Convention Hotelby Admiral BiscuitChaptersArrivalCourtshipIceSlalomShowerA Kirin Walks Into a BarArrivalConvention Hotel Admiral Biscuit Chapter 1: Arrival They came to Baltimore from all over, arriving by various means. Some of them flew, some took airplanes, and many arrived by train. A few took buses—chartered, if enough were clustered geographically, or Greyhound otherwise. A few arrived by car, and one arrived by boat, sailing into the Inner Harbor and mooring at the docks just below Federal Hill. The first group gave the hotel staff pause. They'd known about the convention, of course, but they hadn't really been prepared for the first pony who bumped her muzzle on the revolving door, paused long enough for it to hit her in the rump, and then darted forward and out, casting a wary glance backwards at the contraption. She looked around the lobby, taking in the little alcove with computers that anybody could use. The long open fireplace on the opposite wall, currently not lit in deference to the humid July day. One of the clerks motioned for her to come over, worried perhaps that she might set hoof on the escalator. It wasn't proper to think she wouldn't expect the stairs to move, but it was clearly obvious she hadn't expected the door to feed her into the hotel. A few other patrons, the clerk noticed, were also studying the pony, while trying not to be obvious about it. That was understandable, and if their staff meeting was any indication, soon they would have plenty of ponies to goggle. The mare made her decision, and with a flick of her tail, she clacked over to the desk. When she'd arrived, she hooked her forehooves on the desk and pulled herself up, just enough that her head stuck over the top. “Hi! I'm Bottlecap.” “I'm Kaia.” She hesitated for a moment; normally her script would have her asking if the pony—if Bottlecap—had a reservation, but she probably did. “Is your room reserved under 'Bottlecap?' “I hope so.” Kaia's fingers danced on the keyboard, and found no reservation. Frowning, she tried again, this time just entering 'Cap' in the field for the last name. Still no result. Comma 'Bottle' did provide a result: Pony, Bottlecap. Gender tagged 'prefer not to say.' Already, she had an inkling how the day might wind up going. “Do you have any form of identification, Miss?” She wasn't entirely sure if Bottlecap was all one name or two and didn't want to risk offending her guest. “And a form of payment.” “Certainly.” She ducked her head down and came back up with a passport, visa, and credit card all held between her lips. It only took a moment to enter the relevant information into the computer. The visa, she noted, had her name listed as Bottle Cap, while the passport simply said Bottlecap. She passed the cards back. “Do you have a floor preference? You're booked for harbor view; we have rooms available on the sixth through fourteenth floors.” “Might as well get a good view, I guess.” Her ears turned for a moment, then focused back at Kaia. “Maybe not all the way at the top, that might be something a pegasus would prefer. How about nine? I like nine.” “Of course. I can put you in room 918.” While she finished up with the reservation and the programming of the keys, Kaia briefly explained the amenities of the hotel—the exercise room, the rooftop bar and pool, the restaurant on the third floor and the twenty-four hour convenience store on the second. Without even the slightest condescending tone, she also explained how the room key needed to be used to move the elevators to guest floors. A pony might not know. “Do you have any luggage? I can have a porter bring it up.” “Just my saddlebags,” she said. “That's all I need.” “I—it says here that your room is reserved for two. Is the other guest here?” Unlikely; there weren't any other ponies in the lobby yet. “No, she had to take a late train.” Bottlecap glanced over at the elevator bank. “If they don't work without a card, how's she going to get in?” “I can put a note in the computer, and when she arrives, I can call your room, or have a porter escort her up, whichever you prefer. Or if she wants, since you're already checked in, she can just call you and you can come down to meet her in the lobby. That's what a lot of people do at conventions.” “Can you make a key for her and set it aside, so when she comes she can just let herself in the room? I might be napping.” “Of course.” A few more keyclicks. The key wouldn't be created until she actually arrived, of course. “Let me make sure, the reservation says Melba—“ “Yeah, Peach Melba.” Whoever had been entering in pony names hadn't understood which fields first and last names should go in, Kaia noted. That was something to mention to the rest of the staff; besides the hassle of looking up reservations, ponies might be insulted by people getting their name wrong. “It's all taken care of, Bottlecap. Enjoy your stay at the Hyatt Regency hotel. If there's anything we can do to make your stay more enjoyable, please let us know.” “Thanks!” She turned and made her way to the bank of elevators. There was already a car parked at the ground floor, and from her post, Kaia could see her enter, and after a moment, the elevator began its ascent. Meanwhile, the revolving door disgorged another pony, this one a unicorn. ••• They came from all over, arriving by various means. Some of them flew, some took airplanes, and many arrived by train. A few took buses—chartered, if enough were clustered geographically, or Greyhound otherwise. Some of them had bags and bags of luggage, others only had saddlebags on their backs. Some struggled with the revolving doors, although the porters and valets out front quickly realized and directed them through the doors beside the revolving door. Most of them passed through the lobby the normal way, the exception being the fliers. Kaia saw him when he glided down the escalator; he was a light yellow with a spiked grey mane and she was certain if he'd checked in, she would have noticed him. The fact that he came up to her desk and asked for a key was a good indication he hadn't, and she wondered if he'd come in the back way. That was where buses stopped, and maybe he'd gotten on the elevator and ridden up a couple floors before realizing that that wouldn't get him where he needed to go. It didn't occur to her until much later that many of the pegasi were landing on top of the parking garage and making their way down from there, nor did she realize until much later that they weren't riding the elevator down from the sixth floor; they were jumping off the balcony over the 300 club and gliding down from there. Admittedly, it was the most direct route to the lobby. ••• As the afternoon went on, the reception area overcame its initial struggles. The three desk clerks on staff used their downtime to check through all the various reservations and made notes on what possible variant of the pony’s name might have been entered. Everyone had gotten over the shock of seeing unicorns levitate things, and the entire staff had been treated to a pony family, complete with two adorable foals and an only slightly less adorable teenage daughter. They didn’t know for a fact that she was a teenager, but the way she rolled her eyes when her younger brother and sister excitedly rode the escalator up and then back down again implied it. Things had almost fallen into a routine, then a zebra arrived with an entourage and a regal bearing. Said entourage had a suite and technically there were more ponies than the room was supposed to have. Ponies were small, and more of them could fit in a suite. She found one that was next to an unoccupied room, just in case, and put a note in the computer to not sell it right away. Just in case they decided the suite wasn’t big enough to fit them all. As soon as they tromped off to an elevator and crammed themselves inside the cab, she turned to Miriro and whispered “Do you think she’s royalty, rich, or some kind of celebrity?” “She didn’t have enough stuff to be rich,” Miriro said. “I heard ponies had princesses and queens and stuff, so I’d bet she’s royal. Plus, she had one of her entourage do the transaction for her. That’s how you know. A rich person wants to be seen tossing around the wealth; royalty can’t be bothered.” ••• Every time they thought they’d seen it all, a new guest arrived. A pair of bird-lions soared down majestically from the sixth floor, and after they’d checked in, Miriro and Kaia debated what they were. It was incredibly rude to ask a guest what their race was, and both of them assumed that that extended to species. Miriro thought they were griffons, while Kaia vaguely remembered her boyfriend mentioning a Shirdal which kind of fit their description. It was something to ask him about tonight. There were ponies with cloven hooves, jagged horns, and leonine manes and tails; there were bipedal lizards, bird-horse hybrids—hippogriffs, which they both knew from Harry Potter—and even a strange bipedal cat who reminded Miriro of Fonzie. Kaia had no idea who Fonzie was. By the end of their shifts they had concluded that there was simply no logic to Equestrian names; some of the guests only had a single name, some had two—likely first and last, but that couldn’t be assumed—and a few had more, such as Jonquilla Redder van de Narcissen. The usual routine for guests was to check in, wash the dust off in their rooms, and then leave their rooms again and do things. Said things varied from group to group and individual to individual; none of them knew quite what to expect from the Equestrians. Would they be demanding guests? Entitled guests? Would they come down to the lobby and mingle, or would they prefer to stay up in their rooms? Were they partiers or not? Complainers? Kaia could read most of her guests by the time the check-in was complete, but she had little luck with the ponies. Most of them were friendly and patient, which was a good sign. Some of them needed specific instructions on how the keycards worked and how the elevators worked, which was not as good a sign. And any number of them came into the lobby from the most convenient entry-point, which was also worrisome. The sixth-floor patio’s door wasn’t locked from the outside, because why would it be? A large number of winged guests arriving via the patio was a valid reason to re-think security on that door. Ponies had come back down from their rooms, mostly grouping on the second floor, but a few clusters had established themselves on the first. One group was trying to figure out the computer, which luckily for her was outside her area of responsibility. A lizard was rummaging through the plastic jewels