

The mare examines you, sitting on the floor in a contemplative pose, from head to toe and blinks. Oh no, you feel like your perfect disguise is cracking! Time to take over the initiative.

"How may I help you?"

The mare blinks again.

"So... everypony is leaving. Are you alright in here?"

Hah. Everypony leaving? In the middle of the crunch? Wusses. Back in your days, you would spend nights at work to meet the deadline! There is absolutely no reason why you should be proud of this shameful fact, but you are.

"No worries, ma’am, just taking a short break. Have a nice evening!" you say with as much confidence as you can muster. The mare smiles and nods, putting your worries at ease.

"You too, have a nice holiday!" she replies, fighting back a yawn before leaving you alone.

You have to admit that you liked all interactions around here so far. You really hope that the reason is not something stupid like "Your shirt makes you look more feminine in ponies' eyes," and the mares here are just... more normal. Or less normal, by the standards of this company. Still, tomorrow you are going to catch your boss and somehow convince her to assign you to this floor.

With a sound of the floor door closing far away, you stop thinking and take a moment to enjoy the silence.

The entire floor is yours.

No one is telling you to go home early.

No one is annoying you with an overbearing attitude.

No one is disrupting you while you finish your self-imposed duties and leave the canteen in the cleanest state it has ever been since its inception.

With a feeling of deep satisfaction settled in, you contemplate whether you should wipe down the offices too.

Hmm... Nah. That would overstep some boundaries. You don't want to trip on a loose wire and destroy a few weeks of somepony's work by accident. Plus, there are probably tons of personal items indistinguishable from random junk, and you definitely won't be that guy who desecrates a productive environment by throwing something important away. That's a job for the actual janitor, who doesn't seem to be showing up for some reason.

For today, your work here is done.

With your trusty mop in one hand and equally trusty bucket in the other, you walk down the hallway towards the exit, whistling a jaunty tune. You feel content. Absolutely nothing can ruin such a perfect and productive evening.

Putting your equipment on the floor, you move your badge closer to the lock.

Blop.

Wait, what was that? You blink a few times before understanding slowly creeps into your empty skull like a hermit crab into a vacant seashell. With shaking hands, you move the badge closer again.

Blop.

Pony locks. Your only weakness.

Blop.

And this is the second time this month.

Blop.

How could you be so incredibly dumb?

Bonk.

And that was the sound of your forehead hitting the door in frustration. Yep, a normal facepalm won't do.

Sigh...

You know who your true enemies are? Equestrian fire inspectors. Because the ones from your home planet would never allow this bullshit to happen. So what if ponies have magical fire suppressors, while your planet has to resort to the old and boring dihydrogen monoxide—commonly known as "water"? So what if these systems convert smoke into breathable air, while on your planet the CO-alarms are only good for waking up the entire city block when you try cooking in the oven? These are not valid excuses for allowing doors that can't be opened from the inside without a pass!

Surely there must be some way out. There are tons of other reasons why someone might accidentally lock themselves inside—besides being an alien spy of course—and someone else must have considered this possibility while making the door in front of you very thick, very robust, and very enchanted. There are no visible buttons on the surrounding walls, not counting the light switches, so you sit down and carefully inspect the lock.

Aha! There is an arrow pointing to the side of the box, where you see a long and thin button, probably designed to be pressed with the side edge of a hoof, labeled "SECURITY." Understandable. Must be hard to avoid accidental presses otherwise if the entire population doesn’t have fingers. Now you wonder how many Equestrian buttons like this you have failed to notice so far because you didn’t know where to look.

You move your hand to press the button, but then stop yourself. What are you going to say? How are you going to explain your current situation? "Sorry, ma’am, I just wandered into a restricted access area without a pass, assumed the identity of a janitor, and accidentally cleaned the entire canteen after everypony left." Doesn't sound good, does it?

But wait. What if, hypothetically speaking...

"Am I seriously considering…?"

Yes you are, and stop talking to yourself. Hypothetically speaking, what if...

Bonk.

No-no-no, listen up. What if you just stayed here until morning? Then tomorrow—when somepony shows up—you pretend that you just came in earlier to finish your business, and then you'll sneak out the same way you snuck in!

Yep, sounds like a plan.

Although... didn't the last mare say something about having a nice holiday? Today is certainly not a Friday, so... wait, are there any upcoming national holidays you are forgetting about?

Bonk.

Okay, you deserved this one.

