The Empire Strikes Back
The 70 inch widescreen plasma tv (with Netflix) turns on and cheerful music and colorful images burst forth from it. It’s the theme song from the tenth season of the My Little Pony cartoon, and all of the main characters are grinning and shouting cheerfully as they race towards the viewer. Then, suddenly, they all leap into the air, there’s the sound of shattering glass as the “screen” is broken, and each cartoon pony is replaced by a live-action fluffy pony, each identical to their cartoon counterparts and with a cutie mark dyed and tattooed on their hindquarters. The laughing, cheering fluffies tackle each other in hugs and begin rolling around and playing.
“Now your child’s wildest dream can come true! Introducing the fluffy pony, a new biotoy from Hasbio, a division of Hasbro Incorporated. Now your son or daughter can own their favorite character from My Little Pony, with a fluffy pony of their very own!”
Various children of diverse ages and ethnicities are shown playing with fluffies, both the regular variety and ones that look like characters from the show. The camera zooms in on a little girl brushing her fluffy’s mane, then hugging her and saying, “I love my fluffy pony!” A young boy is seen with a fluffy of his own, a G.I. Joe action figure astride the fluffy as it charges into a line of Cobra figures and bowls them over. Both cheer their victory over the bad guys and the fluffy crawls into the boys lap and hugs him.
“Each fluffy pony comes with built-in programming to make them as child-friendly as possible, and comes from licensed dealers with special obedience training and equipment to make them as fun and safe as possible! You can get a fluffy pony of your very own in an endless variety of colors and sizes, and we have earthies, unicorns, and pegasuses available!”
Fluffies of every variety and color flash across the screen, playing, hugging, eating kibble, sleeping, and looking at the viewer adoringly.
“Not only is the fluffy pony the world’s first biotoy and the perfect pet for children of all ages, it’s also the only one that can tell its owner how much it loves them!”
A pegasus mare flaps her wings excitedly while looking into the camera and exclaims, “Hewwo! Fwuffy happeh tu see yoo!”
“Go online to the Hasbio official website to see if there’s a licensed fluffy pony dealer near you! The best friend and playmate a child could ask for is waiting for you! So what are you waiting for?!”
A url for a defunct website flashes across the screen under a scene of fluffies chasing after a ball along with a long disclaimed stating that fluffy ponies are living constructs, require food and water, and batteries should not be inserted. The My Little Pony theme song begins playing again, and just as it trails off a fluffy of indeterminate gender stares out of the screen in extreme close up, smiling happily, and shouts, “FWUFFY WUV YOO!”
The commercial pauses, freezing on the smiling, shouting fluffy. The room full of men (and one woman) in suits stares at the screen disinterestedly for a moment before looking around at each other.
“Al, just what exactly is this trip down memory lane supposed to accomplish?”
One man, in a very nice suit tailored in London, stands and walks around to the end of the conference table, looking at the image on the screen for a long moment before turning to answer.
“Remember when that commercial first came out? We were hailed as the greatest thing ever. A massive breakthrough in genetic engineering. Our logo and fluffies were on the cover of every news magazine, newspaper, and blog in the world. We were set to rake in billions ANNUALLY from sales of fluffy ponies worldwide.”
“We know, Al. We were there. Then PETA, Greenpeace, and those others screwed it all up for us.”
Al nods, clearly leading somewhere.
“Exactly. If it weren’t for them letting the genie out of the bottle, as it were, fluffies would be a proprietary product. Nobody could get their hands on one without our say so. Every one of them would be sterilized before being sold, so only licensed breeders could produce more of them. We’d be the exclusive source of fluffies and could charge whatever the hell we wanted for them. Fluffies with behavioral problems would never reach the consumer; any that could be fixed would be disciplined before hitting the sales floor, and any who were irredeemable brats would be eliminated. All anyone would ever see would be perfect, obedient, loving, and caring fluffies. Instead, we got screwed. Ferals running wild, and brats and smarties ruining the reputation of our product. And it’s only by successfully arguing that none of the problems with fluffies would have ever happened in the first place if it weren’t for those PETA terrorists that we’ve managed to avoid getting sued into oblivion. But the damage has been done. Profits from fluffies are next to nothing; we basically breed specialty fluffies like those designers, one that look like the cartoon characters, and that’s it. Instead of buying a generic fluffy from us for a thousand bucks a pop, they’re buying generic fluffies for twenty bucks at city shelters, or picking up ferals for free. We got screwed. If it weren’t for all the medical research and treatments we devised from our work on fluffies, we’d have gone bankrupt. Hell, we’ve basically cured alzheimer’s, three types of cancer, and heart disease, thanks to what we found while developing fluffies. If it weren’t for our medical advances, we’d be up the creek without a paddle.”
