Ezra rubbed the sleep from his eyes as the elevator floor rumbled beneath his feet. He regretted having to come into the plant so early, but he was Head Overseer of Holiday production and when there was a snag, it was up to him to manage it. Stepping through the doors and into the plant, he was met with the familiar sound of fluffy chatter and scattered peeps and chirps. As he walked past the varied fluffy enclosures, he was quickly greeted by one of the handlers, a younger man who had the good sense to have a cup of coffee for his irritated boss.
“Here you are, sir.”
“Thank you Thompson, but why don’t we go ahead and skip the formalities. It’s almost six hours before my shift, so I assume something must be wrong…”
“Sorry sir…we wouldn’t have bothered you, except…”
“It’s fine Thompson. I’m tired and eager to deal with whatever crisis there is…Lead the way.”
The meek handler simply nodded, walking beside Ezra as they crossed through the primary assembly line. The bread and butter of their holiday themed fluffs, there were already a few of the foals passing along the conveyer belt, peeping and screeching as they blindly tumbled down to sorting. Waiting at the end was a pair of his employees, who would visually inspect the foals for proper coloring, defects, and other imperfections before either dropping them into a chute for holiday sales, or one that would reprocess them into slurry to feed the breeding force. It was nearly a week till Easter Sunday, so the factory hadn’t gone into full production as of yet, not wanting their best seller, holiday themed foals, to grow too much. His eyes on the confused, rolling fluffs, Ezra noticed quite a few were off colored, browns and greens that simply wouldn’t be salvageable compared to the soft pastels that his company were known for around this time of year. Signaling for the handler to wait for him, Ezra made his way past the assembly line and into a large room labeled Production-001.
Covering his ears as he slid the doors open, Ezra reached over to where the supplies were kept and grabbed a pair of earplugs, always shocked how loud the production floor truly was.
“BABBEHS!!! WEWE AM BABBEHS?!”
“*SCREEEEEEE!!! NU WEEB MUMMAH TUMMEH BAB…BIGGEST POOPIES?! BIGGEST POOPIES!!!”
“MUMMAH NEE’ BABBEHS!!! P’WEASE GIB BABBEHS BACK!!!”
Here was the beating heart of Ezra’s profits. Countless mares within hobbling cages, all at varying degrees of expectancy. Kept in stacks on an industrial scale, a simple robotic arm would rotate them out as the weight increased. Once at proper birthing weight, the arm would take their cage and interlock it with the assembly line, the mare’s hindquarters facing towards the conveyer. Once the fluffy’s weight dropped past a certain amount, the cage would be taken away and placed into the racks that awaited studding. Forgoing traditional breeding long ago, Ezra had lucked out by finding a single stallion with a unique genotype that made his coloring always recessive, increasing the likelihood of offspring matching their mother. Pillowed and set in a machine that extracted his seed nearly non-stop, Ezra almost felt sorry for the bastard, having blinded and muted him shortly after he went wan die.
Seeing that there was only one observer on duty, Ezra waved him down, walking to the mare racks, almost yelling to be heard over the clamor. “I noticed a lot of off colors on the line! Any idea why?!” Nodding to his boss, the observer took out a clipboard and began to peruse the pages until he found his answer.
“Here it is, sir! One of the purples has been making more and more undesirables! Nearly her whole damn litter!”
Ezra looked over the paperwork himself, sighing as he saw the numbers. Nearly every mare had a foal or two that was off colored, but her birthing record had plummeted, with seven of her last brood being a variation of brown, gray, or green, leaving a single foal that matched her shade of pastel purple. Compared to her previous litters, it was unacceptable and ate into Ezra’s profit margins. “Go ahead and mark her for Reprocessing! And keep an eye out! If they aren’t producing at least half a viable brood, then out they go!”
“No problem boss!”
Leaving the observer to manage the troublesome mare, Ezra left the production floor, shocked that he could hear her over the noise of the rest.
“*SCREEEEEEE!!! NUUUUUUU!!! FWUFFY GUD!!! FWUFFY GUD!!!”
Glad to be done with his detour, Ezra took his earplugs out and rejoined the handler, walking with him past the assembly lines and into a much smaller room labeled Specialty Products. Inside, the pair strode by all manner of Easter themed products that were being tested for survivability and aesthetics. Wicker baskets with faux grass and two peeping foals within each lined a table in the back, wrapped with a translucent film that matched the colors of the fluffs within. Still blind, they could barely move, chirping as they struggled to raise their head and alert their lost mother that they needed her. Ezra noticed that the colored plastic wrapping on a few were far too tight, the foals within having already suffocated. He made a note to tell the marketing department, but it mattered little. These were the prototypes after all and they were nothing more than an expendable proof of concept, fated for the incinerator once the final decisions were made. Reprocessing was out of the question for the basket foals, as they had their anuses and genitals sealed with a mild adhesive, ensuring that they wouldn’t ruin their decorative home with unwanted waste.
