And Nopony Will Tell Twilight Because Nopony Needs To Involve Quantum (Case Transcript 2 of 2)

Sex Court operated under its own slightly-separate set of rules, and chief among those was the guarantee of privacy. It was the only thing which let so many ponies feel they could take a chance on bringing a case at all, and it created certain difficulties when the entire courtroom had just been told that it had to go outside.

It had taken Impassi some time just to get the arrangements in place. The court officers had gone out to notify the police. Most of the contacted patrolponies had set up Police Line: You Cross And You'll GET Crossed notices and barriers around roughly half of the extensive open space available in front of the pink marble structure. Meanwhile, a rookie had been dispatched to the capital's Weather Bureau office with an emergency judicial request, and...

Sun still held dominion over the cycle. It was all too easy to see events on the other side of the barriers, and some ponies responded to instructions of Don't Look Over There with an unvoiced But That Means Only If You Catch Me Doing It, Right? The courthouse had a little too much of a courtyard, and viewing angles were plentiful. Additionally, Equestria still had a few Public Decency statutes on the books, along with self-appointed Guardians of Morality waiting to abuse them.

So Impassi had requested Bureau pegasi. A very localized unseasonal temperature drop. And a lot of humidity.

The result was a cylindrical wall of dense fog: several dozen body lengths in diameter (and, after the defendant had politely requested an unexplained addition, a dozen more), capped off by a fully-inactive thunderhead. Nopony outside the sculpted vapor enclosure could see what was happening and thanks to the sheer amount of blocked light, nopony inside had initially been able to see much of anything until the pole-mounted lighting devices had shown up.

There were certain problems involved with the setup. Creating a fog tunnel to allow everypony the chance to enter the temporary demonstration area in privacy hadn't been one of them. But relocation had created a number of questions and for those who held season tickets in the gallery, one of them was 'Where's my bench?' Because it was effectively impossible to arrange everypony in a way which recreated the elevation-staggered sight lines of stadium seating, most of the crowd wasn't exactly happy about their view, flapping wings tended to get in the way, and ponies kept shuffling around in attempts to give themselves a better vista.

Not of the demonstration, for that hadn't started yet. Of the judge.

They hardly ever saw her outside the courtroom. And when she was at her station... an steady entrance, a controlled exit, and she would be wearing robes the whole time. In a society for which concealment often equaled enticement, the exact nature of the unseen form under the dark fabric had been raising questions for years. And now she was -- outside. Still in the robes, but moving more or less normally. Just about trotting. Portions of her body pressed against the linen contours, provided brief outlines of legs and hips. And with the mane... there had always been some suspicions that she was wearing a wig, and the lavender-tinged ringlets seemed to be shifting naturally.

The gallery, brought into the illuminated fog chamber, mostly watched Impassi Heartstopper: the capital's acknowledged JILF. And some of them began to dream again.

There currently wasn't that much else to see. Ricti Scale was pacing in a small circle: both channeling the energy of frustration and trying to stay warm. You couldn't see anything beyond the fog wall: even pegasus thermal sight ran into a barrier of constant temperature and stopped right there. And Goldberg had temporarily departed towards the parking stable, accompanied by three court officers because the judge was anything but stupid and you never knew when a defendant would invoke the time-honored strategy of Run For It.

But he was determined to prove himself, and the unicorn stepped back through the fog wall. The poorly-worn harness bounced against his shoulders as he stopped, leaving the rest of the cart hidden in the thick mists.

"Everypony was very helpful," he smiled. "Even after I told you I couldn't set up inside. It's all here. I'll just need some --" and stopped, as those dark blue eyes focused on what was now being brought through the tunnel.

Impassi, who had set herself up to have the best possible sightline within what she was presuming had been a space meant to host the entire courtroom (and was nearly up to accommodating the courthouse), made an immediate deduction.

"Our test equipment, Mr. Goldberg," she said, adding a subtle nod towards the approaching occupant of the wheeled bed.

"Oh," he managed. "I didn't think to use a ponikin..."

"There's no reason why you should," she admitted. "We don't employ a standard clothing display model." Which was the typical use for a full-sized jointed wooden replica of the equine form. "This one is somewhat more advanced." She thought it over. "However, if this case ends with your intending to continue working in the sex aid business, it will be in your best interests to acquire one of your own. Contact my office and I'll have somepony put you in touch with the manufacturer."

