“So, about last night ... “

“What about last night?” Fluttershy said.

Traffic was painfully slow. It seemed that everypony was headed the same way as them this morning, and there was a remarkable number of those who couldn’t, or were unwilling to, fly themselves. Not that the cab driver seemed to mind, she was engrossed in a conversation with the driver of the adjacent cab, inching forward slowly so they wouldn’t have to fly circles while the congestion cleared up. Truth be told, Scootaloo had never fathomed an airspace so crowded that it needed traffic rules, though she was hardly surprised to find it in this fantastic megalopolis.

The delay left quite a bit of time to think about last night.

“I dunno,” Scootaloo said, “I thought we were supposed to talk about it.”

“Well?” Fluttershy said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really,” Scootaloo said, “I just can’t tell what it’s going to mean. For us. Like, if things are going to stay the same, between us.”

“Of course not,” Fluttershy said.

“Oh,” Scootaloo said.

The upper part of Skyview was coming up. To call it an upper city would be inappropriate, because it certainly wasn’t a city, more like an immensely proportioned monument to pegasus culture and architecture. Even from an angle, the gargantuan pantheons’ hypostyles towered into the sky, flat roofs of unimaginable dimensions suspended upon countless skyscraper-sized pillars; ponies, carts and airships mere specks of imagination against the grandeur, easily flying around and above each other, even inside the structures.

The foundation itself was no less awe-inspiring, although sized only a tiny fraction of Skyview city’s and the lower city’s gigantic dimensions. A compact fence of columns enveloped the cloud platform itself, from the docks down to the central support tower, brimming with magical emanations, and densely decorated with myth and history, huge carvings and statues of pegasus ponies and many other kinds of creatures wielding spears, scales and overflowing amphoras, visionaries’ stares ahead into a bright future.

“Things never stay the same, Scootaloo,” Fluttershy said. The presence of her voice was so calming. “Call it chance, accident or fate. But that’s just what life is. Constant change. You can’t stop change, and you can’t prevent things from changing. All you can do is to go with it, and make the best of it that you can. And try to do things that you enjoy, along the way.”

“I guess,” Scootaloo said, “But ... aren’t things supposed to get super awkward from now on?”

“Well, do you want to feel awkward?” Fluttershy said.

“No,” Scootaloo said.

“I don’t want to either,” Fluttershy said, “and I rather enjoyed last night. Did you enjoy it too?”

“Yes,” Scootaloo said.

“That’s nice,” Fluttershy said. She kissed Scootaloo on the top of her head affectionately.

Regardless of its heritage, there were modern ponies leading modern lives in the upper city. The ancient superstructures contained regular buildings within, several at a time usually, and were brimming with all kinds of anachronistic activity, ponies in sleek designer clothes reading their printed newspapers of choice, eating fast food or drinking caffeinated hot sugary beverages, markings on the ground and permanent clouds bearing traffic signs to regulate the flow of carts, wagons, chariots, taxis, coaches, lorries, balloons, airships, skyships, yachts, dirigibles, gyrocopters, and whatever unnamed transportation devices populated the skies, smoke and steam in the shape of the wind, posters, billboards, electric lights, magic constructions, and, of course, cloudscapes as pure blue and white as the virgin sky.

In fact, the district might have been constructed just yesterday - cloud buildings don’t leave ruins - hadn’t it been for the scores of non-flying tourists to evidence its reputation, marvelling at the fantastic view, strictly confined to the wooden docks and the cobble of the central avenues, where they could walk.

The cab landed on the marina, among the few other cloudwalkers. The long, winding edge of the cloud island was clearly populated by those better off, all the vehicles parked on, or anchored against, the countless little bridges and jetties bore that particularly spotless varnish of an owner with too much spare time, and the pace of the pedestrians and aerial promenaders was rather leisurely. Even the cab driver took some time to help unload Fluttershy’s and Scootaloo’s baggage.

There was an attempt to transfer Scootaloo from the cab into the stroller, but Scootaloo broke free and made her way across the pier instead, to look over the railing.

“Wow,” Scootaloo said.

“It is quite the sight,” Fluttershy said, “It’s like some kind of landscape.”

