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Lyra's Human 2: Derpy's Human

by pjabrony

Chapter 119: 115: The Derp-up

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Derpy flashed into existence and watched Karyn finishing her tidying work. It was an unspoken understanding between the two friends that Karyn was lazy about cleaning during the week, and that she let clothes pile up, or be hung over chairs; or that sometimes she would leave the dinner dishes in the sink till morning; but that by Sunday she should have everything restored to the pristine state. Derpy could thus pretend that Karyn was as neat as she would like to be, even though she knew otherwise.

And so when Karyn was still going through the motions of vacuuming the rug, it shattered the illusion and put a scowl on Derpy’s face.

Karyn shut off the vacuum. “Good morning, Derpy,” she said. Derpy was about to reprove her, but the speed at which Karyn wound the cord around the vacuum’s hook and the short way she had spoken made Derpy think that something was up. Karyn was clearly not depressed, as she had been, but neither was she in good spirits.

“How are you?” Derpy asked, but it was not in the spirit of small talk. She was genuinely curious.

“Glad to see you, that’s how I am. Let’s have breakfast and get down to our routine, and then I can talk.”

As though Derpy’s presence was a calming one, Karyn moved to the stove with more grace and less anxiety. Through the motions of mixing the pancake batter, testing the griddle to see if it was hot enough, and flipping the cakes onto the plates, she poured out some of her stress like the maple syrup that went on top. Once they were both served and seated, and once Karyn had taken her first sip of coffee, Derpy felt it was time.

“So tell me all about it.”

“It’s August now.”

Derpy looked at the calendar. “So it is.”

“So every month, at work, we have to do a grading report for the students.”

“Every month? Shouldn’t it be every quarter? That’s how it was for Dinky. I’m sorry. I shouldn't interrupt while you’re telling an anecdote. I should listen instead of waiting to talk.”

Karyn smiled and shook her head. “No, go ahead and ask questions. I’m better at back-and-forth than telling stories. Anyway, it’s different because we’re a special school. So we in the IT department have to generate the grade reports I told you about. It’s all automated in the computer. The boss—“

“Leon, right?”

“Right. He gave me the job to do.”

“That’s good. He’s still showing confidence in you. But...did you mess it up?”

“Yes, I did. Not intentionally, or not even at fault really, but...OK, there’s a strict schedule of jobs to run, got it?”

Derpy nodded.

“And normally after one job there’s a hold where I have to check if I can go on with everyone else.”

Another nod.

“And that’s where I held on the last day of July. On the same job.”

“That’s understandable.”

“Except I wasn’t supposed to. I was supposed to hold a couple of jobs past. So I ran the one that put in all the grades, only the teachers hadn’t all finished putting theirs in. So now the records are messed up.”

It took Derpy a few minutes to get it into her mind. The very notion of a school having a complex computer system for records was just one of those foreign differences that she had to get used to on Earth. If she had an issue with Dinky, she talked to the teacher—first Miss Cheerilee, then Princess Celestia. Her grades might have been codified in letters or numbers, but they weren’t as important as knowing the details.

But for Karyn it was clearly a problem, so Derpy had to help out. “Could you get them fixed?”

“No. We would have had to restore the entire system from backup, which is a huge process that would take hours during which no one could work on the computers. It’s not just the teachers, we have a business department too. A lot of work goes into a school. And some of it is mine, which means it’s bad.”

“Hey, you screwed up, but it wasn’t your fault. So you’re not allowed to be down on yourself.”

Karyn looked up. “I didn’t even realize how serious it was until we figured out what was going on. Leon brought me into his office and tried to calm me down by saying, ‘Don’t worry. Ed and Juana have messed up before and they’re still here.’ Like that was supposed to make me feel better, or that I should have expected to be fired!”

“Oh. Yeah, I wouldn’t have thought that either. But would it have been so bad? This is only an internship.”

“That’s true, but in the first place, I’d lose out on a month of paychecks. More than that, a lot of job applications ask if you’ve ever been fired from a job for any reason. They want to see a no answer to that. Obviously you can still get a job without one, or people wouldn’t survive, but at the same time it would make my working life a lot more difficult.”

Derpy stood up and cleared the breakfast dishes. This was normally Karyn’s job, but under the circumstances she felt that Karyn needed a break. Karyn stood up, but with Derpy’s natural Equestrian balance, she didn’t drop any.

“So what did you do afterwards?”

