Flim and Flam and Uncle Scam
“You know, boys, I’ll admit that I was a bit skeptical at first. But I’ve got to admit, you’ve done a bang-up job! I see what I’ve taught you sure hasn’t gone to waste!”
An orange-jasmine buck clucked his tongue and adjusted the lapels of his swanky blue business suit. He ran a hoof over his slicked back red mane and continued to walk around the strange contraption, clucking his tongue in approval. It looked much like a red train engine, but with the four wagon wheels of a drawn carriage and an array of dials, knobs, windows and pipes all affixed to the back of the vehicle. The buck jumped onto a platform at the front and stood at a podium that stood proudly at the fore.
“A nice touch! I’ve always said that anything worth saying is worth saying from one of these babies! Hah, you boys have really outdone yourself! I remember when it was just the two of you and that little cider stand. You boys have sure come a long way.”
A pair of bucks with matching white and red manes and a set of striped blue and white carnival shirts stood at the base of the machine, beaming with a tangible pride. Both tipped their straw pork pie hats with salespony grins. “We learned from the best, Uncle Scam!” said Flim.
“And we’re going to take those lessons to all of Equestria!” continued the mustachioed Flam.
“I don’t doubt it, boys!" said Scam, looking back at the deck with a nostalgic twinkle in his eye, “And is that little beauty in the back what I think she is?”
The brothers Flim and Flam nodded as one.
“Well I’ll be. You boys really did listen to what I taught you. You take good care of her, you hear?”
Uncle Scam hopped off of the machine as the brothers replaced him, standing side by side on the platform. Their peculiar mode of transport stood at the ready on a simple dirt road that ran parallel to a simpler wooden fence. A small path lead down to Flim and Flam’s modest shack about a few hundred meters from where the three ponies were assembled. Even from here, the scraps of metal tubing, broken clocks, and warped frames left over from the brother's hard work was clearly visible, nearly dwarfing their home.
“Don’t you worry, Uncle Scam!” Flim swung his hoof enthusiastically. “We’re going to bring this show to every city in Equestria! Nopony will even come close to matching the quality of our product!”
“And we owe it all to you!” continued Flam, “And as soon as FlimFlam Cider is a household name, we’ll pay you back triple your investment! It’s the least we could do for all the funding you’ve given us!”
Uncle Scam chuckled and waved his hoof dismissively. “Oh, you boys! Stop worrying yourself over that! I’m more than well off enough to lend a few bits to family in need! Just recoup the losses on that blank check I gave you and make your names synonymous with top quality product! That’s all I ever wanted from you two.”
The two bucks tipped their hats and spoke simultaneously. “You got it, Uncle Scam!”
“Now, take your big, um… Super…”
“The Super Speedy Cider Squeezey 5000!”
“Yeah, take your monolithic juicer and find your Opportunity!”
Flim and Flam grinned mile-long smiles as they turned in place. Flam looked at Flim, Flim looked at Flam.
“Ready, Flim?”
“Ready, Flam!”
With calculated aplomb the brothers turned and pointed their horns at the daunting array of mechanical doodads jutting out from the Super Speedy Cider Squeezey 5000's back end. A visible green glow swallowed up each of their horns.
“Let’s bing bang zam!”
Flim and Flam fired twin lances of green energy, both received by different steam pipes reaching from the top of the machine. The pipes juddered to life, followed shortly by the rest of the machine as dials turned, pipes steamed, and the whole thing came alive in a shuddering, melodious ruckus. Flim stood at the podium and swung his hoof out dramatically, shouting down the endless road with careless impunity.
“And show these ponies a world of delectable cider!”
“That’s Opportunity!” added Flam.
Uncle Scam waved them off as the Squeezey chugged along at the pace of a lazy parade float. “See you later, boys, when you’re rich and famous! Don’t be a stranger, now! Find that Opportunity!” With a smile, he turned and trotted casually towards Flim and Flam’s shack.
