Worth Exactly What He Paid For It
If Mr. Rich had truly been thinking about it, he never would have signed up for the program in the first place: not as part of the trial gallop, not as any working wheel on the newest of carts. But Mr. Rich had not been thinking -- or rather, something else had been thinking for him.
"I need you to repeat that," the franchise owner of every Barnyard Bargains (and, in Ponyville, nothing more than the store's manager, because that was the best way) slowly said. "All of it. From the beginning. Just to make sure we completely understand each other."
The young unicorn on the other side of Mr. Rich's office desk, a blue-and-pale-yellow specimen with the somewhat unfortunate name of Slick Deal, swallowed. Most of it was pure air, and the solid mass now sticking in his throat seemed to have been created from what little was left of his nerve.
"Well, sir," he began again, "I represent a new marketing company."
"A start-up," the respected businesspony said.
Awkwardly, "Yes. I'm... just about all of the company, actually..."
"That doesn't matter right now," Mr. Rich said. "Just keep going. I want to hear all of it again."
Another gulp, which did nothing to dislodge the lump. "You see, many companies -- and individuals -- are working on new products. All the time. You know that, because you go to trade and purchase shows. But there's a sort of -- intermediary stage. Where they think they probably have something good, but they're not sure. And one way they can find out is to -- let things out a little early. Before they even reach the shows, sir. Give the public a first chance at something new, and see what the ultimate buyers think. All sort of companies need that. Edibles, household items, even some forms of media. I've had so many sign-ons..."
"Early distribution of samples," the older stallion said. "Directly to the consumer."
"Yes, sir. With feedback cards, which we collect after. When we can, because not very many ponies fill them out."
"Really?" It had been oddly flavorless.
"Well -- we've mostly been trying to give things out on street corners. In Canterlot. Ponies have interesting reactions when you approach them and offer something free, sir. Some of them hang around the booth for a long time and just try to take more and more. Others run. And fly. Very quickly. Because they see 'free' as 'suspicious'."
"Really," repeated the pony for whom 'free' was something else entirely.
"Yes, sir. We're getting some feedback, but -- the companies who signed on with me -- us -- me... want more. And I thought..."
Another deep breath, drawing in more of the warm air which permeated the strangely-simple office on that warm spring day. Just in case it turned out to be the last breath he ever took as a being who still had hope.
"...that there was a better way to distribute things. So I came up with a plan, and -- here I am."
The older stallion subtly nodded at him.
"All of it," Mr. Rich repeated, and there was an oddly musical lilt to those words. "Go on."
"Well... it would be a group of boxes. Several groups. Plain brown paper packets in all of them. Seven groups to start, sir, for your trial period. On each day, you take the boxes from a group and put them next to your registers, behind the counter. Every time somepony makes a purchase, any purchase at all, the cashier subtly nudges the packet into their cart. And the packet has a free sample. A different one each day, plus a feedback card to fill out." A brief pause. "And instructions, where they're needed. But the feedback card is always there. And they bring it back to the store the next day and drop it off. I'll send somepony to pick them up two days after it ends." And a longer one, because he'd just realized the last part might have sounded presumptuous. "If you sign on --"
Mr. Rich knew something about ponies. How they thought and, quite a bit of the time, how they couldn't be bothered to think at all. "Feedback cards" should have rung a warning bell, with "instructions" skipping all normal steps and moving directly to evacuating the building.
But his eyes were bright, his ears were rotated directly forward, and the aspect which was listening so closely had very little to do with his brain.
"You see," the now-sweating young unicorn said, "we're not pressing anything on anypony, because it's a surprise which you only get with a purchase! And maybe they'll come back to see if there's another surprise each day and buy more, but I'm not counting on... um... anyway, it's for the customers. A surprise. And only for customers, of course. You'll be just as surprised as they were, when they come back on the next day with their cards and tell you what their free sample was!"
"Only for the customers," Mr. Rich said. "Yes. I presume we leave the boxes sealed until their day comes. And the packets, of course."
"Yes, if you want to," Slick tried. "There's nothing dangerous or which needs unusual storage. No real enchantments. They're just... new products. Things which the creators want to test. But part of the key is that you give them to everypony. No matter what they purchased or how much they spent. Because we need feedback from as many ponies as we can get, sir." He carefully pitched his voice, and did so at the exact moment he repeated his silent prayer. "We're hoping for the wisdom of the herd."
And not even that set off so much as a single lightly-vibrating clapper.
"And my expenses for taking part in this trial week?" Mr. Rich peacefully asked.
"Sir?" a now-confused Slick repeated.
"Say it," requested the older stallion, whose eyes were now fixed on a waking vision.
Slick said it.
In a way, it was a vulnerability shared by every adult pony. The nature of the approach could certainly vary, and the exact weakness could be found among multiple individuals... but in every case, the ultimate trigger could be seen as the same.
