Audiokooks

by Estee

Rating: everyone
Tags: Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Rainbow Dash, Original Character, Slice of Life
Length: 7597

Rainbow's finally found a way to read which takes that pesky 'reading' part out. Now all Ponyville's lone device mechanic has to do is make it a little more... portable.

As far as Rainbow's usually concerned, innovation doesn't come fast enough. The future should be now, and anypony who isn't willing to greet it head-on just isn't moving with the times. So getting what's effectively a new way of reading? Awesome! But it's not good enough yet. She needs it to work at her standards. And fortunately, she just happens to know a mechanic who can make a few adjustments.

Ratchette (usually) appreciates the business. But anypony who regularly deals with the weather coordinator has to expect a certain amount of... fallout.

And nopony can ever stop Rainbow from being Rainbow.

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Published 2022-08-20 01:00:02 UTC
Last updated 2022-08-20 01:00:02 UTC

As The Narrator Gradually Adds The Tones Of Impending Doom

Ratchette's fix-it shop, as the only place where anypony could attempt to get enchanted devices repaired in Ponyville, tended to attract a certain type of customer: just for starters, it needed those who were willing to believe a pegasus was capable of working on unicorn creations. More than a few potential clients had trotted away after the proprietor had stepped forth from the shielded central repair area with a rustle of steel-grey wings.

She had the mark for the job and because a hip-hosted Equiportent diagram was generally only recognized by device creators and Gifted School graduates, spent far too much time in shyly failing to explain what it meant. Those who had been in Ponyville for a while tended to become used to her: just one more part of the town's weirdness, and a factor which typically stayed in the background. But with new residents, those she was meeting for the first time... she always had trouble accounting for herself.

It meant having a regular client was special. Somepony who did more than just keep coming back. Ratchette had found the sort of special pony who pushed the limits of her skills and talent, almost forcing her to think differently. And in the case of Rainbow Dash, the mechanic regularly entertained thoughts of moving out of town, along with trying to find out if there was any way of talking her mark into a change of career. Because the weather coordinator was continually flying towards the future. And as with every other form of Ponyville-hosted flight which came with a prismatic trail, there was a certain chance of impact, the crash zone was everywhere, and you were the debris field.

There were those who said Rainbow operated entirely on instinct, didn't truly think. Ratchette had the misfortune of knowing they were wrong. The majority of Rainbow's learning process seemed to occur by osmosis and most of her thinking appeared to take place on a background level, but... there were ways in which Rainbow thought all the time. The kind of thoughts which sent the prismatic into the fix-it shop tended to center around how the world wasn't quite operating to Rainbow's benefit, and thus really needed to sort out its priorities. The planet wasn't accommodating her needs and if the mass-produced items weren't quite up to some rather singular requirements, then Rainbow just happened to know somepony who could... tinker.

Just by way of frequently-repaired example, there were movie cameras. Rainbow had seen those as being ideal for filming her own stunts. It could give her something to visually pick apart in the aftermath, typically while her teeth were carefully sorting out bits of debris from her feathers. Or rather, the camera would be ideal just as soon as Ratchette altered one so that it could be worn on the head, with the crank turned by the wind which was moving against the pegasus. (Given the speeds which Rainbow typically achieved, it had been necessary to add a maximum rate to the channeled spin and, from the second model on, a desperate kinetic bleed-off function.) And of course it had to be light, aerodynamic, and durable enough to survive a few impacts which were in no way Rainbow's fault and surely couldn't be blamed on the balance-distorting presence of a head-mounted camera.

And then there was the alarm clock. Rainbow had a certain non-mark talent for sleeping, which was nicely counterbalanced by her inability to reach any number of appointments on time because she'd napped through her departure window. So... why not upgrade the thing? If it was going to wake her up with lights, then there had to be more lights! Sound? That needed to be LOUDER! And Ratchette, who had trouble getting potential new clients to take a chance on her and generally needed every commission she could get, had done everything she could, showed Rainbow exactly what the safe maximums were for lumens and decibels alike -- and immediately followed that up by measuring the distance from cloud house to the mechanic's ground-based little home. Because the safety cutoffs were generally the first thing Rainbow tried to disable and so when the modified alarm went off for the first time, Ratchette became one of the few in all of Ponyville to almost sleep through the first two seconds of it.

There were those who said the weather coordinator operated entirely on instinct, didn't think, and they were wrong. The problems arose from the things she thought of. And you could never stop Rainbow from being Rainbow. Not for long.

So when the prismatic huffily flew into the fix-it shop, Ratchette knew it meant business. The only questions regarded exactly how many public complaint forms were about to be filed with the police, and what Ryder's never-closed moving supplies store was charging for packing boxes at this hour.