Unofficially, the court's ponikin was known as Proxi, and was currently acting as a 'she': the modular nature of the wooden anatomy meant the design could be modified as desired, including in cases where it needed to be anatomically overcorrect.

Proxi couldn't think. The androgynous face was completely incapable of speech -- although one of her enchanters had decided it would be more realistic if Proxi released an authentic gasp of pleasure once in a while: the frantic calls of distress were handled by a separate spell. But she was fully incapable of considering her situation, much less truly commenting on it.

Proxi was also under more permanent enchantments than the average unicorn understood to exist, and the purpose of them was to provide the ponikin with the functional equivalent of a nervous system.

Proxi couldn't see or hear. It took some of the most sophisticated spells in the world to let the ponikin truly experience touch. Proxi understood exactly what pleasure was and, as much to the point, what it wasn't. And in the place where a mark should have been, you found the indicators. Color-coded signs of exactly what the ponkin was feeling -- assisted by the occasional audio cue. Including, if everything really started to go wrong, a spell-shouted emergency request to stop.

Proxi, as the court's demonstration model, Had Been Through Some Shit.

"How does it work?" Goldberg curiously asked. "And what's the cost? I could use that..." She told him and upon reaching the price, got to see what happened when metallic fur blanched. "...oh. I -- can't. Not right now. Not without at least one more sale."

Which was understandable. Proper equipment helped -- but for a startup, it was one more (extremely necessary) expense.

"So as everything required is now present," Impassi began, "please assemble the vibrator --"

"-- it's not everything," said the cart-hauling unicorn, raising his voice slightly to get past the sound of weary approaching hoofsteps.

"Your pardon?"

"Everypony was very helpful," Goldberg smiled. "I think they're right behind me. And it saved me from having to rent another crew of haulers just to get everything transferred here!"

Three sweating, overburdened court officers stepped through the fog wall, and their carts jostled to a stop behind them. The portion of Impassi's mind which wasn't dedicating nearly all energy to keeping the stun off her face briefly noted that one of them had air holes.

"This," the inventor happily declared, "is everything! No, don't trouble yourselves, everypony: just unhitch and step back. I'll manage it all from here..."

His horn ignited: a golden corona, although it lacked the reflective aspects of the fur. Energy projected in several directions, and the first dozen boxes came off the carts.

The next dozen followed.

There was a pause while he started to get some of them open. A crate with small holes all over the lid was readily pried open, and the greeting offered by a doubled low chittering growl entered the local universe.

Glowing, gold-coated parts began to move. And Impassi understood.

In some ways, the assembly and installation were simple processes -- in that any individual step, if fully isolated from the rest of the instructions, would have been easy to understand. There might have been the occasional scream of psychic agony as the reader tried to comprehend why anypony would have wanted to do it, but most of it broke down to the basics. Insert Tab A Into Slot B, which was considered to be a rather important thing for anypony working with sex aids to understand.

That's a gear.
That's a pulley system.

It was just that after a while, Tab A and Slot B appeared to be rotating through Fractal ☊.

(The migraine was starting to come back.)

And that is a bathtub.

This was an illusion. The invention obeyed all laws of physics. There were six simple machines known to sapient life, and all of them had gotten involved while deciding that 'simple' was highly overrated. Everything functioned within the limits of reality.

"Mr. Goldberg?"

"...hmmm?" replied a rather distracted inventor. Glowing parts were moving all over the place, and each had to be brought into precise alignment with its fellows.

"The court," Impassi said on behalf of an entire judicial system, "would like an explanation of the bowling balls."

"Threefold," he promptly said. "Motive power. Vibration generation, as anypony who's rolled one down an alley can tell you. But as only a little of that is taken into the wood, I decided the spiral funnels were more practical. Since they're completely surrounded, you get all of the power. Or as much as entropy allows. You would not believe how many things bowling balls can do! But only when boxing gloves won't work. Have you ever seen a boxing glove? They're almost impossible to get. Most minotaurs prefer wrestling."

"And the third function?"

"They reset the dominoes," the inventor instructed.

"The --"

"-- timing mechanism. And the dampeners. Of course, you've already seen the emergency dampeners." He happily waved a foreleg towards the center of the construct. "Bob! Susan! Say hello!"

The pair of silver-and-tan badgers offered a low chittering growl.