Mr. Rich was among the most ethical businessponies known. There was no degree of product shortage which could make him gouge on the price. He understood that "living wage" didn't mean "bare survival" and paid his employees accordingly. He never shortchanged, always tried to give back to the community, and there were any number of seniors who had lost some capacity for math and so didn't understand that their bill never should have added up to so little. He was, in just about every way, a good pony.
But his talent was still for business, purely so. And a pony whose talent was for music could potentially be lured to the darkest corners of the planet with the promise of a previously-undiscovered instrument. Researchers would find themselves doing anything for the last surviving copy of a book, while the kindest farmer could turn into a fast-kicking source of broken ribs if somepony tried to get away with a cutting from their newest seed.
Mr. Rich was an ethical businesspony, because every talent was tempered and directed by the pony who possessed it. But, starting from the moment he'd truly understood what Slick had been proposing, that pony had effectively stepped aside. The young unicorn was speaking to the mark, and doing so in words of dream.
For this was what the mark had chosen to hear.
I will be receiving goods at no price.
Nosing them out for no cost.
And somepony will pay me to do it.
Mr. Rich peacefully smiled.
"Where would you like me to sign?"
The boxes arrived three days later. Each was filled with hundreds of small, plain brown paper packets. Some were heavier than others, and each had its outline distorted by the shape of the enclosed feedback card. They were well-organized, clearly numbered, and solidly packed.
Mr. Rich nodded in approval.
"First group goes from the loading dock to the registers," he told Invoice. "We'll move the rest to the basement and bring the next group in line up each morning. I'll follow these boxes to the front and tell the cashiers what to do." And he smiled. "They've smuggled enough Hearth's Warming items in front of the colts and fillies who were going to receive them: they'll be able to slip things in without notice."
"It's one of the stranger skills in the job description," Invoice observed. "Watching to see which toy they want most, and then getting it out of the store without their ever seeing it..."
Mr. Rich nodded. "But it'll serve us well here." The warm smile gently settled onto middle-aged features. "Seven days, Invoice. Seven days of giving things away and being paid for it. This is going to be an experience..."
And for the nothing it turned out to be worth, he was right.
The first day... it could be said that in a way, the first day only really took place on the second, because ponies unpacked their purchases at home. They found the packet, curiously opened it, and -- well, the feedback cards did ask customers to drop things off on the next day, so the few who bothered to read them (as opposed to the smaller number which filled them out) might have gone with that. Others simply weren't going to make two trips that quickly, while some decided to just let things simmer for a while.
So the first day (the false one) mostly saw Mr. Rich venture out of his simple office a little more frequently than usual. He would watch his cashiers for the subtle snout movements and light surges of corona which indicated a packet had been planted. And he smiled, because he was happy. He felt as if his hooves might part from the store's floor, his body elevated by sheer joy. As if his mark was singing.
He held onto that feeling for the entire day and just before the end, it would come back one last time.
It was best to see his store in all of its aspects, and so Mr. Rich would work every shift over the course of a week. This meant there were days when he got to sleep in a little and others, like this one, where he arrived while spring Sun was still fairly low in the sky. It gave him a chance to walk through a town which wasn't quite awake yet, have a few quiet words with those getting ready to open their own operations, and bask in the gentle warmth of home.
On the second day, while still two blocks away from the flagship of the franchise, it allowed him to offer greetings, because he was a pony who knew his customers. Just about all of them, by name, as that too was an aspect of his mark.
"Good morning, Ms. Ample," he genially said. All of the surprise had been kept out of the greeting, as Ms. Ample wasn't a pony who was known for being up early or trotting towards anything at a measurable pace. 'Moving' was occasionally in question, at least until somepony brought the food out.
She turned. This took a while to start, and even longer to completely stop. The outlying districts generally required some time to settle down.
"Mr. Rich," the pegasus huffed. "I just left my house." (She was among the pegasi who lived on the ground. Realistically, there was the question as to whether any other option was available) "And I was coming to see you."
"To see --"
Which was when he noticed her expression. It hadn't been instantaneous. He normally paid close attention to how his customers were feeling, but with Ms. Ample, you needed to work a fair distance in before reaching the actual face.
"I," the mare declared, "have never been so insulted in all my life!"
He blinked a few times, closed his eyes and opened them again. Unfortunately, the only result was more of Ms. Ample, who had used the time to get that much closer or, more likely, had finished digesting something and thus metabolized across the distance.
"I insulted you," he tried. "I -- Ms. Ample, I haven't seen you for weeks. If I said or did something --"
"-- yesterday!" she cut him off. "It happened yesterday! I went to your store, to pick up my little treats --"
He made a mental note to restock the candy aisle.
"-- and when I got home, do you know what I found in my cart?"
"No," he honestly said. "I don't. What?"
In tones of ultimate offense, "A diet bar!"
As tactics went, blinking gained nothing from repetition.
"Somepony put a little brown paper packet in with my purchases," the aggrieved mare half-shouted, "and when I opened it, there it was! Plain as anything! It said it was diet, it said it was for diets, and if somepony put a diet bar in my cart..."
She took a deep breath. Several more seconds passed before the suburbs ceased expansion.