Rainbow, who'd just about kicked the door open, landed almost immediately. It was something which generally irritated the prismatic, but the fix-it shop was crowded. Tools hung from the ceiling, opened devices had numbered parts carefully arranged on the floor, and the proprietor had to stand somewhere. There was typically a single aisle available for clients, and it wasn't wide enough to allow ready flight.

The somewhat occupied cloud which Rainbow was towing behind her via jaw-gripped ropes was considerably wider than the aisle, but the vapor went through everything.

Ratchette looked up from the faulty lamp on the worktable, then straightened to her full (and relatively minimal) height. Copper eyes carefully watched as the irritated prismatic half-marched down the aisle, eyes narrowed in a way which meant the frustration had reached the point where it could only be solved by bits.

Normally, a visibly frustrated Rainbow would have had just about anypony's full attention. Ratchette had learned to check the contents of the cloud.

A shoulder-high box. It's rattling. There's a lot of small things in there, probably head-tossed in, and the layers are settling as she moves. That may be what needs fixing, if there's anything left which can still be repaired. And possibly not hers. (Crashes tended to produce debris, and freshly-made debris whose intact form had once belonged to somepony else tended to put Rainbow into small claims court.) And another box. Smaller, but not by much. There's some writing on it. And...

There was a third item. Something completely familiar, which had all four wooden support legs evenly balanced upon vapor. It was a standard feature in the rough majority of pony homes, and it also appeared to be oddly intact.

Why is she bringing in --

The prismatic stopped. Spat out the ropes, leaving the cloud to float where she'd left it as the vapor began to bead humidity onto several enclosed tools. She turned, her head angrily went back and down, and then the client just barely managed to lift the second box. It was too thick to be readily surrounded by the typical pony mouth, and the little grip on one side didn't offer much in the way of initial leverage.

Rainbow turned to face Ratchette, angrily marched forward, and slammed the box down on the worktable. Lamp parts jumped.

"This isn't good enough yet," the weather coordinator spat. "Fix it."

The mechanic made her first mistake. She looked down.

Her first assumption was Saratoga Way production, because the black and gold box was just the right width to hold albums and the prominent columns of text were proudly displaying a full listing of the cast. Most of the musical productions hosted in the capital's theater district released recordings of the songs eventually. She didn't recognize the ensemble, but the mechanic didn't get out much.

A musical album made sense. She just didn't know how Rainbow expected her to fix it, or make it work more efficiently with the rest of the cloud's burden. And there was also a certain question about the musical itself, because the box was thick enough to hold twenty albums. Ratchette tended to be somewhat behind on cultural events, but she was almost sure that somepony would have told her about any stage production which required the audience to sleep in the theater for a week.

The second presumption was that each individual part was actually performed by up to five ponies. Also that fainting spells were probably written into the script.

Carefully, "I don't know what you want me to do, Rainbow."

The prismatic stared at her. Snorted, then glared down at the box. "Isn't it obvious? Look at this thing! It's not good enough --"

Stopped. Blinked.

"-- and it's upside-down," Rainbow muttered. "Give me a second..."

Her teeth nipped at the grip again, and a moment of strain got the box flipped. Gold lettering flashed reflected light towards copper eyes, and the mechanic automatically looked at the title.

"Oh!" she exclaimed with some delight. "Somepony finally made The Princess Bridle into a musical! It's about --" and frowned. "Wait. Just how many songs did they --"

Rainbow shook her head.

"You really haven't seen one yet?" the prismatic asked. "It's not a stage thing. It's the book."

Ratchette blinked.

"...it's the what?"

One more snort. "It's called an audiobook." With a mix of pride and frustration, "It's a little of the future, and now it's here! Every actor reads a part! And there's a narrator, and sometimes you even get a background score! They're awesome! But right now, they're also kind of stupid."

A book you can hear...

"Stupidly awesome," Ratchette's disuse of social skills tried, and knew it hadn't been quite right when she spotted the prismatic trying to repress the smirk. "But how do I fix it?"

Rainbow turned, and magenta eyes directed a frustrated stare at the third item on the cloud.

"It's a new way of reading," the prismatic announced. "It's reading where you don't have to read at all, because somepony reads to you. You can read and do other stuff at the same time."

The mechanic managed a nod --

-- oh no...

"I could read anywhere, while doing anything --" a lot of very open frustration declared "-- if this stupid gramophone wasn't stuck in my living room! I need a gramophone I can take with me! Something I can fly with, so I can read at work, or while I'm doing anything else! So --" and she turned to face Ratchette as the light of thought danced in her eyes "-- how do we fix it?"