There must be a calendar somewhere around here... and yep, there it is, through the glass door of one of the offices. The upcoming four days, including the weekends, are marked in bright red. You can't make out what the fine print says from here, but if you remember correctly, it was something about the unification of tribes?... No, that one is sometime during winter. Unification... with friends or something? Maybe?

You can start celebrating the unification of whatever by getting your shit together. As of right now, it's obviously apart, and that just won't do.

Let's work the problem. What does a human need to survive for a prolonged period in a hostile environment like this one?

Water.
Food.
A place to sleep.
A place to poop.

Taking full stock of your surroundings, there is a tap, a fridge with a bunch of leftovers, a toilet near the canteen (unisex, for obvious demographic reasons), and... well, if a pizza box is a good enough substitute bed for a researcher, it's gonna be good enough for you too. The beanbags from the meeting room are also an option, even if you aren’t sure what’s going to be worse on your back. No shower anywhere, but you can probably keep yourself clean with a wet towel.

Are you forgetting something? Hmm... Ah, right. Protection against natural predators, which in this situation would be security guards patrolling the floors. If they exist at all in this building, of course. You saw this trope multiple times in movies, when a dude in security uniform walks through a pitch-black hallway with a heavy-duty flashlight, looking for intruders, but would something like this be common for Equestria? Better safe than sorry. You should probably sleep in the storeroom just to be safe.

Now that you sort of know what you are going to do in general, it’s prudent to think about what you are going to do right now with all the free time that you suddenly got.

Hmm... You could read a book or something. Your knitting equipment is still in your bag, so that's another option. Or, you can try being productive and doing something useful, like repairing the coffee machine. All you need is to find a spare screwdriver—which shouldn’t be difficult considering where you are—and then wing it.

Day 0.

Dear Journal,

When did this madness begin? Did it begin with the question "What can possibly go wrong if I unscrew the back panel of a highly complex magical device I know nothing about?" Or the exclamation "Oh nice! I wonder what this glowing thing does?" Should we laugh at ourselves? Or sob about how dumb we can be?

Either way, it's 2 AM already, and it's quite clear that putting the left module of the coffee machine back how it was is literally impossible without bending space, time, or both. You know what does sound like a great idea, though? Grabbing a few pizza boxes and making a bed out of them inside the storeroom. It's important to cut your losses before it's too late.

Day 1.

Dear Journal,

What happens to us between sleeping and waking? Every night, when the moon rises, we voluntarily go into a comatose state in order to vividly hallucinate for a few hours in hopes of restoring our energy and cognitive abilities for the following day. If sleeping truly does all those miracles, why do we wake up in an even dumber state than we were before?

Opening the other, working module to see how things are supposed to look like in the assembled state was a mistake. The left module's a lost cause, but maybe it's still possible to revert the damage you did to the right one.

Day 2.

Dear Journal,

What makes a dumb person hopeless? Is it an inability to learn and evolve from their mistakes? Or the lack of awareness of their own incompetence? Irrational optimism? Failure to accept the sad truth?

The coffee machine can go buck itself, but maybe if you stay on top of the table until help arrives, the eldritch tentacles currently wriggling around the canteen floor will stay away.

You knew something bad was going to happen when that glowy thingy started smoking after you poked it with a screwdriver, but you can't say you expected it to be this bad. Thankfully, you reacted just in time, before anything unspeakable could happen to you.

Day 3.

Dear Journal,

What does it mean to be alone? Truly alone? Knowing that help is not coming, and no one will save you from being in the same room with a dangerously incompetent person who just happens to be you?

The eldritch tentacles evaporated during the night while you sat hunchbacked on top of the table wide awake, but at least now you know there aren’t any security ponies checking the floor. You spent two other nights inside the storeroom for no reason. Good job, you.

It's pretty clear that you lack the critical information required to fix the mess you started, and if you admitted this to yourself from the beginning, the disaster could be easily avoided. You could’ve just read a book or knit something nice, but noooo.

Speaking of reading, there is a bookcase between the canteen and the toilet, and judging by the location and how abandoned it looks, it’s probably one of those bookcases where companies keep useless books accumulated over the years which no one wants to take responsibility for throwing away.

