//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4 
// Story: Friendship 101: Final Exam 
// by Sixes_And_Sevens 
//------------------------------//

The beer room, as it turned out, wasn’t actually a bar. It just looked like one. This, Lemon quietly explained, was to put the subjects of the experiments at ease. The room’s purpose was to test out the effects of drunkenness on the mind-- or indeed, the effects of presumed drunkenness. Most of the drinks in here had been carefully formulated to mimic the taste of beer or wine or cider, but they were totally non-alcoholic. That was why Lemon liked coming here. She found the idea of ponies getting steadily more drunk on no alcohol at all completely hilarious.
Right now, though, the current experiment was using real alcohol. Starlight took a glass of cider from the scientist behind the counter and watched. The study was measuring whether ponies thought they were more attractive when drunk. Starlight wasn’t sure how that could be measured, but she was fairly certain, based on her own non-scientific observations, that drunk ponies usually thought they were better dancers.
“So,” Lemon said, sidling over to Starlight’s side. “What do you think?”
Starlight looked down at her glass and shrugged. “Not as good as Sweet Apple Acres,” she said.
“Not the cider, the school! What do you think of the school?”
“Oh.” Starlight thought about that. “It’s okay. I guess it’s a pretty good university. I mean, I haven’t been to many, but this one seems good.”
Lemon’s smile faded. “So, uh, do you think you might try and get the job? The one you came here for?”
Starlight knocked back her mug of cider before she answered. “I don’t really know,” she admitted. “All I’ve seen so far is one building, and it isn’t even the building I’d be working in. It’s too soon to tell.”
Lemon nodded. “Okay, that makes sense. You want another cider?”
“I shouldn’t,” Starlight said. “I want to be compos mentis for the whole tour, right?”
“Nah, come on,” Lyra scoffed, her mane festooned with tiny umbrellas. “This isn’t the alcoholololic stuff! It’s all fake, remememer?” She shoved her cocktail glass down the counter, where it joined about seven more. “But yerrite. We should keep goin’. C’mon, next stop is the natural sciences building.”
She rose from her stool and made for the door in an almost-straight line. Starlight looked at the psychologist behind the counter. “That wasn’t fake, was it?”
He smiled guiltily. “Oops?”
Lemon rubbed her chin. “Maybe we should consider seeing what happens when we serve ponies real alcohol and tell them it’s fake…”
Lyra smacked into the doorway and fell flat on her tail. She hiccupped, then started giggling madly.
The psychologist nodded. “I’ll see about talking to the ethics committee.”
“How exactly do you intend to get them to sign off on this?” Starlight demanded.
He raised an eyebrow. “I’ve got a lot of alcohol,” he said calmly. “Ethics tends to get a lot more relative when you can’t tell your plot from a pencil sharpener.”
“Okay, that sounds grossly unethical.”
“Does it? I’ll ask the committee about that, too.”


***


The natural sciences, aka natural philosophy, aka physics, had an entire block to itself. There was no apparent reason why this should be, as the building itself took up only a third of the area. Actually, it had a little bit more than a block to itself, if you counted distinctly empty spaces on the surrounding blocks. The nearest buildings even seemed to be leaning away from it. Starlight’s mind flashed to thoughts of blast radii and the benefits of keeping well away from certain hazardous materials…
No. She was being silly, surely. This was a school, after all. There had to be rules, safety standards, that kind of thing. There was no way that--
All the windows on the east side of the second floor blew out, followed quickly by a cloud of ash and an acrid stench. Lyra huffed and passed Lemon a stack of bits. “I was sure it would be the fourth floor,” she complained.
“Bet’s a bet,” Lemon said breezily, tucking the coins away.
It was at this point that both of them noticed that Starlight had fallen behind, stopped dead in her tracks as she stared up at the billowing smoke with mouth agape. Lemon looked at Lyra. “You didn’t warn her?”
“She lives with Twilight, I didn’t think I had to.”
“...Fair enough,” Lemon conceded. “Come on, Starlight! It’s just a little explosion! They happen all the time around here!”
“Not helpful,” Lyra muttered.
As if to prove Lyra wrong, Starlight relaxed slightly. “And everypony is okay in there?”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ve got state-of-the-art safety equipment, all the experiments are done behind glass, we’re good. There was only maybe one pony who was exposed to any meaningful level of radiation this year.”
Starlight tensed. “And what happened to them?”
Lemon pointed to a mare trotting in their direction down the road. “Here she comes now.”
The mare turned to enter the physics building and Starlight was able to see for the first time that she had two horns. She drew back in shock.
“Luckily, most of the damage was contained, or she really would be in a bad way,” Lyra said. “Instead, she’s just switched majors from energy dynamics to mad science, which is probably a more lucrative field these days anyway.”
“Is it?” Starlight asked, trotting forwards once more.
“Oh, yeah,” Lyra said, nodding. “I do it part-time, and it brings in tons of bits. If Bonnie didn’t have that whole thing about crumbling castles in the mountains, I’d do it professionally. I still had to join the union, though.”
“There’s a union?”
“Yeah, the Mad Wizards, Academics, Henchponies, And Heckraisers Association.”
Starlight took a moment to think that over. “Wait. You’re saying your organization is called MWAHAHA?”
“Well, we’re infamous for being overdramatic. But like I was saying, it’s a big deal. You wouldn’t believe the trend in babies being called Igor up near the Ovdred Mountains.”
Starlight blinked. “The Mountains… of Dread?”
“That’s their nickname, yeah. But anyway, you wanna go in? Minuette’s probably waiting for us.”
Starlight paused in the doorway and glanced up at the dissipating smoke. “She isn’t on the second floor, is she?”
“Minnie? Nah. She’s got a basement office.”
Another explosion rocked the building. This time, the smoke was green. Starlight shuddered. “All the better to be buried alive in,” she muttered, but she followed Lyra and Lemon in, regardless.