She was a regular client. The mechanic had experience with Rainbow, and to know the pegasus was to recognize the way it was all going to end. The only way it could.

But if Ratchette turned her away, the prismatic would just head into Canterlot. Find somepony who didn't have that extensive (and fragmented) experience with her, and... it would just happen anyway.

In theory, keeping it all local gave Ratchette some chance to defuse things. To reroute the track before it went into the wall. But it was Rainbow. You could follow, or even try to lead -- but for the most part, ponies just had to get out of the way.

No matter what the mechanic did, it was going to happen. And given that, if it was all inevitable anyway... then at least Ratchette would be the one getting paid.

(And it was more than that. She looked at the gramophone, she thought about what Rainbow wanted, and something within her wanted to rise. Meeting the challenge...)

"Tell me more," Ratchette said. "Slowly. And I'm going to need all of the details."

The core of it was this: reading was a sedentary activity. In fact, most of the forms of entertainment which Rainbow enjoyed involved staying in one place, and that was a problem of its own.

If Rainbow was reading, that was what she was doing: reading. (There was the option to eat, but Rainbow respected the sanctity of her own books and Twilight wasn't happy when somepony returned stained pages.) She found a place to read, she went quiet, got comfortable and if the book was a good one, she wouldn't stay quiet for long. Or comfortable. Or necessarily in one place. Having Rainbow as an audience meant the physical focus of attention could go wandering at any time. Rainbow was the sort of reader who not only yelled at books in order to make the characters pay attention, but tended to jump up and jab an accusing forehoof at the name of whoever she'd just decided was actually the murderer.

This issue reached into multiple forms of media. Rainbow really got into movies. Jeers. Cheers. Commentary. Lines were met with attempts to suggest better ones. She offered free advice to anypony who was currently hosted on the screen, and tended to become offended when they didn't follow it. She was the reason for the custom-created Stay On Your Bench cel before every show. The cinema owner had once approached Ratchette to ask about getting something which could detect popcorn being kicked at the screen and deflect it with a gust of wind before the olive oil stains set in, but that wasn't in the realm of unicorn magic. Ratchette worked with devices. Pegasus-enchanted wonders were for a different specialist, and she still didn't know if the referral had worked out.

To have Rainbow at the cinema was to hope unto Sun that the movie didn't have a flying stunt sequence, and it probably would: that was one of the main reasons Rainbow went to see anything. Because the pegasus wanted to see what everypony else was doing, didn't necessarily recognize special effects on first glance, and if she saw something which didn't seem to make any sense...

But when it came to reading, the issue of being able to do nothing but read was something Rainbow had brought to Ratchette before -- only she hadn't quite been honest about what she'd truly wanted. The mechanic had believed the request to be basic: a neck-mounted collapsible reading shelf, only matched precisely to Rainbow's dimensions and made of lighter wood than usual. She'd thought Rainbow just wanted to read in various places without having the book on the ground, and the securing clamps for the covers were just about standard for good models. What she'd done was provide Rainbow with a way to effectively fly and read at the same time -- while looking at nothing except the book.

During the post-crash hearing, Rainbow had claimed that sensing the proximity of impending solids through reading the air currents was clearly enough for anypony to work with and as far as the court was concerned, she'd been wrong about that, too.

(In the aftermath, the mayor and police chief had hastily moved to prevent ponies from reading while flying. Also while trotting in traffic, because not doing so would have been discrimination. After some thought, this had been changed to The Blocked Vision Initiative, and then Marigold and Miranda had needed to mutually write in an exception for Fluttershy.)

Rest in one place, at least to start. Read, while doing nothing else. Don't fall asleep on the book, because that was insulting to the author -- unless doing so served as a way of announcing Rainbow's personal review score. Rumor claimed that she'd once tried to talk Princess Luna into reading to her during dreams, because that was when she wasn't moving anyway. It supposedly hadn't ended well.

But now somepony had invented audiobooks. (Or 'someone'.) And Rainbow had seen the possibilities -- but they just weren't good enough yet. They weren't portable. And now that was Ratchette's problem.

"I mean, what do they expect me to do?" the prismatic demanded. "Just tow a cloud behind me the whole time?"

"Maybe?" Ratchette offered.

"I tried it."

This was not a surprise.

"This is my third gramophone," Rainbow added. "But I brought the pieces from the other two. In case anything still worked and you needed some spare parts." She snorted again. "Why did it have to be albums? You can see it, right? How many it takes to hold a whole book?" Followed by, with a surge of delight and hope, "But it's the whole book, Ratchette! Everything! And that's why everypony says that A.K. Yearling is gonna sign on for the next production wave! Because she never let the movie rights go, it would have been too many changes to the story -- but they don't have to change anything for an audiobook! They're just gonna read it!" With a grin, "I can't wait to see who they get for Daring!"