that surrounded the potted plants, but not causing any harm. And every now and then a pony entering the hotel would get caught in the revolving door despite the best efforts of the valets and porters. There was no rule that said she had to leave the hotel premises at the end of her shift. Usually, she did; it was un-American to hang about at one’s workplace when the shift was over. But ponies had also discovered the bar, and some of them were taking advantage of it, and she was genuinely curious to learn more about the hotel guests, so she took off her name tag and joined them. Author's Note click HERE for story notes! CourtshipCourtship Admiral Biscuit Starry Eyes looked across the outside pool and lounge areas to his current object of affection, Honey Rays. She was stretched out on one of the chaise lounges, preening her feathers and occasionally taking a sip of her mojito. He wasn’t the smoothest pegasus, he knew that full well. Any other stallion might fly up to her, land on the other end of her chair, and puff out his chest to show interest. He might fly off the roof and down to the harbor to catch a fish, and present it to her, still wiggling. Or if it were early spring, he might gift her a mouthful of sticks, suitable for a nest. Starry Eyes wasn’t all that good at fishing. He’d grown up inland, and while he was decent at catching fish in shallow streams, the open water of the harbor baffled him. The fish could be anywhere in there, and he had no idea how to find them. Likewise, nesting materials wouldn’t be appreciated. Not only was it too late in the year for that, but the hotel blankets were more comfortable. Even the towels were more comfortable. Besides, he wasn’t interested in raising a family. Nesting materials might send the wrong message. He trotted up to the edge of the roof and then made a short hop-flight onto the border planters. He wasn’t sure what those were for; the hotel staff didn’t like ponies nibbling on them, although why would they plant grasses and tasty bushes if they weren’t meant to be snacked on? He paced along the thin cement edge, occasionally flapping his wings for balance as he skirted a bush. He could smalltalk, but he wasn’t any good at initiating the conversation. He had to give Honey Rays something, and then he could work from there. His eyes left her for a moment as he slipped on the edge, looking instinctively down at what was underhoof. Starry didn’t register what he’d caught out of the corner of his eye immediately; it wasn’t until he’d turned the corner and she was out of view that he paused and looked down again. The planter wasn't filled with dirt, but with little pebbles. They were boring rocks, dirt-colored, too small to be of any interest, but it set a chain of thoughts off. I’ll get her a rock. Mares love rocks. Not these rocks, of course, but downstairs around the elevators, he’d seen planters full of exotic black shiny rocks, glistening like obsidian although they weren't as glassy. If he’d been on the other side of the bush, he would have gone through the door into the hotel the normal way, but he was closer to the fence, so he flew up and over, then down and around to the front of the hotel. Oftentimes, such a flight would include a lap around the hotel, or perhaps across the street and over the harbor, since that was more fun. In the morning, the hotel itself had some pretty good thermals coming off the slanted glass roof of the atrium, and a pony who was patient could loft above the hotel with very little effort. He was a stallion on a mission, so he did none of that. He dropped down alongside the parking garage, then three floors down he flew through it, coming out the other side after narrowly missing a Mini Cooper making its way up, and dropped down on the other side, looping around the flagpoles and then he made a neat landing out front. He’d long since figured out the revolving door, being one of the few pegasi who often entered at ground level. He did forgo riding on the escalator, since it was quicker to follow its path up while airborne. Just as he’d remembered, the elevators were bordered with a pony-high wall, and atop that wall was a treasure-trove of shiny black rocks. Starry Eyes had no desire to be clipped by a passing elevator, so he stayed away from them, instead hooking his forelegs on the wall as he looked along the rock garden for a suitable specimen. They had a lot of rocks; surely they wouldn’t miss one of them. The wall zig-zagged back and forth, matching the elevators’ profile, and he saw the rock he wanted at the point of the third zag. He looked around to make sure that nobody was watching, then darted in and picked it up, much like he would have caught a fish if he’d found one to catch. Then he was off, airborne before anybody could steal his prize, the rock for his beloved. Inside the hotel was a challenging environment, full of pillars and when he went high enough, steel beams and a sloping glass roof. He overcame those challenges, and after he’d gone up and over the sixth-floor balcony, he made his way to the mundane glass door that led to the outside. That led to Honey Rays. He pranced up the slight incline to the patio and the pool area, the rock held safely in his mouth. Honey Rays was in the pool, splashing around in the shallow end, and it was rude to interrupt a lady when she was bathing so he watched and waited until she climbed out of the pool and shook herself off—much to the dismay of humans sunbathing nearby—and made her way back to her chaise lounge. He timed it perfectly, landing after she’d completed her third circle of her towel but not before she fluffed her wings, and dropped the rock at her in front of her. Honey’s ears perked and she pushed the rock with a forehoof, sliding it along the towel and towards herself. That was a good sign. But then she frowned and stuck her muzzle down against it, sniffing and pushing. Starry Eyes unfluffed his chest as she batted it off the chaise. “Dude, really? That’s a fake plastic rock.” Author's Note Starry Eyes Honey Rays Fake Rocks IceIce Admiral Biscuit The hotel was huge. Peach Melba had never been in any building so big. Sure, there were palaces in Equestria which were probably as large, but she’d never been in any of them. She couldn’t help but explore. In the lower levels, there were rooms everywhere, some which she could enter and some which she couldn’t. She knew that there were even more rooms hidden, service rooms beyond nondescript service doors, kitchens near the restaurants, and closets for every purpose. She had read every sign and tried to figure out what rooms were meant for, the ones she couldn’t get in. Things like ‘Janitor's Closet’ were easy to understand, while rooms with names like ‘Pratt’ and ‘Lombard’ were less understandable. Peach had figured out that there were more elevators than she could find, too. There were four main elevators, and two more in the parking garage—which were numbered seven and eight, suggesting that there were at least two which weren’t meant for guests. Above level six, there was less to explore. She’d figured out that all the floors with guest rooms had a similar arrangement, although confusingly none of them featured a thirteenth or fourteenth room: they just skipped right ahead. One of her exploratory trips led her to a small room near the elevators. Just an alcove, really. On one side of the room were two humming machines with big advertisement pictures on them. She knew what those were; they were machines you could put money in and get drinks out of. You had to push a button with the drink you wanted on it, and it would drop down into the littler cabinet at the bottom, which was really too small to get a muzzle into, and the bottles were slippery and hard to get out without a unicorn to help. There were similar machines she’d seen that offered all sorts of snacks, visible through a glass front, and most of them had a door which unintentionally served as a hoof-trap. The machine on the opposite wall didn’t have any advertisement on it, nor did it have a slot to put money in. It just had a button that said ‘push for ice,’ so she did. The machine grumbled and rattled, and then ice cubes dropped out of it and into a waiting bin below. Peach stuck her nose in the bin. The bottom was too far down for her to reach any of the ice that it had dropped, even if it hadn’t slid out of view into the guts of the machine. She stepped back and pondered it, trying to wrap her head around what its purpose was. Back in Equestria, she got ice four times a moon for her icebox, although it arrived in a big block rather than in little chunks. They had a glass-faced icebox in their hotel room, although she couldn’t figure how ice was supposed to get in it. It was built into a cabinet, and there weren’t any access doors she could find, although it stayed cold all the time. Maybe the maids kept it full when they came by and replaced towels and bedding; maybe there was something that only they could access. There was a locked door in that wall which might lead into some sort of narrow access space, although it seemed unnecessarily large for such a purpose. If she had some sort of bucket, she could catch the ice in it. She had her suitcase, and her saddlebags, but she decided that neither of them would be a good choice for transporting ice. Then she remembered that there was a silver bucket in her room. Bottlecap had told her that it was supposed to be used for champagne, which she thought was silly. All the champagne she’d seen so far had been served in slender glasses called flutes which weren’t hoof-friendly at all. Regardless of what the bucket was supposed to be used for, she went back to her room and got it. It fit into the maw of the machine and when she pushed the button, the machine happily filled her little bucket with ice. It was clear that somewhere in the hotel, probably down in the basement where guests weren’t supposed to go, they had an ample ice supply. They might chip it down and carry it up in the hidden elevators, and the maids could get it to refill the glass-faced iceboxes as needed. That thought gave her pause. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to be in here; maybe this room was for the maids only. But if that were the case, why didn’t it have a door? Surely it was meant for the guests. Peach put the bucket on her back and walked down the hall to her room, deep in thought. Sometimes in the late summer and early fall, ice got expensive. If ponies hadn’t cut enough off the ponds in the winter, supplies got low and it had to be imported from cloud cities—pegasi could make as much as they wanted up in the clouds. She probably didn’t need ice, not here in a hotel that catered to every whim, but the thrifty part of her insisted that since it was available right now, she ought to stock up in case she needed it later. In case they ran out. The glass-faced icebox couldn’t keep much ice. The lid should have been on top, and she could have piled it full. However, she knew that ice would keep for a long time if there was a lot of it, especially if there was something insulating to put overtop. 