“We know all this, Al. Where are you going with this?”
“I’m getting there, Hank,” Al says with only a trace of irritation. “Look up fluffies on the internet. What do you find? Endless websites and videos of fluffies being abused. We designed the ultimate child’s toy, and it ended up becoming a toy for psychopaths and disturbed teenagers to torture, dismember, and kill. When people think of abuse, they think of fluffies. And when they think of fluffies, they think of us. Some people don’t even remember that fluffies were originally a tie in to a kid’s show, they think we INTENDED for them to be abused! Between the ecological damage and the abuse, they’re KILLING our reputation!”
A man at the table stirs, drumming his fingers on the tabletop.
“Well, the ecological damage isn’t nearly as bad as they said it was. They’re not driving any species into extinction, they’ve brought several endangered predators back from the brink by providing a steady food source, and those farmers out west, the same ones who bitched about their crops being devastated by that mega herd and tried to sue us for damages, are now praising fluffies for enriching the soil. They can’t wait until the herd migrates through again; even if they eat whatever’s been planted this season, their crap and their dead bodies will make the harvest huge for the next several growing seasons. They’re not nearly as bad for the environment as the naysayers thought.”
“Right,” Al nods. “And that’s good for us, because it’s taking some of the negative press off of us. But there’s still the abuse problem. It’s making us look bad. How can we bring new products to the market if everyone associates us with torture and death, just because of what some sickos do to our product?”
“What are you suggesting, Al?”
“I’m suggesting we need to change our approach. We marketed fluffies as biotoys to avoid the legal issues of animals and to maintain a monopoly on our product; you can patent a toy, but you can’t patent a species. This is one of the main reasons fluffies are the targets for abuse: it’s perfectly legal to do whatever you want to them. As long as it isn’t someone’s pet, you can do anything you want to a fluffy. Torture, dismemberment, beating them to death with hammers, burn them alive… you’ve got that one French ‘performer’, that nutjob? Remember when he got arrested on obscenity charges? He was nude, had a foal stuffed up his ass so only its head was sticking out, and was sodomizing the foal’s father in front of the Eiffel Tower while stomping the other foals and forcing the mare to dance. All he got charged with was obscenity and public indecency. They gave him the fluffies back. If you did that with any other creature, you’d be going to a mental institution and charged with beastiality. And you’d never see those animals again. That’s the sort of shit- pardon my French- that is associated with fluffies and with Hasbio.”
“He’s right; our reputation is in the gutter because of this.”
“So what’s your idea, Al?”
Al places his palms flat on the table and leans forward, slowly panning his gaze across the table, staring intently into the eyes of each person in the room in turn. Then he speaks.
“We need to lobby. We’ll start with the US, where the problem is the worst and there are the most fluffies, and we’ll go from there. We need to get our reputation back, and we need to get our profits up.”
“And how are we going to do that?”
“Simple. We’re going to lobby Congress to have fluffies recognized as living creatures and given the same rights and protections as other animals.”
The room is silent.
“We’re doing what now?”
“Having them legally classified as biotoys is biting us in the ass. If we get fluffies legally recognized as animals, with the same rights and protections as dogs, cats, whatever, then the cops will start cracking down on fluffy abuse. Arrests will skyrocket. People will be too scared of jail time to torture and kill fluffies, and they’ll get rid of the ones locked up in their basements as soon as the law passes so they don’t end up in a jail cell with Bubba. Abuse will plummet overnight, to the same level as abuse of other household pets.”
“That’s nice and all, but what, exactly, does that accomplish for us, Al? To be perfectly blunt, and I apologize to the lady in the room for my language, I don’t give two shits if some fluffy gets doused in gasoline and set on fire or if some pervert uses him for a loufa in the shower. Yes, it would be nice not to be tied to fluffy abuse by reputation, but how is spending money lobbying politicians to protect fluffies going to help us?”
