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Contraptionology!

by Skywriter

Chapter 10: 10 - Outliers (Awesomeness and Laughter)

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* * *
Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

www.scrivnarium.net

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
* * *

Part Ten: Outliers (Loyalty Awesomeness and Laughter)

"Hold it right there, Applejack!" shouted Rainbow Dash, from above. "If that's your real name, that is."

I held it right there, dutifully.

"Hey, Rainbow Dash," I called up, trying to catch sight of her up there in her little cloud house. "Breakfast for ya. Just like I promised. Keeping my word."

"Uh huh," said Dash. "Real clever, Robot Applejack," she said. "But you forgot about one thing when you duplicated her appearance and stole her identity – my friend Applejack always wears a hat! And I don't see a hat down there."

"For Pete's sake," I said, trying not to think too hard about the fiasco at Carousel Boutique in case it made me get all sniffly again. "Rarity took my hat and burned it. No more complicated than that."

Dash didn't say nothing for a second. Then she did that snorty thing she does when she's trying not to laugh.

"Rarity… burned… your hat?!?" said Dash, then, guffawing. "Oh, that's too rich!"

"Ain't funny, y'all," I muttered, kneeling down by the edge of Tank the Tortoise's little enclosure on the ground underneath Dash's house. I clucked to him and he moseyed on over, extending his head for a hoof-pat. There was something wrong with Tank's setup today, and I couldn't place what it was until I realized that I had gotten so used to things being wrong that I had started getting twinges from something going right.

Based on the scraps and shreds of leafy greens lying around everywhere, Tank had gotten fed this morning. Dash has a pretty heavy hoof on the pet food 'cause she doesn't trust herself to give just the right amount, so she always overcorrects just in case. Today was no exception.

Today was no exception.

Why on the Grower's green earth was today no exception?

"Rainbow!" I yelled up, suddenly realizing with a sick feeling that despite all my reassurances to Apple Bloom, Winona never did get her own breakfast back at the Acres. "You fed Tank!"

"Well, duh," said Rainbow Dash's voice. "Of course! Remember that one day when I was practicing hammerheads all morning and forgot to feed him and Fluttershy got all in my face about it? Sha, like I'm risking that again. She freaks me out when she goes all Gnar Gnar Gnar at ponies." Dash snorted. "Besides," she continued. "We're stewards of the earth! Keepin' it real, right?"

"I don't get it!" I shouted. "Why are you, of all ponies, the one 'keeping it real'?"

"What's so weird about me feeding my pet?" said Dash. Then her voice got all hard-edged again. "But then, I wouldn't expect a robot duplicate to understand things like food!"

"Cryin' in the corn, Rainbow Dash, whatever a ro-bot is, I ain't it!"

"It's another word for 'contraptionoid'," said Dash. "I was over at Twilight's doing some unscheduled single-blind scientific surveys of her project—"

"Spying on her."

"Unscheduled single-blind scientific surveys," insisted Dash. "And I heard her tell Spike that she was planning on making a contraptionoid in the shape of a pony! And she was even gonna teach it how to use unicorn magic! How am I supposed to tell who's real and who's a contraptionoid anymore?"

I frowned. I hated to admit it, but Dash kind of had a point. "I bet a contraptionoid pony is gonna be all shiny and such," I tried.

"What if they dip it in rubber or something and put fake horsehair all over it?"

"I'm at a loss here, Rainbow."

"Exactly," said Dash. "That's why in addition to designing a supremely epic pony-augmentation exoskeleton for tonight's science fair, I whipped up a bunch of questions designed to provoke emotional responses so I can ferret out which of my friends is real and which of them have been replaced by soulless life-stealing robots. I call it the 'Voigt-Clopff'. Ready to begin?"

"Rainbow," I said. "I ain't sure that—"

"Okay," said Dash, clearing her throat. "Reaction time is a factor in this, so please pay attention. Now, answer as quickly as you can."

I gave up and played along. "Sure," I said.

"Sweet Apple Acres," said Rainbow.

I nodded. "That's my farm."

"What?"

"The farm where I live."

"Nice place?"

"Well, yeah. Is that part of the test?"

"No, just warming you up, that's all. You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden—"

"Is this the test, now?"

"Duh, yes," said Dash. "You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down—"

"What one?"

Dash sounded a little taken aback. "What?"

"What desert?" I repeated.

"It doesn't make any difference what desert, it's completely that one thing where it's all imaginary and not real."

"Hypothetical?"