The entire city of Skyview sprawled out underneath, a vast expanse of buildings, houses, shacks, plazas, communes, estates, halls and cooperatives in all their multivariate glory, stone and lumber, cloud and rainbow, steel and glass, magicka and corporea intertwined, to create not merely a city in the sky, but a resplendent domain of the very heavens, so vast and overflowing with life down to the most minute of complexities. The scale of it all was truly breathtaking. And indeed it seemed to have very much of a landscape, the meeting of large and small, new and old, commerce, social, industry, infrastructure, arts and utilities, styles, cultures, purposes, all crashing together and intermingling, forming seas and mountains. The city’s countless ages were painted brightly in the constant emanescent struggle of the next idea, the obvious next step, surviving, adapting, integrating, forming a symbiosis, an emergent ecosystem of life, so many species, so many creatures living together in the compacted social biodiversity that enabled this world to function.

And as ponies are changed by their environment, so is the environment changed by them, the burroughs broken up and criss-crossed by alleys and streets, and everywhere vehicles and fliers evaporated into the skies and congealed into vast, slow-moving clouds of traffic, before raining back down into the ramps and promenades carrying the wild streams of commerce, to seep back into the city districts, or fertilize the rolling green plains of the fields, or float in new soil for the fortresses and towers to grow ever higher, or to vanish over the horizon and trickle away.

“I can’t see the city’s edge,” Fluttershy said, squinting her eyes.

“It’s so huge,” Scootaloo said, “Look! Back there! That’s the colosseum, right? There were, like, thousands of ponies in there yesterday, and now it looks so tiny from here. I can’t believe we’re standing on top of it all.”

“You’d better believe it,” the cab driver laughed, “because it beats the alternative. They really put in a lot of work to make sure all this junk here doesn’t just fall down. Quite the view, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Scootaloo said, “Though I didn’t think it would look so ... green. Why aren’t there more houses? The lower city sure as hay didn’t look so green when we looked down on it.”

“Kid,” the cab driver said, “how much food do you think it takes to sustain a city of this size? A whole lot. It’s not like we can just leave the city boundaries to plough the lands.”

“Oh, you mean like in the fields?”

“You’ve been to the fields?”

“Yeah, we visited one just yesterday, and they grew a whole bunch of stuff there,” Scootaloo squinted her eyes, “though I can’t tell which one it was.”

“I wouldn’t blame you for it,” the cab driver laughed, “even I don’t know how many fields we have at the moment. I’d say about a third of the city’s area is dedicated growing areas. That’s quite a lot compared to any ground city I’ve ever seen. Not that I’m complaining, though, it makes my job rather easy since the traffic’s rarely bunched in one place.” Her flying gear was light and utilitarian, banded jacket and trousers and run of the mill headgear, but there were a couple of newspapers peeking from her pockets. “There’s always ponies trying to snatch every piece of arable land, they’re constantly forming new companies to farm and harvest what they can. Food, alchemy, chemicals, medicine, drugs, you name it. There’s a serious effort to redistribute and expand the fields all the time.”

Scootaloo gasped. “But surely they can’t be making the entire city just fields?”

“Of course not,” the cab driver was amused, “that’s where the ecological boards come in. Things have to be tightly regulated in this city for it to work. The size of the ecological environments needs to be limited in order not to collapse, crops have to be rotated, there’s insects and birds and animals, and so on. That’s why they’re constantly forming new companies, because they have to disband the old ones and find out what works next.”

“How do you know so much about these things?” Scootaloo marveled, “that’s so cool.”

“Well, companies and co-operations forming and collapsing and relocating, that’s when ponies need my services the most,” she gestured toward her carriage, “and when emotions run high, they tend to talk a lot. It’s the same whenever the city’s tethered, really.”

“Tethered?” Scootaloo said, “Like an anchor?”

“They don’t really drop an anchor,” the cab driver laughed, “it’d have to be big enough smash whatever’s underneath into smithereens. No, Skyview’s relocating right now, and ponies are talking about forming new companies and co-ops already, even though it’ll still take a couple of years to arrive. A remote place called Emerald Escarpment, though I’d never heard of it before.”

“Me neither,” Scootaloo said.

“Oh my,” Fluttershy said, “isn’t the Emerald Escarpment very far away from any pony city or settlement?”

“Yup,” the cab driver said, “two thousand kilometers from cold Stratfurt, bordered by volcanic mountains and the Large Wastes. That’s the beauty of our city, isn’t it? No territorial responsibilities means we can just pack up and move over there, where no one else would bother. The papers say there were recent volcanic activities, and the upturned minerals will make us all rich. Well, at least it’ll make us cab drivers rich, that I know for sure. Anyway, you guys know where you’re headed?”