***

The meeting had settled down after the new Archchancellor’s revelation. It wasn’t unheard of to have a non-unicorn on the staff; after all, there were many kinds of magic, art, and science to be explored at the school, and unicorns were hardly the only ones who could study them. Even among the professors unicorns were not the rule, though they were quite common. There were even a number of non-pony professors, like Dr. Zucchini, the zebroid head of the herbology department, or Swift Arrow, a buffalo professor in the history department.
As a matter of fact, it was Jenny Ruiz, one of the few donkeys on staff, who raised the next point. “Archchancellor, there has been some information received about a notorious plagiarist ring.”
Archchancellor Foxfire looked at her. “Mm. Serious, is it?”
“All plagiarism is serious, Archchancellor.”
“Quite so, quite so. But what exactly do you want me to do about this ring? And what is this information you received, anyway?”
Dr. Ruiz nodded to the Dean of Academic Honesty, Green Bean, who stood. “My fellow scholars,” they began. “For too long has this institution been plagued by plagiarism. Those who reap the rewards of another’s labor must not go unpunished! If they are not caught, they will rise-- undeservedly-- to the top, the scum mixing with the cream until it is impossible to tell the one from the other! Allow me to speak plainly.”
“I wish you would,” the Archchancellor grumbled. “Kindly get on with it.”
The Dean glanced at her, startled, but continued with their speech. “Thanks to the work of the Committee for Honest Efforts in Academic Texts, two of the conspirators have already been uncovered. They were both rather low-level participants; one was merely a buyer, but was still able to provide us with the time and place of a major deal on a set of mathematics theses.”
The Lecturer in Linguistic Oddities, Dr. Emordnilap Palindrome raised his hoof, and the Dean nodded to recognize him. Dr. Palindrome rose timidly from his seat and coughed. “Your organization is known as “CHEAT”?” he queried.
The Dean went bright pink as the assembled broke into an uproar of laughter. The Archchancellor, though she was herself laughing, retained the propriety and presence of mind to bring her great wooden staff down on the table once or twice. “All right, all right, settle, you lot, settle.”
The Dean adjusted their spectacles. “Thank you, Archchancellor,” they said primly.
“We can all laugh at the silly name after they’ve finished their report,” the Archchancellor said with finality.
The Dean’s face fell. “...Yes. Thank you, Archchancellor,” they said. “At any rate, the time is this evening. The place is a public house on the west edge of the campus, known as the Oscillating Quark.”
“I’ve been there,” one of the assembled said. “Charming place, if a bit strange.”
“I went there back in my student days,” another mentioned. “Came out not knowing up from down.”
“Top of my list,” another agreed. “Bottoms up, eh?”
“If you’ve all quite finished!” the Dean cut in crossly. “Look. There are supposed to be some major plagiarists there, the worst sort of copycatting cheats. With your approval, Archchancellor, I would like to organize a ‘sting operation,’ as it were, on the meeting and capture the-- for lack of a better term-- ‘academics’ responsible.”
The Archchancellor frowned. “Hrm.”
The Dean paused. “‘Hrm,’ Archchancellor?”
“Well, I mean, what about all the other patrons in there?” she argued. “All the faculty who’ve gone out to have a nice evening and that? What will your sting operation do to keep them out of it?”
It was a good point. The Dean, however, had a trump card. “I’m given to understand that the majority of the bar’s patronage is student-based.”
“Oh,” the Archchancellor grunted. “Well, that’s fine then.”
The Dean beamed. "Excellent! I'll begin proceedings immediately.”
“Good. Now that’s settled, I move for a ten-minute recess to laugh at the irony of an anti-plagiarism organization known as CHEAT. Can I get a second?”
The only three who didn’t vote in favor of the motion were Dean Green Bean, Nocan Neighsay, and a quietly fuming Fractal Path.