At your previous job, there was a similar bookcase with unnecessarily thick and hopelessly obsolete tomes from the time before the internets. There you could find anything from books about COBOL, FORTRAN, and other capslock-intensive programming languages that were popular before you were born, to detailed manuals about technologies that no one has used for decades. To be fair, the bookshelf also contained some useful stuff, just not useful enough to anyone qualified to get the job, like basic books about algorithms that everyone knows anyway. If ponies and humans are equally susceptible to hoarding, maybe you'll find something that's not too far beyond your reading abilities?

You walk towards the bookcase and browse through the titles. Hmm... Too technical. Too weird. Too thick... wait, what's that?

"Magical engineering for dum-dums."

Woo-hoo! Look, a whole book just for you! You have a ton of time and absolutely nothing to do, so why not?

Day 4.

Dear Journal,

Who’s the dum-dum now, huh? HUH?! Look at this beauty. A coffee machine with two, TWO working modules. You press the left button, and the left module works. You press the right one, and the right one works. You press both, and BOTH work!

Some would say it’s impossible, but nothing is impossible for a person who actually spent time reading the bucking manual!

Best part? No eldritch tentacles anywhere.

It's almost the morning of the next day, but you don't care. Tears of pride and happiness are rolling out of your eyes. Turns out, you weren’t just fixing a coffee machine. You were fixing your identity as an engineer as well, and you did a damn good job at it too.

Your shit is finally together, and it hasn't been this densely compressed since that time you saved the release schedule by doing two weeks’ worth of work in two days. Maybe this time you won’t get a bunch of gift cards from the company as a reward, but at least you learned something new from the experience.

Glowy magical tubes and sparkly magical gems are not that different from normal circuits if you first understand what does what, then ignore the fact that what it does couldn't possibly happen in your previous reality.

The only mildly disappointing part is that the entire book didn't mention flux capacitors even once, and you are still curious about what the heck they are. One day you'll figure out what you were supposed to say during that deeply humiliating interview a couple of weeks ago.

Now that you are proud of yourself and cleaned up all the mess that you created with your own hands, you think about how you are going to sneak out tomorrow. You don't have an alarm clock, unfortunately, and it's sort of important to be awake before the first pony arrives, so you decide to skip sleeping altogether. You have a knitting kit to keep you busy, so you sit down on one of the chairs in the canteen and relax. Staying awake for a few more hours shouldn't b...

"Ahem."

Someone pokes you with a hoof.

You open your eyes and find yourself half-sitting at the table, half-napping on the scarf you were knitting moments ago. An unacceptable amount of light in the canteen is hurting your eyes, and your whole body is sore.

Beside you, a small gray mare in a janitor's uniform is hiding behind another, dark purple mare. But something feels off about your depth perception and sense of scale, so you wipe your eyes.

Ah, much better. Correction: there is a normal-sized gray mare in a janitor's uniform hiding behind an exceptionally tall dark purple mare, with a vertical scar on the right-side of her face, who is standing with an unreadable expression and manages to look intimidating without even trying. To say that she has an athletic build would be an understatement. She sort of looks like she can outrun a train, and possibly bench-press it afterward.

You quickly glance at her back: no wings, whew. Then you glance at her horn, and somehow become even more intimidated than before, because either this is the most radical cyberpunk cosplay you've seen in your life, or the mare is the lead actor of the pony version of the Terminator movie.

Her horn was clearly broken at some point, but now it continues with a horn-shaped amalgamation of matted metal, asymmetric chrome inlays, and dark runes. A single red diode—or whatever ponies use instead of them—on the left side of the horn already looks menacing, but it’s nothing compared to the deeply engraved Microspell logo on the other side, which makes you physically shiver.

This reminds you that due to various scheduling conflicts among the management, you missed some crucial parts of the onboarding procedure, like the interview with the security team. Looks like the time has finally come.

Opportunistically Prospecting Collaborative Potentialities

Your basic animal instincts are telling you to drop everything and run away, and you are finding it harder and harder to suppress them. Nevertheless, you endure. Mostly because some other basic instinct keeps reminding you that it would be really embarrassing to drop your food tray on the floor and run out of the cafeteria screaming like a little girl, while about half the population of the surrounding floors would be witnessing your panic attack.

In your excuse, there is a basketball-sized ball of plasma hovering above one of the tables, and you just saw how a metal spoon got evaporated by it in a fraction of a second.

Back on Earth, you used to believe you were doing something cool at work.

No, really. That’s not just your ego speaking from beyond the grave, that’s an objective and provable fact.