"And -- how does one get the bowling balls back to their starting point? Because you described this in your ad copy as 'fully automated', and that degree of reset would seem to be a considerable manual enterprise for the average customer --"

"Oh, right!" Goldberg beamed: the lighting conditions within the capped fogged cylinder kept most of them from escaping. "I haven't put the super trampoline in yet!"

"Super trampoline," the judge neutrally repeated.

"It's bouncier than average. The key is to keep it from rebounding in unexpected directions."

It all operated within the limits of reality. Impassi just wasn't sure reality knew that.

She watched four bale-masses of metal casually float by.

"And that part?"

"Counterweight."

This was followed by two more just like it.

"Mr. Goldberg?"

"Yes?"

"An additional inquiry," Impassi neutrally began. "Unrelated to the case. You may answer it at your own discretion."

Curiously, "Oh?"

"Regarding your corona, and your field strength."

The average clockwork vibrator, self-contained, weighs less than a twentieth of a bale. Generally much less.
I thought an offloaded power source with refined controls would be a full bale or so. Maximum. In a bulky, but oddly artistic housing.
Oh dear.

"You are shifting an unusual amount of mass, in -- rather large quantities," she finished. "Did the Gifted School --"

"-- I was offered a scholarship," the inventor explained. "I turned it down. Spellwork is too fiddly. It's all thaums this and resonance that. The only resonance I want to deal with is created by the bowling balls coming down, and that just goes into the vibrator. Honestly, Your Honor, when you really start to think about it? Magic just doesn't do enough."

Piece by piece. Part by part. The assembly was given multiple spot checks along the way, because the stallion was a professional. Robin, with nothing to record, temporarily left the fog cylinder and came back with enough painkillers for everypony. Impassi, who had a certain need to appear impervious, openly refused her dose and then tried very hard not to look at where the potted plant was now growing into the primary water wheel.

It all went together, expertly, in what was ultimately a precisely logical order. It was easy to see how everything would interact. How it all worked, with every major subsystem terminating in two wires. One of them went to the vibrator, and the other led to the control panel. Create power there, adjust it there. Examine the invention step by step, and it had the potential to make perfect sense. All which was required for that to happen was a minor adjustment in the definition of 'perfect sense' to include 'and then the blackboard gets hit by the incoming boxing glove, knocking off some of the chalk dust which was placed by the rotoscope tracers, creating an extra friction gradient across the surface of the treadmill'.

Which meant you had to look at what was running the treadmill and at that point, the brain more or less gave up in self-defense. There were feats which had never been meant for accomplishment by cotton candy spinners, and Goldberg had found six more of them.

And then he was done.

Judge, court staff, plaintiff, and gallery all looked at the results. It took a while. You sort of had to work in numerical order, right up until everypony's minds collectively displaced the concept of 'counting' in order to make it stop.

Ricti Scale took a slow, soft breath. Her tail lashed.

"Easy setup," she repeated, "my ass."

Goldberg just looked confused.

"It's very simple as long as you do everything in order," he said. "But I didn't exactly have a chance to print up full instructions, so I decided to perform the setup and installation myself. As part of the total price. It's full service."

Impassi, with the case already effectively closed, decided to let them keep talking.

"And as I'm pretty sure I said in the ad copy," the unicorn proudly added, "there's no magic! That's one of my big selling points. Pegasi and earth ponies don't need to pay for thaums. Unicorns never drain their own strength to keep this going, and nopony has to play around with platinum."

"The badgers," Ricti voiced with near-deadly calm, "require feeding."

"Falls under maintenance," he cheerfully said. "The plant's actually more of a problem. It gets some spray from the water wheel, but you do need to reload the cistern once in a while. But with the badgers -- if you live in the right kind of area, you can just let them out every so often. That's encouraged. I got them from an extremely reputable source, and she wants them to have some regular time off. But it's not like vibrators get used constantly, right? And they're very well-trained, and they want to return to where they're warm and safe. You can even tell them not to watch."

An entire temporarily-displaced courtroom blinked. Ricti included.

"...not watch," echoed within the new hollows in Ricti's voice.

"They're very curious. My source told me that. So sometimes they look, if they have a clear sight line. But that just shows they're interested. And they're professionals who do the work." Proudly, "I always respect the opinion of a true expert. And my source told me never to use honey badgers. Those just don't care. But these do. In fact, if you happen to enjoy being watched, there's a command word to focus their attention. It overrides the default setting. Which is that they watch if they feel like it."

