"Goddess blast it all to Tartarus!"
Rarity blinked open her bleary eyes and untangled herself from the mess of pillows. Sunlight was filtering in through the curtains. She'd slept in. Not much but enough.
She stretched and rubbed the sleep away, then ran a hoof through her mane. Brushing would have to be a priority if she wanted to look remotely presentable at the boutique.
A clatter echoed up the stairs. She glanced at the door to the bedroom, then at the rumpled sheets next to her. Another string of blasphemy and the tang of smoke confirmed what she already suspected.
Twilight had woken up early to make breakfast.
Taking only a few minutes to tie her mane back, Rarity made her way downstairs. Sleep still weighed on her eyes as she wandered into the kitchen. She was too late to save the second pancake, as its brief life ended with a short trip to the compost bin at the edge of a charcoal-encrusted spatula.
Grumbling to herself, Twilight marched the pan back to the stovetop. She plopped it on the burner unceremoniously, then glared at the dial and turned the gas down two notches with a delicacy born of barely-contained frustration.
"Gotta wait for that to cool now," she groused, turning her attention to a carton of eggs and a small mixing cup. She levitated out one mottled brown egg and held it at each end between two glows of purple magic. "I guess I can get these started though."
The eggshell imploded with a soft crunch, sending a stream of yolk onto the tile backsplash. Silently, Twilight's shoulders rolled up and forward. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
"Morning darling," Rarity said, careful to make sure her tone conveyed more gentle sympathy than mild bemusement.
Twilight started a little, then looked over her shoulder. The glare blended away into a sheepish smile. "Horseapples, I woke you up didn't I?"
"Only a little," Rarity lied, stifling a yawn. She ambled over to the stovetop and surreptitiously turned the dial down one more notch. "Why don't you take a breather and I'll finish up?"
At first it looked like Twilight was going to push back, but then she nodded and slumped onto a chair at the table. "At least it's nearly impossible to mess up hayburger sausage and toast," she said, motioning to the two items already set out.
Rarity nodded and sniffed appreciatively at the spicy aroma of the still-sizzling patties. "Indeed, those look marvelous."
She made short work of the eggs and pancakes, setting both out a few minutes later with nearly perfect timing.
"How do you do that every time?" Twilight asked. "I can never seem to get it right."
"It's a matter of patience dear," Rarity said. She tucked into her own chair and dished out a plate for each of them. "Pancakes are notoriously finicky about temperature. If you try to rush, you'll end up with charred outsides and gooey insides."
Twilight nodded. "I guess I was worried everything wouldn't be ready at once, and you'd have a cold breakfast-in-bed, so I was trying to hurry, and well…"
"Breakfast in bed?" Rarity queried, pleased at the thought even though the execution had stumbled. "Whatever is the occasion?"
"Belated apology for staying up way too late. Again." She yawned and rubbed her eyes. "I know I promised I'd stop doing that."
A pause, and Rarity shrugged. "Well, you're busy. I can hardly ask you to cut your projects short when you get 'into the groove', as they say."
"Regardless," Twilight said, buttering a piece of toast. She took a bite and then chuckled at herself. "I suppose staying up late and waking up early isn't the best recipe for a smooth apology meal when I'm already a terrible cook."
"Think nothing of it dear." Rarity said. She took a bite of the pancake and chewed it delicately. "Speaking of staying up too late though, how is your experiment going?"
"Eh, it's going okay," Twilight said. The lilt in her voice sounded upbeat, but her body language suggested she would be picking listlessly at her food if she wasn't famished from overwork.
Rarity pressed a little. "That doesn't sound very convincing."
With a sigh Twilight pushed her plate away. "Well, it's complicated," she said. "How well do you understand it?"
"Not much I'm afraid." Rarity twirled her fork thoughtfully. "Something about magical computation constructs and systemic instability?"
"Well, the good news is that I got it stabilized… but not really in the direction I was hoping… Honestly I'm close to just scrapping the whole thing altogether if I can't make it behave."
"Sounds rash." Rarity set down her fork and considered for a moment. "What do you mean, make it behave?"
"That's just it, I don't even know!" Twilight ran a hoof through her mane. "It's so fascinating and intricate and, I don't know, beautiful. But I'm at the end of my patience. Every time I send signals into the system, it fails to output anything measurably meaningful. I don't even know what it's doing, so I don't know if this is a breakthrough in magical understanding or just a— just an art project."
Rarity heard the swallowed words. Twilight didn't usually consider art or beauty for its own sake much of a justification, but she'd quickly learned Rarity was the exact opposite, and very outspoken about it.
Still, the description of the project as "intricate" and "beautiful" from Twilight's own mouth intrigued her. Trying to understand these experiments was often an exercise in frustration, but on the other hoof, it made Twilight happy whenever she tried.
"Would you mind if I take a look?" she asked.
"So as you can see, these processes here have created a sort-of equilibrium, but only by absorbing these less stable process groups. And that's just the main cluster I've been focusing on, at the moment I'm barely doing anything with a lot of the other smaller clusters throughout the matrix."