“Oh, um,” Fluttershy said, “we heard there was a science fair, and we were hoping to visit.”

“The academies, sure,” the cab driver said, “Just follow the crowd. It’s the heart and center of this place, you can’t miss it. And you had better not miss it, you’re a bright kid, you should look into the place. I’ve never seen a filly so interested in sociology and economics before, more than even most adults! Well, I’ll see you around.”

“Goodbye, and thanks,” Fluttershy said, on Scootaloo’s behalf, “They really seem to like you around here, Scoots.”

Scootaloo mumbled her goodbyes. She was flustered. Why had she suddenly received a compliment? She hadn’t even done anything special. The cab driver’s story had simply been interesting.

Fluttershy picked Scootaloo up and straddled her into the stroller, and plopped the pacifier into her mouth, which was appreciated, Scootaloo hadn’t realized how much she desired its rubbery presence right now.

They left the marina and its alien vehicles behind using one of many ramps onto the main streets. They crossed another security moat, a cloud bridge over an earthen dike to keep the non-fliers off the clouds, leaving the distant miniature city behind and stepping into the almost comically oversized upper city.

The only thing of constant scale were the ponies and creatures roaming the streets, though they also came in every size, dragons and drakes and buffalos and elks and ponies and dogs and catfolk and some manners of creatures she didn’t know the names of, who seemed completely oblivious to the buildings’ ridiculous scale, except when they navigated around protruding ornaments and companionways, or craned their necks to read the towering traffic signs. There were a couple of foals toddling around a massive marble column, laughing and playing catch, and Scootaloo just barely repressed her instinct to jump up and join them, because she was really a grown up pony and had an obligation to educate herself. Luckily, Scootaloo was back to full clothing, jacket, skirt and pantyhose, revealing nothing to indicate the contrary.

There were plenty of street vendors, though none of them had any signs or tables out, making them look rather out of place. Fluttershy bought a pretty bouquet of meadow flowers from a florist’s cart, and they sat by the wayside and ate, watching the throngs flow past.

“Do these flowers taste kind of weird?” Scootaloo said, “They don’t taste like in Ponyville.”

“Yes,” Fluttershy said, chewing, “they surely taste different. A bit salty.”

“They taste like metal for me,” Scootaloo said, “I can barely taste out the real aromas.”

“I don’t think I mind that much,” Fluttershy said, “thought it certainly takes some getting used to ... uh ... ” She turned with the wrapping paper in hoof, but there was no trash bin to be seen. At all, along the entire street, actually.

“Over here, Miss,” a stallion said. He carried sticks and rakes on a tool belt, and a yoke mounted with bags of trash, into which he accepted Fluttershy’s refuse.

“Huh?” Scootaloo said, “Do you walk around collecting trash all day?”

“Well, not me, personally,” the stallion said, “there’s enough of us around.” Indeed, down the street in both directions, ponies stood with bags and sticks, and took the trash of passers-by who were attentive enough to give it to them, or picked it up from those who weren’t.

“That seems odd,” Fluttershy said, “why are you collecting it manually instead of using trash bins?”

“Hah,” the trash collector made, “You haven’t seen the houses of the ponies who live here, have you? They have the money, let me tell you. Don’t worry, lots of tourists stop to ask, but this job isn’t too bad, and the pay’s rather good, so I’m not complaining.”

And as Fluttershy and Scootaloo walked past the next block, which was really only one heavy-roofed stoa, they saw one of the houses he had referred to. Marble and polished rock gave way to cloud, a massive piece of cloud property rising in the distance, with perfectly cultivated rainfall lakes and rainbows, and intricate decorative sculptures lining the edges, a resplendent cloud estate perched on the very top, showing off the lofty buttresses and layered terraces of classical pegasus architecture, perfectly visible from every viewpoint.

“It’s a real cloud mansion!” Scootaloo said, “But it’s so big! Much bigger than Rainbow Dash’s cloud house. Who lives in there?”

“Likely some important politician. Or maybe the boss of a company,” Fluttershy said, “Reminds me a lot of Cloudsdale. Good thing Rainbow Dash’s house isn’t so big though, or she’d blot out all of Ponyville’s sunlight.”