While every programmer is essentially an organism that converts coffee into code, your code was exceptionally good, and the coffee was exceptionally bad, so you used to think of yourself as of a very, very efficient converter. Also, one of the customers praised your software as “truly magical”. He meant it figuratively, of course, but it made wonders for your self-esteem as an engineer. How many people can say "today at work I've been making magic happen"?

This time, however, you feel completely outmatched; because if you apply the same perspective to the unicorn mares occupying the cafeteria table in front of you, you get two organisms that consume alfalfa salad and produce literal magic. There can't possibly be anything cooler than that.

Actually, hold the phone. One of the mares, light-blue with a professional no-nonsense mane style and earrings which look more expensive than your current apartment, picks a forkful of alfalfa, brings it closer to the small star, lets it grill for a bit, then munches the salad with a genuinely bored expression. Ok, now we've reached the peak. Throwing an exploding helicopter or two into the scene wouldn't make the mare look any cooler, because she is already off the scale.

What the hell is wrong with you, horse?! Physics is being nonconsensually violated right in front of your eyes! Stop acting unimpressed!

Judging by how the mares are not going permanently blind staring at the star about two feet away from their faces—or getting melted by it for that matter—one would assume some serious magical safety measures are surrounding the thing which you⁠—a creature without a horn⁠—simply can't see. The lack of awe and/or panic in the cafeteria also suggests that everything is under control.

Around you, there is a wide, bright open space, mildly resembling an IKEA restaurant, if you stretch it in each direction to cover almost the entire floor and replace lines of people⁠—walking along the food counters and chatting with each other⁠—with ponies, doing more or less the same thing, just in a bit more orderly and civilized fashion, without anyone cutting the line or talking too loudly. Like any other self-respecting corporation, Microspell went all out on making every place that can be seen by potential investors as breathtaking as the budget allows, and the cafeteria near the management floors is easily the most prominent cash sink in the entire building. Tall ceilings, vastly decorated with geometrically-shaped light sources, the vegetation on the windows, the rays of sunlight breaking through it and creating intricate light patterns on abstract sculptures decorating the space between the tables—everything is designed to make a visitor feel calm, content, and willing to buy some stocks after a pleasant lunch in this tranquil environment.

The company may have gone a bit too far with the fountain in the middle of the floor, but you have to admit that it does make the air around here feel a bit fresher than anywhere else in the building. This time, however, the said fountain is on your mind only because you wonder whether there is enough energy in the plasma ball that you see ahead of you to evaporate it entirely.

Breathe in, breathe out. Hunt for stray R&D mares, day 3. Third time's a charm.

You grip your food tray harder and slowly walk towards the scene that would give an OSHA inspector a heart attack. As you get closer, you hear snippets of the highly technical conversation going on between the two mares.

“... ah, buck it,” says the other mare, olive with a cream mane. With a flair, she conjures a few loops of something that looks like magical duct tape around the ball of plasma. The ball pulsates and shakes a few times, before shrinking in size by about half. The mare pokes the result of her work with a flawlessly-polished hoof and nods in satisfaction. You are genuinely curious whether her body is warded to be fire-proof, or she simply doesn’t care.

“Yeah, that should work,” confirms the blue mare with a bite of alfalfa, casually dispelling the star, magical duct tape and all, as if it was some napkin math she did during lunch break. Suddenly, a hint of excitement emerges on her face

"Hey, is it just me, or they are putting more sugar into the sauce now?" she asks as she dips another forkful of salad into the purple goo on her plate.

Now that you see them up close⁠—and realize how much each of them spends on her looks⁠—you are almost certain they are not the ones you are looking for. You were trying to catch anyone from R&D for the past few days, and while your luck has been failing you, you've managed to gather some vague descriptions, which don’t seem to match. Unfortunately, it would be too awkward to turn around and walk away at this point.

“Mind if I sit here?” you ask the mares who didn't notice your approach. You clearly deserved an Oscar with this line, for managing to sound neither nervous nor afraid. It took you a few months to accept that about a third of the country's population can kill you with their mind, and a few more months to realize something like this will never happen because the idea of using magic to harm someone terrifies the average unicorn a lot more than it terrifies you, the potential victim.

“Sure, sweetheart,” answers the blue one and moves her tray to make space. She wrinkles her nose after noticing the fried fish on your plate but doesn’t say anything. It’s curious how your choice of meal got more of a reaction than your appearance, especially since you can spot at least three pegasi having the exact same thing. You vaguely wonder if that's because of her innate personality, or the amount of bizarre shit she saw on her job over the years.

