Twilight was lying on her couch watching Action Newz 7, a channel which showed mainly news and occasionally shows about yelling at people with different political views from the channel. Unlike most news channels, they didn’t do crossovers that often.

“Sixty-four died in the flood in Oppidia,” she barely took in from the channel often accused of having a strong bias to both left and right. The channel had a larger proportion of sad stories than other major Equestrian news channels and was the only one to have ads for Amnesia Juice™, which was the source of many functionally identical bits of speculation.

Twilight didn’t like Amnesia Juice™ since you didn’t have any control over what memories you lost, so if you just learned something important in the past exactly six hours every time then you might forget it. Overdoses, easy to do since the drink required different dosages for forgetting different types of things, could also result in long-term memory loss.

“I hate Amnesia Juice,” Twilight said. It was rare for people to say the ™, though it was officially in the name. “You don’t have any control over the memories you lose, so you could forget something important. And if you overdose on it, which is easy to do since you need a different dosage for, like, everything, you can lose long-term memories. You always hear about ponies who drink just a little too much and they forget their PIN, how to spell ‘hors-d’œuvre’, even their family or their own names....”

Ten minutes later, she was on her computer. “Huh. Remember how I talked about me not liking Amnesia Juice?” No one was there to answer her. “I’m going to the Big Stopmart.”

She ran as fast as she could to the nearest Big Stopmart, except she teleported just outside and walked calmly in. She encountered a wet floor sign blocking her way to the memory alteration substance aisle, but also happened to notice the lack of a sign, and the lack of a large puddle of water, at the other end of the aisle. She decided she didn’t care, but couldn’t get past the sign even though it left a gap she could fit through. She tried to push it away, but to no avail.

“Fucking tiles,” she muttered.

She went around the back and quickly found the violet-purple bottles of Amnesia Juice™, which were only available in sets of twelve.

“They know they can sell these to me even though we both know I’m only using one. I can’t do it. I can’t let them win. Besides, I’ve run into traumatising things before and I’ve gotten over it. Traumatising is a pretty strong word for it anyway, really. But that... that one was so... why do I feel differently about it anyway? I should at least see it as one of those things that’s so ridiculous it fails to do anything.”

Two hours later, the store now closed for fifty-five minutes, two employees were almost finished cleaning up.

“Can you believe that mare—or filly, she seemed teenage, it was hard to tell—who was in front of the Amnesia Juice for half an hour talking to herself about whether to get it?” said the store’s oldest and wisest janitor, Janet.

“I know, she was weird,” said a more rookie janitor, Saraswati. “At least she listened to the wet floor sign unlike half the fuckers who come here.”

“Yeah. And then when they slip, they decide it’s the nearest employee’s fault and give them shit.”

“Does it make me dumb to find observational comedy this basic so funny?”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“Cool.”

Two hours earlier, Twilight was debating with herself over whether to get some Amnesia Juice™ despite this constituting giving in to the twelve-packs she hated so much. You have any more detail to tell us, Twilight?

“Hmm,” transcriber #2 said, “Maybe if I say it to her instead of type it, she’ll respond to me. Hey, Twilight, can I ask you something?”

“What?” Twilight looked over to transcriber #2. “Did you say my name?”

“You have any more detail about your decision to tell the camera?”

“Um... will I get over it anyway... paying for more than I’ll use... no, I think that’s it. I’m going to stand here and repeat myself for a while until I decide.”

Thirty minutes later, she made up her mind.

“Okay. Okay-okay-okay. I’m getting the Amnesia Juice. How should I carry it, though? Wait, I’m a unicorn.”

Twilight levitated a case and went to checkout #74. It was at the point of putting the Amnesia Juice™ on the belt that she realised that the store had been silent for the past ten or fifteen minutes, she the only customer there.

“Welcome to Pudding Palace,” the cashier said. “How may I—um, wrong job.” Twilight paid as the white Charcoal Nightcrow bagged her one item. “Thank you for... shopping at Big Stopmart.”

Twilight teleported back to the treehouse without even leaving the building first. She tore open the plastic around the cardboard case, took a bottle, and opened the cap.

“Do I really want to do this? If I don’t do it right... do these come with instructions or something?” She looked all around the paper circling the bottle, but found nothing of use. “Could I call Fluttershy? Because she... no, she’s probably asleep.”

She found it on the Internet.