"...Mr. Rich -- are you trying to imply that I'm fat?"
He was, in many ways, rather quick-witted, and so a response immediately came to mind. He also wasn't stupid, and so the words Ms. Ample, you are the reason why my daughter's best friend, at the age of four, innocently asked me if clouds had a weight capacity never reached his actual mouth.
Instead, he went with "Barnyard Bargains is currently participating in a free sample program. We're giving away the same thing to everypony, and yesterday happened to be diet bars. I didn't even know that was the giveaway, because I've been leaving the packets for the customers. There was no offense meant, Ms. Ample, because deliberate offense requires intent. You've been upset by this, and I apologize for that, but nopony at the store intended to offend you in any way --"
"-- fat!" Ms. Ample nearly roared, and stomped her right forehoof. (Things shook. Most of them were some part of Ms. Ample.) "Nopony has ever called me fat!"
Which mostly proves that in many ways, the Equestrian language just isn't up to the task nearly made it as far as his throat. "Once again, I am sorry --"
"-- you want to apologize?" Her tones had dropped. "I know how you can apologize. I want the employee discount. Today. On all my purchases."
...well, the candy aisle wouldn't have been restocked yet, so short-term damage would be minimized. And given just how much of those yearly sales she represented...
(In theory, Bon-Bon would have seen the bits, but Ms. Ample didn't go to that shop. The smaller space gave her trouble and anyway, what she mostly wanted was bulk.)
"Done," he agreed. "If you like, I'll let you in a little early and ring you up myself."
"You'd better," she huffed.
He nodded and they both moved down the road, with Mr. Rich dropping his pace to match hers.
Eventually, "Mr. Rich?"
"Yes?" he asked, forcing his legs to move still more slowly.
Thoughtfully, "The discount is good for anything in the store, correct?"
"Yes," he repeated. The first ache from his hips made itself known, and so he learned it actually hurt to move so slowly.
"Oh. Good." Much more softly, "Sports equipment included, then."
"...what?"
"Nothing."
The giveaway had been the same for everypony. It didn't matter what the customer's state of health had been: if they'd shopped at Barnyard Bargains on the first day, they'd gone home with a very small diet bar. Some ponies had simply laughed it off, while others had treated it as a light snack, a number had kicked it away, others had passed theirs on to a friend (which was the first hint of an upcoming problem, completely missed), and a number...
How many had been offended, when no offense was intended? Not that many, at least not when expressed as a percentage. It was just that the fraction tended to look a lot larger when it manifested in the form of ponies who all felt they'd been weight-shamed and were lined up outside his office door to tell him so. Some of those ponies had been pretty large to begin with and thanks to Ms. Ample, nearly all of them agreed on the only thing which could make matters better.
There was, of course, an exception.
"There wasn't very much of it."
"It was a free sample, Pinkie. They tend to be small."
"Oh." The curly tail lightly swished. "And it could have been sweeter."
"It's a diet bar. There isn't much sugar." With mild desperation disguised as minor helpfulness, "You could put this on the feedback card."
"But it's more personal to tell you! So that's it. Too small and not sweet enough. Mr. Rich?"
"Yes, Pinkie?"
With bright eyes fully open, ears rotated forward and waiting, "Am I fat?"
He looked at her over the top of his desk, at the rounded cheeks and nicely-padded ribs. She was, strictly speaking, carrying roughly a tenth-bale more than she should and given that it was Pinkie, it was the way everypony expected her to look. You didn't trust a thin baker.
"No."
"Okay. So bigger diet bars. Because what's the point of eating low-calorie food if you can't have a lot of it? Bye!"
But with everypony else, he issued discount after discount, and watched his merchandise being pulled out the door.
As losses went, it was no worse than holding a standard sale, and the fact that those customers were getting the break on any item encouraged them to buy more than usual: he was partially making it up on quantity. The cost to the business was minimal, and what he was being paid to distribute the samples more than covered it.
But still... he'd given the herd something free, and the nature of that giveaway had offended a portion of it. When no offense had been meant at all.
And every time somepony pulled their cart and its discounted load up to the register, the packet for Day Two was subtly placed with their purchases.
Eventually, the second Bearer got to the front of the next day's line.
"I want to talk about the chapbook," the furious little unicorn immediately declared, pinkish energy closing the door behind her. "Now."
It was unusual to see Twilight angry, and almost unheard of to see her in a state where she was demanding something. But as this had been a form of publication...
"Yes," Mr. Rich sighed, and considered that he probably should have been expecting her hours ago. "We signed on to give out free samples, Ms. Sparkle: the same thing to everypony on a given day. And yesterday was a chapbook. We didn't know until this morning, because we've been saving everything for the customers --"
"A chapbook," the angry mare repeated. "I know. Did you know I don't usually carry them at the library, Mr. Rich? They're just so cheap! Releasing a book one chapter at a time, just so the publisher can build up more drama! Or cut a book off if it isn't selling well, leaving ponies with stories which will never be finished!" A slim forehoof tried to slam into his office floor and succeeded on technicality. "And if the book is finished, they release the hardcover and make ponies pay for it twice! Cheap bindings or, with this one, no bindings..."