“What could I do? I joined in on the fixing and helped as best I could, but basically I sat in meetings while the top brass took a few hours to come to the conclusion that we were going to be fouled up for the next month.”

Shaking her head, Derpy said, “No, I mean, what did you do after you found out? Right then. What did you think about?”

Karyn couldn’t see the direction that Derpy was taking the coversation, but she thought back. “I guess my initial thought was if there wasn’t some way to cover it up. Or at least to contain it to the IT office. I mean, suppose I took all the extra information that wasn’t entered and I did the corrections myself. It would take forever, but then no one would have to know.”

“Well, I credit you for thinking of trying to remedy the situation, but you really shouldn’t be thinking of covering up.”

“It wasn’t a serious thought. There are far too many records kept in redundant places for anything like that. They do that kind of thing in order to prevent anyone from getting away with stuff like that.”

“But if they hadn’t, you would have tried.”

Karyn’s voice quickened a little. “I wouldn’t use it for the big frauds, like changing grades for money. But if I hit a few keys out of order, why is it so bad if no one knows?”

“You know that, and I know that, but everypony else?”

“I should just go to work in Equestria. If Rarity drops a stitch or Pinkie Pie uses salt instead of sugar, nopony says anything.”

The germ of an idea formed in Derpy’s mind, but she pushed it to the back in order to keep talking about what she wanted to.

“There’s a difference, though.” Derpy stood up and put her back hooves together while her front hooves stood apart. Karyn recognized this as the pose she adopted when speaking seriously. “There’s a mentality that some ponies have—and some humans too, I gather—that makes them good at being bosses. I see it in the ponies I work for at the post office. I’m dedicated to mail delivery, and I work hard, but for them it’s different.”

“How?”

“Well, I mean, if I were some kind of super-pegasus who could go to all the houses at once and deliver the mail, or if everypony could send letters by dragon fire the way Twilight Sparkle can, then I would say that all the mail carriers could just sit around and be lazy all day. Putting it that way, it sounds selfish. But the same thing holds for any other job. If Rainbow Dash didn’t have to push the clouds to make it rain, I’d be fine with her napping all day.

“But bosses aren’t like that. That is to say, if you’re like that, you don’t get to be the boss. They’ve got a different idea, that even if they were given the opportunity to have their work done for them, they wouldn’t. And certainly when it comes to one of their subordinates, they don’t want them shirking.”

“I wasn’t shirking,” muttered Karyn. “I tried my best.”

“I know. But that’s just to demonstrate how they think differently than we do. Now, I’ve been working a lot longer than you have, and over the years I’ve learned how to deal with them. You haven’t. And a lot of it doesn’t make sense. For instance, if you somehow messed up when I asked you to do something, I’d want to hear all about how and why.”

“Leon wanted to know how it happened.”

“Yes, but not in terms of an excuse.” Derpy was getting into her speech now. “He only cared about fixing it and making sure that it didn’t happen again.”

“So you’re saying I should have apologized?” Karyn was now listening intently.

“N-no. Maybe. Not for what actually happened but for not asking and communicating with him ahead of time. I mean, I still don’t understand all the technical details, but if I’m right this was a very small error with very large consequences.”

“You could put it that way.”

Derpy paused frequently, trying to figure out the right words she wanted to use. “Then even though it’s not fair, you have to take...not responsibility...maybe it is responsibility, but not blame. What I’m trying to say is, even though it wasn’t your fault, it’s up to you to make it right.”

“That’s what we did. It took us a long time, but we fixed it.”

“No, what I mean is that you should stop it from happening again. You wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, but if you sat down and wrote down a policy of how to arrange things so that the next person, being in your shoes, wouldn’t make that mistake, then I think your boss would be more impressed than if you just let it go and pretend it didn’t happen.”

Karyn scrunched her nose. “Make a policy. That sounds suspiciously like homework.”

“Well, you could do it at work.”

“More than that, though, it feels...well, you don’t know a lot of the Earth culture that surrounds the idea of office life. Part of that is that there are endless policies and documents that people write but no one pays attention to.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” said Derpy.

“And I’m not sure that you ought to. We have movies and comic strips dedicated to all of how offices are weird, far weirder than anything you’d find in the Everfree Forest. They’re their own jungle. And honestly, the fact that you can talk about your bosses that way, when ponies are supposed to be nice to each other, makes me a little upset. I don’t see why we can’t all be more understanding of each other. Yes, I know that the boss has a job to get done, but it’s not something I’m passionate about the way he is. If I were in his shoes, I’d be a lot nicer to me.”