"That was a pretty cool... umm... technical solution. Are you, by any chance, from the R&D team?" You feel like you already know the answer but might as well give it a try.

"Do we look like nerds?" the olive one replies without any real malice in her voice. You almost say "Yes," before reminding yourself of your position in the metaphorical food chain around here.

Judging from what you've seen before, and by their attitude, they are likely from the department of enchanting, or DoE for short. It is the third-largest department after marketing and accounting in this building and is mostly populated by quite eccentric personalities. From what you heard so far, these are the ponies who do the “actual job” in this company. The salaries and the hiring criteria are equally insane there, and you wouldn’t be surprised if the mares in front of you are either magical prodigies or at least PhDs of some magical horse science. As for what they do, it’s… complicated.

Originally, DoE was the entire Microspell brand. Big customers who wanted some custom-made on-site magical solution would sign a contract, and Microspell would perform the initial work, then provide continuous support over the years. Compared to hiring independent enchanters, there is a lot less risk involved for corporate clients, so that's how the company's multi-billion business was started.

The department of enchanting still does this kind of stuff, but only because it’s a significant part of the company's brand. An on-demand business model like that is not scalable, and keeping expensive staff on a paycheck while waiting for the next deal is just unreasonable. Thankfully, the company found a new area for itself.

For millennia, minor enchanting has been the rich pony’s service, taking a lot of time and effort from well-educated unicorns. It's not that hard for a university graduate to make a single non-sticking frying pan, but making thousands of them and cheaply is a different story, so supply and demand balanced themselves around a price tag way beyond the budget of a typical family. Often, enchanted objects became family heirlooms, passing down from one generation to the next.

Everything changed after somepony found a way to construct even more complicated distributed enchantment systems—spell arrays—capable of mass-producing much simpler ones.

Similar to large automated assembly lines, they often occupy an entire building, where hundreds of independently moving technomagical parts work in unison on replicating something a live unicorn does in their head while weaving a spell. Each small part has a role, each is irreplaceable, and each is a pinnacle of magical engineering.

Making a working spell array is extremely difficult, and requires the combined efforts of the best enchanters of the generation. Still, it's much cheaper than hiring a horde of mediocre unicorns to do each simple enchantment manually. The economy of large scale always wins, you learned that back on your previous planet.

So nowadays, Microspell either sells these "spell arrays" to various manufacturers, or uses them for its own branded products. Oddly enough, that also means some of the greatest magical talents in Equestria are indirectly responsible for mass-producing coffee machines, doorbells, and mosquito repellents instead of something, well, less mundane. But who are you to judge? Some of the best scientists of your planet are wasting their lives on making sure that one teenager can reliably deliver his insult to another across the country in under thirty milliseconds, without any details about his interactions with someone's mother lost in the process.

Thinking about this makes you a bit less nervous around the unicorns you are sitting with. On one hand, they literally pay their bills by warping the reality around their horns for about thirty-five hours per week. On another hand, the final product of their work could be as boring as a magical plunger.

You exchange pleasantries for a few minutes—“How do you like it here so far?” “Is it true that you are an alien prince?” and other nonsensical questions you answer more or less daily—and dive into the topic you are actually interested in.

“Speaking of aliens, I'm sort of new here, and trying to introduce myself to everyo.. everypony around, but I haven’t seen anypony from R&D yet. Are all of them on vacation or something?”

"Nah, probably just too busy making our lives harder again," scoffs the blue one.

"I think Vitrail's deadline is in a few weeks," adds the olive one, "and it's, like, half-a-year from being ready. So there is a huge crunch for the last month or so, and the R&D is staying inside this whole time."

"Vitrail? Wasn't it canceled last winter?" The way the blue unicorn said it, you would think ‘Vitrail’ was some boring ten-year-old TV show no one is watching anymore that refuses to die for some inexplicable reason; most likely involving money laundering.

"Some walking fossil from the board really wants it to be done"—another forkful of alfalfa flies into the olive unicorn's mouth—"and I think Flashy's plan was to allow this shit to fail rather than cancel it and write it off as a loss, so"—she takes a sip of juice—"so that she could fire everypony who pushed the project against her will."

Your guess is that she's talking about Flashy Sales, the previous CEO and, if even half of the rumors about her are true, the biggest asshole in Equestria.