He wondered how much headache medicine was left in that one desk drawer. Surely enough to get through the week. "It's just how some of them are done, isn't it? Instead of a yarn binding, it's one large sheet of paper, folded down. In this case, the folds resulted in sixteen pages. I was told that some forms of media were involved in the program, so a chapbook really isn't a surprise --"
"-- do you have any idea," the librarian nearly hissed, her tail accelerating in lash, "what this has done?"
She had been the twenty-eighth pony in line. The previous twenty-seven had provided some hints.
"Is this about the stallions?" he wearily asked.
"...what stallions?"
"The ones who are apparently on Page Seven," Mr. Rich told the mare, who had apparently found a book which she hadn't memorized on sight. "The ones where -- there's been parents in, and they all seem to feel that for something which is being marketed as a book for children --"
"Page Seven?" a confused librarian asked.
"Yes."
"The two who were at the end of the dock?"
"Yes..."
"They were just standing next to each other. What's wrong with that?"
"Apparently," Mr. Rich wearily said, "any two ponies standing next to each other --" which was when he fully remembered who was in his office. "-- never mind. What is the problem, Ms. Sparkle? The language?"
"Well, the vocabulary is fairly advanced for the intended age group," the mare considered. "But that's usually a good thing overall. And it forces them to use dictionaries."
She missed the curses. So at least one pony in town didn't recognize that segment of Griffonant. "The quality of the writing?"
The narrow rib cage puffed out as much as it could. "It's not a bad start. But that's all it is, and nopony seems to understand that! Did you know I recently dedicated a notice board in the library to Reader Reviews? I had ponies in all day yesterday, posting comments on the chapbook!" Frantically, "How can you write a full review of a story based on one chapter?"
"I honestly don't know," he admitted. "But I can't ask them to stop, either. Ms. Sparkle, if there's a problem I can solve --"
"-- sixteen pages," she said.
"Yes." Not without a certain valiance, "Folded from a single sheet."
"And then it stops."
"Well, it's a free sample, Ms. Sparkle. They're small. The publisher probably wants to know how readers feel about the story before they commit to printing the rest --"
"-- it stops right there. Sixteen pages and it stops...!"
Which was when she reared up.
The slim forehooves landed on his desk. Her nostrils flared as breath after breath went in and out of the froth-coated form of a mare who was rapidly approaching hyperventilation.
"It stops," she desperately repeated as the corona began to build around her horn and frantic eyes stared directly into his soul. "It stops right there. 'And they were rendered as --' Rendered as what, Mr. Rich? Somepony has to know, please, somepony has to and you're the one who nosed them all into the world! Rendered as what?"
He'd wound up taking the rest of that day off, mostly because somepony had to haul Ms. Sparkle's half-conscious form onto the train. Fortunately, she was exceptionally light and the publisher was in Canterlot, so the matter wound up being settled after a quick private talk with the editor, most of which concerned how easy it was to allow the little unicorn a quick glance at the proofs. Especially as opposed to, say, telling her 'no' and in doing so, getting to find out exactly what somepony who was capable of levitating Ursa Minors could potentially do in the name of reaching the proofs. After that, it had just been a matter of getting her to stop offering revision suggestions and when that had failed, he'd finally reminded her that Spike had a bedtime and if she didn't get on the next train, she was going to miss it. (He was already pushing the limit on Diamond.)
It meant missing nearly all of that day's sample distribution, and so he didn't find out what the problem was until after Sun had been raised again.
Mr. Rich took a long look at the little sphere which had been placed onto his desk. It was mostly red and white, with a hint of orange swirls. It also happened to smell enticingly like fresh-cut grass.
"So that was yesterday's?" he asked the raspberry-hued mare on the other side of the desk. "It's the first chance I've had to see it."
"Yes," the mare tightly said, and glanced at the silent unicorn filly who was standing on her right. No further words emerged.
"I usually don't see you during the day," Mr. Rich tried.
"Yes."
Or in daylight. Actually, you usually don't leave the bar. Some ponies aren't sure that it's ever been closed, much less if you've ever truly been away from the counter...
"I hope this is something I can resolve," he pleasantly said. "What seems to be the problem, Berry?"
The bartender took a slow breath. Looked at her daughter again. Back to the little sphere.
"Do you know what that is?"
"No," he admitted. "Other than it being yesterday's giveaway. I wound up in Canterlot --"
"-- it's laundry detergent," she interrupted. "I didn't know that at first. Ruby did the shopping, and they gave her the sample."
"There's a feedback card," Mr. Rich helpfully supplied. "And instructions, where they're needed."