Ratchette was nowhere near that culturally detached.

Daring Do, who has to regularly pull off stunts just to stay alive...

She knew how it would end. But before that happened, she had a gramophone to take apart. The mechanic had mounted her custom-built spring-powered clamp and tool holder onto her snout, was carefully nudging controls with her tongue. Rainbow, who had seen it all before, no longer made comments about the giant steel spider which was so clearly eating her face.

"But it's still albums," Rainbow added. "Why not use the film stuff?"

"You mean the spells they use to make talkies?"

"Yeah. There's something in a projector which reads the sounds --"

"-- and those spells were designed to work with film." Minotaurs had invented cameras and, subsequently, cinema -- but a partnership with ponies had been required to move the medium out of the silent area. "So they only work with film. Without the celluloid, they sort of... collapse. Or detonate."

"So you could just film a blank wall or something while the actors were performing --"

Ratchette, who was occasionally retained by the cinema for other repairs and had Stiff Neck as a loyal client because Ponyville's only movie collector needed to maintain his equipment, gave Rainbow a long look. Then she carefully detailed the weight of the average projector, added in the sound reader, then instructed Rainbow on the time content of one reel and finished it all up by kicking in a hefty multiplier.

"...oh." The prismatic watched the front panel of the housing come off: one nudge withdrew the screwdriver, and then the next slowly lowered the clamped wood to the table. "So can you do it? Make it small enough to fly with?"

"I can try. But we may wind up going through a few versions before we get the right one." Or, with Rainbow, the last.

"Got it," Rainbow smoothly said. "Test flights. Happens all the time. I can pay. When can I pick up the first?"

"Give me three days," the mechanic said. "Then check back." Thoughtfully, "And I need to learn about audiobooks, because this is the first one I've seen. I don't know if the creators tried anything else before they went to albums. Something which might be better for you."

Her client nodded. "This is all I've seen," she admitted. "But I know who you could ask."

Twilight looked so put-upon as to have the weight of the inquiry seemingly pushing her down into the checkout desk's wooden bench.

The mares spoke on a fairly regular basis, because Ratchette considered Twilight to be one of her few friends. One understood magic, the other devices, and two powerful talents had just enough intersection to give them both things they could talk about and, on a good day, at least ten minutes before one of them would need to ask for headache medicine.

Gramophones were machines: mechanisms which operated without any spells at all, and that placed them into Ratchette's jurisdiction. But audiobooks were clearly the domain of a librarian.

This librarian didn't look all that happy about it.

"Audiobooks," she groaned, and the tones of despair echoed through the nearly-empty library, changing only slightly as they bounced off distant scales. "Don't talk to me about audiobooks. They're causing so many problems..."

"I kind of have to," Ratchette apologized. "You're the only pony --"

"-- I know," the next groan offered. "I don't mind that much, Ratchette. It's just been a lot of adjustments."

"And..." Carefully, because it was Twilight and books, "...what kind of problems? Is it the production?"

Surprisingly, the little alicorn shook her head.

"They're getting good actors. I heard that it's making things a lot easier on Saratoga Way, because there's been more demand for parts. Limited stages -- but now there's a recording studio. It's extra jobs." Happily, "And of course, they've been reading the whole book, like a sensible production would! As opposed to --"

Six limbs tossed off a shudder in multiple directions, and then went tight as purple eyes narrowed with ferocity.

"-- abridging," Twilight named the sin with a hiss. This was followed by glaring around the tree, as if trying to find somepony who might have considered committing it.

Ratchette briefly considered the paradoxes built into the Equestrian language, because 'abridgement' oddly meant the creation of gaps and none of them would ever be sufficient to prevent Twilight from getting to you.

"Good actors," the alicorn added. "But I'm not sure about the casting directors."

"Why?" was a natural inquiry, and also a mistake.

"The mare leads never sound like they do in my head," Twilight stated. "I've thought about sending a letter. Or maybe even auditioning." Hopefully, "We did do that play once --"

From somewhere in the unseen depths of Thaumic Fiction, a very young voice called out "Let me guess. The mare leads always sound like you."

A rising blush quickly began to underlight purple fur.

"Or like you sound to yourself," Spike added from what was probably a safe distance. "Which the audio wouldn't pick up on, because it can't account for bone conduction. So you'd read for the part and decide you didn't sound right. Then you'd realize why. Then you'd try to adjust the equipment." The younger sibling artfully paused. "It's usually about four minutes until the first explosion goes off --"

"-- I get it!" the big sister frustratedly called out. "Mental self-inserts! Like you don't do it, Captain Bound Sterling! And that's before we get into all of the knight stuff...!"