🧊 🧊 🧊 By the time the machine had finally run out of ice, the bathtub was nearly full. Peach dragged the blankets off one of the beds and into the bathroom, tucking in the ice to protect it. The other bed was plenty big enough to share with Bottlecap. They’d have to figure out what to do for showers, but that was okay. She was sure one of the other ponies in the hotel would be happy to share for a few buckets of her ice. Author's Note A great way to keep food fresh for longer is to keep it cold. That’s easy if you live in the Arctic (or Antarctic); just put it outside. Springs and in some cases wells were used historically, which was great if you had a spring or a well. If not . . . winter was cold, winter had ice, and the idea of harvesting the ice and keeping through the summer actually turned into an industry for decades. It would be cut from lakes (usually) in the winter, stored in an icehouse which in simplest form was a room dug in the ground and heavily insulated, and distributed year-round by an iceman. Fun fact, 7-11 started out in 1927 as an icehouse storefront (if you didn’t want to pay for delivery, you could go to the ice store). Houses had iceboxes, which were sort of like fridges except that they had a refrigerator section, a frozen section, and an ice section. And while it might seem inconvenient to have to put a new block in your icebox every week or so, unlike modern refrigerators, ice boxes kept working during a power outage. Physics! Source Even after mechanical refrigeration became common, lots of industry had been built around standard-sized blocks of ice, and railroad cars in the US continued to be kept cold with blocks of ice well into the 1950s and possibly the 1960s. SlalomSlalom Admiral Biscuit The Hyatt had a large atrium, stretching from the second floor all the way to the sixth. It provided plenty of natural light, and an open, airy feeling that the other hotels nearby lacked. Balconies on the third through sixth floors opened onto the atrium, providing passers-by with a good view of the Baltimore inner harbor. The only thing interrupting the view were the occasional concrete pillars, which were a structural necessity. Most people didn't really notice them, nor the delicate steel webbing tying them into the roof structure. If they spoiled the view, people just moved a few feet along the balcony. ••• People in general don't tend to look up, so nobody noticed right away that there was a pony perched precariously on a steel truss six floors up, despite his yellow coat and maroon hoodie. He took a few tentative steps towards the junction of beams atop the cement column, moving cautiously in order to keep his balance. A moment later, still unnoticed by the few people far below on the second floor, a second pony joined the first on the slender steel support. She was virtually his twin, and had anybody below been looking up, they would have been unlikely to tell them apart. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” “Sure, it's good practice.” The colt took another step forward, edging ever so slightly towards the top of the column, the place where all the steel beams came together. Had they billed themselves as a highwire act, they would have garnered a huge audience far below, but for now they continued doggedly forward, completely unobserved. He reached the relative safety of the top of the column and scrunched himself into the beams, watching his sister's wavering progress until she, too, joined him. “Good practice.” She snorted. “So now what?” “Now, we can—“ He paused to consider. “We can't go any higher, Pickle.” “I know that.” That wasn't entirely true; the ceiling was still above. “But down and around.” The two of them looked over the edge of their perch. The column they were sitting on wasn't the only one holding the roof up. “They are like stone trees.” “Without branches, though. That'll make it easier.” Pickle pointed towards the bank of elevators, and the sixth-floor hallway that crossed beyond. “What do you think, Bar, over there and under and back?” Barley counted the columns, and nodded. “Backside of the first, then around twice.” “One floor at a time, or it doesn't count.” “Okay.” She studied the steel, how some places it went up at angles and other places it was flat, connecting one pillar to the next. How there were places where one could pass and places where one could not. “We gotta have an ending point. You can't have a race without an end.” “Yeah.” He pointed to the open structure above the coffee stand. “What about there?” “And we don't have sompeony to tell us when to start. It's not gonna be fair if you say it.” “The elevators.” He pointed over to one of the cars as it rose. “The first one, we can go when it stops on the third floor.” “Okay.” That was fair. The duo spread apart to give each other a bit of room. Both were planning the route in their heads, considering where they might have an advantage over their sibling. Pickle was stronger, but Barley was more flexible, and either could win the race. ••• The second elevator car stopped unexpectedly at the sixth floor. Neither of them had been paying it much attention; neither of them had noticed the worried security officer riding up—but he'd noticed them. It wasn't the first time that somebody had done something dumb in the atrium. By the grace of God he hadn't been there the last time, but he'd heard all about it and he couldn't help but wonder what he might do were he presented with that situation. One part of his mind insisted that he'd do what needed to be done, that he'd shinny out on the beam and be a big goddam hero and maybe he would, but he'd already called the fire department and the paramedics and as he rode up, a worried eye on the two ponies atop the pillar, he'd been constantly repeating the mantra of first-responders the world over: please, not on my shift. The elevator wouldn't go any faster, but his key at least guaranteed it wouldn't stop for anyone else on its way up. It was by pure instinct he grabbed it out of the slot before squeezing through the partially open doors, and then he was sprinting down the hallway, too late. ••• Both pairs of pony eyes were focused on the first elevator car, slowly rising from the second floor to the third—and then it stopped. “Now!” Barley's ears perked, and she lept forward, off the column to the thin tracework of steel. Her hooves skidded on the smooth surface—she should have known that there was practically no traction from her journey to the column. Already her brother was ahead of her, edging to the left, but she had her balance and even if it was awkward she estimated that gains here would pay dividends later. She was on the most direct route, as long as she could keep her footing. ••• The guard skidded to a stop. He was too late. There was no way he could head them off, there was nothing he could do but watch and pray. Off in the distance he could hear approaching sirens. If the two were just clinging to a beam or support, waiting for rescue, he could assure them that it was on its way, but they were racing, darting across the trusses from one column to the next. His heart skipped a beat as a hoof slipped on the steel, throwing the pony off-balance, and he grabbed the railing as she recovered. That had been too close. . . . ••• The third column was close, with its own tangle of steelwork, and there were no more beams in her favor. Her brother was above and ahead of her, but she was gaining already. She twisted as she approached it, her hind hooves shoving off the beam as she snapped her wings open and gave one last kick for speed, then rolled back to level flight, her eyes already on the next column. Nobody was on the balcony, so she pulled her hooves up and rocketed across just above the railing, dropping back down as soon as her hind legs were clear. Slaloming around the columns was easy, routine—they did it all the time in Hope Hollow, although usually with trees. She couldn’t get close to a tree trunk, on account of the branches, but she could get close to a support column, brushing her primaries against the concrete as she passed. End columns were a different challenge. Instead of skimming by as close as possible, she would have to turn around, and Barley was already calculating the best way to do that without losing too much speed. A high bank, or cut wide and lose less speed? Pickle opted for a high bank, rolling almost perpendicular to the column and fighting his momentum all the way around. He took the lead, but her wider path left her better set up for the fifth-floor slalom. Gotta bleed off speed for the corners and get it back again, she thought. There wasn’t a rule about going up, just only going down one floor at a time. If she did a tight spiral climb, she’d finish the turn in a more stable configuration and have some altitude she could drop for more speed. ••• By the time the twins crossed above the coffee shop—neck and neck—the first members of the fire brigade were rushing into the hotel. Up on the sixth floor, the security guard slumped against the wall as the pair landed safely. What he ought to do was march down and tear a strip off their hides, but he just couldn’t. In fact, he wasn’t sure that he could move just yet. While the immediate terror of them plummeting to their deaths had been avoided, their race had left them with plenty of opportunities to smash into a column and then fall to their deaths, or take out some poor bastard who was walking along a balcony or even wipe out a waiter at the 300 club—they’d come out of the restaurant at not much more than table-height. He did muster the energy to radio down to the front desk that the situation had been handled and the fire department could be dismissed. ••• Pickle and Barley made quick friends with the fire fighters, and managed to get a tour of the fire trucks. One of them was a Pierce Dash CF that was very similar to a Matchbox fire truck Barley owned. The winner of the race was never determined. ShowerConvention Hotel Admiral Biscuit Chapter 6: Shower Sundew held her wings out for balance as she transitioned from the carpeting to the smooth, slippery tiles of the bathroom