"*screeeeeee!!! *chirp…*chirp…"
"wawa ba’!!! wawa ba’!! *screeeeeee!!! *chirp…*chirp…"
“*chirp…*chirp…ba’beh wan mu’mah!!! nu see mu’mah!!! *chirp…*chirp…”
Several foals chirped and shrieked as they were dunked into small bins filled with colored dye. It was something that Ezra had though of ages ago, using white or cream fluffed foals for coloring, just like eggs. There were still many kinks to work out, namely that they’d yet to find a coloring agent that didn’t agitate the foal’s skin, and the fluffs would often go blind shortly after being dipped within it. Still, progress was progress and he was eager to see the concept in stores one day.
Finally, the handler led Ezra to the problem he’d been woken for. On the table in front of her were several foals, the tiny fluffs chirping and peeping far louder than normal, their mouths occasionally opening wide as their underdeveloped throats tried and failed to scream. Their bodies were mangled badly, some with their tiny nubs broken, others bent at an odd angle as they screeched non-stop, and even a few with their skulls partially caved in, wheezing and peeping slowly. “Damn…what happened?”
“It’s the artificial eggs sir. The shell is still too hard for the foals to break through properly. They’re growing on schedule, but the force required to free themselves from the faux egg is too much and they end up breaking as they hatch.”
“…Show me…”
Nodding to his boss, the handler retrieved a small carrier from underneath the table, taking off it’s top to reveal a padded container holding nearly a dozen eggs, each a cream white with a random pastel colored ring around it’s center. Most were completely intact, but a few had the odd bump and crack in seemingly random places. He reached for one that had a slew of breaks, placing it on the table near the mangled foals, silently watching it with his employer. It was slow and tedious as the egg slightly rocked on the table, Ezra’s eyes never leaving it.
The idea had been based on the plastic foal eggs they’d sold a few years prior. They took recently littered foals and placed them in a fake egg, with a small milk reservoir to prevent starvation. Despite problems with some of the foals dying before being freed, freezing the night they were hidden, starving due to milk spoilage, suffocation due to the airholes being blocked, it was a hit! Since then, foal eggs had been an Easter staple every year. But sales had dwindled slightly, with the novelty wearing off and sales falling closer to the other mundane Easter fluff products. Ezra wanted to revitalize the idea with a twist and spoke to his R&D staff.
Hatchlings were the term that he’d been throwing around since late February. It was a twist on the foals in plastic eggs concept, but unlike the toy eggs, these wouldn’t just pop open. These would hatch with real, newborn foals. Using a three dimensional printer and a mixture of calcium carbonate, the faux eggs were nearly identical to the real thing, coming out of the press in two parts. A mare that was near birthing weight would then be taken and ran along a conveyer belt, with a series of syringes attached to mechanical arms that would press deeply into her abdomen, through the belly and into the womb. Suction would drain away most of the amniotic fluid, both gathering the much needed liquid and triggering a forced prebirth over a mechanism that held the faux egg bottoms, the still forming foals falling one by one into them. Time was critical at this point, with the fluff now technically dying without some sort of outside interference.
Within seconds of falling into the mechanism, the top of the faux egg would be placed atop the bottom via an automated clamp, with several needles quickly piercing it and filling the egg with everything the foal would need to continue to develop. The mare’s stolen amniotic fluid would suspend the foal as it grew, with a glob of high calorie fluffy fat mixed with milk injected so the foal could absorb nutrients. A small but crucial pocket of oxygen would be forced into the bottom via an airgun, allowing the foal to breath, the faux egg’s porous nature letting the carbon dioxide safely out. Finally, a colored ring would be stretched and lightly heated over the connection points, sealing the egg, the whole process from prebirth to sealing taking just under a minute. It had been well thought out and meticulous, planned to nearly the last detail, with the idea being that as the foal grew and developed within the egg, it’s own expansion would theoretically rupture the weak shell and free it.
But Ezra narrowed his eyes as the egg slowly cracked open, seeing how much damage the inner shell was doing to the foal within, noting how the pressure broke it’s delicate flesh and even bones before the shell gave way. It took twelve minutes for the shell to finally break away, the foal within gasping as it chirped rapidly in agony, it’s features twisted as it tried in vain to scream. Ignoring it’s plight, Ezra took a sharpie out of his pocket, first pressing it against the mewling foal, noting where the injuries were worst, and then marking a few places on the cracked shell with the marker. “We’re too far into production at this point for a one hundred percent fix, but if we grind down the shells, change the print so that the eggs are weaker here and here, then the damage from hatching should be contained to only their legs.”
“Won’t that still be a problem, sir?”
“It’ll be fine. Kid’s won’t know why they’re chirping so much unless an adult points it out, and why would they? Newborn foals can’t move much, so no issue there either. And these things aren’t made to last longer than a few days. They’re paying more to see the foal hatch than the foal itself anyway…”
“…Okay! Great idea sir! I’ll get right on it!”
The park was abuzz with the yelling and laughter of excited children. all eager to find the Easter treats their family had hidden throughout. One younger girl, walking past the swing set saw something hidden nearby, kneeling over and finding a large egg with a light blue band around it. It was cracked in several places and leaking fluid, the girl staring in awe as it wobbled and rocked before finally splintering open, a pastel blue foal gasping for air before peeping wildly, the happy child oblivious to it’s warped, broken nubs.
HAPPY EASTER
Concept that popped into my head. Hope you enjoy.