“That’s easy,” Al grinned. “Laws against animal abuse will also shut down every damn foal mill in the country. People are already against foal mills because of those documentaries and that expose everybody saw on the news, so there’s no risk of a backlash there. And foal mills are the biggest damage to our profits there is. They’re cranking out foals by the hundreds of thousands, and selling them for pennies on the dollar compared to fluffies from reputable breeders and dealers. If we shut them down, that helps us enormously. Our reputation will get a boost because people will see us doing something about abuse and foal mills, something they already strongly dislike. We get rid of the cheapest source of fluffies on the market, eliminating a huge percentage of those available for sale and the competition. Bam, only reputable breeders are producing and selling fluffies. And, the feral population has mostly gained equilibrium out in the rural areas and farm country; predators, farmers, and cars are killing them off at roughly the same rate they’re reproducing, so the problem isn’t getting any worse. Ferals are really only a problem in the cities, where the population would be in equilibrium if it weren’t for the constant influx of new ferals from people dumping fluffies they don’t want anymore, mostly because of behavioral problems. And where do these fluffies come from? Foal mills. Eliminate the foal mills and we not only eliminate the source of the cheapest and most numerous fluffies on the market, we also eliminate the source of all new ferals in the cities. The feral population drops with only reproduction adding to their numbers, and they become less of an issue for people. Most states with a feral population already have laws in place for culling ferals, and they’re all based on laws for dealing with overpopulated deer, pest animals like feral pigs and coyotes, etc. so they’ll be in line with any new laws classifying fluffies as animals. Thus, they continue purging feral fluffies like there’s no tomorrow, and the feral problem becomes largely nonexistent. We’ll never get rid of them all, but we can make the problem negligible, a drop in the bucket compared to what it was at their peak.”
“So, we’re eliminating foal mills to boost our reputation and get rid of the cheapest source of fluffies, thus eliminating some of the competition. Makes sense. The rest is all just good PR, but it’s PR we desperately need. I’m liking it so far.”
“That’s right,” Al nods. “We get our reputation back, we get credited with solving the feral problem, and we eliminate the cheapest competition on the market. A couple states have already passed laws requiring all fluffies to be spayed or neutered, except for professional breeders. If we lobby some state legislatures to pass similar laws requiring every fluffy sold to be spayed or neutered, and make the sole exception apply to breeders officially recognized and licensed by Hasbio…”
“We get it back. Everything goes back to the way we had planned it out before those PETA fools ruined everything. Those assholes at Hasbro may even make us an offer to bring us back into the fold.”
“Exactly.”
Several board members sit there in stunned silence, while others whisper to each other. Al stands at the front of the room, looking smug and glancing at the smiling fluffy on the screen idly. Finally, the president of the board rises from his chair, looks around the room, and says, “All in favor of Al’s proposal?”
The foal mill is nameless, and isn’t even incorporated. There are no background checks for employees, and employees are paid in cash under the table, allowing both the mill owners and their employees to dodge paying income tax. Many employees are even collecting unemployment checks on the side. In short, even if the business itself isn’t illegal, their employment policy definitely is.
For the owners, it’s a gold mine, a source of cheap profit with no taxes, no insurance, and little overhead. For the employees, it’s a steady source of cash that they don’t have to report on their taxes. For the fluffies, it’s a living hell.
In one room, lit by a single, dim, 40 watt bulb, is a stack of dozens of cages. The occupants in the cages don’t need to see, and the employees only need to go in there three times a day.
In each cage is a fluffy stallion. All four legs, the tail, ears, and eyes have been removed. So have its teeth and tongue. If it’s a unicorn, pegasus, or in one case an alicorn, horn and wings are also removed. Its coloration, type, and a short serial number for identification are printed on cards on the front of its cage. Each stallion is suspended by a mesh hammock to prevent bed sores and to keep it fully immobilized. A feeding tube goes into its mouth and down its esophagus, pumping a puree of food into its stomach every six hours to keep it alive. Another tube goes up its anus to collect feces, which is always liquid because of the liquid diet each stallion is force fed. A small attachment to this hose is carefully positioned to stimulate the prostate with vibrations and electrical shock every eight hours. A third hose is slipped over the penis; catheters were used originally, to eliminate urine, but the hose is used now for collection of other bodily fluids. Every eight hours, a worker will turn the lever on the hose, cutting off the flow to the waste collection vat and sending any fluids gathered into a small canister attached to the hose. A button is pressed and the prostate stimulated, while suction is applied to the penis in the same manner as a milking machine for cattle. The stallion inevitably ejaculates and semen is collected into the canister for use in artificial insemination. Many stallions are completely motionless, but others anticipate the stimulation and tense up, then spasm uncontrollably; although they are ejaculating, the process is not pleasurable for them. Each and every one is mentally retarded and/or insane from sensory deprivation, and each and every one believes itself to be in hell.