The reptilian snicker abruptly cut itself off at the source.

"Brothers," Twilight muttered. "Anyway, part of the problem is just the size. The boxes are too big to go next to their books of origin on the shelves. So I had to create a whole new audiobook section!" A vague illness was now adding some tinge of green to the red. "And that's multiple genres tangled up on the same bookcase. The same shelf! How is anypony supposed to --"

"-- you don't place periodicals with books of the same topic!" Spike distantly rallied. "Or were you planning to start --"

"-- Don't. Push. It."

One more (retreating) snicker, and then Twilight sighed.

"Size," the librarian repeated. "Filing. Rarity tried playing one in the Boutique, because she likes having some background sound for customers. It didn't work out. They shopped, they decided not to buy anything, and then they wouldn't leave because the chapter wasn't over. Ponies keep asking which books are coming out next, and I don't know because the company is still trying to find authors willing to sign on. And some of them think that because the tree is carrying audiobooks, I have to keep gramophones in stock and let ponies check those out too." She sighed. "The worst part is that I already asked the mayor about putting something into next season's budget for it. I like the idea of them, Ratchette. They can be a lot of fun with the right readers, and that's before you start thinking about what this could do for the blind and vision-impaired. But right now, they're new. And 'new' can mean a lot of problems."

The mechanic nodded. "So when it comes to anything else they might have tried to hold the sound...?"

"Just albums," Twilight said. "Can you imagine how many wax cylinders it would take just to get through the average prologue?" She wearily shook her head. "I guess you could read a book into a Minder. If you had about eight thousand of them."

Ratchette winced. The rather limited note-recording devices were among her least favorite, and part of that came from the manufacturer's habit of charging for storage by the syllable.

"So until somepony invents something else," the librarian finished, "that's what we're stuck with. The good and the bad." She paused, and fur twisted against itself with worry. "This is for Rainbow?"

"Yes."

A solid, almost even statement, weighted down on all sides by Too Much Experience. "You know how it's going to end."

"...yes," Ratchette sighed. "But it's better if it's me. Maybe I can at least try to moderate it."

The alicorn looked sympathetic and, when it came to heading off the inevitable, that was the most she could do.

"Good luck."

"Thanks."

Placidly, "We're doomed."

Or somepony is. We both know what's going to happen. 'Where' is still a variable.
I'm the one who gets to put a starting gate on 'when'.

"I know."

Doom, however, involved a number of fascinating mechanical questions. Just for starters, Ratchette was trying to figure out how much of a gramophone was truly essential to its operation. How much it could all be cut down.

Hour after hour in the shop, taking things apart. Tinkering. The manipulation prosthetic began to weigh deep pressure canals into the fur of her snout.

The support legs went immediately. Ratchette would be ultimately looking to mold the base into something which would fit smoothly against the small of Rainbow's back, just above the lumbar vertebrae. It was just a matter of determining how much mass had to be carried. And this turned out to be easier than expected, because a gramophone's base was roughly eighty percent hollow. The wood was present to hide the gears, cylinder drum, and quite a lot of non-supportive air.

It was possible to play with the gear ratio somewhat, as long as the turntable's spindle still moved at the correct speed. She reached out to Stile, and Ponyville's tool-maker cast a few smaller specimens. Force-storing springs were examined, then rendered in lesser dimensions.

There was a crank. There wasn't much Ratchette could do about the crank. The film camera, on the rare occasions when it was intact, was mounted on top of Rainbow's head and the pegasus, relative to herself, was usually facing forward. It had given the little windmill engine something to constantly collect. The crank stuck out to one side, and changing that was going to involve a significant amount of kinetic rerouting, with gears and weight added accordingly. Even in her most streamlined flight positions, Rainbow's head and neck were going to block a lot of the airflow. Wings would frequently interfere with the rest. Putting an effective sail on the crank wasn't going to work, and also created something which might impact a wing. And running a turbine up to Rainbow's head... no flexibility, and she couldn't freeze somepony's neck. Ratchette could theoretically get the turntable to run for longer than usual, but motive power was still going to be supplied via mouth winding.

Then you had the audio delivery. Ratchette took multiple pictures of the diaphragm, examined the horn impedance in the air chamber and checked the weighting on the spider arms. None of that changed the fact that it all now had to work while in motion, and do so while the pegasus would be perpetually moving into self-created wind. Something which had a good chance to whip words away.