"That's the word," said Dash.

"But how come I'd be there?"

"Maybe you're fed up, maybe you want to be by yourself, who knows? You look down and you see a tortoise, Applejack, it's crawling towards you—"

"Yeah," I said, glancing down at Tank. "I, uh, actually do see a tortoise here."

"You know what a tortoise is, right?" said Dash, ignoring me. "It's just like a turtle. Same thing."

"Actually," I said, "If y'all remember, Fluttershy spent a long time trying to—"

"You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back, Applejack."

I looked up and down between Tank and the still-unseen Rainbow Dash. Tank blinked at me. "Wait," I said, "are you telling me to flip your tortoise over, or what?"

"The tortoise lies on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't, not without your help. But you're not helping."

"What do you mean, I'm not helping?" I said, starting to get really annoyed now.

"They're just questions, Applejack."

"No, they ain't!" I said, stomping a hoof in perturbation. "They're just you doing weird rambly goin'-off-at-the-mouth stuff! I ain't heard a question yet!"

"It's a test," said Rainbow Dash, infuriatingly calm. "Designed to provoke an emotional response. Shall we continue?"

"No!" I spat.

"Describe, in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about your mother."

Right, I thought. That tears it. "My mother?" I said, nosing back into my saddlebags.

"Yeah," said Dash.

I emerged from the bags with Dash's steel breakfast dish locked between my teeth. "Let me tell you about my mother," I said, around it. With a mighty heave, I chucked the dish directly at the patch of clouds out of which Rainbow Dash's voice had been coming all this time, resulting in a very satisfying clang.

"Ow!" said Rainbow Dash, as the breakfast dish tumbled back through the clouds, landing with a heavy thud on the grass below. "That's not you telling me about your mother! That's you throwing something at me!"

"Good test," I said. "That was your breakfast, by the way. I'm gonna throw it again, and this time, actually catch it, so's I can be done with this leg, hear?"

"Not on your life, Robot Applejack!" said Dash, bursting up through the clouds and taking the roof of her house in her teeth, then dragging it skyward, leaving a trail of cloud residue behind it.

"Consarnit, Rainbow!" I swore, grabbing the breakfast dish up from where it fell and stuffing it back in my saddlebags. I took a second to make certain I could still see the light-wiggles of the cloud-walking spell on my hooves, then gathered my legs under me and leapt to the lowest mass in the shedded-off cumulus trail. And then the next-lowest mass. And so on.

"Aw, pony, no fair!" said Dash, peering over her roof at me. "You got Twilighted, didn't you!"

"She ain't a verb, Rainbow!" I said, kicking off another cloud and landing square on the next, climbing higher and higher with every leap. "Now keep your dang mobile home still for a piece!"

"Sorry," said Dash, grabbing her roof again, "but I don't take orders from walking, talking, breakfast-chucking bio-replicating crimes against equinity!"

The next few minutes was, all in all, just about the stupidest thing I'd ever done to fulfill a promise, even counting the potato-chip-soda-pop-earthworm muffin incident, less said of that the better. Dash led me on a merry little hunt through the clouds, her working on wingpower, me on brute strength of hindquarters. Higher and higher we went, until we got to a point where a single misstep was absolutely, one hundred percent, guaranteed to kill me. The ground got tiny beneath us. Still I charged upward.

Dash was obviously faster airborne than I was cloud-skipping, and had experience on her side, but on the other hoof, she was slowed down quite a bit by the mass of her house. Eventually, that meant I was able to close the distance between us to the length of one powerful leap that might or might not be just beyond my ability to make.

"What's the matter, cow-pony?" said Dash, watching me from her roof across the divide, her hooves on her cheeks. "Turning into a chicken-pony on me? Or is it your built-in robotic danger-avoidance program kicking in?"

I snarled at her, glanced once at the faraway ground, squeezed my eyes shut, gave a quick inner pep talk to Bucky and Kicks, and then trusted my life to the air, a party I never have been real friendly with in the first place.

I nearly missed, but it was good enough.

Scrabbling mightily against the edge of the clouds over a fatal drop into thin air, I finally managed to find purchase with one of my hind hooves and lever myself up and over the rim of Rainbow's yard, landing with a soft, feathery whumph in a pile of loose cirrus that she had raked up by her front porch. I stood there, panting, gazing up at the blue sky and cussing out Dash, myself, and whatever mother-loving tyrant it was who invented gravity.