"-- they were watching by default --"

"-- I've been trying to figure out whether they can also act as an alarm system," the inventor smiled. "No extra charge!"

Impassi looked the structure over, bottom to top. Then she reversed the process. Adding gravitic acceleration allowed her to complete the process before Sun-lowering.

"I see that the wires have been connected to the vibrator and panel," she observed. "Begin the demonstration." And took a glance at Robin. "As our model cannot operate the panel, that falls to you. On Mr. Goldberg's instruction."

The court clerk nodded, and golden light levitated the vibrator's business end into contact with magically-softened wood. Insertion carefully occurred. And then it was all powered up, which happened with a simple flick of a hoof into a switch. After all, it hardly took very much energy to make a single domino fall.

Then more dominoes fell.
Bowling balls went into funnels.
The plant did something which presumably came from being a plant and thus could not have had a non-plant substitute.
A repurposed lamppost swung around by ninety degrees.
The badgers got involved.

And the vibrator...

It was too hard to watch the machine in action. Just about all of the gallery was now watching Proxi. Watching and listening for the indicators which would determine whether or not wood was having a good time.

It wasn't.

Wood was having a great time.

The color indicators came in on green. Then they quickly accelerated up through yellow, turning into the brightest lights within the fog as Goldberg proudly suggested switches (which required raising his voice, as the whole thing did make a certain amount of noise). The simulated cries of delight gained extra volume at orange, achieved full virtual orgasm well before red, and then the whole thing entered the domain of the pegasi because a lack of thermal sight meant Impassi needed outside advice on what it looked like when the pleasure meter kept going up.

Ponies were watching Proxi, and their expressions stated that an entire herd was now effectively regarding cellulose with open jealousy.

Goldberg told Robin to hit one more switch. The badgers took a break. Trampolines got involved, in a decidedly super manner. And it all powered down.

Judge Impassi Heartstopper took a breath.

They say that if you build the best possible spider trap, her mind spun out, the herd will beat a path to your door. And once some of the more skittish ones see what Mr. Goldberg considers to be perfect...

That was the thing about a herd. It stampeded. And it always had a choice of direction.

"Ms. Scale?" The plaintiff desperately wrenched her attention away from the ponikin, then refocused on the judge. "Did you actually use this?"

"After... everything else," the mare quietly admitted. "Once I'd finished -- looking at everything he'd done to make it work. I decided... I know it was stupid, but I thought -- so much else was already wrong, there's no point going in on half a disaster, so maybe just a little quick contact and I can get away from it at the moment anything starts to feel wrong..."

"And?"

The younger earth pony's hooves shuffled against the courtyard stone.

In the low tones produced by the highest embarrassment, "...it's perfect. It's the best I've ever had. I think it might be the best anypony's ever had from a vibrator..."

Impassi briefly wondered if the plaintiff would object to offering a numerical rating. Also whether it was arithmetic or logarithmic.

"...you might get mares trying to marry this thing..."

It can't agree to a union.
Legally, neither can the badgers.

Every syllable was now being extracted from the mines of humiliation. "...it works perfectly. It does -- exactly what the ad copy said it would. The greatest vibrator ever made..."

Goldberg beamed. Half of the gallery briefly looked intrigued, and a significant subset instantly channeled that into raw want.

Then they looked at the 'offloaded' power source again. And they couldn't stop.

"I have some questions for each of you," the judge announced. "Ms. Scale, you first. Where do you live?"

"Canterlot," said a rather confused mare. "It's in my paperwork --"

"-- the neighborhood and nature of your residence."

"Oh. I'm out in Manowar. It's a small house."

"I presume there's a backyard immediately behind your bedroom?"

Rather darkly, "Not any more. Technically. It's -- occupied. The control wires come in through new holes in the walls. They're good fits. He even reinsulated."

"And your neighbors...?"

"Have a few questions," Ricti wearily stated. "None of which relate to my sex life. Yet. But a lot of them were about badgers."

"If they need referrals," the defendant began, "there's this cottage outside Ponyville --"

"-- your turn, Mr. Goldberg," Impassi calmly said, and the inventor perked up. "First: is this the standard model?"

