>A dozen or so people wait listlessly in the lobby of Good Mummahs Fluffy Mill
>Each of them is gazing individually into a handheld obsidian mirror
>A snappily dressed employee enters and greets them
>“Is everybody here for the tour?”
>The crowd nod their heads
>“Then let’s begin”
>The man leads them through a door and down a lazily sloping corridor
>They duck into another door into a room where large newborn chirpies are coming down alomg a conveyor
>Each passes under an arch which flashes green as they pass under it
>Immediately past the arch a small empty spur track branches off of the main conveyor
>“We do a preliminary scan for disposition on every foal, but our system produces good disposition foals so reliably that we actually have to source the bad temperment foals used for practical assessment of the mummahs from a third party”
>They follow the main conveyor to where it disappears into the ceiling and enter another corridor
>Along the corridor a series of one-way mirrors looks into a series of brightly colored saferooms
>Each one has toys, beds, a clean litterbox, lots of foals, a mummah feeding the foals, a special friend helping the mummah and playing the rest of the foals, a series of artificial nipples fed from pipes in the wall, and a partition dividing off part of the room, making the area near the entrance privatr from the rest of the saferoom - But not from the spectators, as the trick mirror extends across both halves
>Outside the entrance to each saferoom is a padded tray congaining chirpy foals
>The trays are fed by tiny spiral slides recessed into the walls, which are in turn fed by the conveyor belt from the previous room
>“The young mummahs will foster these foals along with their own”
>The pink mare in the adjacent saferoom has about eleven or twelve foals.
>Too many
>Still, she sings a mummah song to the foals and tries to ensure that each gets milk
>“The mares are deliberately given too many foals to test whether they will play favorites, lose their tempers, give up on their babies, teach them to be bad, refuse to show them affection, or otherwise exhibit behavioral problems”
>At the next nursery, a worker has a protesting dull brown talkie foal with a messed up leg and is giving it to a tired looking mare
>“Nu wan dummeh nu mummah mummah!” complains the foal angrily
>The worker deposits the foal haphazardly on the ground
>“O nu! Babbeh am huwt!” says the mare when she sees the foal’s injured leg
>A moment later the mare ambles up to hug the foal, “Babbeh nee bestest huggies. Huggies make aww bettah”
>Before she can however
>“Screee! Bad upsies!”
>The mare is picked up by the worker, carried out of the saferoom, and dropped into a chute labeled “Rejects”
>“This mare took too long to give huggies after seeing the injury on our dud foal” explains the guide, “She’s not Good Mummahs material.”
>“We also simulate food shortages, outages, darkness, long periods where the fluffies are seemingly forgotten about but are actually still being watched” continues the guide, “and of course while we’re evaluating the mares we’re evaluating the stallions and foals as well”
>In another saferoom a mare and stallion are hugging some foals goodbye
>“Ok, it’s time for the foals to go off to a new home” says a worker, as he loads the foals onto a colorful plastic slide leading out of the room
>The guide continues “These foals, like most foals here, aren’t good enough to be cycled back into our breeding program”
>They are led down the hallway to another saferoom where a blue mummah fluff nuzzles its foals happily while her special friend aids some of the other foals
>“Bluebell here has passed all of our tests”
>The tour walk into the saferoom as a worker is placing Bluebell into an immobilizer board atop a utility cart.
>The cart has a fishing net clipped onto the side, and three levels of shelves that are carved with intricate patterns
>The immobilizer is a metal board with four holes for her legs that keeps her raised up so her legs don’t tough the ground.
>It too elaborately carved with symbols.
>"You’ve been a very good fluffy Bluebell and you’ve raised very good foals. You will know our finest gift.
>Bluebell coos and waggles her legs through the holes in the board, enjoying the novel sensation.
>“Yay! Bwuebeww get gif! Fank ou daddeh!”
>Then she screams as the self-hammering nails in the board drive themselves into her legs
>“Screee! Bwuebwww hab weggie owwies!”
>The stallion comes running, along with the foals that are old enough
>The worker grabs the stallion by the scruff of the neck and catches the foals in a net
>“Huu huu! Bad upsies!”
>The worker slots the net into a holster on the utility cart and checks a clipboard hanging on the front of the cart
>After examining the clipboard he takes the stallion out of the saferoom and drops him in the rejects bin
>The stallion complains the whole time about “pwease put back! nee gif babbeh an speciaw fwiend huggies to make aww bettah!”
>Meanwhile, as Bluebell’s blood drips onto the carved symbol, the cart begins to rattle
>The guide gestures for the tour to follow him out
>The cart also follows him of its own accord, with the foals in the net still trying to hug Bluebell and Bluebell still trying to reassure the foals
>“Come” says the guide, “I have such sights to show you. Now that we’ve picked up Bluebell here we can see the actual mill itself”
>The guide leads them inward toward the center of the building and they enter a large central room
>“Wan die! huu huu! Wan die!” the mantra echoes through the chamber from thousands of tiny voices
>The walls of the chamber were ringed by tens of thousands of fluffies, trussed up by hooks and chains like Hellraiser, and all with their eyes clipped open facing the center of the room
>In the room’s center was a large millstone
>High overhead the slides leading out of the saferooms dropped their foals into a large hopper
>An apparatus attached to the hopper dispensed talkie foals into the center of the millstone at a regulated rate millstone every few seconds
>The millstone ground the foals into pulp
>“DADDEH HEWP!” cried Bluebell, “Dis pwace am bad fo fwuffies! Sabe babbehs! Sabe babbehs!”
>The tour guide took the net with Bluebell’s foals and ascended onto a catwalk above the millstone
>“Nuu! Dat pwace bad fo babbehs!”