In a second, Dash appeared in my field of view, leaning over me and looking powerful amused, her lightning-bolt amulet glowing a medium red more or less right in my face.

"I ain't," I wheezed, pointing up at her, "no cotton-pickin' ro-bot."

"Relax, Crabapple-jack, you sold me," she said, tousling my mane. "Not even a perfect robot duplicate of you would be dumb and stubborn enough to do what you just did." She flittered back to her roof and began shoving her house back down to a more sensible altitude. "So what's cooking for breakfast?" she asked, as the upcurrent whooshed about us on all sides.

"Mushroom omelet," I said, getting to my hooves and shaking the cloud out of my coat.

"Blech," said Rainbow. "I hate mushrooms. They taste like dirt."

"This ain't about what you do or don't like," I said. "This is about the Bearer of Honesty, sticking to her word. For all I care you can open this plate up and dump it right in the trash once I've done my part." I glanced around me. "And on that topic," I said, "where can toss this dish so it don't fall again?"

"Yeah, I got stratus countertops in my kitchen that're dense enough to hold food," said Dash. "I'll be down in a sec."

"No worries, I can find 'em," I said, heading for her front door.

"You stay out of there, A.J.!" said Dash. "Nopony gets to see the undiluted super-concentrated radicalness of my science fair project before the competition kicks off! You're just gonna try and steal my awesome ideas!"

"What if I was jes' gonna do some 'unscheduled single-blind scientific surveys' instead?" I asked, all smirky.

"That sounds like fancy-talk for 'spying'!" said Dash, who, to her credit, has a short enough attention span that you can't even really hang hypocriticalness on her. Quickly and surely, the ground rose up to meet us, and eventually Dash left the roof, trusting that the house would drift the rest of the way down. She joined me on the porch.

"So," I said, "Where, at last, do you want this breakf—"

"Hold on," said Dash, eying the ground beneath us and cutting me off with a raised hoof. "That dumb ol' rabbit's back."

"Who?" I said, trying to get an angle. "Angel Bunny?"

"Yes, Angel Bunny!" said Dash, fuming. "All morning, he's been hanging around trying to steal all Tank's leafy greens! Like he doesn't get spoiled rotten enough by Fluttershy. Just gimme a sec, here."

Dash took to the sky and swooped down toward Tank's enclosure. I parted a hole in her front yard and yelled after her. "Actually," I said, "funny you should say that, because—"

Dash weren't listening. "Hey!" she said, approaching the little white shape who was alternately scrabbling at, and trying to reach through, the holes in the unbending chicken wire panels safeguarding Tank's lettuce. "Your Momma-shy feeds you enough!" She picked the rabbit up in her hooves, pulled him away from the fence, and tossed him into a nearby thicket, to the noise of ferocious bunny swearing.

Dash dusted her hooves off and glided back up to my level. "Sorry about that," she said, chuckling.

"So anyway," I said. "As I was saying, before we was interrupted—"

There was a bright whoosh in the air nearby, and a streak of orange fire. Dash and I turned, wide-eyed, to see Angel Bunny, hovering in the sky next to Dash's cloud home, wearing some kind of weird saddlebag-looking construction that was venting big cones of flame out its back, flames which was apparently pushing him aloft somehow. Angel adjusted a button on the contraption and hovered over to us, scowling straight at Dash as he did so.

"Oh come on!" shouted Dash. "You built a jet pack?"

Angel nodded in his own evil little brand of self-satisfaction, gave Rainbow a bunny-punch in the snout, then rocketed back down toward the tortoise enclosure. Dash yelped in protest and took off again in hot pursuit, catching up to the flying rabbit and snagging the back of his jet contraption right before his little paw was about to grab a hunk of Tank's leftover lettuce. Once again, Dash chucked Angel into the thickets, causing a tiny explosion this time. Angel emerged, soot-stained, stamping angrily and chitter-cussing at Dash for a good entire minute before he stalked back into the bushes, presumably to continue plotting. Tank himself blinked placidly at the goings-on, then ambled back over to his little house, dismissing the whole scene in with that long-minded I's-fixin'-to-outlive-all-y'all's-so-what-the-buck-do-I-care mentality common to his kind.

Meanwhile, Dash sullenly flapped back up to me, looking like she was fixing to take a bite out of somepony.

"So," I said. "Maybe you didn't hear the first couple times, but see, I got this here breakfast plate—"

"WHO CARES ABOUT YOUR STUPID BREAKFAST PLATE?!?" screamed Dash, totally losing it. "Did you see that? Angel Bunny built a jet pack! Angel flippin' Bunny!"