“All right. Does my scratch-resistant microwave-safe Pyrex® measure jug made with borosilicate heat-resistant glass even have marks that low? Well, I’ll see.” She went to the kitchen, and it didn’t. “Well, fuck. Wait a minute, don’t I own a graduated cylinder somewhere? Where is it? And how weird would I look drinking out of something like that? It would look like I’m drinking some chemical and trying to kill myself. Or what if I just measured it and then poured it into something more conventional? But that’s just doing something inconvenient for no practical reason. I guess there really aren’t any ‘practical reasons’ anyway when what’s a good experience is completely subjective, and besides, no matter how much I like something because I have to subjectively decide some things are fun or I’ll end up depressed or insane, we’re all going to die eventually anyway, so even once you get over the subjectivity it still doesn’t make a difference what you do.”

She paused for a moment.

“Okay, let me try to take that in a different direction. It would be so weird to drink out of something like that. But why do I care about what the culture I live in has subjectively described as ‘weird’? If you don’t think something’s weird, then it’s not. I shouldn’t be worrying about all these baseless concepts society’s come up with when it’s obvious what the most practical thing is to do. So I’ll go with my original plan of drinking out of the cylinder that I still haven’t found.”

She then noticed it on a bookshelf she had been facing the whole time. Technically the upper cabinets in her kitchen were not meant to be used as bookshelves.

“That was easy.”

Back at the study where she left the Amnesia Juice™, a room distinct from the den as well as the cabinet, Twilight had eighty millilitres of the liquid ready to be consumed.

“Do I really want to do this? You know, I’ve been so distracted by this whole Amnesia Juice thing that I haven’t even thought about that thing again except for now okay I’ve decided.” She drank it as quickly as gravity would let her. “Why do I have a bottle of Amnesia Juice here? Oh no, did I... oh, I remember. Wait, I don’t remember anything about that... thing... I don’t even know what kind of thing it was. So I did it right, good.”

Spike came into the room. “Twilight?”

She looked over her shoulder. “Holy crap, a dragon? What are you doing here? And how do you know my name? Okay, I saved the world and I’m famous, but what are you doing here?”

“I’m Spike.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about. Are you going to try and eat me? I’m willing to hurt you.”

Spike noticed the Amnesia Juice™ on the desk. “Did you just take some of that Amnesia Juice?”

“Yeah, why? I measured it carefully, I would still know who you are if I knew you. I guess I could’ve misread something, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t.”

“I’m not going to eat you—”

Twilight began to charge a spell requiring an expanding sphere of magic.

“What are you doing? I’m Spike, don’t you remember? Do you need a picture of us having happy times together or some—”

She sent a white bolt of something vaguely electric-looking but which could’ve been anything from her horn to his chest, knocking him out. She went back to the computer. “What did I do wrong? Yeah, take eighty mi... oh, that’s a six. There’s the problem. Let’s see, how can I fix... well, I still remember Zecora.”

She teleported outside Zecora’s hut and barged in.

Zecora looked up from a cauldron. “Hello, Twilight.”

“Hi, Zecora. I was wondering if you had anything for overdoses of Amnesia Juice.”

“I just came back from foreign lands—okay, it was just across the border to Pferdland, but still foreign lands—a couple weeks ago with what you need.”

“Why aren’t you rhyming?”

“Does it matter?”

“Fine, just give me the magical potion or flower or whatever it happens to be.”

“Here.” Zecora took a plant that looked rather like mint or catnip about forty centimetres long and gave it to Twilight.

“Cool.” She ate the plant. “When does it start to work?”

“Instantly.”

“Oh, yeah. I remember stuff now. Like that baby dragon I killed was Spike.”

“You killed Spike?!”

“Did I say killed?”

“Yes. You said ‘Like that baby dragon I killed was Spike.’.”

“Oh. I meant knocked out.”

“That was scary, I thought he was actually dead.”

“Nope, he’s alive. Anyway, I’m going to back my house.”

“All right, then.”

“I could just leave him here,” Twilight said as she looked down on Spike’s body. “If I did it right, he’ll wake up and he’ll be fine. If it takes, I don’t know, an hour, I guess I’ll take him to Zecora.”

Exactly five minutes later, Spike woke up.

“Twilight?”

She put a book down. “Oh, good, you’re okay.”

“Do you know who I am now?”

“Yep. Went to Zecora and everything’s fine now. I hope that didn’t hurt too much.”

“I only felt it for a second, but it was worse than The Event.”

“Oh.” She took a second. “Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“It’s not fine if it was worse than The Event. What do you want from me?”

“Really, it’s—”

Twilight levitated him into her legs. “No, no, you don’t have to be like that. So what is it? Food? Money? Electronics? Your way with Rarity?”

“It was only for a second....”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m happy with what I have.”

“Okay. I guess I’ll make a joke about having a lot of extra Amnesia Juice.”

“Like?”

“I sure have a lot of extra Amnesia Juice.”

Spike didn’t laugh, or respond at all. Next Chapter: Chapter 27: Dash Gets an Ouchie Estimated time remaining: 17 Hours, 2 Minutes