//------------------------------// // 8 - How Enigma Got His Cutie-Mark // Story: Forsaken // by Beware The Carpenter //------------------------------// Jam on toast. Jam on toast! Crunchy, gooey, yummy, crumbly, sticky, slimy jam on toast! Enigma wanted jam on toast; was that really so hard to understand? Enigma was pregnant with three people now, but not one of them had listened to a single word he’d said. That made him sad. Whenever Enigma got sad he tried to think of things that made him happy; like jam on toast! All that fructose, sugars, fibers and yeast wobbling around as he chewed and getting all over his taste buds before sliding down his trachea and into his stomach. That was where the real fun began; watching all those friendly little people who lived inside him getting all excited as they ran up and began turning the sugars into magical energy. Those people were nice. Enigma liked them. If they didn’t live inside him, he would die. Enigma used to try talking to them but they never talked back; but it was still fun to count them and give them names. It was very sad however that they only lived for an average of 15 days, 7 hours and 12 minutes; because that meant the number was always changing too fast for him to count exactly how many there were. Right now Enigma thought there were between 27,974,674,153 and 32,432,427,223 of them; but that was only a rough estimate. Enigma did not like estimates. 3 years, 12 weeks, 6 days, 14 hours and 11 minutes ago Enigma had wanted to see if he could have every one of them named at once, and started naming them as they were born. Keeping up with naming an average of 1,613,571 of them per minute was very difficult; and he only managed to keep it up for 13 days, 2 hours and 13 minutes before he passed out, and then slept for 2 days, 14 hours and 1 minute. That was when Enigma decided that he had way too much free time. Enigma had cut back the time he spent to counting bacteria to 2 hours and 11 minutes a day, and began filling his schedule with more useful things, but when The Fat One came to visit him he tried sharing his favorite game with her. He put her in a giant stomach with 23,445,753,112, 635 nice immortal bacteria so she could count them without any of them dying on her, but The Fat One didn't count them. Then Enigma remembered that bacteria were small and easy to miss unless you knew to look for them, and wondered if maybe The Fat One didn't realize she was inside a stomach. To make sure The Fat One knew she was inside a stomach, Enigma brought her out of that stomach, and then put her in front of The Goose Hydra. The Goose Hydra had 7 necks, each neck had 7 heads, each head had 7 beaks, each beak had 7 tongues, each tongue ate 7 ponies. Each pony had an average of 40.74 organs; each organ had an average of 898,634,397.13 bacteria. The Goose Hydra had 784 organs; each organ had an average of 1,781,221,583,374,957.57 bacteria; before it ate the ponies. The Goose Hydra lost 22,153.58 gallons of saliva eating the ponies, each gallon of saliva had an average of 69,094,726.44 bacteria that can no longer be counted. After The Goose Hydra ate the ponies, it pooped 12,538.41 gallons of poop. Each gallon of poop contained an average of 1,157,837,947.41 bacteria that can no longer be counted. After The Goose Hydra pooped it ate The Fat One who was was as fat as 2.81 ponies and had 3.14 X as much bacteria which meant she needed to be divided up between 6 tongues from 5 mouths of The Goose Hydra. 8.13% of The Fat One's bacteria got spilled on the ground and did not get eaten by The Goose Hydra. The Goose Hydra lost 2.17 gallons of saliva eating The Fat One. How many bacteria were then inside The Goose Hydra? The Fat One did not find the correct answer. She didn't even try to count the bacteria. Even though Enigma had split her into 6 even parts, so she could count 6 X as fast and find the answer before time ran out but she didn't appreciate that. She just wriggled around inside The Goose Hydra looking for her other parts, and then poked a hole through The Goose Hydra's 34th stomach with her horn so she could crawl out. She spilled 17.54% of the bacteria in that stomach as she made her way out, and gave heart burn to The Goose Hydra's 5th heart. Enigma decided that maybe she did not like counting bacteria as much as he did; so he asked her a different question: 21.39 of ponies have golden tooth fillings. 61.35% of these ponies have two or more fillings. 41.76% of these ponies have three or more fillings. 36.77% of these ponies have four or more fillings. 