This method is more costly than simply leaving the stallions intact and allowing them to breed naturally, but it also eliminates the possibility of escape, suicide, killing of mares, and streamlines feeding and waste disposal. It’s also as soulless a process as is physically possible, which is why it really appealed to the mill’s owner.
The brood mares are in a separate room with a nearly identical set up. The difference being that they’re accessed more often and the room is more brightly lit, and the mares are facing the back of their cages rather than the front, providing workers with direct access to their genitals for the purpose of artificial insemination and assisting in the delivery of foals in case of a difficult birth. These mares never see or suckle their foals; each foal slides down an aluminum ramp and into a pan at birth, and an alarm is sounded once the pan detects weight in it. When an alarm goes off, a worker comes over, waits until the mare finishes foaling, and then attaches a milking machine to her teats. He then picks up the pan of foals and carries it to the next room for sorting.
The afterbirth, stillbirths, and runts, along with any healthy foals deemed undesirable, are tossed into the grinder that purees the food, mixed with water to form a slurry, and fed to the stallions and mares in their cages. It is a never ending cycle of birth, death, and torment.
Foals deemed worthy of sale, or good enough to be used as breeders, are hooked to catheters to carry away waste, given feeding tubes giving them milk collected from the mares, and kept in incubators under heat lamps. None is ever hugged, none ever sees or touches its mother, none ever smells her scent or hears her voice. None ever even see their own siblings. Each is an orphan, alone in the world, until it’s old enough to speak, and then it is dumped into an enormous pen full of foals the same age. There are no toys to keep them occupied, there are no adult fluffies, the only feature in the pen is a set of feeding nipples for the foals to suckle. Each of them is emotionally crippled and mentally damaged by their environment and lack of a role model, their only interaction being with other foals. Many of them play, but the bigger, more ambitious foals inevitably bully the others and exclude them from games or injure them. The workers never intervene. Dead foals, killed by bullies, starved by bullies denying them access to the milk nipples, or dead of loneliness and despair, are a regular feature in the pens. Dead or injured foals are tossed into the grinder and turned into a slurry for the breeders.
Once they’re old enough to start eating solid food, the milk nipples are converted to water nipples and bins of kibble are filled once a day. The kibble is the cheapest on the market, consisting mostly of old newspaper mixed with corn meal, rice flour, and occasionally wheat, and the producer has been sued repeatedly because of the lack of nutrition it provides and the inevitable, sometimes fatal, constipation the newspaper produces. The foal mill prefers it because it’s cheap and they want the foals constipated so they don’t produce wet, messy diarrhea as fluffies often do. Instead, foals complain constantly of ‘tummeh owies’, strain to the point of injury trying to poop, and produce only small, dry turds. Foals are instructed to use the litter box, but there is no demonstration and no education regarding ‘good poopies’; instead, it’s sink or swim. Every time a foal is caught pooping outside of the litter box, it is hit with a car antenna; if its injuries result in scarring that could prevent it from being sold, it goes in the grinder. After the first week, any foal caught making ‘bad poopies’ is thrown into the grinder alive. Bad poopies are often blamed on foals who are already dead, as a corpse is often readily available, mainly thanks to the terrible food.
Once they’re at least theoretically litter box trained and fully weaned, each foal is segregated by gender and put into new pens. Over the course of the next week, mares are tagged, then a syringe full of chemicals is inserted into their birth canal without anesthesia and their cervix is chemically scarred to the point that pregnancy is impossible. This is even more painful than having limbs amputated prior to being taken in the back to serve as a brood mare, but fillies receiving this treatment could be considered the lucky ones. Sterilization is the sole effort the mill makes to comply with the law, and this only because they couldn’t get pet stores to buy their foals otherwise.
Colts aren’t neutered until they’re sexually mature, giving them the hormone boost they need to fully mature physically before being castrated. Sometimes, sexually frustrated colts will take out their needs on others, being as there is a lack of willing females. In one pen, a pink colt screams itself hoarse as other colts repeatedly sodomize the ‘pwetty fiwwy cowt’ to get the ‘good feews’. Workers, again, do not intervene or put a stop to this behavior, partly because of apathy for the plight of the rape victims, and partly because they figure the little colts had better enjoy it while they can. Once each one has had his dose of hormones, an elastic band is tightened around his scrotum and blood flow to his testicles is cut off. Several days to a week later, the testicles fall off and the colt is now a gelding.
