Calling the boiler plant “The Cloud Factory” reminded Cirrus Wisp of home.
It had been a long time since the pegasus pony had left Cloudsdale. How long had it been since she moved to the Earth city of Pittsburgh? Was it twenty years ago? She counted the number of winters she could remember. Yes, twenty years ago.
Cirrus Wisp was the Equestrian founder and de-facto manager of The Cloud Factory, officially called the Bellefield Boiler Plant. She, along with a few humans and pegasi immigrants from Cloudsdale, ran the boiler plant, which provided steam heat for universities, hospitals, and other public buildings in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. It was a large, yellow-brick building, built at the bottom of a narrow, forested ravine between the library and a university building.
It was almost the end of Cirrus’s shift. Normally this would be time to call in to confirm that the next hopper car of coal would arrive on time in the morning. But after several meetings with the city council about the air pollution, they switched from coal to natural gas boilers.
Cirrus did not enjoy these meetings (though in fairness, her human counterparts didn’t seem to enjoy them much either). Often the only Equestrian in the room, she always stuck out like a pastel-colored sore thumb. And somehow, whenever she asked a question, she never felt like the humans took her seriously. She rejoiced a little when the meetings started to be held on Zoom, because then at least she could turn her video off.
Back inside the boiler plant, Cirrus was finishing up her evening checklist.
“Rob, how’s the air intake on Boiler Number 7 doing!?” she hollered out to the human across the room. The machinery was very loud, and it ran 24/7.
The human hollered back. “The replacement part’s comin’ in on Friday. But it should hold up till then.”
“Alright, when it comes, lemme know and I’ll hook it up for you. It’s kinda high up.”
Tonight was one of the coldest nights of the year, close to 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Those were their most stressful nights. Demand for heat was high, and all the boilers needed to stay in perfect working order. A globe valve already had to be replaced today. Two air scrubbers had to be cleaned. One of their human mechanics was out sick, so everyone was doing extra work.
It was 7:30pm. Cirrus grabbed her jacket. “All right, Rob, I’m headin’ out for tonight.”
“‘Kay. See you tomorrow, boss.”
Cirrus Wisp left the building with a smile on her face. Rob was her favorite employee. He always respected her as the boss, despite her being ten years younger than him, being half as tall as him, and speaking with an embarrassingly high-pitched voice. Rob was one of her longest-serving employees, working at the boiler plant shortly after she founded it.
The way Cirrus saw it, if only humans just took time to listen to Equestrians, and get to know them, maybe then they would come to realize their many similarities, rather than their differences.
Taking off from the parking lot, she flew the 3 mile straight shot back to her 12th floor condo in Downtown, bypassing the rush hour traffic, and entering through a keyed window that she had specially ordered. (“So you want the lock on the outside of the window!?” she remembered the workman saying over the phone.) It was the closest she could get to a cloudominium. Even back in Equestria, some pegasi enjoyed living on the ground, but it never appealed to Cirrus.
Some humans would balk at the idea of pastel-color winged ponies coming to Earth to build and operate, of all things, a boiler plant. But to the pegasi, what better job to do?
Back in Equestria, honorable pegasi took great pride in their control of the weather. A pegasus's success in life was measured by their ability to control the weather. There was also some joy in, say, bringing rain to a parched farmer’s field, or plopping a fresh coat of snow on a grassy hill to a group of smiling children. That was their purpose in Equestria, in the symbiotic relationship between earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns.
So, coming to Earth, what was a pegasus’s purpose in this world of bipedal creatures? The clouds here on Earth were pure, unenchanted vapor, and impossible to move. In Pittsburgh, rain came whenever it liked, sometimes flooding the streets with trash and sewage. There were hot, muggy summers, followed by frigid, icy winters.
Most of this human nation—the United States nation—had this same climate pattern of drastic seasons. How did hundreds of millions of humans live here and withstand such extreme, uncontrollable weather? Back in Equestria, there would have been riots. Crops would grow inefficiently. Ponies would cower in their homes, afraid of not knowing what the sky would unleash upon them.