"Wasn't that part of your project?" I asked.

"It is my project!" shouted Dash. "I'm just… it's just…" Dash gave a frustrated little roar and kicked a little hunk of cumulus out of the floor-clouds of her porch.

"Sugarcube," I said, trying to sound gentle. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing!" exclaimed Dash. "My science fair project is going just peachy! Here, gimme that omelet so you'll shut up about it, and then get out of here and let me concentrate!"

Thoughts had started warming in my head ever since I saw Tank's sufficient and plentiful breakfast, and now they was coming to a boil. "Rainbow," I said, "I think it's real important for you to show me how your project's coming along."

"Right!" sneered Dash. "Like I'm gonna show you! You're the pony I care most about beating tonight!"

"I'm touched," I said, coming to a sudden decision. "Well, all right then. You win."

Dash blinked. "What?"

"You win," I repeated. "I can't not finish my Large Hadron Cider, 'cause my brain just won't allow it. But once I do, I ain't entering it in no silly Science Fair for Grown-Ups."

I put one hoof on Dash's shoulder, just above the wing. "Rainbow Dash," I said, looking her square in the eye, "I'm officially forfeiting. To you."

"Woohoo!" yelled Rainbow Dash, taking off and doing a couple flips in the air, her mood instantly reversed. "Total science-victory over Applejack! Ha ha, ha HA!" She pointed a hoof at me. "In your face, workhorse!"

"Yup," I said. "You beat me. So you gonna show me what it was that beat me, now?"

"Sure!" said Dash, all spunky again, fluttering past me towards her front door. "I mean, since you're officially no longer my scientific rival, what harm could it possibly do?"

Dash led me over to her front door and threw it open, leading me inside. "All right now," she announced. "I'm going to have to ask you to stand back, for your own protection. Something's gone terribly wrong in the construction of my lightning armor, and it's venting iodine all over my radiator."

"'Ionizing radiation'?" I tried.

Dash waved a hoof. "Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Anyway, if you look at my project too close it'll make your hair fall out and then all your kids will have like five legs, which would admittedly be kind of awesome."

I scanned around Dash's living room. "So… where's this project?"

Dash grabbed my face and pointed it. "Right there! On the stratocumulus throw-rug!"

I frowned. "Underneath the pile of boxes and grocery bags, then?"

"No!" said Dash. "That's the project! It just looks like a pile of boxes and grocery bags!"

I sauntered over to it. "Be careful!" shouted Dash. "You'll get iodine on your radiator, too!"

"Uh huh," I said, picking up what looked like a cardboard moving-box that'd been drawn all over with rainbow-colored fruit-scented markers. "Is this the culprit, here?"

"No, dorkbrain," said Dash. "That's not the reactor. That's the primary torso section. See those wing-slits in the back?"

"I do see 'em," I said, setting it aside. I rummaged through the pile a little more. "Oh, and here we have an empty oatmeal canister with some tin foil on it."

"Yeah, that's the jet pack," said Dash, sweating a little.

"It's an oatmeal box," I said, lifting it up for her to see. "Y'all just wrote 'Jet Pack' on the outside."

"Intention is important to the creative process!"

"You didn't even spell 'Jet Pack' right," I said, peering closer at it. "How in the hay did you manage to misspell 'Jet Pack'? That's one of them things that's actually harder to spell wrong than it is right."

"Maybe the problem's with you, huh?" said Dash, flap-charging over. "Let me show you how it's done." She dove into the pile of paper and rustled around for a spell, eventually emerging in an outfit made all of decorated cardboard boxes and brown-paper bags. She walked back over to me, crinkling noticeably with every step. "Bet you're impressed now!" she said, displaying herself to me.

"No," I admitted.

Dash slumped. "Yeah, this whole thing pretty much sucks," she said. Then, with a speck of defiance, she looked back up at me. "But it still beats out whatever your project is, 'cause you forfeited!"

"That I did."

Dash went back to crestfallen. "What's the matter with me?" she said, surveying the mess on her rug. "All I wanted to do was find the link between lightning and awesomeness, just like the Professor told me to! Am I just that bad at science?"

"I dunno, Dash," I said, "but based on what I seen today, whatever it is you don't got, you best be thanking your lucky stars you don't got it."

"'Scuse me?"