floor. Kukui, her roommate, didn’t seem to have as much a problem with the changing floor treatments, even though she wore shoes. Everypony said shoes didn’t get as much traction on hard floors, but then farmers wore them to tend their fields and she knew that some shoes had spikes on them—she still had some scars on her barrel from one, in fact. Never pick a fight with a farmpony, that was a valuable lesson she’d learned. Maybe it was just experience. Sundew didn’t care much for being on the ground and didn’t get much practice at it. Sadly, Earth did not offer cloud-based hotels, which was really odd, given how much other fantastic technology they had. Humans seemed to like open spaces in the sky; the hotel had a big open atrium she was allowed to fly in the day of her arrival but then the hotel staff decided to ban ponies from flying inside. They really didn’t care that much if she flew down the hallways or took a spiral course down the stairs to the pool deck—that was the best way in and out, especially since that door didn’t require her to fumble with the hotel’s door cards, unlike the elevators. It was a shame that the big windows in their room didn’t open. Kukui had studied them to see if they might, but as far as she could tell any mechanism was well-hidden. Sundew had reached the same conclusion from a flight around the hotel. None of the windows were open, and she didn’t see how an opening mechanism could fit in the thin strips of metal that framed each window. Still, everything else in the hotel was clever and even Kukui didn’t understand how it all worked. Their room had a movie screen that showed pictures even without a projector, and she’d discovered that they’d put them in the elevators and even some of the bathrooms, too, down on the upper lobby level. Their room had a little machine that took water and a little pod and made coffee with no need to light a fire or put it out in the sun to brew, and it was good coffee. She was too clumsy to make it work right, but Kukui was willing to make her a cup in the morning. And the hotel staff had given them straws so they could drink it more easily, since the cups they offered were too flimsy to hoof-hold. She’d woken up well before dawn, and pressed her muzzle against the glass and watched over the city, the unimaginably big city with all its electric candles making a false starscape, with its rubber-tired trackless locomotives moving all night long, and then she’d looked over at the coffee maker and a cup would be the perfect thing to wake her up, but Kukui was still asleep and it would be rude to wake her up for something so simple. Downstairs was a coffee shop and maybe it was open. She’d have to have her plastic door-card so she could get back into the room, or find something to prop the door open with, and had decided that wasn’t worth the trouble, she could wait for her morning coffee. For all her life, showers had been rainclouds and rinsing off in the lake during dry spells. This was something new, something she’d been embarrassed to admit to Kukui, and now was a good time to figure it out. There was a chrome lever which was obviously what made it work, and a drain in the floor. Over her head, a broad faucet which was surely where the water came from. If they’d been more clever, they could have shaped it like a cloud. Human controls were sized for their fingers, and both she and Kukui had been using the pens that the hotel provided to actuate some of those buttons. The black button-stick that made the movies play was the trickiest; the back was curved and it slid away at the slightest provocation. On another hoof, the handle on the toilet was easy enough to work and had a reasonable, strong feel to it. Admittedly, the first time she’d used it, she’d jumped away, afraid she’d broken it because of the loud whooshing noise it made. The lever in the shower was not unlike the lever on the toilet or the levers for the sink faucet. Humans used symbols and colors to represent things, which she’d been figuring out. O meant off, I meant on; triangle-person meant it was for mares and rectangle-person meant it was for stallions and somebody in a suit had gotten all shouty when she’d used the rectangle toilets. This lever had an O, where it was set, and then an arc which went from blue to red, presumably water intensity. When she used the sink levers, the more she turned it, the more water came out. She gave it a push, and a moment later water started dribbling out of the showerhead in big, fat droplets, much like a proper raincloud. Another nudge, and it started to flow like meltwater, a near-steady stream. And she’d hardly moved the handle. The hotel provided bottles of soap and shampoo and conditioner, and they’d amassed quite the collection of them. A maid had stopped by just after they’d checked in and given them a whole box of them. She didn’t care much for the soap; it smelled and tasted weird. She was willing to give the shampoo a try, though; it had a good smell to it. Sundew pushed the lever further and more water came out. Now it was a steady stream, spraying down with enough force that it would probably rinse her clean even if she didn’t use any soap at all. A driving rain in intensity, but continuous. She stuck a hoof in it, feeling the water beat through her fur and against her skin, splashing back into her muzzle. It had the same weird smell as the sink water and toilet water, and the same feel as the sink water. More slippery than water should be, and completely sulphur and salt free. Still, plenty good for showering. And the shower had a clever glass surround that would keep her from getting anything wet when she was done and shook off. Sometimes back home they’d leave a cloud out in the sun for a while to warm it up, but that wasn’t always convenient. As she stepped into the chilly water, Sundew considered the advantages of waiting until sunrise to take a shower; she could sun herself on the pool deck and warm back up. She didn’t want to miss the convention, though, and she’d never experienced anything other than cold or tepid showers. Twenty little bottles of shampoo and six bottles of conditioner later—she only conditioned her mane and tail—she was both clean and cold. The room had a box on the wall that made heat, and she could dry herself in front of it. Those buttons could be pushed by a pen, and she’d learned that bigger numbers were hotter air, that you could push the red arrow to make it hot and the blue arrow to make it cold. Of course, there was the risk of overheating the room and making Kukui uncomfortable, so maybe that wasn’t the best idea. She reached a hoof for the shower lever and was about to push it off when a realization occurred. The dial was also labeled in a blue to red scale. What if instead of volume, it was heat? The sink could make hot water, so why not the shower? Sundew considered this. She’d had hot water in teas and soups and coffee, she’d showered in sun-warmed water and she’d heard of fancy spas where they had a tub that was hot. There was a spot where she could stand in the shower and not have the water hit her, and that was the safest place to be if she was wrong. The water volume coming out of the showerhead was like an intense rainstorm and she’d flown in worse but preferred not to. Sure enough, turning the dial further didn’t increase the water intensity, and after the shower had run for nearly a minute she stuck her hoof in to be sure. It was the same volume, and it did feel warmer. Hot water could burn, so she cautiously turned the dial up, and the water temperature followed. Comfortable, then luxurious, then decadent. It was like liquid sunshine on her back, and she sat down on the floor and let the water wash over her, warming and easing tension she didn’t even know she had. Steam clouds rapidly filled the bathroom, quickly condensing on all the chilly, hard surfaces, and for a few minutes she played with it, making little clouds that were destroyed the instant they hit the relentless spray, and then she started to wonder if the hot water might run out, if she was being rude to other ponies by hogging it. And then she stopped caring, and just sat down and let the hot water wash over her. Author's Note Source A Kirin Walks Into a BarScott had gotten used to the ponies, at least to the point where they didn't seem all that weird any more. He could mostly tell male from female, often before they even spoke, and he'd learned to abbreviate the list of specials to avoid anything meat-based, unless it was fish and pegasi, griffons, or hippogriffs were asking. He knew that the unicorns would almost always use silverware, while the other ponies preferred not to, he knew that the plain ponies drank like champions, and that the bat-winged ones didn't like being near light if they could avoid it. The new arrival, however, stumped him. Its face looked feminine, but it had a lion's mane and tail. Its horn was curved and had little branches off it, more like a deer antler. Its head and back were covered with what looked like some kind of scale armor, although it flexed as the pony moved. He took a moment to gather his thoughts, then picked up a menu and walked over to its table. “Good evening, I'm Scott, and I'll be your server tonight.” He set the menu politely on the table. “Do you know what you want to drink tonight?” The pony shook its head. “Ah, well, we have a list of our drinks right here.” He handed her a card. He thought he'd seen all the weird ways that ponies held things, but he hadn't anticipated its forehooves opening slightly, almost like crab pincers. If the pony had sliced off a corner of the drink list, that wouldn't have surprised him at all, but the list remained intact. Even though he could have left it alone to decide, he didn't have very many tables, and wanted to be ready to answer questions. Most of the ponies had had questions their first time at the restaurant, and while he was no expert with the wines, he had a decent familiarity with the other drinks on the menu. “Huh.” It was the first thing he'd heard the pony say, and it had a feminine lilt to it. “Do you have a question?” He almost added 'ma'am,' but decided it was still safer to not. She set the drinks list down before pointing with a hoof. “There's a drink here named after me!” “Oh, really?” That was an interesting conversation starter, and people and ponies always seemed to tip better if they had conversations with their waiter, so long as the conversation steered clear of sports or politics. “Yeah, Ginger Mojito, that's my name.” He nodded. “That's a good drink—would you like me to bring you one while you decide on your dinner order?” Author's Note Chapter notes!