"It's the first one I've tried to sell," he quickly said. "There may be some future adjustments as feedback comes in. There's almost always room for further improvement. I know it comes across as perfect today, but you never know what tomorrow might bring. Still, I'm confident it's better than anything else on the market."

If you can sell enough to get feedback. And stay out of court.
...further improvement.
He got this far without a Proxi...

"The question of 'standard model'," the judge clarified, "currently refers to another definition of 'almost always room'. Is this the minimum size for the power source?"

He frowned a little: lightly-distressed light beams sunk to the ground. "Currently..."

"'Currently'," Impassi repeated.

"It would take up a little more space without the badgers. And I do have a blueprint which lets it all work without them. But I was trying to help out the cottage." Thoughtfully, "And the machine would need to scale with the recipient. So if the pony was of exceptional size..."

Impassi Heartstopper's mark talent suite included steadfast control over any and all visible reactions. It had never done anything to discipline a rather freeform imagination.

Palace order.
Two orders.
...yes, there's always been the rumors, but who doesn't masturbate?
And they could just put them in the bailey between the Solar and Lunar wings.
...there's probably enough bailey.
Then it's just a matter of getting the illusion spells going to conceal the results. Princess Luna can manage a casting on that scale.
Or, to prevent collisions, they could just ban all flyovers. Forever. It's already restricted airspace, so...
...might cause some minor problems for the Guards...

She looked at Goldberg, and saw that the dark blue eyes were bright, wide, and -- happy. He'd proven himself. The invention worked, and did so perfectly. It was like looking at a father who'd just heard his child's first word. Or a sex aid creator who'd just effectively broken a standard pleasure meter.

Even within the moisture and chill of the fog, he was happy. Because it was a rare parent who could make themselves see every last one of their child's faults. Especially when they were staring through a filter of pride.

"Ms. Scale," the judge finally said as her mind wrenched itself away from a procession of armored pegasi tumbling down the bowling ball tube, "said this was a case of deceptive advertising via omission. I have seen your ad copy. You claim to have perfected the vibrator. And based on what the court has witnessed during the demonstration, if you have not done so, then you are arguably closer than anypony alive."

He instinctively puffed out his chest, which dislodged a few of the oldest oils. Ricti was beginning to look ill.

"However," Impassi continued, "there are certain natural traits which should be listed for sex toys and when it comes to vibrators, a rather critical one is size."

"I put down how large the terminus was," the inventor frantically began to defend. "A buyer can even customize --"

"-- yes. Both Ms. Scale and myself saw that. What the text does not say," Impassi firmly declared, "is that the offloaded power source is effectively its own structure." She looked up. Then she let gravity do all of the return work. "One which may be larger than the residences of its potential buyers. Ms. Scale barely has the space around her residence to accommodate this. All of which has now been used. Rather visibly so. With badgers, and all associated questions. Which might eventually include a few about why a shadow is now permanently falling across the local gardens. I feel that listing the full dimensions of the power source would have an effect on sales. And so I have to question why you omitted it."

The dark blue eyes helplessly blinked at her.

"...ad space is limited..." the inventor finally tried and with that, a defendant who'd already won his case effectively lost it.

And it also explains why you didn't attend an expo. Because ponies would see what was required to make it work.

Additionally, he would have had to rent out a truly expensive amount of space. Some of which would have been vertical. Altitude notwithstanding, what was the highest ceiling in Las Pegasus? Because an outdoor demonstration might have required another fog cylinder. And possibly some reinforcements to the supporting clouds.

A mark for inventions of -- complexity. (She was now assuming the automatic diaper-changer was the rough size of a diaper factory.) Which did exactly what they were supposed to do, only while occupying a certain amount of universe. A pony who wasn't careful could find himself listening to talent more than brain, and when that happened...

Did he even truly understand the problem? Could he still recognize that a problem existed?

She had no true way to tell.

But that wasn't her current job. Legally, the case had defaulted to the defendant: the evidence tampering guaranteed it. But a judge could still make requests.

"Ms. Scale," Impassi Heartstopper pronounced, "has requested the removal of her purchase and a full refund. I am not entirely inclined to grant her the whole of that, because there was some unauthorized disassembly and all of the parts may no longer be in a resellable state."

"Your Honor -- !" erupted from the younger earth pony mare, and a single hard look from the judge made her halt there. It was a look which carried many words, and the first had been STOP. But lurking slightly underneath...

Under the law, you've already lost.
Stop talking and maybe I can help you.