"I don't know how or why, but turns out this contraptionology business is a bad seed," I said. "It gets in your head and makes you willing, and able, to do stuff that plain just don't make sense. Rarity built a whole dang lighthouse on her roof in half an hour, f'rinstance."

"Rarity built a lighthouse… on her roof?"

"Yeah. And it ain't the friendly sort of lighthouse," I said. "It's the hat-burnin' kind. And if that weren't enough, it seems like the further you get into your contraption, the crazier you turn. Right about now, Twilight's prolly burning the last of the library's collection, if that gives you any idea."

"The library's collection of what?"

I stared at her meaningfully.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait wait wait wait wait wait wait," said Dash, the lights coming on upstairs. "Twilight's… burning… her books? Like, everything? Like her Daring Do novels, even?"

"Mm hm," I said. "And it ain't just her. Everpony else in town's following that same road, real quick. I need to get to the bottom of what's happening to Ponyville, and I'm gonna need you to help me, 'cause you're the normalest pony I met so far."

Dash looked at me, her eyes full of trust, and all of a sudden, it was just like old times. Like when we was all kidlets together, before Pinkie came back from what I now guess was college, and certainly before the Miss Twilight Sparkle and her Performing Pet Dragon Traveling Circus of Wonders parked itself permanently in town. Back in the days when everypony looked to me when somethin' weird or threatening would arise, and the three of 'em, Rar and Flutters and Dash, would all come a-running, and they'd say…

"A.J., what should we do?"

Laws, I thought, basking a little. How I been missing the sound of those words.

"I'll tell you, Rainbow," I said. "You're gonna stay right here. Hold tight, and whatever you do, don't go into town. I reckon things is gonna turn ugly there pretty quick. I'm headed back there myself, and if I don't return in a reasonable period, go get Princess Celestia. Tell her what's happening."

"If it's that bad, why don't I just head to Canterlot right now?"

"'Cause we don't know enough yet. I ain't even sure what's causing this, and I don't want no princesses rushing down here and running afoul of whatever this is. Equestria itself wouldn't survive one of them royals hopped up on contraptionology. Savvy?"

"Yeah, okay," said Dash. "So I hold down the fort. What are you gonna do?"

"I," I said, "am gonna go talk to the one pony in town who might be able to tell me what's going on."

* * *

"Pinkie Pie," I said, "tell me what's going on."

"I'm so glad you asked me that, Applejack!" exclaimed Pinkie Pie.

She took a deep breath. "Okay, so you're probably wondering why I'm wearing this big flowy nightgown and have all these white and black streaks in my mane! That's because I'm dressed up as the Bride of Frankenholstein! I thought since everypony in town was getting really into science, I'd play dress-up as a character from one of the greatest science-themed books of all time: Frankenholstein, by Marey Shelley! You know that story, right, Applejack?"

"Pinkie…" I said.

"It's about this great pony scientist named Frankenholstein," continued Pinkie, ignoring me. "One day he gets it in his head that he wants to create a zombie cow out of a bunch of pieces of other dead cows he's got lying around. So he finds enough dead cow parts to make one whole entire cow, and then he stitches it all together and zaps it with a whole bucket-load of electricity and FOOM!" She clapped her hooves together. "One living zombie cow! Or bull. Or steer, I guess, if he was missing the wrong couple of parts. Anyway, the zombie cow is called Frankenholstein's Monster and he's really big and dangerous and scary-looking but deep down he just wants to be loved!"

"Pinkie…" I said, a little louder.

"But unfortunately he's the only one of his kind! And he's so lonely. So the Monster goes back to Frankenholstein and he moos, 'Doctor, you must make a wife for me!' And at first Frankenholstein is all, like 'Nuh uh,' and the Monster is like 'Yah huh,' and Frankenholstein is like 'Nuh uh,' and the Monster is like 'Yah huh,' and that goes on for like forty pages until finally Frankenholstein decides that it really would be nice of him to make a wife for his Monster and they run another bucket-load of electricity through another bunch of dead cow parts, and pretty soon they have a bride for Frankenholstein's Monster, which is what I'm dressed like! And there's a big wedding with lots of cake and sarsaparilla and everypony lives happily ever after and then the Monster has lots of dead zombie cow babies and starts a family, so I guess he's not a steer after all. The End!"

"Pinkie!" I said, lunging at the break like I was aiming to catch a moving train.