"Yes, I've seen them," Berry tightly countered. "Trot through the right part of town -- say, going behind your store, heading towards my house -- and you'll find instructions and feedback cards all over the road. A lot of ponies don't read, Mr. Rich. I put up notices saying If your tail hits the ground, so will you and nopony seems to recognize what that means. They open the packets and the cards fall out. And if I give somepony a free drink, they stop caring about what happens to the mug, because the drink was free. Do you understand that? So my daughter did the same thing which a lot of adults did, because there was a line behind us and we just happened to be first. She opened the packet and found a small object which smelled of fresh-cut grass, one of the most enticing scents there is..."
"I don't understand," Mr. Rich said or rather, the businesspony in him did. The parent, who had been resting, abruptly jerked into full wakefulness and made a desperate gallop towards the control center of his brain.
"Ruby," Berry Punch calmly said, "tell the nice stallion what happened next."
The little filly opened her mouth. Mr. Rich's galloping inner parent had all four legs tangle, sending the intangible body crashing into something which seemed to control the jaw, which at least explained why that had stopped working.
"Break the bubbles with your horn, Ruby."
The filly nodded, then began to happily jump around the office. Soap popped.
"Employee discount, Mr. Rich," the bartender softly said.
"...yes."
"And let me know if you get that detergent in permanently. Her breath's never been fresher."
As far as Mr. Rich was concerned, the Day Four problem wasn't due to ponies lacking in imagination. But they were a herd species, and so there was a frequent tendency for large groups to wind up imagining the same thing. And once an idea had caught, it often took a rather rare specimen to imagine something else.
Take, for example, the naming of scandals. Decades had passed since the break-in at the Tarter Hotel: most of the participants had died and once all of the details had come out, it was possible that a few of those fatalities had been from sheer embarrassment. There had been only a single botched robbery, every aspect of the affair it had eventually revealed was over -- and yet every time a political scandal broke out, the newspapers would title it by taking the name of the location, then adding 'Tarter'. (The exception was anything which took place across a border: in that case, the concluding syllable would be 'Stile', and Mr. Rich usually discovered something had happened when he spotted the exceptionally small form of Ponyville's foremost accessibility construction expert sulking past the newsstand with his eyes down or rather, more down than usual.) The editors of multiple publications had gone through the original thought within what might have been minutes of each other, and now nopony could imagine anything else -- even though more than a few readers were annoyed by the sheer banality of repetition. And with Ponyville, with all the weirdness which permeated the town and occasionally erupted from the soil... the population had collectively chosen a description-ending word for that, and applied it at far too many opportunities.
Present a thousand ponies with the same problem and you might get fifty solutions -- but do it in a group and there would be nine hundred ponies following the same one. And when it came to getting things wrong...
That, perhaps, was the part of the problem which reverberated through that week. The tendency of actions to echo, whether that mirroring was deliberate or unknown. And when Mr. Rich, through comparing and contrasting the accounts which were screamed at him from Sun-raising to lowering, eventually backtracked what had taken place on Day Four...
Instructions, for example. Customers would march into the store with a list of things which had gone wrong with the now-broken device they wanted to return for a full refund because the failure was in no way their fault and because that list had to be written on something, they would have used the otherwise-untouched manual. In the case of the samples, he'd already seen proof that very few ponies were paying attention to the comment cards, and this was an item which came with instructions. Some of those little sheets had undoubtedly been shredded when the packet was opened, while others wound up misplaced or lost. But this was a recipe and in a town where family recipes were often guarded more zealously than family heirlooms, he suspected that the vast majority of recipients had simply ignored everything.
The fourth day's sample, observed in the latency stage, could be described as a rectangular knot of thin, brittle-seeming, rather dense whitish strands -- at least, for those who were only observing it by eye. A simple inhale taken in the knot's vicinity would identify its true nature immediately: dried pasta. But as all the samples were new in some way, this foodstuff had something special about it, and that uniqueness was initially revealed only to those who bothered to read the instructions.
The recipients who allowed their eyes to roam across the little piece of enclosed paper would learn that this pasta had been hypercompressed. That if they placed it into water and allowed everything to reach a boil, it would expand to the point where a single rectangle served as a full meal. It was, Mr. Rich considered, a rather brilliant way of managing shelf space, and he certainly would have considered carrying the product -- even though most of the pasta's flavor seemed to come from whatever else the pony had been eating at the time.
But ponies didn't read the instructions. As Berry had said, they discarded, lost, ignored, or failed to recognize that there were instructions present at all. And all of the samples had been small.
The herd had seen a knot of pasta, one which was less than a fourth the diameter of a hoof, and the majority had collectively decided that it was, at best, a single mouthful. There was no point to making one bite of pasta. But if they weren't going to use it... well, didn't everypony know somepony who might enjoy some pasta on that evening?
And so samples were redistributed, because generosity was one of the virtues. Some ponies found themselves with enough of the knots to require the largest boiler they had: those who had the biggest families needed to use multiple burners. Pots were filled about halfway up with the dense little whitish rectangles, because pasta expanded and you also needed to leave some room for the water.
Which was to say, normal pasta expanded. Normally.
Herd instinct. Perhaps that was part of why so many ponies began preparing dinner at the same hour. The same minute. Putting water into the pot, turning up the burner, waiting...
