//------------------------------// // Conversation 10: Rainbow Dash // Story: Aporia // by Oliver //------------------------------// “…so imagine, a wide, empty street, paved with asphalt, snow falling, holiday decorations, lights, the works, and I’m standing in the middle alone like an idiot, and the first tank of the column is creeping up on me, and it’s not stopping… by the way, you do know what a tank is, don’t you? I’m just not sure ponies even have them.” “We don’t actually use any as weapons,” I said. The previous thing she wasn’t sure about was what she called a “car,” which turned out to be a self-propelled carriage thingy, not a common sight. We really don’t have a generic word for those, who’d think it, we just use the word for train cars. Which they also do, somehow. “Except in sci-fi movies. It’s a carnival thing. Big cannons on wheels under armor, right? Self-propelled, too, yeah. Hauling something like that around yourself would be such a drag.” In the morning, I flew over to check on the mystery shack in the Everfree. Kinda felt bad about leaving the humans alone in the middle of the woods, and I’ve been curious about what a ‘hunting lodge’ looks like when it’s actually built. For the awesome way it got built, it was a bit too ordinary, and even a bit boring – humans seem to like icky orange for some reason – so I was a little disappointed. Then Mary came out, and all the time she was walking towards the town, we’ve been swapping stories, which was a lot more fun. She’s had some interesting adventures back in her home world, real superheroes and all. “Mostly. It’s kind of strange, considering that tanks were invented to solve a pretty specific problem in warfare,” Mary answered, “I doubt all your conflicts are fought with pies, like in that Appleloosa incident, but I expect that trench fortifications aren’t your thing.” “Actually, the reason that one ended with pie is my fault,” I said, adopting a proud grin. This was my awesomest idea ever! Pinkie helped on the delivery method, but the basic idea was still mine. Mary looked at me curiously. “Do tell. I know the general course of the events, but I never understood why exactly pies were the weapon of choice.” I flew up and circled around the slowly walking Mary. “You see, chief Thunderhooves had this problem. Time for the yearly stampede, lots of young, hotheaded buffalo in the tribe, all out to teach the settlers a lesson for taking the land over and doing something useful with it, oh the horror, yadda, yadda. He didn’t really mind the apple orchard, as long as he got a path to stampede through, but being seen negotiating would be ‘losing muzzle.’ Stupid, I know, but that’s buffalo for you. He also didn’t want to let the hotheads rush the town and be shot at. Grapeshot is a horrible thing. Taking a hostage was his idea to set up negotiations without being seen as suing for peace.” “Doesn’t seem to have worked,” Mary commented. “It did, just not the way everypony expected,” I grinned, “Buffalo never fight those they shared food with, and they never eat with their enemies. Pretty strict about it. When I noticed that, I knew we had to get the entire tribe to eat apples somehow. Pinkie suggested an actual food fight. We just needed to get the town to play along. While she was singing, Thunderhooves and Silverstar had a private talk. That was the biggest and awesomest prank we ever played!” “So that entire battle was…” Mary stared at me with raised eyebrows. “A prank?” “Mass pie in the face, hel-lo-o!” I said, landing in front of her. “Which saved the buffalo from getting shot at, and saved the settlers from getting stuck in a real feud. When Twilight finally realized what happened, she kept giggling all the way back home. She was actually the last to get it. Not kidding.” “How did you know that sheriff Silverstar would agree?” Mary asked. “He’s a sheriff!” I scoffed. “Letting a shooting war with buffalo start, when he can avoid it forever with a few carts worth of apple pie? His job is to keep the peace. Yeah, it was risky. Turned out okay, didn’t it?” I turned around and started walking in the direction of Ponyville again. “You were telling a story. Something about tanks,” I winked at her over my back. “Right. Where was I…” Mary said. “Ah. So I’m standing there like an idiot, wondering how to stop that tank, and then I remember it weighs over forty tons. Boom, and the front tank falls through the asphalt. The entire column stops, not sure what to do now, and all the Elusive Avengers are staring at me, and I say, trying to pretend my knees aren’t shaking, ‘Need any more help?’” “So how did you actually do it?” I smirked. “Magic?” Mary shook her head, “No magic in my world. Time travel. Time travel works across time, you see.” “I don’t get it,” I said honestly. Eggheads and their egghead ways to solve problems. Mary grinned at me. “I went back in time a few years. It’s a very big city, near fifteen million people, so there are extensive water and sewage