Too slow. "So, yeah, I'm dressed up as a zombie cow made up of parts of other dead cows!" She sighed, rolling her eyes. "Again! I'm not real happy with the look this time because the Bride of Frankenholstein has seriously big hair, and my mane has been really droopy ever since everypony abandoned my party last night, which really kinda bummed me out, but Madame LaFlour has been talking me through it and I think we're gonna be all right." Pinkie zipped over to a flour sack that she had propped up on a stool nearby. "Oui! Zat eez correct!" she said her voice going all squeaky and Frenchy as she waggled the flour sack up and down in my face like a puppet. "Madame LaFlour thinks zat all you ponies were very rrrude hier soir!" Pinkie cocked her head in the other direction, her voice going normal. "Madame LaFlour can be very judgmental sometimes, but she really does care about me and wants what's best for me in the end. The other thing Madame LaFlour is helping me do is bake a whole bunch of cookies to celebrate us eventually pulling through this crisis and turning into a big happy Ponyville again, which is very nice of her, considering I have to scoop things out of her head to do it!" Pinkie turned French again. "Ah, well! Tant pis, tant mieux! Such eez ze lahf of a sack of flour!"

"Madame LaFlour!" I shouted, squeezing my eyes against the sheer undiluted dumbness of what I was about to say. Pinkie and the flour sack stopped short and stared at me, blessedly quiet.

"Beggin' your pardon, Madame," I continued, "but I got a real important question for your friend Pinkie there. Now I know we all cut out of the hypercube dance early last night 'cause we was all so excited about science all of a sudden, and I'm sorry about that, but in our defense, we've all gone totally bat-bucking crazy. And that's what I need to talk to her about." I scratched the back of my mane with one hoof. "So could you please ask Pinkie about contraptionology and why it makes ponies go silly in the head. Please."

Pinkie turned the flour to face her. "Pinkie Pie," said the flour, "I seenk Applejack deserves to know zis. You rrreally should tell 'ahr more about ze contraptionology."

Pinkie looked a little glum. "You're right, Madame LaFlour," she said. "Why can't I ever be as wise as you?"

"Do not despair, leetle wahn," said Pinkie, patting herself comfortingly with one of the flour sack's corner-tassels. "Wisdom comes with tahm."

"You're a good friend!" said Pinkie hugging the flour sack. Then she abruptly chucked it back onto the stool in a cloud of powder and turned to me, her eyes sparkling. "Okay, Applejack!" she said. "Sit your rump down and have a listen to Professor Pinkie Pie's Contraptionology 102 lecture on the topic of convolvement!"

"Convolvement?"

"Convolvement!" said Pinkie. "One of the pitfalls of the career contraptionologist is a thing called 'convolvement', which can strike both your experiments and, in advanced stages, your brain itself! When you begin work on a contraption, it's because you had a single cool vision of what that contraption was supposed to be. If you can finish your contraption before convolvement hits, then everything goes super-duper great! Just like me and Iggy! But if you make the mistake of tinkering too long on your contraption, trying to make it perfecter and perfecter long past the point you should have moved on to new projects, you run the risk of your original project becoming convolved."

"And what in the name of radish-tops does that mean?"

Pinkie's voice got low and mysterious. "It starts innocent enough at first. You start fiddling with things. You wonder what would happen if you inverted the phase manifold rather than keeping it upright. Or maybe you want to run the whole equation with negative numbers just for kicks, to see if you can get better results. And before you know it, your contraption is doing the exact opposite thing of what it was supposed to do! And then you're trapped, because you keep working on it, harder and harder, trying to get it back to what it was originally gonna be, but the more you work, the worse it gets!"

"So let's say," I said, "that Rarity makes a generosity machine, but then she reverses the polarity of the beam so that it steals stuff from people rather than giving it. Or Twilight gets frustrated with using friendship to power her ro-bot, so she harnesses betrayal-energy instead. Is that…?"

"Textbook convolvement," said Pinkie, nodding. "And what's worse, if you spend too long struggling with a convolved contraption, it starts sucking your brain into the convolution waveform! Pretty soon, you're sacrificing everything that used to be special to you, all in service to your very own infernal machine!"

"Fluttershy's critters," I said. "Rarity's diamonds. Twilight's books."

"Yup," said Pinkie. "It's exactly what's happening to Ponyville! Once convolvement gets into your brain, you turn competitive, driven, narcissistic and totally nuts."

"Great!" I said. "Finally, we know what's goin' on! What's the cure?"

Pinkie bit her lip.

"Pinkie," I said, "there is a cure, right?"