The whole trip had taken on kind of a homely feeling, though Scootaloo couldn’t quite pinpoint the cause. Maybe it was the architecture, even though she never had been to different cloud houses, neither in the orphanage, nor in Ponyville. But it touched on Scootaloo’s pegasus ancestry, made the cultural genes deep withins stir.
Or maybe it was the fact that you became intimately familiar with the little details of every great building you passed, because they were gigantic, and covering the distance took ages.

The road went up a ramp, and then they walked under a huge, empty pantheon, countless hooves and paws and claws clopping and clicking against the polished white stone, which was not marble, but limestone or maybe basalt, Fluttershy explained. And everypony knew exactly which turn to take and where to go, except for Scootaloo and Fluttershy, who continued the way they had come from. Eventually they exited the structure, and the way opened up into a large and pretty plaza. It wasn’t really a plaza, it was just the continuation of the regular cobbled street, but its sheer scale made it appear like a meeting ground.

“There it is!” Fluttershy said, “University.”

“What? Where,” Scootaloo said. Fluttershy indicated a large stoa like many others, but with a string of symbols on the gable, senseless triangles and lines. “That’s the writing language of Atlassian Pegasus navigators and explorers,” Fluttershy explained.

“How do you know this kind of stuff?” Scootaloo said, “Atlassians? Isn’t that, like, super ancient history?”

“Quite so,” Fluttershy said, “I had to take a course at flight school. They have signs like this in Cloudsdale, too. Shall we go in?”

In they went, but the feeling of familiarity wouldn’t let go of Scootaloo, and it became more and more oppressive as they closed. The entrance wasn’t difficult to spot, many ponies went in through the arching main doorways, many obvious students draped in non-conform colours and sporting weird mane styles, and also younger fillies and colts of school age. There was a large number of bikes and skates and scooters and flight goggles and helmets piled up in the general vicinity of a mounting rack, and there were strollers too, so Fluttershy parked their stroller nearby, and unfastened Scootaloo, stashed her pacifier, picked her up and placed her on the ground.

Scootaloo kept close to Fluttershy as they went through the entrance, but that was when it hit her, all at once.

The explosion of noise of many ponies talking at the same time, their voices echoing off the walls, and the musty smell of old wooden benches and chalkboards suffused with sweat and cleaning agents, and book bindings and glue and paper and deodorant and scarce lunches in backpacks. Rows of desks in classrooms, students and teachers arguing and gossiping and laughing, hoofprints in white chalk dust on the ground, creaking floorboards.

“But ...” Scootaloo said, “but --”

“Hmm?” Fluttershy said.

“But it’s a school!” Scootaloo said.

“Yes, it’s a school,” Fluttershy said, “what did you think it was? Come now.”

Fluttershy pulled, but Scootaloo was frozen in place.

It was a school.

She didn’t want it to be. She’d been enjoying herself too much, without school, without having to think about it. About the noise and the confusion. About books she didn’t understand, about words that were too long to pronounce, lists of dates and tables of names, learn this and that, it made her head swim, everypony passing the exam she hadn’t even taken, teachers whispering behind her back because they knew she was a lost cause, she was an idiot, and her peers in the classroom solving reaction equations without effort, while she was still singing the multiplication song in her head, it was giving her vertigo, her hooves were locked up, she was falling, and she had to hold on to survive.

“Um, Fluttershy?” Scootaloo said, “Could you wait for a moment? I don’t know if I want to go in there.”

“Oh, Scootaloo ... ” Fluttershy said. She wrapped a wonderfully downy wing around Scootaloo, and held the smaller pony until she stopped shaking. “You don’t have to be scared. It’s a science fair, everypony here will be really nice. We’ll just go together and see what nice things they have on display, okay?”

“But it’s a school,” Scootaloo said, “And doesn’t feel right to go in with ... what’s going on at home. I don’t know if a school is a place where I belong.”

“I know Scoots,” Fluttershy said, “I know things aren’t always easy. But this is not a school like you know it. Everypony is here because they want to be here, and the students here don’t just study, they learn. It will do you well to see how other schools can work, and I want you to come inside and take a look. Will you do that for me?”

“I would do anything for you,” Scootaloo mumbled, and so that Fluttershy heard, “but I can stay close to you, okay?”

“You can always stay close to me,” Fluttershy said. Her wing was soft and warm.