"Well, Flashy is not here anymore, and the new dummy doesn't care, so I guess they’ll let it fail for nothing," concludes the blue unicorn, done with her meal and about to leave the table. You are curious, though

"As I mentioned, I'm new here... what is Vitrail about, exactly?"

"Oh, some nonsense. Like, a really, really trivial spell array. Dumb enough to mass-produce it with an actual spell array. Doesn't really do anything useful by itself, beyond maybe casting Arcane Message, but can be reconfigured," the unicorn chuckles, "by dirt ponies."

Another unicorn rolls her eyes, "Yeah, right. What are they gonna use it for? Storing recipes?"

Both mares are packing up and ready to head back to work.

"Sorry, gotta run. It was a pleasure meeting you, Anon. Feel free to stop by anytime. See ya!"

And with that, you are left alone at the table. Well, there are also three dirty food trays to keep you company, but it's not like the trays can share your disappointment in the casual act of tribalism you just witnessed.

On one hand, it's not necessarily their fault. From what you understand, DoE tends to accumulate star students, who tend to originate from rich aristocratic families, who tend to be full of shit. Plus, the DoE management was hoof-picked by the racist ex-CEO, which has its own share of implications. Chances are, those two mares grew up in families where unicorn superiority was a basic axiom of life, not some moral choice they had to consciously make. An ideal that was further pushed when they ended up in a company where this is the norm.

On the other hand, ew.

So, another lunch is over, and you are yet to see anypony from the team recommended by Autumn Leaves. Yet another day wasted…

Hmm...

No, that's not right. You have to look at the bright side of things. For example, what's this, right in front of you? Some dirty trays? Nope, that's what an amateur would say. But a professional like you only sees opportunities.

So what if you have no clear responsibilities in this company? That only means the possibilities for you are endless! For example, right now you can grab all three trays, stack them together, and swiftly deliver them to the tray racks about twenty steps away from you. It would be nice if the DoE mares would clean after themselves, but hey, for all you know they could be very noble, very busy, and very asshole-ish at the same time, and the combination of these circumstances gives you a unique chance to prove yourself and demonstrate how great your menial labor skills are!

Ah, who are you kidding? Of course, one of the forks falls from the tray, and as you try to catch it with one hand, you notice that the trays you are holding with the other hand are leaning a bit too far, and the plates are starting to slide... you are going to make a fool of yourself again, aren't you? Yes, you are.

About 3.7 milliseconds before disaster, the fork stops in mid-air enveloped in a white glow and then floats up towards the trays that are stabilized in a similar white field.

You quickly scan the cafeteria for your savior and notice a small, white mare with a matching halo around her horn unloading her own, much larger stack of food trays into a nearby rack.

Huh, is she some sort of a junior employee who does the dirty work for her team? Back on Earth, it wouldn’t be that unusual, at least in some cultures. Although you have to admit, she doesn’t look like your average pushover mare who could end up in a position like this. There is a certain grace in the way she moves despite her small frame, and a distinct “leggy” build, typical for pony models. All this is contrasted by a total lack of accessories, a long and unevenly cut white mane with strands clumped to each other, and an equally white tail that desperately needs emergency brushing. Also, you just can't get your head around how ridiculously monochromatic this mare is.

You remember seeing Princess Celestia from afar once, and while her coat was pristine, her eternally flowing, colorful mane was as far from ‘plain’ as it gets. In contrast to that, the pony in front of you somehow manages to look even whiter than the surrounding ambient light, as if she’s been poorly photoshopped into the environment by an amateur photo enthusiast who doesn’t understand how color balancing works.

The mare doesn’t even look at you as the fork she was levitating lands neatly on your stack of trays. She is clearly in a hurry, so after leaving the trays, she runs towards the counters, gets a few paper bags from the chef, and, glancing once in your general direction with her bright red eyes, dashes away, leaving you in a state of gratitude mixed with confusion.

Hold on. Why would she have so many food trays, and where would she run with a bunch of doggy bags?

Not so fast, R&D! you think, before realizing that it's already too late and she was indeed fast enough, so repeating your exclamation out loud would be rather awkward.

You sigh.

So, the reason you were gathering rumors and trying to catch R&D ponies during lunchtime, instead of just scouting the area, as you did with some other teams, is surprisingly dumb and looks like a thick enchanted door that blocks the access to the entire floor. Initially, you assumed that the purpose of the door is to protect the ongoing research from the outside world, but after hearing some stories, you are not entirely sure anymore. With so many runes on the door, it might as well be the gate to Tartarus.