ArrivalConvention Hotel Admiral Biscuit Chapter 1: Arrival They came to Baltimore from all over, arriving by various means. Some of them flew, some took airplanes, and many arrived by train. A few took buses—chartered, if enough were clustered geographically, or Greyhound otherwise. A few arrived by car, and one arrived by boat, sailing into the Inner Harbor and mooring at the docks just below Federal Hill. The first group gave the hotel staff pause. They'd known about the convention, of course, but they hadn't really been prepared for the first pony who bumped her muzzle on the revolving door, paused long enough for it to hit her in the rump, and then darted forward and out, casting a wary glance backwards at the contraption. She looked around the lobby, taking in the little alcove with computers that anybody could use. The long open fireplace on the opposite wall, currently not lit in deference to the humid July day. One of the clerks motioned for her to come over, worried perhaps that she might set hoof on the escalator. It wasn't proper to think she wouldn't expect the stairs to move, but it was clearly obvious she hadn't expected the door to feed her into the hotel. A few other patrons, the clerk noticed, were also studying the pony, while trying not to be obvious about it. That was understandable, and if their staff meeting was any indication, soon they would have plenty of ponies to goggle. The mare made her decision, and with a flick of her tail, she clacked over to the desk. When she'd arrived, she hooked her forehooves on the desk and pulled herself up, just enough that her head stuck over the top. “Hi! I'm Bottlecap.” “I'm Kaia.” She hesitated for a moment; normally her script would have her asking if the pony—if Bottlecap—had a reservation, but she probably did. “Is your room reserved under 'Bottlecap?' “I hope so.” Kaia's fingers danced on the keyboard, and found no reservation. Frowning, she tried again, this time just entering 'Cap' in the field for the last name. Still no result. Comma 'Bottle' did provide a result: Pony, Bottlecap. Gender tagged 'prefer not to say.' Already, she had an inkling how the day might wind up going. “Do you have any form of identification, Miss?” She wasn't entirely sure if Bottlecap was all one name or two and didn't want to risk offending her guest. “And a form of payment.” “Certainly.” She ducked her head down and came back up with a passport, visa, and credit card all held between her lips. It only took a moment to enter the relevant information into the computer. The visa, she noted, had her name listed as Bottle Cap, while the passport simply said Bottlecap. She passed the cards back. “Do you have a floor preference? You're booked for harbor view; we have rooms available on the sixth through fourteenth floors.” “Might as well get a good view, I guess.” Her ears turned for a moment, then focused back at Kaia. “Maybe not all the way at the top, that might be something a pegasus would prefer. How about nine? I like nine.” “Of course. I can put you in room 918.” While she finished up with the reservation and the programming of the keys, Kaia briefly explained the amenities of the hotel—the exercise room, the rooftop bar and pool, the restaurant on the third floor and the twenty-four hour convenience store on the second. Without even the slightest condescending tone, she also explained how the room key needed to be used to move the elevators to guest floors. A pony might not know. “Do you have any luggage? I can have a porter bring it up.” “Just my saddlebags,” she said. “That's all I need.” “I—it says here that your room is reserved for two. Is the other guest here?” Unlikely; there weren't any other ponies in the lobby yet. “No, she had to take a late train.” Bottlecap glanced over at the elevator bank. “If they don't work without a card, how's she going to get in?” “I can put a note in the computer, and when she arrives, I can call your room, or have a porter escort her up, whichever you prefer. Or if she wants, since you're already checked in, she can just call you and you can come down to meet her in the lobby. That's what a lot of people do at conventions.” “Can you make a key for her and set it aside, so when she comes she can just let herself in the room? I might be napping.” “Of course.” A few more keyclicks. The key wouldn't be created until she actually arrived, of course. “Let me make sure, the reservation says Melba—“ “Yeah, Peach Melba.” Whoever had been entering in pony names hadn't understood which fields first and last names should go in, Kaia noted. That was something to mention to the rest of the staff; besides the hassle of looking up reservations, ponies might be insulted by people getting their name wrong. “It's all taken care of, Bottlecap. Enjoy your stay at the Hyatt Regency hotel. If there's anything we can do to make your stay more enjoyable, please let us know.” “Thanks!” She turned and made her way to the bank of elevators. There was already a car parked at the ground floor, and from her post, Kaia could see her enter, and after a moment, the elevator began its ascent. Meanwhile, the revolving door disgorged another pony, this one a unicorn. ••• They came from all over, arriving by various means. Some of them flew, some took airplanes, and many arrived by train. A few took buses—chartered, if enough were clustered geographically, or Greyhound otherwise. Some of them had bags and bags of luggage, others only had saddlebags on their backs. Some struggled with the revolving doors, although the porters and valets out front quickly realized and directed them through the doors beside the revolving door. Most of them passed through the lobby the normal way, the exception being the fliers. Kaia saw him when he glided down the escalator; he was a light yellow with a spiked grey mane and she was certain if he'd checked in, she would have noticed him. The fact that he came up to her desk and asked for a key was a good indication he hadn't, and she wondered if he'd come in the back way. That was where buses stopped, and maybe he'd gotten on the elevator and ridden up a couple floors before realizing that that wouldn't get him where he needed to go. It didn't occur to her until much later that many of the pegasi were landing on top of the parking garage and making their way down from there, nor did she realize until much later that they weren't riding the elevator down from the sixth floor; they were jumping off the balcony over the 300 club and gliding down from there. Admittedly, it was the most direct route to the lobby. ••• As the afternoon went on, the reception area overcame its initial struggles. The three desk clerks on staff used their downtime to check through all the various reservations and made notes on what possible variant of the pony’s name might have been entered. Everyone had gotten over the shock of seeing unicorns levitate things, and the entire staff had been treated to a pony family, complete with two adorable foals and an only slightly less adorable teenage daughter. They didn’t know for a fact that she was a teenager, but the way she rolled her eyes when her younger brother and sister excitedly rode the escalator up and then back down again implied it. Things had almost fallen into a routine, then a zebra arrived with an entourage and a regal bearing. Said entourage had a suite and technically there were more ponies than the room was supposed to have. Ponies were small, and more of them could fit in a suite. She found one that was next to an unoccupied room, just in case, and put a note in the computer to not sell it right away. Just in case they decided the suite wasn’t big enough to fit them all. As soon as they tromped off to an elevator and crammed themselves inside the cab, she turned to Miriro and whispered “Do you think she’s royalty, rich, or some kind of celebrity?” “She didn’t have enough stuff to be rich,” Miriro said. “I heard ponies had princesses and queens and stuff, so I’d bet she’s royal. Plus, she had one of her entourage do the transaction for her. That’s how you know. A rich person wants to be seen tossing around the wealth; royalty can’t be bothered.” ••• Every time they thought they’d seen it all, a new guest arrived. A pair of bird-lions soared down majestically from the sixth floor, and after they’d checked in, Miriro and Kaia debated what they were. It was incredibly rude to ask a guest what their race was, and both of them assumed that that extended to species. Miriro thought they were griffons, while Kaia vaguely remembered her boyfriend mentioning a Shirdal which kind of fit their description. It was something to ask him about tonight. There were ponies with cloven hooves, jagged horns, and leonine manes and tails; there were bipedal lizards, bird-horse hybrids—hippogriffs, which they both knew from Harry Potter—and even a strange bipedal cat who reminded Miriro of Fonzie. Kaia had no idea who Fonzie was. By the end of their shifts they had concluded that there was simply no logic to Equestrian names; some of the guests only had a single name, some had two—likely first and last, but that couldn’t be assumed—and a few had more, such as Jonquilla Redder van de Narcissen. The usual routine for guests was to check in, wash the dust off in their rooms, and then leave their rooms again and do things. Said things varied from group to group and individual to individual; none of them knew quite what to expect from the Equestrians. Would they be demanding guests? Entitled guests? Would they come down to the lobby and mingle, or would they prefer to stay up in their rooms? Were they partiers or not? Complainers? Kaia could read most of her guests by the time the check-in was complete, but she had little luck with the ponies. Most of them were friendly and patient, which was a good sign. Some of them needed specific instructions on how the keycards worked and how the elevators worked, which was not as good a sign. And any number of them came into the lobby from the most convenient entry-point, which was also worrisome. The sixth-floor patio’s door wasn’t locked from the outside, because why would it be? A large number of winged guests arriving via the patio was a valid reason to re-think security on that door. Ponies had come back down from their rooms, mostly grouping on the second floor, but a few clusters had established themselves on the first. One group was trying to figure out the computer, which luckily for her was outside her area of responsibility. A lizard was rummaging through the plastic jewels that surrounded the potted plants, but not causing any harm. And every now and then a pony entering the hotel would get caught in the revolving door despite the best efforts of the valets and porters. There was no rule that said she had to leave the hotel premises at the end of her shift. Usually, she did; it was un-American to hang about at one’s workplace when the shift was over. But ponies had also discovered the bar, and some of them were taking advantage of it, and she was genuinely curious to learn more about the hotel guests, so she took off her name tag and joined them. Author's Note click HERE for story notes!