21.09% of these ponies have five or more fillings. Only three ponies have six fillings. No ponies have more than six. Each golden tooth filling contains 4.59% of an ounce of gold. How many ponies will The Goose Hydra have to eat before it can lay a golden egg weighing 251.98 pounds, which it can bring to the marketplace so that it can afford singing lessons for its 7 daughters? The Fat One did not answer that question correctly either. Finally, after 8 hours and 23 minutes; Enigma decided that The Fat One must not like The Goose Hydra since she kept trying to poke its eyes out; so he put The Goose Hydra back inside it's box and decided to give The Fat One a completely different game: 1 year, 11 weeks, 3 days, 14 hours and 46 minutes ago, Brace Wits had shown him a piece of curved glass through with Enigma could see smaller. He now saw that cells were made out of proteins, and proteins were made out of amino acids and amino acids were made out of molecules and molecules were made out of atoms. Enigma wanted to know what atoms were made out of, but Brace Wits wouldn't tell him so he asked Cognastruct, but he wouldn't tell Enigma what atoms were made of either. Enigma decided to find out for himself. He took the curved pieces of glass Brace Wits had given him, found an atom and then tried to cut it apart to find what was inside. He tried, and tried, and tried, and tried; but he could never get his magic small enough to cut anything smaller than a protein. He'd asked The Fat One if she would help him pull an atom apart so he could see what was inside, but she didn't answer, so Enigma decided that that meant she'd said no. So then he made her his bitch, and whistled for her to round up his herd of fractals into the endless barn to began infinite sheering, but she just barked at him, then ran and hid in a pile of hay. Since then Enigma had shown The Fat One all 23 of his top 23 favourite games of all time, but she hadn't wanted to play any of them. She hadn't wanted to taste any of his poetry, she hadn't wanted to measure the camels used to power The Mighty Bean Crane, she hadn't even wanted to count pi with him. Finally Enigma decided that The Fat One simply wasn't very intelligent; so to give her a game at her own level he put her inside The Meat Fountain of Lies to see if she wanted to count the snakes that he kept there. There were only 10,431 but she hadn't even wanted to count those. The Fat One wasn't very fun to play with. Now however, Enigma was also pregnant with Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor. He wondered if they would like any of his games, but he didn't think that it would be a good idea to try. When he was only pregnant with The Fat One it was easy to play with her, while keeping her safe. Now that he had 3 babies inside of him, he needed to think 3 X harder to make sure nothing bad happened to any of them, and none of them wandered into any of the dangerous parts of his brain. There were things in Enigma’s mind that should never have existed. Abominations born from the vain hubris and venal lusts which had infested Enigma during his selfish and uncontrolled youth. They were really scary. When Enigma stopped feeding them they shrunk some; but they were still in there, lurking, and if those naughty ideas found Enigma’s babies then Enigma wasn’t sure what would happen. Maybe his babies would all run away and then get even more stuck in his imagination. Maybe they would all lie down and not want to move ever again. Maybe they would get gobbled up by Enigma’s memories and become naughty. Enigma didn’t want to find out. The very worst of them came from when Enigma was only 38 weeks, 6 days, 14 hours and 23 minutes old, and he was discovering circles. He liked circles. He wanted to keep them for himself. ALL OF THEM. Then one night Enigma had a dream that he had become The Pi King. All the numbers came and gathered around him on his geometrically perfect throne, bowing down and kissing his hooves as he counted the first 627 digits of pi. But when the 70th 1 came to him, he dropped it on the ground and broke it and then all the circles in the universe died in agony. It was horrifying. Enigma apologized to The Pi King for trying to take his job away, and then The Pi King put two circles on his butt for him to take care of. It was the happiest day of his life. Then Twilight Sparkle came along and got stuck inside one of them, and took 1 hour, 43 minutes, 45 seconds to get out. Silly Twilight Sparkle. None of his babies had found each other yet; they kept bumbling around by themselves and bumping into things; but Enigma didn't think they would stay that way for long. He had a plan on how to help them find each other. It was clever.