Steam heat was the closest one could possibly get to weather control on Earth.
It brought the summer to the winter. It was efficient, provided high-quality heat, and plenty of it. The Cloud Factory didn’t have a slogan, but if it did have one, it would be a promise. A promise that there would never be a shortage of warmth in the city of Pittsburgh. That cold spells are no longer an inconvenience. That you can make it as hot as a summer day on the coldest winter night.
When Cirrus built the boiler plant, she intentionally overdesigned the boilers. The boilers can provide so much steam that, even with all the windows open, every building would stay a balmy 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The idea was you could feel a breeze from the window, and feel like you were sitting outside in a tropical paradise in the dead of winter.
With steam heat, there is no fire. Or rather, the fire is invisible to the user. There shouldn’t be any fire, really. On a hot summer day, do you see a fire burning right next to you? No, you see the sun, burning far, far up in the sky. Much like the sun, the fire that heats the steam is far, far away, in the centralized boiler plant.
In the mind of a pegasus like Cirrus Wisp, steam heat was like piped and concentrated summer clouds. (Hence the name “The Cloud Factory.”) The gas-fired boiler was a mere necessity, given the laws of nature of this human world—tucked away in a ravine, out of sight. Pittsburgh was awfully convenient in this way. Nuisances could be hidden under ravines, landmarks perched on hills. And the steep descent into the ravine never bothered Cirrus, of course—she could just fly down.
Poor humans, walking on two thin legs up and down all these hills! Their joints must be hurting! Shouldn’t they have settled someplace flatter? Or someplace warmer, for their un-furred skin? Why did humans pick the most biomechanically incompatible location to build a city? Humans were such peculiar creatures.
The humans’ weather forecast was always the best comedy program on TV. Cirrus would laugh in the morning when the forecaster would say something like “We might have a 40% chance of possible rain in this general area in Allegheny County,” without slowing the pace of his dialog.
How did the humans on Earth stay happy? Were they really satisfied with living at the mercy of so many unpredictable forces? Or perhaps they had long accepted the many things that they could not control? And they just never questioned it?
Some humans say that humans can control the weather. Because pollutants in the air released by humans were causing the weather to change, they said. There were now more natural disasters. More floods. More droughts. More heat waves. More polar vortexes. Humans were controlling the weather and making these things happen.
“Well, if you humans know that you can control the weather, why can’t you just change it back?” Cirrus remembered asking this at one city council meeting.
There was no response. Perhaps humans were so used to being unable to control anything, that they didn’t want to believe they could fix it.
It took a while for Cirrus to not question. Sometimes she did feel helpless to all the things that she could not control in the human world. In a moment of weakness, she’d wonder why she even left Cloudsdale in the first place. On days when the boilers malfunctioned, and the icy cold would begin to seep into the cracks of the buildings, her team would be frantically scrambling, fighting to get the heat back up.
And Cirrus would question who she was fighting against.
In Equestria, it was easy. There, uncontrolled cold is caused by Windigoes. You’re fighting against Windigoes. But on Earth, the question was much more complicated. Was she fighting against humans, if humans could control the weather? Was she fighting against the weather? What was the weather? A demon with icy breath? An ether surrounding all life? What was it even!?
And could she control it?
Without her boiler plant, could she control anything?
The weather speculation on TV concluded, and the program switched back to the news. More updates about the hurricanes down south, the wildfires down under, and the stock market going down. Cirrus switched the TV off.
Cirrus cranked up the steam radiator in her apartment. She opened the windows, closed her eyes, and imagined sitting on a breezy tropical beach. She smiled.
Maybe it wasn’t weather control, but it was the best she could do.
Author's Note
The Bellefield Boiler Plant, pictured on the cover, was built in 1907 and provides heat to much of the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. It is actually nicknamed “The Cloud Factory,” which inspired me to write this story.
Early buildings with steam heat were designed to be operated with the windows open, as this was during the Spanish Flu pandemic and fresh air circulation was considered a way to prevent the disease. Perhaps we can readopt this during the COVID pandemic, especially with outdoor dining.