CourtshipCourtship Admiral Biscuit Starry Eyes looked across the outside pool and lounge areas to his current object of affection, Honey Rays. She was stretched out on one of the chaise lounges, preening her feathers and occasionally taking a sip of her mojito. He wasn’t the smoothest pegasus, he knew that full well. Any other stallion might fly up to her, land on the other end of her chair, and puff out his chest to show interest. He might fly off the roof and down to the harbor to catch a fish, and present it to her, still wiggling. Or if it were early spring, he might gift her a mouthful of sticks, suitable for a nest. Starry Eyes wasn’t all that good at fishing. He’d grown up inland, and while he was decent at catching fish in shallow streams, the open water of the harbor baffled him. The fish could be anywhere in there, and he had no idea how to find them. Likewise, nesting materials wouldn’t be appreciated. Not only was it too late in the year for that, but the hotel blankets were more comfortable. Even the towels were more comfortable. Besides, he wasn’t interested in raising a family. Nesting materials might send the wrong message. He trotted up to the edge of the roof and then made a short hop-flight onto the border planters. He wasn’t sure what those were for; the hotel staff didn’t like ponies nibbling on them, although why would they plant grasses and tasty bushes if they weren’t meant to be snacked on? He paced along the thin cement edge, occasionally flapping his wings for balance as he skirted a bush. He could smalltalk, but he wasn’t any good at initiating the conversation. He had to give Honey Rays something, and then he could work from there. His eyes left her for a moment as he slipped on the edge, looking instinctively down at what was underhoof. Starry didn’t register what he’d caught out of the corner of his eye immediately; it wasn’t until he’d turned the corner and she was out of view that he paused and looked down again. The planter wasn't filled with dirt, but with little pebbles. They were boring rocks, dirt-colored, too small to be of any interest, but it set a chain of thoughts off. I’ll get her a rock. Mares love rocks. Not these rocks, of course, but downstairs around the elevators, he’d seen planters full of exotic black shiny rocks, glistening like obsidian although they weren't as glassy. If he’d been on the other side of the bush, he would have gone through the door into the hotel the normal way, but he was closer to the fence, so he flew up and over, then down and around to the front of the hotel. Oftentimes, such a flight would include a lap around the hotel, or perhaps across the street and over the harbor, since that was more fun. In the morning, the hotel itself had some pretty good thermals coming off the slanted glass roof of the atrium, and a pony who was patient could loft above the hotel with very little effort. He was a stallion on a mission, so he did none of that. He dropped down alongside the parking garage, then three floors down he flew through it, coming out the other side after narrowly missing a Mini Cooper making its way up, and dropped down on the other side, looping around the flagpoles and then he made a neat landing out front. He’d long since figured out the revolving door, being one of the few pegasi who often entered at ground level. He did forgo riding on the escalator, since it was quicker to follow its path up while airborne. Just as he’d remembered, the elevators were bordered with a pony-high wall, and atop that wall was a treasure-trove of shiny black rocks. Starry Eyes had no desire to be clipped by a passing elevator, so he stayed away from them, instead hooking his forelegs on the wall as he looked along the rock garden for a suitable specimen. They had a lot of rocks; surely they wouldn’t miss one of them. The wall zig-zagged back and forth, matching the elevators’ profile, and he saw the rock he wanted at the point of the third zag. He looked around to make sure that nobody was watching, then darted in and picked it up, much like he would have caught a fish if he’d found one to catch. Then he was off, airborne before anybody could steal his prize, the rock for his beloved. Inside the hotel was a challenging environment, full of pillars and when he went high enough, steel beams and a sloping glass roof. He overcame those challenges, and after he’d gone up and over the sixth-floor balcony, he made his way to the mundane glass door that led to the outside. That led to Honey Rays. He pranced up the slight incline to the patio and the pool area, the rock held safely in his mouth. Honey Rays was in the pool, splashing around in the shallow end, and it was rude to interrupt a lady when she was bathing so he watched and waited until she climbed out of the pool and shook herself off—much to the dismay of humans sunbathing nearby—and made her way back to her chaise lounge. He timed it perfectly, landing after she’d completed her third circle of her towel but not before she fluffed her wings, and dropped the rock at her in front of her. Honey’s ears perked and she pushed the rock with a forehoof, sliding it along the towel and towards herself. That was a good sign. But then she frowned and stuck her muzzle down against it, sniffing and pushing. Starry Eyes unfluffed his chest as she batted it off the chaise. “Dude, really? That’s a fake plastic rock.” Author's Note Starry Eyes Honey Rays Fake Rocks
IceIce Admiral Biscuit The hotel was huge. Peach Melba had never been in any building so big. Sure, there were palaces in Equestria which were probably as large, but she’d never been in any of them. She couldn’t help but explore. In the lower levels, there were rooms everywhere, some which she could enter and some which she couldn’t. She knew that there were even more rooms hidden, service rooms beyond nondescript service doors, kitchens near the restaurants, and closets for every purpose. She had read every sign and tried to figure out what rooms were meant for, the ones she couldn’t get in. Things like ‘Janitor's Closet’ were easy to understand, while rooms with names like ‘Pratt’ and ‘Lombard’ were less understandable. Peach had figured out that there were more elevators than she could find, too. There were four main elevators, and two more in the parking garage—which were numbered seven and eight, suggesting that there were at least two which weren’t meant for guests. Above level six, there was less to explore. She’d figured out that all the floors with guest rooms had a similar arrangement, although confusingly none of them featured a thirteenth or fourteenth room: they just skipped right ahead. One of her exploratory trips led her to a small room near the elevators. Just an alcove, really. On one side of the room were two humming machines with big advertisement pictures on them. She knew what those were; they were machines you could put money in and get drinks out of. You had to push a button with the drink you wanted on it, and it would drop down into the littler cabinet at the bottom, which was really too small to get a muzzle into, and the bottles were slippery and hard to get out without a unicorn to help. There were similar machines she’d seen that offered all sorts of snacks, visible through a glass front, and most of them had a door which unintentionally served as a hoof-trap. The machine on the opposite wall didn’t have any advertisement on it, nor did it have a slot to put money in. It just had a button that said ‘push for ice,’ so she did. The machine grumbled and rattled, and then ice cubes dropped out of it and into a waiting bin below. Peach stuck her nose in the bin. The bottom was too far down for her to reach any of the ice that it had dropped, even if it hadn’t slid out of view into the guts of the machine. She stepped back and pondered it, trying to wrap her head around what its purpose was. Back in Equestria, she got ice four times a moon for her icebox, although it arrived in a big block rather than in little chunks. They had a glass-faced icebox in their hotel room, although she couldn’t figure how ice was supposed to get in it. It was built into a cabinet, and there weren’t any access doors she could find, although it stayed cold all the time. Maybe the maids kept it full when they came by and replaced towels and bedding; maybe there was something that only they could access. There was a locked door in that wall which might lead into some sort of narrow access space, although it seemed unnecessarily large for such a purpose. If she had some sort of bucket, she could catch the ice in it. She had her suitcase, and her saddlebags, but she decided that neither of them would be a good choice for transporting ice. Then she remembered that there was a silver bucket in her room. Bottlecap had told her that it was supposed to be used for champagne, which she thought was silly. All the champagne she’d seen so far had been served in slender glasses called flutes which weren’t hoof-friendly at all. Regardless of what the bucket was supposed to be used for, she went back to her room and got it. It fit into the maw of the machine and when she pushed the button, the machine happily filled her little bucket with ice. It was clear that somewhere in the hotel, probably down in the basement where guests weren’t supposed to go, they had an ample ice supply. They might chip it down and carry it up in the hidden elevators, and the maids could get it to refill the glass-faced iceboxes as needed. That thought gave her pause. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to be in here; maybe this room was for the maids only. But if that were the case, why didn’t it have a door? Surely it was meant for the guests. Peach put the bucket on her back and walked down the hall to her room, deep in thought. Sometimes in the late summer and early fall, ice got expensive. If ponies hadn’t cut enough off the ponds in the winter, supplies got low and it had to be imported from cloud cities—pegasi could make as much as they wanted up in the clouds. She probably didn’t need ice, not here in a hotel that catered to every whim, but the thrifty part of her insisted that since it was available right now, she ought to stock up in case she needed it later. In case they ran out. The glass-faced icebox couldn’t keep much ice. The lid should have been on top, and she could have piled it full. However, she knew that ice would keep for a long time if there was a lot of it, especially if there was something insulating to put overtop. 