And so, Scootaloo marched on, half-ducked behind Fluttershy’s tail, with trepidation, but also new resolve. The main hall was huge, an ancient pegasus construction with sunlight finding its way in through the very high roof, and many floors beset with terraces around a central open space, through which ponies could fly up and down. But it was also modern, because there were ramps for those who didn’t fly.

Then the shouting began.

“Come work with the Institute of Aeronautical Engineering! Invest in your future with the longest running industry in all the skies!”

“Deep Green is looking for new recruits! Soil! Growth! Life! This is your opportunity to make a contribution to Skyview’s unique biosphere, that lasts!”

“Where would you be without the floor? That’s right! A pancake on the ground! The Architects’ Guild has issued new funds for student programs, and we’re looking for interested candidates!”

Recruitment stands besieged the main entrance, easily a hundred and more, and everypony was trying to shout over everypony else in order to advertise their open positions. Ponies in suits, wearing expensive earrings and glasses and watches, but also trying to appeal to the youth with fancy coloured manes and shirts and hoof bands with ironic quotes on them, throwing out their bait, pens and pencils and sticky notes and pocket calendars and printed flyers, all stamped with corporate logos, like carrots on sticks. And the catch was phenomenal, every booth was filled with students and researchers, the glimmer of opportunity in their eyes as job offers were discussed, the smell of cheap deodorant and coffee. Scootaloo made her way past one stall after the other, trying to dodge the assault of noise and free junk, while Fluttershy trailed behind, and diligently collected all the flyers and put them in her pocket.

“Come work with us! It’s the best job ever!”

“We’ll pay your tuition! We’ll give you money!”

“We’re forming a mining and excavation co-op. We need drills and shovels, and mine construction, and transport and logistics, and storage, and refining and shipping.”

That caught Scootaloo’s attention. “Huh? You’re going to mine the Emerald Escarpment? But isn’t that years away?”

“Yes!” the mining pony said, “But there’s so much to be done before then. Think of the equipment, and you need light, air and food down there. And then we’re all going to be rich!”

She shoved a pile of pamphlets into Scootaloo’s face. Scootaloo ducked away quickly, but Fluttershy collected them anyway.

They eventually escaped up a ramp onto the first floor, a sea of moving heads underneath. The elevated walkway looked much more like an academic institution, some pictures and historic events adorning the walls, and the carpet was soft, and there were many doors with various nonsensical numbers on them.

A nearby door was open and an arrow sign pointed inside, and a good number of smaller fillies and colts followed its call. Fluttershy and Scootaloo went inside.

It was a classroom. Well, there were no desks or chairs, but the worn windows and the old heating pipes and the scratched chalkboard told it all.

Of course it was a classroom. What else. Scootaloo was beginning to get annoyed to the point of turning around. But Fluttershy was there and pushed her forward, so Scootaloo sucked it up and went inside anyway.

A crowd had gathered in the small room. Fluttershy and Scootaloo stood at the back, but Scootaloo was grabbed and pushed through to the front row, where all the other little colts and fillies were, shuffling and squirming about, trying to find a comfortable position on the hard tiled floor. Scootaloo didn’t know what all the fuss was about, she was sitting quite comfortably.

There was a wide teacher’s desk in the front with some instruments on it, some metal stands, flasks and test tubes, and a faucet. Behind it stood three ponies in lab coats. They were young like students, but looked like professors, pens sticking out of their pockets, ties around their necks, and appearing utterly bored. To the side, the happy flame of a burner bounced underneath a propped up small steel barrel, an old beer keg according to the label.

“Good morning, everypony,” one of the professors said, even though it wasn’t even morning.

“Good morning,” the little ponies said in chorus.

The rhyme left a bad taste in Scootaloo’s mouth. Same as in her school.

“Welcome to the physics lab,” the professor droned, “It is the place where we teach physics. Physics is the study of the universe’s fundamental properties. In practice, even though they are the same, we distinguish between two basic constituents of the universe, matter and energy. Everything we see around us is matter. Matter comes in different principle states, relating to different quantities of energy, such as solid, liquid and gaseous. Let us see these different principle states in action.”

One of the assistants walked over to the burner. “Safety first,” she said, donning some oven mitts. Propped against the table, she turned off the flame, then stuffed a cork in the barrel’s opening, lifted the barrel and placed it in the sink.

“We boiled some water in the barrel,” the professor said, “Meaning that we added heat and the water vaporized. Heat turns water into vapour. If we decrease the heat of the barrel, the vapour inside will turn back into water.”