The results, because the town had already collectively decided on the description-ending word for such events, came to be known as The Noodle Incident. It would be brought up over and over again across the years, emerging from memory every time something exceptionally strange happened, and eventually became a shorthoof term for anything mundane which went wrong in an spectacular way.
But when it came to what had happened after the water began to boil, it was surprisingly hard to find anypony who was willing to provide the full details.
Three exceptionally tight-lipped fillies were glaring at him from the other side of his desk. Most of that had to be done on an angle, and all of them were performing occasional jumps just so he could see that they were glaring properly.
"This may be hard to believe," Mr. Rich finally told them, "but I was a colt once."
The collective glare intensified.
"And when you're young," he added, "sometimes, all you think about is getting that part of your life over with." He couldn't quite manage to repress the sigh. "Which is a mistake, by the way. But it's a mistake I remember. Being a colt who was thinking too much about becoming a stallion. So there's a part of me which knows what that's like. I even have some idea of how it might feel to be a filly who's dreaming of the day she's a mare."
They weren't exactly going to get a mark for glaring, either. The bouncing was definitely subtracting something, especially when he kept mistakenly refocusing his eyeline on the bow.
"I also have a daughter," he reminded them. "Of your age. One who wanted to see that restricted movie just as much as I'm guessing you three did --" and noticed the anger surge from the pegasus, something which was almost enough to get her mouth open "-- don't deny it. Please. If there's any reason why this happened, that would be the most immediate, wouldn't it?"
He waited.
Finally, the little unicorn's eyes winced shut, and the two-tone mane vibrated with embarrassment.
"Because I did get to see the sample, eventually," he sighed. "Toothpaste as makeup. To make yourself look more mature, wasn't that the advertising claim on the little tube? So you thought that if you got enough discarded tubes together because some ponies kicked them away immediately, then used everything you'd found, without ever asking how it worked..."
Or, he thought as the earth pony's tail drooped, ever saying to yourselves 'Y'know, since we live in a small town and we've had a lot of times where we've tried t' use the cinema for mark-findin', includin' that one where the flamin' reels finally landed in the fountain, Ah think the ticket-taker kinda might recognize us no matter what we try.'
"...you'd be able to claim you were over the minimum age and see the film. Would that be correct?"
The pegasus' eyes flashed with fury. The unicorn's head went down. The earth pony miserably nodded.
"And because you used everything..."
Silence.
"Yes," Mr. Rich eventually said. "Well... yes, in a way, you could call it a cosmetic effect. It depends partially on the diet, you see, and the mineral content of the soil for your favorite grazing pasture. But that's why tooth whiteners are also considered to be makeup. To make ponies seem younger. Because as we age, unless we're exceptionally careful about what we eat... yes," he concluded. "Well. Perhaps if you'd used somewhat less?"
"Whtnrs," Scootaloo not-quite said.
"You're a little hard to understand with your lips pressed together," Mr. Rich reasonably pointed out.
Her expression instantly (and given the required lip movements, unfortunately) flashed into something resembling a snarl.
"Whiteners!" Scootaloo demanded from between chocolate-brown teeth. "We want whiteners! The overnight kind!"
He sighed.
"Tell the cashiers to give you the employee discount. Only on the whiteners."
"For free!" Scootaloo abruptly shouted. "We should get them for free --"
"-- did any of you read the directions on the tube?"
"But we --"
"How about the part right under the advertising? 'Makes teeth browner.' And in smaller print, 'Not to be used more than twice per day.' Do you remember seeing that part?"
And if not for the sound of three heads going down, there would been silence.
"The employee discount," he told them. "Please send the next children in." Because herd instinct still existed, every filly and colt wanted to see that movie just because they weren't allowed to, and the Crusaders had simply been towards the front of the line.
"...betcha Diamond got t' go," Apple Bloom muttered as she nosed the door open.
Well, she won't go today. The whiteners did require a night to take full effect, and his daughter had no intention of being seen in public before that happened.
(Which provided time for reviewing her savings. She'd never been able to sneak into the cinema through the back exits, but there was a chance she'd been preparing for a bribe.)
He had the early shift on the seventh day, and so wound up looking at the muttering line through the front glass of his still-closed store. Waiting, as time mercilessly moved towards the point where every narrow-eyed pony in it would be blaming him.
"At least there's less of them this time," Invoice pointed out. "Nowhere near as many complaints as for the Day Five sample, when you think about it."
He didn't say anything, and so the plum-hued unicorn awkwardly forced the oddly-weighty conversation to shift forward with but one pony pulling on the harness.
"And did you notice that each sample's had its own fallout?"
"Yes, Invoice," Mr. Rich carefully said. "It's been lined up outside my office door. In fact, on most days, it made it out of the employee section and had to make its way through Cookware."