🧊 🧊 🧊 By the time the machine had finally run out of ice, the bathtub was nearly full. Peach dragged the blankets off one of the beds and into the bathroom, tucking in the ice to protect it. The other bed was plenty big enough to share with Bottlecap. They’d have to figure out what to do for showers, but that was okay. She was sure one of the other ponies in the hotel would be happy to share for a few buckets of her ice. Author's Note A great way to keep food fresh for longer is to keep it cold. That’s easy if you live in the Arctic (or Antarctic); just put it outside. Springs and in some cases wells were used historically, which was great if you had a spring or a well. If not . . . winter was cold, winter had ice, and the idea of harvesting the ice and keeping through the summer actually turned into an industry for decades. It would be cut from lakes (usually) in the winter, stored in an icehouse which in simplest form was a room dug in the ground and heavily insulated, and distributed year-round by an iceman. Fun fact, 7-11 started out in 1927 as an icehouse storefront (if you didn’t want to pay for delivery, you could go to the ice store). Houses had iceboxes, which were sort of like fridges except that they had a refrigerator section, a frozen section, and an ice section. And while it might seem inconvenient to have to put a new block in your icebox every week or so, unlike modern refrigerators, ice boxes kept working during a power outage. Physics! Source Even after mechanical refrigeration became common, lots of industry had been built around standard-sized blocks of ice, and railroad cars in the US continued to be kept cold with blocks of ice well into the 1950s and possibly the 1960s.
SlalomSlalom Admiral Biscuit The Hyatt had a large atrium, stretching from the second floor all the way to the sixth. It provided plenty of natural light, and an open, airy feeling that the other hotels nearby lacked. Balconies on the third through sixth floors opened onto the atrium, providing passers-by with a good view of the Baltimore inner harbor. The only thing interrupting the view were the occasional concrete pillars, which were a structural necessity. Most people didn't really notice them, nor the delicate steel webbing tying them into the roof structure. If they spoiled the view, people just moved a few feet along the balcony. ••• People in general don't tend to look up, so nobody noticed right away that there was a pony perched precariously on a steel truss six floors up, despite his yellow coat and maroon hoodie. He took a few tentative steps towards the junction of beams atop the cement column, moving cautiously in order to keep his balance. A moment later, still unnoticed by the few people far below on the second floor, a second pony joined the first on the slender steel support. She was virtually his twin, and had anybody below been looking up, they would have been unlikely to tell them apart. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” “Sure, it's good practice.” The colt took another step forward, edging ever so slightly towards the top of the column, the place where all the steel beams came together. Had they billed themselves as a highwire act, they would have garnered a huge audience far below, but for now they continued doggedly forward, completely unobserved. He reached the relative safety of the top of the column and scrunched himself into the beams, watching his sister's wavering progress until she, too, joined him. “Good practice.” She snorted. “So now what?” “Now, we can—“ He paused to consider. “We can't go any higher, Pickle.” “I know that.” That wasn't entirely true; the ceiling was still above. “But down and around.” The two of them looked over the edge of their perch. The column they were sitting on wasn't the only one holding the roof up. “They are like stone trees.” “Without branches, though. That'll make it easier.” Pickle pointed towards the bank of elevators, and the sixth-floor hallway that crossed beyond. “What do you think, Bar, over there and under and back?” Barley counted the columns, and nodded. “Backside of the first, then around twice.” “One floor at a time, or it doesn't count.” “Okay.” She studied the steel, how some places it went up at angles and other places it was flat, connecting one pillar to the next. How there were places where one could pass and places where one could not. “We gotta have an ending point. You can't have a race without an end.” “Yeah.” He pointed to the open structure above the coffee stand. “What about there?” “And we don't have sompeony to tell us when to start. It's not gonna be fair if you say it.” “The elevators.” He pointed over to one of the cars as it rose. “The first one, we can go when it stops on the third floor.” “Okay.” That was fair. The duo spread apart to give each other a bit of room. Both were planning the route in their heads, considering where they might have an advantage over their sibling. Pickle was stronger, but Barley was more flexible, and either could win the race. ••• The second elevator car stopped unexpectedly at the sixth floor. Neither of them had been paying it much attention; neither of them had noticed the worried security officer riding up—but he'd noticed them. It wasn't the first time that somebody had done something dumb in the atrium. By the grace of God he hadn't been there the last time, but he'd heard all about it and he couldn't help but wonder what he might do were he presented with that situation. One part of his mind insisted that he'd do what needed to be done, that he'd shinny out on the beam and be a big goddam hero and maybe he would, but he'd already called the fire department and the paramedics and as he rode up, a worried eye on the two ponies atop the pillar, he'd been constantly repeating the mantra of first-responders the world over: please, not on my shift. The elevator wouldn't go any faster, but his key at least guaranteed it wouldn't stop for anyone else on its way up. It was by pure instinct he grabbed it out of the slot before squeezing through the partially open doors, and then he was sprinting down the hallway, too late. ••• Both pairs of pony eyes were focused on the first elevator car, slowly rising from the second floor to the third—and then it stopped. “Now!” Barley's ears perked, and she lept forward, off the column to the thin tracework of steel. Her hooves skidded on the smooth surface—she should have known that there was practically no traction from her journey to the column. Already her brother was ahead of her, edging to the left, but she had her balance and even if it was awkward she estimated that gains here would pay dividends later. She was on the most direct route, as long as she could keep her footing. ••• The guard skidded to a stop. He was too late. There was no way he could head them off, there was nothing he could do but watch and pray. Off in the distance he could hear approaching sirens. If the two were just clinging to a beam or support, waiting for rescue, he could assure them that it was on its way, but they were racing, darting across the trusses from one column to the next. His heart skipped a beat as a hoof slipped on the steel, throwing the pony off-balance, and he grabbed the railing as she recovered. That had been too close. . . . ••• The third column was close, with its own tangle of steelwork, and there were no more beams in her favor. Her brother was above and ahead of her, but she was gaining already. She twisted as she approached it, her hind hooves shoving off the beam as she snapped her wings open and gave one last kick for speed, then rolled back to level flight, her eyes already on the next column. Nobody was on the balcony, so she pulled her hooves up and rocketed across just above the railing, dropping back down as soon as her hind legs were clear. Slaloming around the columns was easy, routine—they did it all the time in Hope Hollow, although usually with trees. She couldn’t get close to a tree trunk, on account of the branches, but she could get close to a support column, brushing her primaries against the concrete as she passed. End columns were a different challenge. Instead of skimming by as close as possible, she would have to turn around, and Barley was already calculating the best way to do that without losing too much speed. A high bank, or cut wide and lose less speed? Pickle opted for a high bank, rolling almost perpendicular to the column and fighting his momentum all the way around. He took the lead, but her wider path left her better set up for the fifth-floor slalom. Gotta bleed off speed for the corners and get it back again, she thought. There wasn’t a rule about going up, just only going down one floor at a time. If she did a tight spiral climb, she’d finish the turn in a more stable configuration and have some altitude she could drop for more speed. ••• By the time the twins crossed above the coffee shop—neck and neck—the first members of the fire brigade were rushing into the hotel. Up on the sixth floor, the security guard slumped against the wall as the pair landed safely. What he ought to do was march down and tear a strip off their hides, but he just couldn’t. In fact, he wasn’t sure that he could move just yet. While the immediate terror of them plummeting to their deaths had been avoided, their race had left them with plenty of opportunities to smash into a column and then fall to their deaths, or take out some poor bastard who was walking along a balcony or even wipe out a waiter at the 300 club—they’d come out of the restaurant at not much more than table-height. He did muster the energy to radio down to the front desk that the situation had been handled and the fire department could be dismissed. ••• Pickle and Barley made quick friends with the fire fighters, and managed to get a tour of the fire trucks. One of them was a Pierce Dash CF that was very similar to a Matchbox fire truck Barley owned. The winner of the race was never determined.