“I would too, and that’s why you and I will never be bosses.”

Karyn threw up her hands and walked over to the computer. “Well, that’s just ridiculous.”

“I’m sorry. And maybe I’m wrong. I’m wrong about a lot of things you know. But I still feel that you should write something about—“

“Yeah, I’ve already got a template up. What should I put in this thing?”

Derpy hovered over and saw that indeed Karyn had begun a writeup of the events of the day in question. “I’m proud of you.”

“We’re not spending all day on this, you know. Let’s just get it down and get it over with.”

Derpy didn’t want to push too hard, so she let Karyn start with a retelling and only put in a few suggestions of questions she would have. And once Karyn claimed that she was done and would give it in on Monday, Derpy didn’t ask her to revise any further.

“You can get it from your computer to work?”

“Yeah. I’ll e-mail it to myself or bring it in on a flash drive. Hey, that would be a good name for a pegasus.”

“I’m glad that you’re able to joke about it a little now. Come on, let’s go do something fun to get the taste of that out of our mouths.” Derpy knelt next to Karyn and nudged her onto her back while reaching for her spells.

Karyn slumped over her and braced for the change in air pressure that accompanied a jump between universes. She enjoyed the fresh Equestrian air as Derpy descended and folded her wings under Karyn’s legs. But when she landed Karyn made no motion to get off.

“This is going to sound really horrible, but would you mind if I rode you a little further?”

Derpy trotted for a moment. “Can you get off for a moment, though, so that I’m not craning my neck to look you in the eye?”

Karyn did so, and Derpy swiftly grasped her face with her hooves. “Listen. Any time you need me to, I will carry you.”

Karyn got back on, and Derpy resumed her trot. Karyn didn’t know where they were going, but Derpy was heading toward the general center of town, so Karyn was fine with that.

When they finally came to a stop, Karyn got off and looked at her surroundings before seeing which direction Derpy was trotting. “Sugar Cube Corner?”

“Yeah, why not? Like I said, we want to get the taste of having to write that out of our mouths, so what better way to do that with a sweet?”

“I didn’t think you meant it literally.”

“Plus I want to show you that I’m not all about being so strict. Just because I make you do something you should doesn’t mean we can’t do some things we shouldn’t. So I’ll cheat on my diet a little.”

Karyn realized the inequity in that and shouted, “Hey!” but Derpy was already opening the door to the gingerbread house.

Whether it had always been there or had been a more recent addition, Karyn couldn’t remember, but a small bell tinkled as they entered, and that was enough to summon Pinkie Pie from wherever she had been. This was possibly just under the counter to do some loading of baked goods, but it was equally possible that she was off in an alternate dimension, perhaps the same one that cats so freely enter and exit when they do not wish to be found.

“Hey, Derpy! Karyn! Got some new wild adventure you two are on across worlds? Can I come?”

“Not today, Pinkie,” Derpy said as she looked through the glass at the sweets. “Today we’re here as paying customers. What’s good?”

“What isn’t good? But I know you want the muffins, right?”

She looked over at Karyn, who was smiling but not actively looking for anything to eat. “Why don’t we make it baker’s choice?”

It only took Pinkie a second to suss out the situation. “Oh-ho! I think maybe we need something cream-filled with chocolate. Guaranteed to turn a puss-face into a sunbeam in two bites or less! Perfect for when you’ve just finished some unpleasant.” She found a tray and set to arranging cakes and cookies into a dessert platter that any first-class hotel would be proud to serve in its banquet hall.

“Thank you,” Karyn said, “for the sweets, and for empathizing, and for not being too crazy today.”

“Part of being a good friend is knowing when not to go crazy, but just to cheer someone up. Go on, take a cookie. You’ll feel better.”

Karyn gave a quizzical look, but unless Pinkie had broken through in other ways, there was no way she could know the movie that she was inadvertently referencing.

She bit into the cookie, and saw Derpy watching her intently. “It’s tasty, just like always. Equestrian sweets are different from the ones on Earth, but it’s hard to describe how. Kind of the only way I could say it is that the same way that all of Equestria looks like a cartoon instead of the material of earth, these cookies taste that way. But I don’t know if that explains it.”

“So long as you like it.”

Pinkie went back behind the counter leaving Derpy and Karyn to munch together. “They are good,” Karyn repeated. “Thanks for bringing me here.”