The unicorn swallowed. "That's... not how I meant it, Mr. Rich. After the diet bars, the exercise equipment started selling. We're out of tooth whiteners. The chapbook, that mostly wound up at the library, but we were selling all kinds of cleaning supplies after the Noodle Incident, and the laundry soap... I can't get the supplier to ship replacements for the stomach tonics any faster. Every time we've passed these out, something happens afterwards. And portions of it are turning into profit, even when we're selling so much at the employee discount."
"True," Mr. Rich admitted (while privately thinking that the profit lost something once the accounting book took its debit entry in the form of a huge red-ink slash of DAILY MIGRAINE).
"And I'm sure some ponies are coming back every day just to see what we give away next."
"Yes, Invoice," Mr. Rich replied, allowing the false patience to suffuse every word. "Ponies move to this town just to see what the Bearers do next. It's not necessarily a good thing."
Another gulp, which was eventually followed by "And when we look at what we passed out yesterday..."
They both looked at the discarded piece, resting quietly on the sales counter. It was something which required some mutual squinting.
"Unknowingly passed out," Mr. Rich clarified.
"Well... yes," Invoice reluctantly agreed. "Because they've all been for the customers. In the sealed brown paper packets."
"Would you please lift that for me?" Mr. Rich requested. "Hold it up to the light that's coming through the front windows? Sun's at a good angle."
The unicorn's horn ignited. The tiny thing floated into the sunbeam, and both squints became narrower.
"It's an interesting idea," Invoice considered.
Mr. Rich said nothing.
"Because usually," the unicorn unwisely continued, "you have to go there for a preview. Um. To the cinema, I mean."
The silence, with mildly vicious intent, stretched out and began looking for extra tail room.
"And this way, the preview comes to you," Invoice temporarily finished.
The franchise owner took a slow breath.
"So how many frames would you say that is? On that single piece of filmstrip."
More squinting.
"Twelve."
"So timewise, that's about..."
"Half a second."
The muttering from outside was getting louder.
"Can you actually see what's going on?"
"No," Invoice admitted. "But we could always load up a projector."
"We don't sell projectors," Mr. Rich noted.
"No, it's too much of a specialty item... Borrow?"
"How many ponies in town," Mr. Rich patiently asked, "own projectors?"
Invoice thought that over. "The cinema, obviously. Plus the schools have one each." A long pause. "And Stiff Neck keeps asking Purchasing to order parts for his. He collects films. For home viewing."
Eventually, "...how?"
"The way he explained it," Invoice said, "the reels eventually wind up at the studios again and go into vaults. So it's possible to buy them directly, if you know the right ponies. But it's very expensive, it takes up a lot of room, and -- well, the way he talks, I'm not even sure he likes films very much. His neighbors told me that they can hear him late at night, ranting at his personal screen about how bad they are. Like the movies can hear him."
"So he spends thousands of bits on being able to watch films at home," Mr. Rich tried, "just so he can hate them more directly?"
"Yes."
Eventually, both stallions managed to stop thinking about that.
"So less than a dozen projectors," Mr. Rich finally concluded. "Quite a bit less. And everypony who shopped here yesterday got twelve frames from the same movie."
"Yes, Mr. Rich."
"...check the basement inventory, then bring up all the magnifying glasses we have and tell the cashiers to get ready for a lot of employee discounts. Oh, and see how much clear tape we've got left."
"Tape?" Invoice asked. "Why do you want --"
"-- because the feedback card said this is all from the same movie, along with wanting ponies to form an impression on whether they'd want to see it based on twelve frames. I know that because I actually read it, which might make me the only pony who did. And I really don't think the studio ran off copies of the same twelve frames several hundred times. So given that we're probably looking at a single cut-up reel and I know how some of the ponies in this town think, somepony's going to be buying tape. In bulk. And probably dropping by Stiff Neck's house later, unless that pony happens to be Stiff Neck, which would at least save some time."
He looked out the front windows again.
"Oh, and see how we're fixed for reading glasses."
"Mr. Rich?"
"They're not narrow-eyed because they're angry. They're narrow-eyed because they've been squinting. And they're angry. Also, send one of the interns to Dr. Ocular's shop and tell him to get ready for a long day." Mr. Rich slowly shook his head. "I'm very tired of going in blind, Invoice..."
And then blue eyes widened or rather, widened as much as they could.
"Ritty!" The coppery pegasus looked up. "Open Register One. I need some mane shampoo." If only because it was the closest thing which would actually be used.
"Sir?"
"Register One, Ritty. Please. And ring me up at the employee discount, of course. Hang on..." Nimble teeth worked carefully and after a few seconds, so did his legs. "There. Receipt, please -- thank you. And now, as I happen to be a customer, subtly nudge in today's free sample. Let's see..."
He got the packet open after a while, read the card (which temporarily set the information acquisition rate at 100% for the first and only time) and carefully sniffed at the contents. Then his tongue went down.
"Mr. Rich?"
"Just a minute. It's a slow dissolve... There." He nodded, mostly to himself. "Well, that's a new flavor. 'Rambutan'. They say it's fruit-flavored, but I've never seen the fruit."