***

As it turned out, the basement offices of the physics building were rather plush; it was a welcome break from the marble halls and ivory towers that comprised most of the campus. Down here, it was all shag carpeting, with beanbags sitting at all the tables, against the walls, in the middle of rooms, and even perched on top of doors. That last one was easily explained by pegasus professors. The one that really had Starlight scratching her head was the beanbag resting on the ceiling, apparently attached by nothing at all.
The further down they went, the clearer it was that they were descending into an ever-deepening den of geekery. Posters of Daring Do and Star Horse and Space Trek grew increasingly frequent on every floor. At one point, Starlight saw a poster of Harry Trotter that she found particularly interesting, and she wandered over to look. Almost immediately, a little window in the door shot open, and a pale grey stallion glared out at her. “What was Professor Snake’s middle name?” he demanded.
“I-- wha?”
“Ha! I knew it! Fake fan! Fakey-fake-faker fanpony! Fakety-fake-fake-fake!” he jeered. “Fakety-fakers can’t come into the Trot-head Real-Only Literary Lounge!”
While he laughed, Starlight peered into the room beyond. It was covered with lots of Harry Trotter merch, books, and very complex corkboards, but no other ponies. There was also a lot of dust in there.
“Don’t try to talk to the Gatekeepers,” Lyra advised from just behind Starlight. “It only makes them weirder.”
“Gatekeepers?” Starlight questioned, turning away from the still-raving stallion.
Lyra gestured to the door. “Gate.” She pointed at the stallion. “Keeper. For a given value of 'keeper' that means 'total loser'.”
“Gotcha.”
The rest of the way down to Minuette’s office passed largely without incident. She had no poster on her door. Instead, it was painted. It was a deep, pure shade of blue, with a little frosted window in the very center. There was a sign on it that read ‘Pull to Open.”
Lyra pushed the door open and they all filed inside.
Starlight’s first impression of Minuette was a series of quick, graceful motions. Her second impression was of a mare who has lost all patience with her latest project. “Come on,” the unicorn growled, continuing to hammer away at a silver hoofband with a crescent wrench. “Get-in-there-and-stay!”
“Hi, Minnie!” Lemon called.
Minuette paused in mid-swing. “Oh. Hello, girls.” She blinked. “This the newbie?”
“Uh, yes,” Starlight said. “Hey, this might be a weird question, but do you have a sister? Dentist in Ponyville?”
“No, why?” Minuette asked, setting the wrench down.
“No reason. You just look alike, that’s all.” Unnervingly alike, actually.
“So!” Lemon said brightly. “Getting any further on that time machine of yours?”
Minuette sighed and set the band aside. “No, not really.”
Starlight’s eyes bulged. “Hold up. Time machine? I mean, I’ve had some experience with time travel before-- magical, not scientific-- and it, uh, didn’t end well…”
“Well, this particular device isn’t that dangerous,” Minuette said sadly, pushing it forward. “All it does is travel at a rate of one second every second.”
There was a long silence. “So, it travels… like the rest of us?” Starlight asked hesitantly.
“Ah. No. This travels backwards by one second per second,” Minuette said, a faint note of pride entering her voice. Then she slumped forwards. “But because time is weird, it’s still stuck to the normal chronological progression, so from a practical viewpoint, you’ve just sort of stopped time.”
“That still sounds pretty cool,” Starlight said.
“Yeah. Thanks,” Minuette sighed. “There’s just not as much of a market for stopping the entire world in its tracks. Everypony wants to go back and see the pre-Harmonic era, or forward to when we’ll have flying trains and space stations.”
“Well, I can think of tons of uses for stopping time like that!” Starlight said. “Like, um.” She hesitated.
Minuette nodded. “Yep. It always seems cool at first, but then…”
“Wait, wait! For when you want to paint something, but it won’t stop moving around! Yes!”
“So I’ve invented the camera,” Minuette said, unenthused.
“...Oh. Right.” Starlight drooped.
Minuette sighed and shook herself. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be dragging you down like this. It’s really nice to meet you, Starlight.” She extended a hoof, and Starlight shook it.
“It’s nice to meet you, too, Minuette. Um, I guess you’re too busy for a tour…”
“Nah, I’ll be ready in a sec,” Minuette said, picking up the time machine and slipping it into her saddlebags. “I’ve been in here all morning, and I’m starting to get a little cabin-fever-y. I’d love to show you around…”