Rarity nodded. Her brain was beginning to get fuzzy with the heady ideas of magical particulate submeshes interacting in a qualitative experiential process, but she thought she was following well enough. "I see. And you say you've been trying to influence the… what was it, vibrational outputs of the experiment?"
"Correct!" Twilight said, bubbling with excitement. "At first it was easy, I just introduced feedback in response to behavior I wanted to improve or dissuade, but then the particles began forming pathways I wasn't expecting, and with each subsequent super-iteration they've been getting more stable in aggregate but less… what's the word, cohesive?"
She sat on her haunches, and rubbed a hoof through her mane. "I don't even know what I'm going for here."
Rarity let the silence rest for several minutes while she explored the floating cloud of magic. It sparked and thrummed in discernible but unpredictable patterns. Particles of ethereal lumessence darted and bobbed, each one made of yet finer strands, but each time she tried to get close to something interesting it changed or vibrated away, confounding her efforts to understand it.
She huffed in frustration. "Is there no way to—" she scrunched her nose then made a reverse pinching motion with her hooves "— zoom in? Is that even a thing?"
Twilight shook her head. "Not yet. You're seeing here the maximum refinement I've been able to achieve without using up all the space in Ponyville. I've tried using deep field tracking to project myself into parts of the construct to gain a more tangible understanding, but it's been unstable and only works for brief instances. I've mostly used it to generate better feedback for the process clusters by having the changes in the construct come from a source rather than nothing, but it always seems to result in some clusters negatively interacting with others."
Rarity nodded. "So by studying it, you're changing it, but the changes you're making aren't having predictable effects."
"Exactly!" Twilight looked relieved. "It's nice when somepony gets this even a little. Spike tries his best and he's got a more intuitive knack for influencing the cohesion of the aggregate, but it's subtle and hard to quantify in meaningful terms."
Silence fell again as Rarity continued exploring. As she probed with her magic, she indeed felt the intuitive nature of the thing. When she touched a glowing particle, it reacted. When she guided it, subtle changes in pattern rippled through the local cloud.
She paused, thinking back. "You said 'yet'," she mused at Twilight. "Is there something else you're working on?"
Yawning, Twilight stood up. For the first time since coming down to the lab she looked tired instead of excited, but a gleam of determination shone in her eyes. "Actually yes." She walked over to a nearby workbench and motioned to a confusing mess of metal and wood. "This is a focusing harness. I've used runes to hopefully improve the rate and fidelity with which I can subjectively experience and inject data to the construct, rather than just poking at it in broad ways."
"Have you tried it yet?"
"A few times. It's still fuzzy. I can get a better sense of what the individual sub-meshes are doing but it doesn't often resolve properly. Just moving data around is difficult." Twilight furrowed her brows. "It's like… Well, no I'm certain I lack the patience to work with the construct instead of forcing myself into it."
Rarity smiled and nudged Twilight in the ribs. "Well, you've never been one to wait on innovation, darling. Sometimes it gets the better of you."
Twilight chuckled. "Yeah…" Then she got quiet for a moment, a far-off look in her eyes. "Would you like to try?"
"What, me?" Rarity exclaimed. "Why? I don't know the first thing about all this."
Twilight nodded. "Well, that's kinda the point. I have preconceived notions about what I'm doing here. I think maybe a fresh perspective would be helpful. Plus your magic is more precise than mine."
The compliment landed squarely and Rarity beamed, but took the tack of humble deference. "Whatever do you mean?"
Twilight laughed. "You know what I mean. Breakfast, case in point. See, I can conjure a teleportation spell, but you'll spend an hour making sure a sequin is perfectly positioned. I can move a house without breaking a sweat, but you can sew stitches finer than the most precise machine. You have finesse and patience, I don't." She motioned to the equipment on the workbench. "I think maybe that's what the focusing rig needs. Someone who can slow down and approach it with a fine-toothed comb instead of a hoofball mallet."
Intrigued, Rarity pondered on the idea. "Yes, I see what you mean." She looked over the equipment. "Is it dangerous? Sticking my horn into some… self-sustaining… magical computational… experiential… net… thing?"
"Not really." Twilight shrugged. "I've had Spike take detailed notes of my sessions. Typically I go into a brief trance, maybe a few seconds or minutes. Subjectively it feels like several minutes or even an hour at the longest. A little disorienting to come out of but I typically regain full function within a minute or two, no long-term side effects that we've measured."
"Seems perfectly reasonable." Rarity looked at the clock, suddenly aware she was yawning between sentences. "I would be willing to try it for you, perhaps tomorrow afternoon?"
Relief and excitement washed over Twilight's tired eyes. "Oh that would be amazing, yes. Why don't you go to bed, I'll need to do a little prep-work so the construct will be ready. Introducing outside elements often requires setting up at least a few artificial threads so the local structure doesn't entirely break down."
"Certainly, darling. Don't stay up too late!" With a hug and a kiss, Rarity left Twilight in the basement lab and went to bed.