"Convolvement with brain infiltration is really hard to shake, A.J.," admitted Pinkie. "I keep trying to think of ways to make everypony better, but I keep drawing blanks. Maybe a couple years on top of a mountain breathing clean air and not thinking about machines at all might snap a pony out of it, but we don't have that much time. Or that many mountains."

"Well, that's just swell," I said. And then, "Wait. No offense, sugarhypercube, but is that what happened to you? Is that why you ditched contraptionology and moved back here to Ponyville?"

"Nonono," said Pinkie. "Like I keep telling everypony, I ditched contraptionology because I'm not a contraptionologist! I'm a baker! And besides, I'm way too young to get seriously convolved."

"I hate to break it to y'all, but comparative youth don't seem to be stopping Twilight or Rarity none."

"That's just it!" said Pinkie, tapping her chin. "There's one thing I don't get about this whole predicament we find ourselves in, A.J."

"One… thing?"

Pinkie pondered this. "Yep!" she said. "Pretty much just the one thing. And that is this: convolvement is a long, slow process! Back in Maresachusetts, it took a pony years to reach even Stage One convolvement! But overnight, everypony in town's suddenly hitting a high Three or even a Four! It's like something happened in their dreams to accelerate the convolvement process to unheard-of levels!"

"Well, I guess I'm safe from that," I muttered. "I ain't caught a wink since the morning of the forest fire." I frowned, then. "Pinkie, did you sleep?"

Pinkie giggle-snorted. "Of course, silly!" she said. "I always take the opportunity to get rested and refreshed whenever I can, just in case any unexpected all-night parties show up the very next day!"

"So your project's convolved, too!"

"Not a chance, Applejack!" said Pinkie. "I finished my assignment last night, before I even went to sleep! Just like any experienced contraptionologist would!"

"You made the link between balloons and laughter?"

"Yep!" said Pinkie, proudly.

"Take me to it," I said, grabbing the front of her nightgown. "Show me what you came up with. 'Cos if I survive L.H.C., I'm fixing to truss this Junior Armageddon right up, which means I need to know as much about it as I possibly can."

"I don't have to take you to it!" said Pinkie. "It's right here!"

I looked around, a mite startled. "Well, what is it? Did you build a giant invisible balloon or something, so's you can hover around and prank ponies better? Are we standing inside your contraption?"

Pinkie frowned, thoughtfully. "Is this or is this not me talking about a science project?" she said, out of the blue.

"Of course it's you talking about a science project!"

"Well, then I've already said too much," declared Pinkie. "If you'll recall, I Pinkie-Promised Twilight back in Part Four, 'Stranger Danger', that I wouldn't talk about any of my science projects from here on in. And if this is me talking about one of my science projects, then no can do, A.J."

I growled a little. "Okay, fine, it's not you talking about a science project."

"Hm," said Pinkie, pursing her lips. "That sounds like somepony trying to weasel out of a Pinkie Promise to me. But I don't suppose you know anyone who'd do that, right?"

"For heaven's sake, Pinkie," I said, "Dodge Junction was a real bad time for—"

"Any ideas?" said Pinkie, blinking at me. "Anypony at all you can think of who might try to weeeasel out on a Pinkie Promise for some reason?"

"Pinkie."

"Weeeeeeeeeeeeasel?" said Pinkie, leaning in.

"Fine!" I said, storming away to the other side of the kitchen. "Y'made your point! I'll just have to go at it half-baked." I grabbed the sixth and final breakfast dish in my teeth and chucked it, clattering, onto a counter. "Here's your breakfast, by the way," I said, sullenly.

Pinkie trotted over and broke the seal on the dish. "Mm!" she said, breathing in the apparently-delightful aroma of scorched eggs. "Burnt to a crisp! Just like I like 'em! Thanks, Applejack!" Pinkie went fishing around in a nearby pantry for a bottle of hot sauce and drenched the sad remnants of her mushroom omelet in about a gallon of the stuff.

"You're welcome," I said, as Pinkie began crunching contentedly on her eggs. "And glad you like 'em burned, 'cause it weren't supposed to be that way. The heating element in your dish switched on right on time, same as the other townpony ones did. It's just that I took a detour out to Rainbow's house afore coming here."

"Not how I would have done it!" said Pinkie, around a mouthful of food. "Seems like you maybe wasted a lot of hoofsteps!"

"I did," I said. "It's just… after seeing what became of Rar and Twi, I didn't know if I could face a messed-up you. Or a messed-up Sugarcube Corner."