When his back was turned, Flam looked nervously to his brother. “Say, brother of mine, do you remember where we put the speed controls on the Squeezey?”
Flim was staring at the ground crawling past at the pace of a crippled snail. “It was in the designs! I thought we put it by the podium! Where is it?”
“Here, brother!” Flam had taken hold of a giant lever that rested to the right of the couch that rested in the back of the platform. There were notches on its base, corresponding to various speeds. At present, the lever was at a notch marked, ‘Milking it.’ Flam was wrestling with the lever to move it. “Help me!”
Flim ran to his brother and grabbed the lever, grunting as he shoved. “It’s not budging! Did we make this part out of rust, brother?”
“If I recall correctly, brother of mine, we used the most luxurious, smooth, and rust resistant metal we could buy! I recall because we were wondering if the lock mechanism might have been redundant, but safety-”
“The lock mechanism!” Flim put a hoof to his face. His horn glowed a bright green, as did the simple fastener at the base of the lever. Flam pulled when the lock was off, and the lever slid a notch up to, ‘Musical Exit.’
“Phew!” Flam wiped a bead of sweat off his brow as the Squeezey picked up pace to a calm trot.
“FLIM! FLAM!”
Flim’s hat spun on his head and Flam’s moustache straightened in terror at the bellow. Slowly they turned to where the door to their shack had been kicked down. Framed in the doorway was Uncle Scam, a wooden plank in his magical grip and a sheet of paper in his jaws. From this far away, it seemed so tiny. But when the brothers had held it in their hooves, the amount of zeros that came before the word, ‘bits,’ made it seem so incredibly large.
Uncle Scam began to gallop towards the Squeezey.
“We’re going to need it a little faster than that!” shouted Flim, and Flam pulled the lever a few notches until the base read, ‘Angry Mob.’ The fields of grass began to fly by as the machine picked up speed.
Flim stuck his head out the side of the machine nervously, watching Uncle Scam close the distance. “Uncle Scam, we can explain! This isn’t what it looks like! We- AAH!”
Uncle Scam made a massive leap, trailing bits of what could have been either shreds of paper or froth behind him. Scam hooked a foreleg on the side of the Squeezey and locked Flim in a death glare, his back hooves scrambling along the ground. The word, ‘Bill,’ along with a very large number could be seen on the paper in his mouth before he spoke, letting the damning invoice fly away on the wind.
“You never told me how much this bucket of bolts cost!” Uncle Scam threw a hoof over the side, which Flim nervously grasped in his magic and pushed away.
“Y-y-you gave us a blank check to make her! And we needed quality ingredients if we wanted-OW!” Flim jerked as the plank in Scam’s telekinesis slammed down on his head. Flam shakily pulled the lever another notch until it read, ‘Tax Collectors.’
Uncle Scam’s hindlegs flew out from under him, but he kept a deathly steel grip on the accelerating machine, beating Flim’s head with the plank. “That ain’t how I brung you boys! Uncle Scam’s boys don’t never run a sham! You’re no better’n those other two!”
Flim desperately peeled Uncle Scam's legs off the machine, preventing the maddened uncle from pulling himself up. “It’s -OW!- No scam, Uncle! We said-OW!" explained Flim through the assault on his skull, "Ow! That we’d pay you back and we will! We met a buck named Credit who promised to get us all of our-OW!- supplies, and we never knew how much they -OW!- cost until today!”
“You idiots!”
Flam pulled the lever back as far as he could, until it reached the final notch. Hastily scrabbled in that notch were the words, ‘Uncle Scam figured out how much of his fortune we spent on building the Squeezey and now he’s out for our blood.’ After pulling the lever, Flam hopped to Flim’s side and wrapped his magic around Scam’s other hoof.
The brothers spoke together. “We’ll pay you back, Uncle Scam!”
Nearly rabid with rage, Uncle Scam teetered off and onto the road. Flim stuck his neck out to peer behind one side of the Squeezey, Flam on the other side.