>Bluebell began rocking herself in the immobilizer, trying to get out and get to her babies as the guide began dropping them one by one into the millstone
>“Nuuu daddeh! Dey good babbehs! Yu say dey gu to gud home!”
>“And that brings us to the heart of the matter” says the guide, “Bluebell, what do you think makes the lights shine, and the machines move, and everything in the world work? What do you think is moving that cart that you’re on?”
>“Wightning?”
>“No”
>“Hot wawas?”
>“No”
>“Vowcano”
>“No”
>“Scawy metaw”
>“No”
>“Bwight baww in sky?”
>“Ha ha. No. Can somebody enlighten her?” says the guide to the tour
>“It’s blood”
>“Exactly right!” exclaims the guide, “Blood is life! Blood makes things move, lets them react, enables us to conjure up the necessities and this mill pipes blood out to every building in the city, including every home”
>“Huu huu… nuuuuuu…” cries Bluebell, still struggling to get to her foals “Pwease wet gu! Nu cawe if it get dawk and fingies nu wowk! Babbehs most impowtant fings in da wowwd! Pwease! Dey gud babbehs! huu huu huu!”
>The tour guide continues unhurriedly dropping foals into the eye of the millstone
>"Our mill pulps over 6000 ‘gud babbehs’ per day
>“That doesn’t seem like enough to fill the pipes” interjects one of the people on the tour
>“You’re correct. The contents of the pipe network don’t turn over every day. Modern blood magic is very efficient…”
>In the background Bluebell is yelling “FWY AWAY MAWIGOWD! IS NU SAFE HEWE!” to a canary yellow pegasus foal as it drops into the millstone
>“…This is why it is important that they really are ‘good babies’. Fluffy ponies are an ideal energy source because their innocence and childlike naivety significantly increases the potency of their blood. And this is especially true of foals. A fluffy contains more energy than an entire real horse, and a talkie foal already contains as much energy as an entire adult fluffy”
>“Nuuuu! Stwawbewwy! Huu huu…” cries Bluebell as another of her foals is dropped into the mill
>“How many mares does it take to make that many foals?”
>“About 50000, of which we replace around ten per day”
>There were some impressed whistles
>Meanwhile, the guide tossed Bluebell’s last foal into the mill
>“Huuuuuu…Wastest babbeh! Huu huu! Am mummah no mowe!”
>All the while, a red liquid was beginning to condense on the magic circle on the underside of bluebell’s immobilizer - not blood, but something of similar appearance
>When a drop of it fell off onto the cart it immediately congealed into an appearance and texture more similar to creamed corn
>“If you’ll all come and observe” says the guide, “It seems Bluebell has begun producing our second product”
>“Her pain and sorrow can be harvested as a powerful industrial chemical”
>The guide picks up Bluebell and walks up an access stairway with the tour in tow until he reaches an empty niche left by Bluebell’s predecessor.
>He gives the immobilizer a shake to get Bluebell’s blood dripping again, them locks it into place.
>Hooked chains shoot out of the walls and pierce Bluebell’s flesh, immobilizing her further, and pulling her head down into a position where she is forced to watch the millstone
>The guide clips bluebell’s eyes open Clockwork Orange style and opens a valve on a tube at the top of the niche to set water dripping on Bluebell’s head
>Bluebell is still crying, “Am mummah no mowe”
>“Who here wants Bluebell to be a mummah again?”
>Everybody raises heir hands
>The guide leads them up the access stairs to a level halfway between Bluebell’s row of mummahs and the next one up
>On this level is a legless stallion who has been attached to a small cart on a curved track leading around the circumfrence of the level
>“Nu! Nu wanna gib bad speciaw huggies! Nu! Nu! Nu!”
>The guide wheels the stallion above Bluebell and unpins a peg on the back, allowing his back end to swing down against Bluebell
>“Nu! NU!” they both scream, as the device comes to life, lines them up and moves them of its own accord
>“Because of our dedication to breeding good fluffies, any stallion that wants to do this, or that becomes resigned to doing this, is automatically out”
>The guide begins to say something else, but is interrupted by the sound of machinery creaking and an unusually large fluffy voice from the center of the room
>A fluffy face has appeared on the millstone, “cheep”
>It quickly progresses over the fluffy developmental milestones over the course of a minute and gradually becomes aware of its surroundings
>“Why mummahs hab saddies? Babbehs? Am huwting babbehs? Nee sabe babbehs!” the millstone forces itself to stop
>“Huu huu! am cobewed wit booboo juice! Am sowwy babbehs!”
>“Yay” cries Bluebell, “Wocky fwuffy sabe babbehs!”
>The guide addresses the crowd once more, “You’re in luck folks. Thanks to this little hiccup it looks like you’re going to get to see our second product in action”
>A group of workers come in and spread a thin layer of the creamed-corn-like substance over the millstone-fluffy’s face
>“Eww! Yucky! Nu taste pwetty! Nu feew pwetty!”
>The guide hands out earplugs to the tour as the workers on the floor take out industrial smoothing/polishing machines
>“SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!” the millstone let out a deafening scream as its face is scoured off
>“THE CHEMICAL SERVES THE DOUBLE PURPOSE OF MAKING THE STONE EASIER TO GRIND” shouts the guide over the din of the machines and the screaming millstone, “WHILE ALSO CUTTING THROUGH THE RESISTANCE OF CERTAIN MAGICAL CREATURES TO PHYSICAL ATTACK”
>A moment later the scream subsides and there’s no trace of the face that had appeared on the millstone
>“Nu! Nice fwuffy!” cries Bluebell,
>“Huu huu, nao mo babbehs aw tuwn into booboo juice again, huu huu huu…” she continues as the mill resumes its work
>That’s the end of the tour
>Any Questions?