"I have," a slightly-stunned Ritty chimed in. "They're... furry. Well, they would be furry if fur was made of rubber -- they taste better than they look, sir."
"Furry?" He shrugged. "This looked edible. But so did the detergent."
Nopony said a word.
"It's a good taste," Mr. Rich decided. "I wouldn't mind trying the real thing. And I would definitely carry this in the candy aisle." Another nod. "Well, it's not going to find favor with everypony because as we've been reminded over and over this week, there's no such thing as worldwide acceptance. But a piece of free candy? I think that'll go over well enough. So we'll finish everything out on a quiet note, and what feedback cards we have will be picked up the day after tomorrow." He glanced at the nearest clock. "Open the doors in eight minutes. I'll be in my office. Waiting."
"...all right, Mr. Rich." Ritty's feathers rustled, and the young stallion put on a brave smile. "As you said, it's just candy."
"Oh, and send back some headache medicine. On my personal ledger. At the employee discount."
And then it was over.
He had the late shift on the eighth day, something which had allowed him to sleep in a little, get some degree of bearings back. Extra time spent in simply ruminating over his meal, and thinking everything over.
Somepony would show up to collect the cards, and after that... well, Mr. Rich had to be honest with himself: he wasn't completely sure. Under the one hoof, the week seemed to have been filled with just about nothing but trouble, but under one of the other hooves... as Invoice had noticed, it had led to some sales. And no matter how he looked at it...
I was receiving goods at no cost. Giving them out for no price. And somepony was paying me to do it.
The very thought made it feel as if his hooves were about to part from the cobblestones, borne into the air by the lifting power of sheer joy. As if his mark was singing.
It wasn't so bad, was it? Getting bits to give things away. We could fix the problems, all of us together, if we worked on it long enough. We'd just be getting paid for --
-- and lost in the distraction of inner visions, he nearly trotted into the back of the line.
Then he realized there was a line, at nearly the exact instant the final pony in it (for now) recognized his presence. A recognition which was moving forward. Quickly.
And then he remembered that Barnyard Bargains was still four blocks away.
What seemed to be most of Ponyville's adult mare population turned to glare at him, and the shouting began with the one he'd almost impacted, a pony he needed an extra second to recognize because he'd never seen Ms. Ample in exercise clothing before. The desperately tight garments did a surprisingly good job at bringing her diameter down by a few tail strands, with the exception of where they were beginning to fray from the intense inner pressure.
The mare, whose newborn exercise routine had made her late to the fray, sweating more than she ever had in her life, almost instantly rounded on him.
She said something. Something which he would hear over and over again as he slowly made his way to the flagship store, head down and tail low, flattened ears failing to block out any of it. Shuffling forward to face his doom, at least once he'd checked in and select portions of said doom decided how long it was willing to wait in the line.
Because there was such a thing as herd instinct. Ponies who thought of the same thing, at the same time, and then came together. He was used to that.
And then you had mares.
"Are you trying to make us fat?"
That was worse.
"It was pretty nice," the baker said, which stood out because she was the only mare in the line who wasn't screaming at him.
"Thank you, Pinkie." Just keep trotting...
"I'd like to make a cookie with it. Are you going to carry the real thing?"
"We don't really do much produce, Pinkie."
"But there wasn't very much of it." In tones of ultimate offense, "For candy."
"...it was a free sample, Pinkie."
"SO?"
Slick Deal considered it to be a form of exercise. Ignite his horn, push the energy into the comment card box through the mail slot, then blindly probe around until he managed to get a card out into the light of his little Canterlot office. It gave him something to do, especially since the number of cards wasn't as high as he could have wished. Still, it was more than they'd been receiving from passing samples out on street corners. And once he got to see Mr. Rich again... if he could just talk the chain's owner into spreading the system to every store...
His corona bumped the edge of something. He automatically tried to lift it.
Then he tried harder.
Eventually, he wound up just taking the box's lid off and staring at the multicolored sheaf of papers which earth pony strength had managed to shove through the slot. At the sealed envelope attached to the front.
The sheaf consisted of names and addresses, divided up by hue, and there were hundreds of them. The envelope was addressed to him.
Enclosed please find master color guide. For example, pink means that pony is willing to receive and fully review candy at home. There will be some postage costs, but you will gain the benefit of a detailed report. On the whole, this may do you more good.
Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this program. I have found it both instructive and profitable. Please let me know when you are next in Ponyville so that we may speak about how your business is proceeding. And in order to insure that our meeting is a truly pleasant one, please don't schedule your visit for at least six moons.
Sincerely,
Mr. Rich
P.S.
And that was where words ended. There was simply a blur of ink, as if somepony had initially written something down, then thought better of it and crossed the sentence out over and over again with increasing mouth pressure, until the quill had nearly broken through the sheet.
Slick slowly levitated the paper, brought it up to the window, and squinted into the sunlight as he tried to make out the last of the original impressions. And after a while, he thought he had it, but...
"That can't be it," the young unicorn whispered. "'P.S.: herds are STUPID'?"