“Flam!” threatened Uncle Scam, jaw distended with rage, “Flim! You’re going to pay! One way or another, I’ll get my due!”
The two brothers gulped and went to the couch situated in the Squeezey’s center, focusing on steering the machine.
“And that’s…”
“Opportunity?”
-
The brothers Flim and Flam didn’t stop until they were just a few minutes outside of Fillydelphia. Under the fading light, the two of them parked their vehicle and stopped for their first breather since the close escape. Flam leaned on the podium, grooming his moustache nervously. The two brothers sat in silence for a minute as Flam’s strokes steadily increased in pace, combing faster and faster.
“Careful, brother,” called Flim from his lounging position on the couch. His hooves were splayed across its back and his hat lay over his eyes. “You’ll pull it right off. Then how will ponies tell us apart?”
“Maybe we should return to Scam.”
Flim scrambled off of the couch, landing in a heap. Picking himself of the floor, he dusted himself off and took three steps towards Flam. “Have you completely lost it, brother? He’ll skin us alive! And that’s if we’re lucky enough to have coats worth any good amount of money. There is no way we could return to him until we can pay him back for the bits he spent on us.”
“But how can we earn such a gigantic sum of money, especially when we’ll be running from him half the time? Perhaps if we offer him the Squeezey, he can sell the parts and earn back some of the costs?”
“But that wouldn’t even come close to covering what we used up trying to get the Super Speedy Cider Squeezey to work right. The testing, the prototypes… we were already in over our heads before we even got past the Standard Speedy Cider Squeezey! No, we’re going back with enough bits and then some, or we aren’t going back at all!”
Flam simply looked away, tugging fervently at his facial hair.
Flim sighed. He moved to the back of the machine, tapping the great metal engine with a dull thunking sound. “Brother, let me ask you a question: When you look at the Squeezey, our Squeezey, the Super Speedy Cider Squeezey 5000, what do you see?”
Flam put away his comb and looked over. He put his hooves on the podium behind him and leaned back as Flim continued.
“Do you see a failure? Do you see a bad choice? Do you see a poor investment or, worse, a low quality product? Or do you see-”
“Opportunity," sighed Flam.
Flim let a smile crease his features. He threw a hoof to his ear. “What was that, brother?”
Flam allowed himself the ghost of a smile. "Opportunity."
“Say it again!”
“Opportunity!” shouted Flam, listening to the pleasant echo of the word.
Opportunity… opportunity… opportunity…
It surrounded Flim and Flam as they stared into the empty evening. For a moment, both of them completely forgot about Uncle Scam and their massive, looming debt. They allowed themselves a visit to their favourite place. Their thoughts were both swept up to the future, of the fortunes they would earn and the places they would go and the ponies that would fall over themselves for just a taste of their cider. The troubles here were nothing but victories the brothers Flimflam will remember with fondness after they have crawled to the top of the world. Flim cleared his throat loudly. He stepped to the edge of the platform and swept his hoof in a wide arc.
“With every glass of cider sold…”
Flam went to the edge opposite his brother and mirrored the sweep, closing his eyes as he answered the line with his deeper voice. Their quiet memory echoed through an empty night, with nothing but the rabbits in the field to hear them.
“You’ll earn another piece of gold!”
“When everypony wants your drink…”
“You’ll hardly have the time to think!”
“You shall not waver or sell out!”
“You’ll do it right, boys, have no doubt!”
“A conman only offers swill…”
“But I know you never will!”
“And when you’re old, weak, weary and grey?”
“I’ll know you both did it the proper way!”
The two brothers looked at each other. There was no routine, no steps to remember. This song wasn't for tempting customers or attracting a crowd. But they still put their hooves around each other's shoulders for the finish. They pulled their heads back and held their hats out with extended hooves.
“And that’s Opportuniiiiityyyyyy!”
“Goodnight, Brother.”
“Goodnight, Brother.”
Flim and Flam trotted over to their couch, found a comfortable position, and went to bed for the night.