"So I am requesting that Mr. Goldberg return to her home," the judge continued. "Inspect the invention. Allow a reasonable degree of depreciation allowance. Calculate it, then submit the proposed refund amount to the court. Should I approve it, you will grant her that much money back on her purchase. And in the meantime, you will remove the construct. Will you do as I've asked?"

The stallion's eyelids slowly sagged together. His tail went down, and a tiny flick of exhaustion scattered dust across stone.

"...yes, Your Honor."

"And this is acceptable to you as well, Ms. Scale?"

"It's -- what I can get," the mare slowly said. "So yes."

"And Mr. Goldberg?" Who looked up, and did so without opening exhausted eyes. "Pull your current ads from the magazines. My staff will assist you in writing new ones. Things which, while working within limited space, will avoid future cases of this nature."

He just barely managed a nod. Or perhaps his chin had collapsed into a state where it was that much closer to his throat.

"Mr. Goldberg, as the only pony who knows how to properly break down and store his creation, will remain here within a maintained privacy cylinder until such time as he is fully packed up," the judge told them all. "And will be granted full solitude in which to do so. All staff are currently present well beyond their standard hours, and many among our gallery have places to be. Court is adjourned."

It took some time to get it all organized, if only because 'outside' was something which the courtroom didn't really deal with very often. But after a while, the gallery began to disperse. Court staff headed for their homes. Multiple ponies made plans to grab food on their way through the city, as they hadn't left themselves very much time for cooking.

And then there was a single metallic unicorn stallion standing within a cylinder of personal fog, capped by a thunderhead of his very own.

His tail drooped. Ears sagged. Most of his posture made a game attempt to sink into the ground and never return.

And with that effort failed, his horn ignited, with the corona flickering around the edges: the other kind of resonance, made visible when sorrow became too great to hide. Slowly, carefully, in precise order and with the utmost care added to whispered personal apologies delivered to the badgers, he began to take the whole thing apart.

The lighting devices around him brightened as Sun was lowered and Moon came in. He barely noticed. Perhaps he no longer wished to.

"Mr. Goldberg?"

He didn't look up. He didn't acknowledge the speaker. There was some question as to whether he could hear anything beyond the march of failure stomping through his skull.

A little more softly, but with added strength: "Widget?"

And he turned.

"Because we're outside court hours now," the mare said. "And your case is over --"

"-- Your Honor?"

The earth pony took a breath. "'Ms. Heartstopper' will suffice," she said. "You're hardly a defendant at the moment. But I do have another question for you. One which has no need to be on the court record."

"I think," the dejected stallion considered, "I've said enough. Maybe enough for a moon or two. Possibly enough for a whole career. So if this isn't for the court, then I really just want to pack up. And go home. And maybe start packing again. I might wind up moving. It wouldn't be the first time --"

"-- are you still taking orders?"

Impassi watched his face.

"...what?"

"I think I can call myself a fully-informed consumer," she considered. "As, unlike Ms. Scale, I got to see everything about your creation before deciding to make a purchase."

"...you -- you want..."

Which, for Widget, was where speech ran out.

"I live in Canterlot," Impassi told him. "But not within the city. I'm around the curve of the mountain. Out past the prison, about halfway between the retirement home and the bird sanctuary. A miniature sub-plateau, surrounded by a small border forest. It used to host a small farm before I moved in, and... it occurs to me that all of your terminus wires could be discreetly hidden within a pipe. One leading out of the fully-enclosed, sound-muffling empty grain silo which I've never been able to do anything with, funneled directly into the bedroom. Additionally, I expect to go on any mailing list you might have and be contacted regarding future post-Proxi refinements. Which, as a satisfied customer on what might turn into an infrared level, I would be happy to recommend to a few very select parties who both have the sort of space your work truly requires and can afford your services. Along with giving you the name of somepony who manufactures concealing silos. If you happen to be looking for somepony to manage that aspect."

She watched the light beginning to rise in his eyes, and considered that you didn't always need to slam a hoof to make somepony stop talking.

"And since you're clearly good with metalwork," the customer softly added, "my own silo is also going to need a couple of hatches. For sunlight, and to allow badgers free passage. I don't mind giving them a place to live, and I'll do everything I can for -- maintenance. But when it comes to anything beyond the occasional grooming of fur... I... don't always get home on time."