This is a marginal improvement for the colts; originally, workers would cut open the scrotum with a pair of scissors, then rip the testicles out by hand. The process changed after the mill owner decided that too many colts were dying of infection or blood loss. Profits were hurting; the well-being of the fluffies never entered into the equation.
Once sterilized, the fluffies were then crammed into large packing crates with little regard for whether they could move or breathe, locked in, and loaded onto trucks to be taken to bargain pet stores and shelters. Crates were tossed off the back with no concern for the fluffies within, and when the crates were opened there were inevitably several dead fluffies at the bottom, crushed or suffocated under the others, and still others had broken legs from the rough transportation. Injured fluffies went back into the crate on its way back to the mill, and were thrown screaming into the grinder. Intact fluffies were caged and put on the sales floor, but each one was damaged goods thanks to the inhumane conditions of its life up to that point; they were barely socialized, their only interactions with humans were traumatic, and they suffered deep emotional and physical issues from life-long stress and malnutrition. Most people who bought these mill fluffies because they were cheap discovered they had a host of behavioral problems and nervous tics, and either killed them, gave them to already overcrowded shelters, or threw them out onto the streets, where they added to the feral population. At least since the state had passed a law requiring all fluffies sold to be spayed or neutered prior to sale, they were only temporarily boosting the feral population; prior to passage of the law, all of the fluffies were sold intact and once thrown onto the streets were free to breed as they pleased.
The owner of this particular fluffy mill is very, very pleased with it. An abuser at heart, he enjoys the suffering each of his breeders experiences. He even got an idea from seeing the occasional rape in the colt pens.
A purple stallion with a hot pink mane has had its ears, legs, tail, and genitals amputated, though its eyes and ear drums are intact. It lays on a cushion, as another stallion, this one fully intact, grips its mane in his teeth and thrusts its penis in and out of its asshole roughly.
“SCREEEEEEEEEEE! POOPIE PWACE HAF WOWSTEST OWIES! NU AM MAWE! NU AM MAAAAAWE! SCREEEEEEEEEE! WHY DO DIS TU FWUFFY?! WHYYYYYY?!”
“Enf enf enf enf enf GUD FEEEEEEEEEWS! Enf!”
The earthie stallion pulls out and lays down, exhausted, and the gelded fuck pillow sobs miserably. The mill owner points at the pegasus stallion, who lays his ears back, tucks his tail between his legs, and squeaks in fear. The mill owner points at him again and the pegasus scrambles to mount the fuck pillow, who begins screeching again.
“SCREEEEEEEEEEE! NU MOWE! PWEASE, NU MOWE! FWUFFY NU AM MAWE! HEWP FWUFFY! HEEEEEEWP! HUUUHUUUHUUUUUU!”
The unicorn stallion, already aroused, shifts its weight in anticipation. Except for when it was a foal, it has never seen a female and this is the only pleasure it knows in life. Impatient and unwilling to wait its turn, the unicorn charges, mounts the thrusting pegasus, and achieves penetration. The pegasus, taken by surprise, is not pleased with this turn of events.
“Enf enf enf e- SCREEEEEEEEEEEEE! NU AM MAWE! STAHP, STAHP!”
“Enf enf enf- shaddup, dummeh! Enf enf enf!”
The mill owner cracks up laughing, watching two stallions get cornholed in a train. The screaming is music to his ears. So far as he is concerned, the display happening on his desk is way better than any of those stupid gadgets they sell to office workers. Suffering and misery makes him almost as happy as the cash he gets by profiting off of suffering and misery.
Suddenly, the door to the main floor of the mill crashes in with the crack of splintering wood, torn off its hinges by a battering ram. Black-clad SWAT team troopers burst into the mill, shouting commands and waving HK UMP-40 submachine guns at the workers. One worker reaches for a pistol-gripped Mossberg 500 shotgun, thinks better of it, and puts his hands up. All workers are forced to their knees, handcuffed, and frisked before being taken outside into a van to be processed. The mill owner gapes in shock, then stands up and stares out at the main floor of the mill, utterly baffled by what he sees. A triot of SWAT troopers rush him, tackle him to the ground, and cuff him.
“OOF! What the FUCK?! What the hell are you doing?!”
“Clyde Olsen?”
“Yeah, that’s me. What the hell is this all about?”
“Mr. Olsen, you’re under arrest for tax evasion, illegal business practices, and cruelty to animals.”
“WHAT?! Cruelty to animals?! This is a fluffy pony operation, you assholes! There’s nothing illegal about what we’re doing here!”