The assistant turned on the faucet. Condensation dripped from the pipe, the water must have been frigid. Everypony turned silent, watching the water drizzle down the rounded steel. Even the professors didn’t seem much inclined to do anything, scratching their heads or coughing noncommittally.

Then, from one moment to the next, the steel barrel was flat like paper.

The boom was loud enough to knock everypony back, like a punch in the chest, windows vibrating, and water was ejected in every direction, spraying the audience full on in the faces.

Then everypony screamed at once, and the screams turned into squeals of delight, and everypony began laughing. The filly beside Scootaloo couldn’t stop laughing and doubled over, and Scootaloo held her upright, caught up in a laughing fit of her own, her heart racing, hooves electric with the pleasant tingle of adrenaline.

“That was awesome!”

“I know, right?!”

The professor was dripping wet too, but he didn’t even seem to notice, and carried on, with water running down his face. What a professor! He wasn’t bored at all, it was just an act. And what an act it was! Scootaloo found herself fascinated with whatever he would come up next. She vaguely remembered reading or hearing of these terms, matter, energy, principal states. But this was so much cooler!

Next up were mass and motion. The professor explained about mass and energy and impulse and momentum, and there were some formulas, you could multiply around with one and the other to get the third, but that meant you couldn’t net increase or decrease any of them by converting it into one of the others.

“Is anypony here with a skateboard?” the professor said.

There happened to be some skaters in the crowd, so he picked out two of them and had them line up on opposite walls. They sat down on their boards and were given a length of rope. The small pony sat still, while the muscular one pulled in the rope, reeling in the smaller one while barely moving himself. No big surprise, he looked much heavier. The rolled toward each other until their skateboards clinked together.

Then they went back to their original locations, and this time, the small pony pulled on the rope, moving herself toward the barely moving bigger one. And then, something incredible happened. No way! As their boards met, they touched on the exact same tile as before!

“For every action, there is an equal reaction in the opposite direction,” the professor proclaimed, “this fundamental principle can be found not only as a universally observable physical relation, but also in any other form of mechanically or chemically quantifiable system, as a philosophical worldview, and, indeed, in alchemy and magic. The aether tends to quantify the world in different terms than the physical, such as friendship and love, but actually follows the exact same fundamental principles.”

He fished a black marble from his pocket and dropped it on the floor.

“Oops,” he said, “I seem to have lost my marbles. Would you pick it up?”

The closeby unicorn walked over to pick up the shiny black dot, but when he reached down to grab it, it was like his horn was pushed away, and he lost his balance and fell on his flank.

“That’s right, you can’t pick it up,” the professor said, “and that is why there are staves or wands for all kinds of spells, but not telekinesis. This is a piece of the reagent Orichalyx II. which I have ... borrowed, from the alchemy lab. It can keep up the enchantment indefinitely, but it still adheres to the law of opposite reaction, in the case of telekinesis, manifesting on the absence of attraction. Your horn manifests upon the very same, which causes the smallest relative point of attraction to move outside of your influence, immediately pushing you away. Quite the party gag under a napkin, if I do say so myself.”

He placed a second black marble on the floor, and both marbles began attracting and moving toward each other, but when they got too close, sure enough, they changed directions away from each other, until they eventually turned back once more and rolled together again, oscillating back and forth.

Scootaloo had already known this behaviour. She wasn’t familiar with these particular marbles, but they reminded her of the reagent pieces she had gotten from Twilight, which she had moved around with her wings in a similar fashion.

The marbles were passed around, and while most found them pretty, the unicorns made faces and quickly passed them on. They didn’t feel special to Scootaloo though.

Scootaloo was enraptured with the demonstration. The professors had a cool experiment for every topic they brushed on. They mixed some stinky chemicals to create something that smelled pleasantly like strawberries. Then they cooked up some dirt and some reagents and watched the gold flakes fall out at the bottom, measured the thickness of the micrometer-thin flakes by measuring a stack of them with a ruler and applying some math, and watched a couple of swirly colours and things flying around through a microscope.

Scootaloo couldn’t believe the demonstration was already over. She had tried to keep her distance, this was a school after all, but the recalcitrant feeling in her gut had proven too powerful, bubbling excitement alternating with the pleasant buzz of playful exploration; when something new comes along, and you have no idea what you are doing, but you keep playing around with it, and suddenly it starts makes sense.