Also, gramophones had to remain level and still to operate at maximum efficiency. Factor that against the existence of pegasi and, more specifically, Rainbow. How was Ratchette supposed to keep the album stable on the turntable?

It took a few tries before she came up with the idea of the rim. Tin sufficed for that: two thin half-circles of metal with a hollow valley at their center, each spring-loaded on their own side of the turntable. Place the album, close the rim, and the edge of the album gained the extra support of the valley's borders. Which didn't mean that there might not be chipping produced by sudden movements, especially since she was working with metal. So maybe if she padded out the hollow -- but she had to do that while still allowing the album to freely turn...

Challenges. Because Rainbow's desires pushed the mechanic, forced her to think differently as an aspect of her talent rose to meet the wishes of another, and that was why Ratchette continued to let the weather coordinator cross the threshold into the shop. When it was Rainbow, you never knew where the journey might take you along the way. You only knew how it would end.

But there were still a few iterations to go through before that happened. And every few days, Rainbow dropped by the fix-it shop. Took the latest model into the sky, as Ratchette watched.

They kept the trials confined to the atmosphere over an unoccupied pasture. Ratchette, who had very little speed or skill in the air, asked Rainbow to keep things at a rate where the mechanic could stay close enough to observe. This happened. Most of the time, and Rainbow usually remembered to apologize after accelerating a little too much.

Her client kept bringing back notes.

"I don't know about this dome over the top."

"The album has to be protected from the wind." And, to the tiny degree it was possible, from Rainbow. "And that keeps it from just coming all the way off."

"The aerodynamics are all messed up," her client complained. "My air profile --"

"-- I can try to make it into more of a slope at the front," Ratchette allowed. "But there's always going to be some effect."

And Rainbow grumbled.

"I'll figure out how to compensate."

I knew you were going to say that.

"I like the sound cones! And now we've got two of them! I could hear everything! It's like sitting dead-center in the cinema every time!"

It had been the easiest way to make sure the words actually reached Rainbow: twin the reproduction, then curve it directly to the head. The prismatic could get a near-perfect seal just by tilting her ears back a bit. But for what that did to the aerodynamics...

Still, getting the sound to reproduce twice off one lever needle had been a challenge. She'd had to ask the cinema for a look at their system, then get everything scaled down from there. "I'm glad they're working out."

"Better than working out! The words were right there, Ratchette! It was like if I talked back, they would hear me!" Which explained why the weather coordinator had been speaking somewhat as she flew along. "Shape's a little weird, though." She frowned. "Maybe if it went inside the ears..."

Ratchette pictured the ending. Rainbow did not.

"No."

"What if you put a gyroscope under the whole thing?"

"Then I'd have to balance everything on top of it," Ratchette pointed out. "And it would all be shifting. Constantly. It's been hard enough to keep the needle from skipping all the time." She was trying a drop-down restraining circle over the spinning album, preventing it from jumping off the spindle. Another work in progress. "And it would double the volume. At least. I'm trying to keep this as low to the wind as I can." For the total amount of good it would ultimately do, which was none.

Ratchette was making regular copies of her notes, along with writing down everything she said to Rainbow and putting that into the file. When it all ended, Miranda Rights would want access to the information. The mechanic was planning to give the police chief every last hoofstep and wing flap of the process, one at a time.

It was somewhat like reading (or listening to) a book from the library's Disaster section. You knew how it ended, at least for general theme. But the details were still important.

"We need a better way to change albums." Rainbow snorted with disgust, then worked her ears until she'd shoved the cones back far enough to let her hear the results. "Better than landing."

"Twilight's had the same complaint," Ratchette said. "Everypony does. Automatic swapping is going to take a while. And even the most experimental designs are going to make it too large for you to carry." Which currently seemed to involve having albums in a vertical stack, allowing the lever enough room to work the turntable and then, when the playing level wrapped up, dropping another album on top of it. Without breaking the album or the lever. It was far too much to rig into a portable design.

"And carrying the rest of the albums under my belly..." the prismatic complained.

"They have to go somewhere," the mechanic pointed out.

"It's a lot of weight." Which had been a near-constant complaint about every iteration. "How do we bring the mass down on that?"

"I thought of a way," admitted a great deal of pent-up frustration. "But it's a gradual thing. You'd only lose mass along the way. One album at a time, after you'd finished listening to that section."

"That sounds great! What's it called?"

"An eject button."

And finally, they had a version Ratchette was happy with.

...well, for a given value of 'happy'. It worked, and continued to work as long as operational conditions were scrupulously maintained. It also made Rainbow look as if a mad scientist had tried to combine pony and mechanism into a single being and given up on the project shortly after lunch, but it worked.