ShowerConvention Hotel Admiral Biscuit Chapter 6: Shower Sundew held her wings out for balance as she transitioned from the carpeting to the smooth, slippery tiles of the bathroom floor. Kukui, her roommate, didn’t seem to have as much a problem with the changing floor treatments, even though she wore shoes. Everypony said shoes didn’t get as much traction on hard floors, but then farmers wore them to tend their fields and she knew that some shoes had spikes on them—she still had some scars on her barrel from one, in fact. Never pick a fight with a farmpony, that was a valuable lesson she’d learned. Maybe it was just experience. Sundew didn’t care much for being on the ground and didn’t get much practice at it. Sadly, Earth did not offer cloud-based hotels, which was really odd, given how much other fantastic technology they had. Humans seemed to like open spaces in the sky; the hotel had a big open atrium she was allowed to fly in the day of her arrival but then the hotel staff decided to ban ponies from flying inside. They really didn’t care that much if she flew down the hallways or took a spiral course down the stairs to the pool deck—that was the best way in and out, especially since that door didn’t require her to fumble with the hotel’s door cards, unlike the elevators. It was a shame that the big windows in their room didn’t open. Kukui had studied them to see if they might, but as far as she could tell any mechanism was well-hidden. Sundew had reached the same conclusion from a flight around the hotel. None of the windows were open, and she didn’t see how an opening mechanism could fit in the thin strips of metal that framed each window. Still, everything else in the hotel was clever and even Kukui didn’t understand how it all worked. Their room had a movie screen that showed pictures even without a projector, and she’d discovered that they’d put them in the elevators and even some of the bathrooms, too, down on the upper lobby level. Their room had a little machine that took water and a little pod and made coffee with no need to light a fire or put it out in the sun to brew, and it was good coffee. She was too clumsy to make it work right, but Kukui was willing to make her a cup in the morning. And the hotel staff had given them straws so they could drink it more easily, since the cups they offered were too flimsy to hoof-hold. She’d woken up well before dawn, and pressed her muzzle against the glass and watched over the city, the unimaginably big city with all its electric candles making a false starscape, with its rubber-tired trackless locomotives moving all night long, and then she’d looked over at the coffee maker and a cup would be the perfect thing to wake her up, but Kukui was still asleep and it would be rude to wake her up for something so simple. Downstairs was a coffee shop and maybe it was open. She’d have to have her plastic door-card so she could get back into the room, or find something to prop the door open with, and had decided that wasn’t worth the trouble, she could wait for her morning coffee. For all her life, showers had been rainclouds and rinsing off in the lake during dry spells. This was something new, something she’d been embarrassed to admit to Kukui, and now was a good time to figure it out. There was a chrome lever which was obviously what made it work, and a drain in the floor. Over her head, a broad faucet which was surely where the water came from. If they’d been more clever, they could have shaped it like a cloud. Human controls were sized for their fingers, and both she and Kukui had been using the pens that the hotel provided to actuate some of those buttons. The black button-stick that made the movies play was the trickiest; the back was curved and it slid away at the slightest provocation. On another hoof, the handle on the toilet was easy enough to work and had a reasonable, strong feel to it. Admittedly, the first time she’d used it, she’d jumped away, afraid she’d broken it because of the loud whooshing noise it made. The lever in the shower was not unlike the lever on the toilet or the levers for the sink faucet. Humans used symbols and colors to represent things, which she’d been figuring out. O meant off, I meant on; triangle-person meant it was for mares and rectangle-person meant it was for stallions and somebody in a suit had gotten all shouty when she’d used the rectangle toilets. This lever had an O, where it was set, and then an arc which went from blue to red, presumably water intensity. When she used the sink levers, the more she turned it, the more water came out. She gave it a push, and a moment later water started dribbling out of the showerhead in big, fat droplets, much like a proper raincloud. Another nudge, and it started to flow like meltwater, a near-steady stream. And she’d hardly moved the handle. The hotel provided bottles of soap and shampoo and conditioner, and they’d amassed quite the collection of them. A maid had stopped by just after they’d checked in and given them a whole box of them. She didn’t care much for the soap; it smelled and tasted weird. She was willing to give the shampoo a try, though; it had a good smell to it. Sundew pushed the lever further and more water came out. Now it was a steady stream, spraying down with enough force that it would probably rinse her clean even if she didn’t use any soap at all. A driving rain in intensity, but continuous. She stuck a hoof in it, feeling the water beat through her fur and against her skin, splashing back into her muzzle. It had the same weird smell as the sink water and toilet water, and the same feel as the sink water. More slippery than water should be, and completely sulphur and salt free. Still, plenty good for showering. And the shower had a clever glass surround that would keep her from getting anything wet when she was done and shook off. Sometimes back home they’d leave a cloud out in the sun for a while to warm it up, but that wasn’t always convenient. As she stepped into the chilly water, Sundew considered the advantages of waiting until sunrise to take a shower; she could sun herself on the pool deck and warm back up. She didn’t want to miss the convention, though, and she’d never experienced anything other than cold or tepid showers. Twenty little bottles of shampoo and six bottles of conditioner later—she only conditioned her mane and tail—she was both clean and cold. The room had a box on the wall that made heat, and she could dry herself in front of it. Those buttons could be pushed by a pen, and she’d learned that bigger numbers were hotter air, that you could push the red arrow to make it hot and the blue arrow to make it cold. Of course, there was the risk of overheating the room and making Kukui uncomfortable, so maybe that wasn’t the best idea. She reached a hoof for the shower lever and was about to push it off when a realization occurred. The dial was also labeled in a blue to red scale. What if instead of volume, it was heat? The sink could make hot water, so why not the shower? Sundew considered this. She’d had hot water in teas and soups and coffee, she’d showered in sun-warmed water and she’d heard of fancy spas where they had a tub that was hot. There was a spot where she could stand in the shower and not have the water hit her, and that was the safest place to be if she was wrong. The water volume coming out of the showerhead was like an intense rainstorm and she’d flown in worse but preferred not to. Sure enough, turning the dial further didn’t increase the water intensity, and after the shower had run for nearly a minute she stuck her hoof in to be sure. It was the same volume, and it did feel warmer. Hot water could burn, so she cautiously turned the dial up, and the water temperature followed. Comfortable, then luxurious, then decadent. It was like liquid sunshine on her back, and she sat down on the floor and let the water wash over her, warming and easing tension she didn’t even know she had. Steam clouds rapidly filled the bathroom, quickly condensing on all the chilly, hard surfaces, and for a few minutes she played with it, making little clouds that were destroyed the instant they hit the relentless spray, and then she started to wonder if the hot water might run out, if she was being rude to other ponies by hogging it. And then she stopped caring, and just sat down and let the hot water wash over her. Author's Note Source
A Kirin Walks Into a BarScott had gotten used to the ponies, at least to the point where they didn't seem all that weird any more. He could mostly tell male from female, often before they even spoke, and he'd learned to abbreviate the list of specials to avoid anything meat-based, unless it was fish and pegasi, griffons, or hippogriffs were asking. He knew that the unicorns would almost always use silverware, while the other ponies preferred not to, he knew that the plain ponies drank like champions, and that the bat-winged ones didn't like being near light if they could avoid it. The new arrival, however, stumped him. Its face looked feminine, but it had a lion's mane and tail. Its horn was curved and had little branches off it, more like a deer antler. Its head and back were covered with what looked like some kind of scale armor, although it flexed as the pony moved. He took a moment to gather his thoughts, then picked up a menu and walked over to its table. “Good evening, I'm Scott, and I'll be your server tonight.” He set the menu politely on the table. “Do you know what you want to drink tonight?” The pony shook its head. “Ah, well, we have a list of our drinks right here.” He handed her a card. He thought he'd seen all the weird ways that ponies held things, but he hadn't anticipated its forehooves opening slightly, almost like crab pincers. If the pony had sliced off a corner of the drink list, that wouldn't have surprised him at all, but the list remained intact. Even though he could have left it alone to decide, he didn't have very many tables, and wanted to be ready to answer questions. Most of the ponies had had questions their first time at the restaurant, and while he was no expert with the wines, he had a decent familiarity with the other drinks on the menu. “Huh.” It was the first thing he'd heard the pony say, and it had a feminine lilt to it. “Do you have a question?” He almost added 'ma'am,' but decided it was still safer to not. She set the drinks list down before pointing with a hoof. “There's a drink here named after me!” “Oh, really?” That was an interesting conversation starter, and people and ponies always seemed to tip better if they had conversations with their waiter, so long as the conversation steered clear of sports or politics. “Yeah, Ginger Mojito, that's my name.” He nodded. “That's a good drink—would you like me to bring you one while you decide on your dinner order?” Author's Note Chapter notes!