“This was so cool!” Scootaloo said, with a huge grin splitting her face, rapidly toddling over to Fluttershy, who was among the other parents on the sidelines.

“It was quite an impressive demonstration,” Fluttershy said, and gave Scootaloo a big hug, but Scootaloo couldn’t stop twisting and turning, so excited was she. “Although maybe a bit loud at some points.”

They filed back out of the room, and, Scootaloo realized, something started to make sense. The main hall’s open space was now full of ponies flying, up and down the floors, and the walkways were also ripe with activity, and all of the ponies were on their own journeys of exploration, going to their classrooms, looking through ancient decorated bookshelves, carrying their notes and instruments. Not because they had to, or because somepony forced them, but because they too were caught up in the hunt. The hunt through dogmatic questions and confusions, for the ever elusive prey of discovery. The promise of enlightenment, a piece of understanding, a seductive challenge, because every answer was sure to open the path to more questions.

Scootaloo felt the very same tantalizing lure pulling on her thoughts.

On the far end of the halls, classrooms gave way to grand lecture halls with huge doors. Water fountains bearing depictions of a long scholarly history decorated the walls. The high altitude rainwater was refreshing, and further invigorating. The lecture halls seemed popular, everypony was streaming into the one with a sign, in normal Equestrian font.

“Symposium on ecologistics and ecosym ... symbiotics?” Scootaloo said, “What’s that?”

“Oh, just the biggest and most famous conference in all of ecologics and engineering,” a random student passing by said, “and they’ve got the biggest and most famous eco-engineer, Power Set, to hold a talk!”

“Get in, quick,” somepony else said, “I hear he’s getting ready to speak.”

And so, Scootaloo and Fluttershy went in. The lecture hall was quite large, and the walls were detailed with symbols and decorations in marble finish, but the furniture was rather utilitarian, just rows upon rows of elevated benches, all looking down upon the speaker desk in the centre. A speaker was presently finishing her talk, but it was too loud to understand anything. The room was so packed, the audience was already standing on the stairs, but somepony offered their seat to Fluttershy, because she was with child. How neat!

So they waited, Scootaloo snuggled into Fluttershy’s lap, and they observed as a immaculately groomed stallion stepped onto the stage. His appearance was truly remarkable, no matter what you were looking for. He wore a homely knitted sweater, and rather stylish designer glasses, but he was toned and athletic with a spring in his step, and his mane was combed back to mirror-like smoothness, no doubt thanks to several bottles of hair gel, and not a single drop of sweat stood on his handsome face under the brightness of the spotlight, which must have been the result of unfathomable cosmetics. The stallion sat at the desk and donned the voice medallion.

“Good afternoon everypony,” he said in a buttery smooth voice, and already the audience was cheering, “my name is Power Set. I am the founder and CEO of Powerdynamics, the Equestria-wide, founded-in-Skyview leading company for your modern energy engineering needs, including electrical engineering, photovoltaics and photoreactivity, arcane machining, and more. But, I trust you all are here because you already know this.” He winked, and the audience laughed. Scootaloo didn’t get it.

He proceeded to recount the beginnings of his company, how his forefathers had founded it to keep up with Skyview’s increasing need for sustainable energy, and how he steered its corporate path to new levels of profitability. Then he listed off his company’s inventions, and explained some pieces of machinery in detail, even going as far as to draw schematics onto the chalkboard, always remembering to mention which of his company’s department produced which parts. The whole thing was an advertisement show, and yet everypony was frantically scribbling in their notebooks. He kept babbling on and on, and Scootaloo would have soon fallen asleep if not for the cheers and rounds of laughter from the audience in reaction to bad jokes.

“... and thus the piezzobubonic accentuators control the moment of flux tension by miniscule movements, the moving parts patented by my esteemed colleagues of my precision engineering department. Yes, yes, I know, us scholars can’t stand patents, it hurts my heart as well, but whatever makes the investors happy, right?” Laughter. “Speaking of investors, at the dawn of the new financial year, we have plenty of positions open for all lines of education and experience, so why don’t you come talk to us and see if we can find a fruitful engagement?”

The room descended into chaos. Some assistants began distributing flyers and brochures for Power Set’s company, and everypony was hooves over heads to get hold of one, or all of them. Scootaloo took cover when they threw the fliers into the crowd, but Fluttershy picked some up, and stashed them.