“That wasn’t the only reason. I wanted to show you Pinkie Pie.”

“I’ve seen Pinkie Pie. Not that I’m blase about any pony, but I don’t follow why her.”

Derpy looked out of the corner of her eye—an easier task for her than most—to make sure Pinkie wasn’t eavesdropping. If, indeed, she wasn’t omniscient anyway. “Because Pinkie runs the bakery, and if anyone is the opposite of being uptight and strict the way you describe your boss, it’s Pinkie.”

“I thought the Cakes ran the bakery and she just worked here.”

“It used to be that way, but Pinkie gradually took over more of the work and more of the responsibility. The Cakes still have half a stake in Sugar Cube Corner, but Pinkie is the active partner.”

Karyn wondered if pony business relationships were actually that rigid. Did Pinkie Pie draw a salary in addition to owning half, if indeed she did? Probably not. Working among all the sugar was reward enough itself for her.

“All that said, Pinkie doesn’t have any employees. So she’s not a boss.”

“You think so? That she works here every day? No, Pound and Pumpkin work here just as much. When they get older, they’ll probably take over their parents’ share and then it’ll be an active partnership once more, but right now, they’re under Pinkie’s hoof. I presume that she treats them well. I’ve never heard any complaints, not that I’m here all the time. Not that I wouldn’t like to be here all the time. Not that it would be healthy for me to be here all the time.”

Karyn let Derpy wind down her musings while she considered. She had not known that the two younger Cakes had joined up, or that Pinkie was in charge. “I think that’s different because they’ve known each other all their life. They’re practically family.”

“Maybe. Hey, Pinkie!” Derpy called, ignoring Karyn’s waves to stop. “Do you treat Pound and Pumpkin different from how you would a different pony, if they were working here?”

“Definitely! They already know me and how intense I am about cupcakes and donuts and stuff. If it was somepony I’d never met before, I’d have to be much nicer to them.”

Karyn rolled her eyes. “Yeah, so she’s even further opposite from what I have to deal with. But I’m not upset anymore.”

“The cookie did you good, huh?”

“No. Well, yes, it did, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’ve been thinking, and I’m making a resolution. You see, Derpy thinks that whoever’s in charge at a workplace has to be of a certain character, but, begging your pardon, Derpy, but you don’t know everything about workplaces on Earth.”

Derpy nodded her head. “It’s true.”

“And I think that, if there’s anywhere in a business where the rules don’t necessarily apply, it’s with what I do with computers. A lot of people don’t understand them, find them mysterious, a little like arcane magic here. Now, I think Derpy’s right about how bosses have to act, but maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. In obscure corners of the business world, maybe there can be understanding and, goodness forbid, maybe even friendship. My challenge to myself is to rise high enough so that I can be part of some IT department that runs with all the same feelings as Sugar Cube Corner.”

“You want to be the boss and make it that way?”

“If it’s that way, I won’t care if I’m the boss or just another worker.”

She said it with a distinct period at the end, as if to seal her resolution.

Pinkie Pie picked up the crumbs from Karyn’s cookie. “Well, another problem solved with desserts and advice. Any more cookies?”

“No, thanks,” said Derpy. “We might reverse the process and wind up with more problems.”

“But then you could have a third cookie and fix them again!”

“Maybe next week. Come on, Karyn.” As they left, Derpy turned her attention back to Karyn. “You know, maybe you picked computers specifically because, even if you didn’t know it, it had the kind of culture that you wanted. If you couldn’t be a family woman like you wanted to, maybe a working family is the next best thing.”

“It could be. I think I’d be all right with that, so long as I have a few friends outside of work.”

She smiled, and Derpy motioned for Karyn to get on so she could return her to Earth.

“You know what? I think we’ll walk for a bit.”

Author's Notes:

OK, folks. Here's how it is: I've got a good spate of ideas for the fan-suggested chapters. In fact, I've found eleven that I really want to write. Now, what I was looking for was twelve, and so if it comes down to it, I'll take one of the ideas I was less enamored of and make it work. But the door's still open if anyone has a real kick-flank story idea.

What I'm not sure of is what order I want to put them in. So until I know that, previews may be iffy. There are some plot points that I want to have happen at certain times that the fan suggestions have to be done before, and so I'm juggling a few potential orders.

Next Chapter: 116: Gonna Derp the Bass Estimated time remaining: 12 Hours, 24 Minutes
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