networks. I made a tiny hole in a water pipe, so that it would leak and erode the ground under the asphalt. Nobody noticed. Eventually, there was a cavern under the street. It wasn’t big enough to affect normal traffic, but when the tank actually reached me, it broke through the asphalt and fell in.” I tried to wrap my head around this. I’m not sure even Manehattan is that big, but forget the fifteen million people. There’s something else wrong. “But you didn’t have the time to go back in time.” Mary shook her head. “But I had all the time in the world… Let me try another way to explain. Imagine that right now, I want to sing a song.” “Okay. What’s stopping you?” I said. Everypony likes a good song, I half expected to hear humans sing something by now. “And I need a piano for the music,” Mary added. “You can play a piano? Really?” I asked. Playing a piano is supposed to be very difficult, I don’t know that many ponies in town who are any good. There’s Spike, who’s not a pony, and Pinkie can play just about anything, but that’s Pinkie, I’ve long stopped wondering just how she can do the things she does. “Not particularly well, but back when I was born, the three maidenly virtues were modesty, music, and applied mathematics,” she said, stopping. I looked around. We were still a ways away from the town, and there’s nothing to stop here for, except for the lake. I don’t think anypony dropped a piano into the lake since we cleaned it out last spring, and it’s still a bit too cold for swimming. What’s she getting at? “So I need a piano,” Mary said, pointing at a bush. “And I’m pretty sure that there is no piano behind that bush. But if I had a time machine, I could decide that tomorrow, I will use it to go back to what is now yesterday, find a piano, and hide it there.” Okay, I think now I’m getting it. “And just deciding would make a piano appear?” “Assuming nothing can stop me from hiding it, and nopony makes off with it, yep,” Mary said, grinning. “That’s why the trick is called ‘Retroactive preparation.’ I promise to myself to do it tomorrow, so if I can succeed, the piano has been there since yesterday,” she added, walking up to the bush and pushing the greenery away to look behind it. “Shame that I… what.” I felt my jaw hit the ground. Behind the bush was a large, black, grand concert piano, shining with reflections of the sun and blue morning skies. “I heard you needed a piano,” Pinkie deadpanned and winked. She was lounging on the lid in a suggestive pose with her head propped on her hoof and an expectant toothy grin on her face. Mary looked at me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a combination of emotions on one face all at the same time. There was everything – surprise, stifled laughter, joy, annoyance, I can hardly even tell, human faces are so weird. But it didn’t last long. Mary broke down and actually bent over, clutching her belly with both arms and laughing, so loud that you could probably hear it all the way to the forest and in town, that silly, girly laugh… Girly laugh of a human and two ponies, duh. “This has to be your best one ever, Pinkie,” I finally said when I regained the ability to talk, a minute later. “…What, she didn’t need a piano?” Pinkie asked with surprise, jumping up to stand on the polished woody thing. “Not as such, no,” Mary mumbled, trying to choke down another fit of laughter. “Awww…” Pinkie replied, hanging her ears. “I wanted to hear you sing…” “Where did you get a piano anyway?” I asked. “Oh, I have pianos stashed all over Ponyville, in case of a parasprite emergency.” “That …made a bit more sense than usual,” I said. Less than I’d like. Isn’t the idea to lead parasprites somewhere by playing music at them? You can’t really move around with a piano. …Eh, whatever, it’s Pinkie being Pinkie. “Got a stool?” Mary finally asked. “I don’t think I can play a piano standing up.” “Sure!” Pinkie said, pushing a stool into position. “So you’re going to sing?” “I …can’t really sing,” Mary replied with a slightly strained smile. Really, there are humans who can’t sing? “But since you’ve gone to the trouble of bringing a piano, I might as well play something,” she added, settling onto the stool and flexing her fingers. Pinkie settled down to lie on the lid of the piano, watching Mary’s fingers, and Mary started playing… I’m not that into music, let alone classical music, to tell just how good she really was. But the melody itself was about as awesome as classical music gets. It’s hard to tell what it was about, without words and all, but the image of a bird valiantly fighting a sea storm kept floating through my mind, the waves her left hand was making washing over us, and the chords made with the right hand like irregular wingbeats of a falcon flying against the changing wind. It was scarcely three minutes long, but when it actually ended, I just stood there slack-jawed and looking at Mary clutching her left hand. “Revolutionary Etude kills your left hand. Winter Wind kills your