Ratchette felt as if she'd learned a lot about gramophones, sonics, and relative miniaturization. There was a lot in the final rig which she simply hadn't been able to do anything about -- for starters, there was no helping the size of the actual albums, let alone their cumulative number and weight -- but she felt as if she'd done the best she could with the equipment which was available.

It worked, and Rainbow was happy.

There was the matter of a final payment for services rendered. And, just before she let her client go out the shop door with the rig, a speech. There always had to be a speech, just so everypony would know exactly what had been ignored.

"This is for standard flying," she told Rainbow. "Slow climbs and gradual descents. You can tilt your torso and the album will keep playing, but pure vertical is going to cause problems. And as you kept saying, this messes with your air profile --"

"I'll adjust," the prismatic confidently declared. "Once I've had some more time wearing it."

"-- and that means it can change how the air reacts," Ratchette pushed on, because testimonies had to be exact. "You could probably use it at work, for a few things. Cloudbreaking, setting up wind borders. But nothing more intensive. Normal, routine weather manipulation and commuter flights. No practicing stunts --"

The magenta eyes narrowed.

"Making stunts into part of the job," the prismatic stated, "is how you get to be a Wonderbolt."

And there we go.

"It's a risk."

"I live for risk."

"The rig can only take so much --"

"-- so I'll find out how much. Aren't stress tests supposed to be part of this? Go to the line, exactly the line, and then stop --"

"-- and I am not responsible for what happens if you go all-out, Rainbow. If you try to do anything more than what I told you, and what I've written down -- that's outside of my responsibilities."

"Where's the written-down stuff?"

Ratchette nosed it across the worktable. Rainbow collected the paperwork, then shoved it deep into the recesses of her right saddlebag, never to be seen again.

"I'm also not responsible for what happens if you don't read --"

"-- fine. Can I go?"

Ratchette internally reviewed the contents of several recently-consulted law journals.

"Whenever you're ready."

Rainbow proudly nodded.

"This," she declared, "is gonna be so cool. Personal sound system! Traveling library!" She snickered. "I want to be the one who tells Twilight that. After she gets a good look at it. And finds out she won't be able to get one of her own for weeks."

The prismatic grinned, because some kinds of pranks and vengeance were preemptive. Ratchette was momentarily silent.

"Are you going to take it to the library now?"

Rainbow glanced back, visibly working her gaze past numerous hanging tools until she could judge the position of a gradually dropping Sun.

"Tomorrow," she decided. "I'm going to drop this off at home. Then I'm going to the library -- yeah, without it, Ratchette: I'm picking up an audiobook tonight. Something I can be listening to tomorrow, when I go back. They're finally getting some decent adventure stuff in!" Beaming, "And the rumors say Ms. Yearling's coming on board! That's going to be the start of a whole new collection! And I can finally get first editions starting from Day One on the entire line!"

"The audiobook," the mechanic started. "The one you're picking up. Pegasus main character?"

"Yeah. She's no Daring, but the cover blurb said she's a stunt flyer. I'll give her a chance."

Ratchette, who had always been on the shy side, felt herself go quiet.

"...you okay?" the prismatic inquired. "You look kind of --"

"-- I just wanted to say," the mechanic carefully cut in, "that it's the best I can do. I don't know if it's the best anypony could have done --"

"-- I came to you --"

"-- because my mark is for devices. Pure mechanisms is -- more of a side thing," Ratchette reluctantly admitted. "And for some of the things you really needed, to make it as good as anypony could dream of... I don't think the magic exists for that yet. Or the technology, Rainbow. If I did it right -- then this is the best I could do, for what I'm capable of, with what's out there. And if that's not quite what you wanted... I'm sorry."

Copper eyes began to close as her head dipped. The sleek form on the other side of the worktable turned --

-- a cyan wingtip met her chin, and pushed the grey head up.

"You're the one I trust with this," Loyalty stated. "Not somepony else. You. Every time."

She watched her client leave.

She was as happy with the final model as she was ever going to be. It wasn't perfect. But the things she needed to make it so didn't exist yet, and... it worked.

It wouldn't hurt too badly to see it destroyed.

It was inevitable. Something which was going to happen no matter what anypony did, and it happened on the next day.

Ratchette got to be a witness. She normally would have been at the shop by that point, but -- she'd been wandering somewhat, all at ground level. Looking up, and... waiting. She just happened to intercept the right moment. The one before the conclusion began, and she did so because she spotted where everypony else was looking up.

"Yeah! That's the way you do it! Tilt a little there, then feather off to the left..."

Residents who'd been in Ponyville for a while tended to pay a little more attention to air traffic than those in other mixed towns, because they'd learned that safety could depend on knowing where Rainbow was at all times.