I squared my jaw, looking around Pinkie's happy little kitchen. "This here's my favorite place inside the town limits, Pinkie. All the time me and you spent baking stuff here together, they's some of the happiest memories I got. And because you're in all them happy memories, I guess that makes you one of my favorite ponies, too. Even if I can't understand what you're jabbering on about half the time. I'm glad to see that, even in the middle of all this nonsense, you're still pretty much you."

"I'm always me!" agreed Pinkie, happily.

"Just thought I'd let you know all that, before I head back out to the Acres," I said. "In case I don't get a chance to say it again."

"That sounds kind of downer-y," said Pinkie, cocking her head at me.

"I mean it, Pinks," I said. "I got no idea what's gonna become of me once I get a gut full of nuclear cider. I got no idea what's gonna become of the world. So in case I don't make it, y'all gotta find Rainbow Dash and get the heck out of here. You two are the clear outliers in this little experiment, whatever it is. Last night at the party you thought maybe I'd spilled something on my Honesty amulet, but that ain't the case." I lifted up the little once-orange apple at my neck, now hovering just above black. "I been looking at these things as I been making my rounds, and none of them's in real good shape no more."

Pinkie looked down at the little rain-blue amulet of Laughter hanging around her own neck. "It does look a little gloomy, doesn't it?" she said, shining pitifully at it with one hoof.

"Gloomy or not, what I'm trying to say is, it's still a darn sight better than Rarity's, or Twilight's," I said. "Or mine. If the Elements are any indication, you and Dash have got the least damage here, and I'm hoping that means you're gonna make it through this." With that, I turned toward the door and started heading on out.

I could hear the sad frown in Pinkie's voice. "A.J.," she said, "I know what it feels like, but trust me, you can fight this. You don't have to drink the cider. You don't have to let contraptionology eat you up."

I didn't turn back. "It already 'et me," I said. "I just ain't stopped wiggling yet."

And with that, I walked out the door.

* * *

By the time I got back to Sweet Apple Acres, there weren't nothing but the wind to greet me.

Big Mac and his sonic plowshare were gone, leaving behind a whole mess of gray, cratered earth, craters which'd taken a bite out of the southern orchard and claimed some of the farm's smaller outbuildings as well. If Granny was still in residence, she was still hiding in the cellar, probably working on a way to destroy the world using rheumatism medication. Apple Bloom was nowhere to be seen. And all the livestock was just… gone.

I couldn't remember the last time I had come up that road leading back to the Acres and not heard the noise of snuffling pigs and clucking hens. Never, I decided. I ain't never heard Sweet Apple Acres so quiet. It felt like a needle being plunged into my heart.

"Hello?" I tried calling out. No response. Just a sad little echo from one of the bigger plowshare craters.

I sighed, hanging my head, and crossed under the arch leading back to my home. For a second, I had a wild little hope that Mac had obliterated the still shed and the Large Hadron Cider along with it, but no such luck. Everything was intact. Wincing, I nosed open the shed door, tossed my empty saddlebags into one gloomy corner, and then stood back and witnessed my creation.

The still was absolutely, well, still, the fractionating column silent and empty of bubbles. At some point in the process, it looked like we'd lost power to the entire contraption, maybe a fuse or something. Didn't matter none. If we had had a power outage, the L.H.C. sequence had finished before it cut. And the reason how come I could tell that was that there at the very end of the apparatus line was the glass-walled spirit safe, glowing bright amber-gold like I'd lassoed a star from Luna's heaven and dragged it down into my barn.

I walked over to it, fumbled my teeth around the spirit safe key, and unlocked the shiny brass padlock keeping the glass lid in place. Then I swung it open, feeling a gust of hot wind rush out from inside.

There, resting in a cider mug made out of focused magnetic fields strapped to a projection handle, was a single dram of the most potent cider known to pony, practically bending space and time around itself with its powerful alcoholic goodness. It fizzed a little as it sat there, and I knew – because I had made it – that the fizz weren't from no fermentation process. The bubbles in Large Hadron Cider come from billions and billions of tiny explosions going on at a subatomic level, matter and antimatter crashing into each other over and over again.

I reached down into the safe and lifted the magnetic tankard. The light came with it.

Well, this is it, I thought, blowing a thick head of quantum foam off the top of the mug and gazing for a while at what I had wrought. Time to face the inevitable.

"Bottoms up," I said.

I chugged 'er.

Next Chapter: 11 - The Honest Truth Estimated time remaining: 5 Hours, 20 Minutes
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