right hand,” she finally uttered. “I’m way too much out of practice, it was horrible,” she added with a sheepish smile. “That was awesome,” I said honestly. Maybe not as awesome as me, but I can’t play a piano, so let’s not compare Apples to Oranges. “Yes! Play some more!” Pinkie said, loudly bouncing up on the lid. “Sorry, Pinkie. Hand hurts. Maybe at your next party,” Mary grinned at her, standing up and massaging the left hand. “Pinkie promise me that!” Pinkie said, poking her with a hoof and making an accusing face. “Absolutely no pinkie promises,” Mary replied, sternly looking back at Pinkie. “I’m definitely not making those when there’s even a slightest chance I might be unable to keep them.” “Awww… Okie dokie, I’ll forgive you. If you tell me your birthday!” Pinkie grinned at her. Mary paused. “You do have a knack for asking difficult questions, Pinkie.” “Uh… Don’t you know when you were born?” I asked. I suppose I can imagine how this could happen, but those would be some very sad events. The kind that very rarely ever happen. I mean, there’s what, two orphanages in the entire Equestria? Three? Sounds like it’s not the same for humans, but come on. “Oh, I do,” Mary said. “But that doesn’t mean I know when my birthday is. You celebrate a birthday when a whole number of years elapses since you were born, right?” “Yes,” Pinkie nodded. “Is that counting the time you lived through,” Mary asked with a mischievous grin, “or the time that elapsed for everypony else?” “It’s your birthday, so the time you lived through, I guess…” I said, and then finally saw the problem. “Oh… Time travel again?” “Stop being silly!” Pinkie poked Mary again, with an oddly serious, very un-Pinkie expression on her face. “A birthday is a party just for you. It’s not about how old you are, and not about how many candles to put on the cake! Pick a day and stick with it!” “I have a better idea,” Mary grinned and poked Pinkie back with a finger. “You pick a day. Use your Pinkie Sense and surprise me.” Pinkie pushed her face into Mary’s. “And I will! Prepare to be SURPRISED. You will have a birthday party this year!” I snickered. “You just signed your own surprise warrant, Mary.” Mary pulled away from Pinkie to snicker at me. “Oh really? I think Pinkie just walked into a logic hole.” “Sorry, I don’t speak egghead,” I said. I guess now that Mary is around I’m going to have to ask Rarity for a T-shirt with that, because I will end up saying this at least once every day, together with Twilight they’ll be insufferable. But that’s going to make me look too dorky, so let’s not. Mary looked back at Pinkie. “Suppose that I lived through this year to the end, with no birthday party in sight, and it’s the last day of the year. December 31st in your calendar, is it?” “There are only thirty days in a month, Mary, even little fillies know that!” Pinkie bubbled, instantly switching away from the slightly threatening expression she had just moments ago. Mary made a wry smile. “No matter. December 30th is the last day of the year, then.” Pinkie nodded. “…O-okay,” I said. She’s making me think, I hate that. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mary says she was born on the 31… th… nd… st… rd… argh! Day 31 of some month in some broken human calendar. I don’t know just what kind of stunt Pinkie might pull then, but my money’s on getting Princess Celestia to extend the year by one day just to accommodate that birthday and screw up the seasonal weather change schedule all across Equestria. That would be kind of awesome, but very uncool. It’s a bit dangerous to taunt Pinkie like that. “So if, on the morning of December 30th, I haven’t had a surprise birthday party yet, I would know, that I’m sure to have one on that day, and therefore it would not be a surprise,” Mary explained. “There’s still a lot of days left in the year, you know,” I pointed out. “But since I already know, that I can’t have a surprise birthday party on December 30th, I can apply the exact same logic to December 29th, because it would then become the last chance to surprise me remaining in the year,” Mary told me, grinning wide. “So December 29th is out. But once it is out, I can exclude December 28th… This logic continues all the way to today. So I can’t have a surprise birthday party.” Pinkie suddenly threw her head up and laughed, “Mwahahahahahaha! Of course!” she exclaimed theatrically. “That’s exactly why every day is a surprise!” “Oh blast, you knew this paradox,” Mary grinned back at Pinkie. “No,” Pinkie snickered. “But it’s a fun one!” I sighed. “Either Pinkie is a closet egghead, or every egghead is secretly as random as Pinkie,” I said, pointing my hoof at the two in accusation. “I don’t know which is worse, you, Mary, for turning a simple question into a… a logic puzzle, or you, Pinkie, for actually solving it!” Mary giggled, first cautiously, then openly, and was immediately joined by Pinkie… and eventually, me. I guess this human is cool enough to hang out with some more.