"...okay, watch your curve there," said the non-reading singular audience as she flew along, maintaining a level path to assist the dome on her back in its operations. "Maybe use your momentum -- oh, come on, he's right behind you!"

Rainbow was somewhat more of a sight than usual. Ratchette could see ponies trying to work out the purpose of the cones, dome, and belly-slung harness. If they'd had a little more time, a few might have reached the right conclusion. Perhaps one of the most experimental might have come to her with a commission.

"So what are you gonna try now, huh?" inquired the flying weather coordinator of an unseen character. "What's your next big move for the great chase sequence, now that the last one failed? What's the plan?"

Ratchette, who had a mechanic's instinct for knowing exactly which part shouldn't be sparking, responded to those words by slowly shifting her body to the left.

"OH, COME ON! That would never work! Who wrote this, a flight camp dropout? Look, I'll just show you why it doesn't --"

The prismatic had certain preferences in her entertainment. Books and cinema alike. And it was the same problem -- or rather, it was two of them. The first said that if something which was seen as impossible got demonstrated on a screen, one member of the audience was going to correct. Right then and there, and the theoretical wonder probably wasn't quite up to deflecting her either. And reading, while it could draw commentary, had been a largely sedentary activity -- until now.

The paired issue was even more basic, and simply said you could never stop Rainbow from being Rainbow. Not for long.

There was a story. The audience had decided that part of it didn't fit. But there was only one way to prove expertise.

Rainbow had declared that whatever plan was being executed in the narrated text wouldn't work. As spoken words went, it was just an opinion.

True proof required demonstration.

The prismatic's entire body twisted.

Aerodynamics pushed against the unfamiliar shape and profile of the rig, then twisted all the more.

Ratchette was the first pony to reach the shallow crater, and did her best to step around numerous pieces of debris in order to reach the prone, stretched-out, bruised pony at the center. But she couldn't avoid everything, and part of a sound cone crunched under a hind hoof.

"Rainbow?" she checked, as soon as she was both within range of slow-turning ears and could see that the eyes were blinking. "Rainbow, talk to me --"

"-- this," the prismatic irritably declared from somewhere near the heart of concussion, "is how you know it's fiction. Mediocre fiction. Sub-Daring. By a lot."

"...what?"

A cyan right forehoof lashed out at a piece of broken album, all the better to kick the offending party that much further away.

"Writer obviously didn't do the research!"

The last fragments, no longer needed for the evidence locker, had been returned to Rainbow's custody and the weather coordinator, who didn't like keeping proof of past failures around, was dropping off the latest box of debris at the fix-it shop.

"That was me," she quietly admitted, and did so at the moment her snout was clear of the nosed-over container. "I just... look, I know what you said, but... I heard that page, and I just..."

"It's okay." Because it was Rainbow, and -- Ratchette had known how it was going to end. But some customers were special. Because they trusted you, sometimes more than you trusted yourself. And they kept coming back.

Rainbow's head briefly dipped. Lifted again.

"I'm only giving up for now," she announced. "We'll try again, once some more of the future gets here. When the magic is there. And the technology. And everything else."

The mechanic nodded.

Maybe it'll work. Some other day.

The story was a familiar one. But that would be a new chapter, and a chance at a different ending.

"Back to reading," Rainbow sighed. "The same old reading, where I'm stuck in one place most of the time. At least some of the books are good..."

The sleek wings unfolded, worked out the joints a few times before returning to the rest position.

"So what are you working on?" Rainbow asked. "That's a projector, right?"

"Stiff Neck's," Ratchette unnecessarily confirmed, and only recognized the pointless qualifier after the words had escaped. Who else in town has a personal one? "He's got this bad habit of kicking it when the movie's lousy. And most of the reels which the studios are willing to sell after release are pretty rotten." It was her turn to sigh. "The lenses are out of alignment. I have to get them to place the images on the screen again, without blurring..."

"Projected images."

It had been an odd tone. Rather... thoughtful.

Ratchette met the prismatic's eyes and in doing so, made a mistake.

There were those who said the weather coordinator didn't listen, and they were wrong. It was just that you could never be entirely sure as to which words had registered, especially when she mostly seemed to learn by osmosis. And those same ponies claimed Rainbow didn't think -- but there were ways in which she thought all the time.

"That reading shelf you made for me," Rainbow began. "The collapsing one. That worked fine. Held the book. Pages didn't get turned by the wind, and nothing tore. When you think about it, the only reason anything happened is because I couldn't see through it."

The problems arose from the things she thought of...

"What if," a new fast-approaching inevitable conclusion proposed, "you projected the words onto glass?"