“It’s been illegal for three months, you sick fuck. C’mon, on your feet. You have the right to remain silent; anything you say can and will be used against you in court. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford-”
“This is BULLSHIT!”
The mill owner is dragged away, and the building searched for any stragglers. The remaining SWAT agents gather in the owner’s office, where the pegasus has ceased sodomizing the fuck pillow, but is himself still being roughly fucked in the ass by the unicorn and screaming. The earthie is indifferent to this turn of events, but seems frightened of the masked, armored men with guns.
“Holy shit, that’s fucked up.”
“You know what they told us; any that are damaged beyond rehabilitation need to be destroyed. Any they can salvage are to be turned over to Hasbio for processing. I’d say we’re looking at some damaged goods here.”
The unicorn is roughly grabbed and yanked away from the pegasus and thrown to the floor with an audible CRACK.
“OWIES! WEGGIE HUWTIES! WHY HUWT FWU-”
CRUNCH.
A black combat boot puts a stop to the unicorn’s screaming. The earthie screeches in fear and tries to flee, breaking both its front legs as it falls off the desk. The SWAT trooper who stomped the unicorn looks at his sergeant.
“Damaged goods?”
“Damaged goods.”
CRUNCH.
The pegasus, bleeding from the rectum, drags itself to the edge of the desk with its front legs and whimpers.
“Pwease… fwuffy nu wan huwties nu mowe. Nu wike dis pwace. Pwease… wan die.”
The pegasus is roughly dropped to the ground and stomped. The fuck pillow follows it, whispering a quiet “fank yoo” before a size twelve boot ends its suffering forever.
Foals of all ages are herded into crates, less tightly packed and handled less roughly than normal, but still not very gently. They’re loaded into trucks supervised by Animal Control employees and transported to a nearby facility rented by Hasbio for processing of all fluffies taken from the mill. Some will be rehabilitated and sold, mainly the youngest, but most will be written off as damaged goods and euthanised.
Chirpy foals are disconnected from feeder tubes and catheters, removed from their incubators, and taken away by Animal Control. Except for those too physically frail from their mistreatment to live, all will be rehabilitated and sold. They’ve just gotten a pass on a life of horror and torment.
All that remains are the breeders, some twitching, a few spasming continually, but most lying motionless in their mesh hammocks. One SWAT trooper pulls his ski mask off and vomits uncontrollably. Others are visibly sickened or angered, though a few are indifferent.
“What kind of sick fuck would… wow. Ok, these are all definitely damaged goods. How the hell do we deal with them all though?”
The feeding tubes are traced back to the grinder, whose purpose soons becomes clear from the bins of ‘nutrients’ and the pile of dead foals and severed limbs that were about to be fed into it. Another trooper becomes violently ill and runs out of the mill. The others find bleach and other cleaning chemicals scattered throughout the facility and pour them into the grinder. Soon, every breeder in the facility will be fatally poisoned. Their deaths will be painful, but every single one would prefer the release of death to this continued nightmare.
The SWAT team exits the building, and city building inspectors go inside to see how bad the clean up will be and whether or not the building can be brought back to code and sold.
Back in Hasbio’s board room, the executives gathered there are looking over their numbers.
“Gentlemen, Louisiana, Kentucky, Wyoming, Ohio, Indiana, Massachusets, and New York are onboard, and we’ll likely have Florida, California, and New Jersey by next week. We’ve shut down hundreds of foal mills, and per our arrangement with state governments, we’ve taken custody of any fluffies within that were deemed viable. We stand to make some money from selling them, and we’re now assured a steady income as licensed fluffy breeders within each state pay us their annual fee to be allowed to continue operation. There will, of course, be a steady black market thanks to ferals, basement breeders, and continuing foal mill operations, but we’re regaining our monopoly on fluffy ponies. Further, the media has been highlighting our involvement in shutting down already unpopular foal mills, and our reputation has been steadily climbing. The increased publicity has also drawn more attention to our medical division, and sales of stock are rising. We’ve also got two pharmaceutical companies looking to perform join research with us to work on sickle cell anemia and more forms of cancer. There’s even talk of Congress letting us do research into altering the human genome to eliminate inherited defects like myopia and diabetes. In short… the future’s so bright, we should invest in Rayban stock.”
Several chuckles are heard around the table, and Al seats himself, pleased. He’s just secured a promotion for himself, Hasbio is turning the biggest profit its seen since the fiasco with PETA, and he was featured on the cover of Newsweek as the man behind the biggest animal rights movement in decades.
Yes, the future was definitely looking bright.