It was eventually time for the next speaker, an old, corpulent stallion wearing a green shirt, waddling his way up on stage. He wearily eyed the throng of students crowding around the superstar, but paid no further mind. It would take a while until all the students had filed out of the hall, after their idol, but this was the heavyset stallion’s time slot, so he put on the voice medallion and began speaking anyway.

“We are the company Deep Green owned by the university’s Department of Ecologics and Environmental Engineering,” he droned sedately, “We are responsible for the balancing of Skyview’s biosphere that keeps the city afloat, so to speak. Let’s start with the fundamentals. A healthy ecological environment is critical for any permanent settlement to flourish. A functioning ecology requires four equally important components, minerals and gases, soil, plantlife and animals. Any of these aspects can spiral out of control if not treated with care, such as the parasitic fungus that spreads quickly if left unchecked, requiring the introduction of predatory bacteria, which in turn will multiply uncontrollably, necessitating an increase of microbes and worms in the soil, and so on. You always want to test new techniques in the lab before fielding them.”

Most ponies were gone, but Scootaloo couldn’t see why. The speaker’s story was enrapturing. It seemed really difficult to keep a closed ecosystem like the cloud city of Skyview in balance, especially when it needed to produce enough pony-edible food to sustain most of the city. A large diversity of plants and wildlife had been taken from mountain tops and arctic tundras, due to their adaptability to the high altitudes and extreme situations of cold and aridity that could occur in Skyview. They consisted not just of animals and flowers, but the vast majority of biomass consisted of mosses, fungi and insects, which were responsible for the viridity and chemical balance of the soil. The soil was not just dirt, but in fact a very nuanced system of worms, microbes, bacteria and multicellular organisms, which transported and transmuted the minerals and chemicals from which all other life sustained itself.

“... and one of the biggest problems is raising the levels of nitrites, nitrates and sodium in the soil to sustainable levels, since the biosphere only processes it slowly, and adding it too quickly may fatally salt the earth. One of the more promising projects consists of a special fertilizer mixed with alchemical reagents affine to nitrites --”

“Do the vegetables have many nitrites too?” Scootaloo piped up.

“Who said that?” the old stallion said, and, seemingly becoming aware of the lecture hall for the first time, squinted against the light. His question was pointless though, the only other ponies in the audience were his assistants, wearing green shirts, who were asleep. “What makes you think that the nitrite content of the vegetables is abnormal?”

“Well, we tasted some flowers earlier,” Scootaloo said, “and we thought they tasted kind of like salty metal. Was that because of too much nitrite?”

“Ah, a biologist’s sense of taste,” the stallion said, “an oversaturation in sodium and nitrates, in fact. But it highlights the great care we have to take when applying procedures that alter the entire ecosystem. Most predatory plants won’t take the increased sodium so well, while some forms of bacteria will thrive. Very astute observation, young colt.”

“I’m not a colt. I’m a filly!” Scootaloo said.

“Hm? Oh, yes, yes,” the old pony said distractedly, “The other source of organic sustenance actually stems from the mineral foundation in the soil. This is where a mobile city such as Skyview comes in practical, since the mineral compounds rich enough to nourish the biosphere are typically found in uncivilized lands ...”

And off he was again. Scootaloo didn’t understand much of what he said, but she got the general gist of it, and she found the subject pretty fascinating.

What interested her even more, though, was that bulking old stallion, somepony so utterly enraptured in his topic of expertise, that he barely registered the room he was sitting in, freely sharing his experience just for the sake of spreading knowledge. Such a wealth of insight, of understanding the subtle inner workings of the complex and vital mechanism that was the flowerbed of the city’s prosperity. And it made sense to Scootaloo, she could see how one would get caught in the inexorable pull of the unknown, stumbling around, discovering, understanding, inventing. This pony embodied all of those stages in one, and the whole concept suddenly became so much less ephemeral, so much more practical and real.

Scootaloo had tried not to think of school, she was on vacation after all, and her memories of school weren’t particularly pleasant to begin with, but she couldn’t help it. She ended up sitting in a lecture hall, listening to somepony speak, just like in her school, yet it was so different, it captivated her, and she found herself able to understand. Scootaloo could easily see herself sitting on these lecture benches just a while longer.

The talk was over, and the stallion announced cake and coffee break, licking his lips. But Scootaloo didn’t want any cake, she wanted to go see more of the university instead.