The whole R&D team has a... reputation, to put it lightly. You are yet to find a single pony from another team who genuinely respects them, and not sees them as some variation of "talentless commoners who don't belong in DoE," "losers who will never be promoted by the manager line," or "mares who are hurting the image of the company by not being marely enough."

And now, you know there is a deadline of some sort, and the R&D mares are working overtime, and everything is on fire, and no one seems to be particularly sympathetic, thinking the project is dead on arrival anyway. Good old corporate indifference. How nice to see something familiar so far away from Earth.

But let’s apply your recently acquired positive thinking skills to the same rumors that you heard so far. Not being noble enough to be accepted in DoE, or powerful enough to ignite literal stars during lunch breaks? You are totally fine with both options! Lacking the skills to suck up to higher-ups? Great! Not "marely" enough in a world where the word "marely" fuels your worst nightmares? Awesome!

Positive thinking! That's what has been keeping you sane during your stay in the horse country, and that's what will lead you to the great career success in the horse corporation!

With this, you can probably conclude the first phase of scouting and move to the next one.

Unfortunately, there is the matter of the enchanted door which doesn't share your optimism. Is that going to stop you? Pfft, of course not. The next step of your plan is to see the mythical R&D land with your own eyes, and the door is just a minor inconvenience. So far, your track record with Equestrian locks is 1:0 in your favor. Prepare to be conquered, door, for this here employee doesn't know fear, doesn't know defeat, doesn't know anything!

Closer to the evening, you snag a mop and bucket from the janitor's closet, ride the elevator up, and camp in front of the door, waiting for somepony to enter or leave. You hope to be done with your exploration before the actual janitor arrives, and if anything goes wrong, you'll blame overlapping schedules.

You wait for over an hour. A voice in the back of your head suggests you kill some time by knitting—since you brought your bag with you just for an occasion like this one—but you quickly discard this idea. You are not bored! You are a male, an apex predator, waiting in the ambush. That's legit, manly work! You don't need some "knitting" to distract yourself! Although you have to admit, it's strangely relaxing, and you think you are getting pretty good with the technique...

Bleep.

Success! Some unicorn mare opens the door from the inside. You catch it before it shuts, and attempt to squeeze past with your best "don't mind me, I'm just a janitor" expression. The mare stops you with a hoof.

Crap. Of course, no one will just let you walk in like this.

"Why are you wearing a suit?" asks the mare, shifting her eyes between you and the mop.

Huh? Ok, ma-a-aybe you don't look like a typical janitor, but there are like twenty-five other reasons to come to this conclusion besides the lack of an appropriate uniform on your unusually shaped body. On the other hand, this mare looks as if the last time she slept was sometime last month. Struggling to keep her eyes open, she unsuccessfully tries to hold back a yawn. That's your chance to say something smart in a very confident voice.

"Because this is an important restricted area."

Really, that's the best explanation you came up with? Ok, now you are doomed.

"Ah, I see. Sorry about the mess in the canteen," says the mare and staggers towards the elevator. On the way, she mumbles something about sleeping in for a few days.

And just like that, overtime burnout wins against common sense once again. You never properly understood the mentality of managers who expect people—and now ponies—to be productive in a state like this. During your career, you went through milestone crunches multiple times, and each time you couldn't recognize your own code afterward, as if it's been written by some heavily drugged monkey. Which might be not that far from the truth, considering that by the end of each crunch probably half of the blood in your body was replaced with pure caffeine.

Trying to look unsuspicious, you enter the R&D area.

Well, that's different. Instead of a noisy and unproductive open space, you see a long hallway in front of you, with two rows of large offices on both sides. As you move forward, through the glass doors and walls at your sides you see small groups of visibly tired mares working on something. You have no idea what it is, but you know it must be something awesome because the rooms are full of mysterious devices and glowy and sparkly stuff. You also see pizza boxes, dirty utensils, and other attributes of a typical "death march" crunch.

Some would identify the faint smell hanging in the air as a mixture of coffee, reheated food, and sweat. They would be wrong. You, on the other hand, recognize it for what it is. It’s the smell of a burning deadline.

For some really weird and probably unhealthy reason which you don't understand yet, for the first time in your Equestrian life, you feel a little bit at home.