//------------------------------// // 7.3 - Dance Math Fever // Story: Quantum Vault // by WishyWish //------------------------------// May 15, 2030 Stability – Calvanner Residence Wednesday Night True to his word, Hal guided his charge through every curve and twist in the politics of the Calavanner household. Quantum played up her unfortunate encounter with a dodgeball to Hal’s mother until the middle-aged mare insisted her poor son not exert himself for the rest of the day – effectively eliminating the threat of a wing-race with Hal’s elder sister. With her ace in the hole floating beside her, Quantum waltzed through dinner conversations with Hal’s father about school, fended off challenges in everything from video games to ping-pong from Hal’s older sister, and even managed to win an argument with his younger sister while managing to come off as a wise elder brother to everypony else. By the time she was finally dismissed to bed, Quantum felt like she could do anything. “Did you see that?” The minty mare beamed, spinning on the stool that complimented Hal’s writing desk. “You should have let me play your sister in Hay Invaders! I’m a crack shot!” “Keep it in the stable Cutie,” Hal couldn’t help but smile along with Quantum’s enthusiasm. “You might be good at that game, but I suck at it. She was just trying to bait you. And it would have looked weird if I suddenly kicked her tail at it.” Quantum waved her hoof dismissively. “Oh relax. I’d have taken a dive!” Hal just shook his head and took to inspecting his own closet by the simple expedient of phasing his face straight through the door. “Yeah, no. Not with as pumped up as you were.” He made a face nopony could see, “Dang, did I always keep my closet to messy?” Quantum giggled. “I dunno, you tell me!” Hal pulled his face out of the door and glanced over his shoulder. “You know something? I can’t remember the last time I heard you giggle like that.” Hal’s brand new smile evaporated quickly when he noticed Quantum had abandoned her perch on the stool in favor of poking around under his bed. With a grunt and a tug, she partially unearthed an unassuming cardboard box and took immediately to peering past the loosely folded flaps at whatever treasures might be inside. “What’s in here?” “H-hey!!” Hal was suddenly looming atop the bed, hooves on his hips. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s impolite to snoop!?” Quantum looked up, honest curiosity turning to coy amusement. “As a matter of fact, she did. But isn’t this my stuff? If I’m gonna be you, shouldn’t I strive to learn all I can?” “There’s nothing to learn in there!!” Hal insisted. “Just listen to me and do what I tell you to do!” A soft magical glow bled into life around the box as Quantum sat up, grinning playfully. “So what’s in here that’s so secret, huh?” Hal was suddenly acutely aware of his inability to affect the world around him. He sighed and bowed to the inevitable. “Teenage colt stuff. I realize you didn’t have any brothers, but do I really need to say more?” Quantum made a face, her magic roughly stuffing the box back from whence it came. “Ew.” “All colts have a box!” Hal blurted. “It would be weirder if there wasn’t a box! Don’t judge me. You probably had a filly box or something.” “Filly b-b--!” Quantum blushed, “There’s no such thing!” “That’s what your kind all want us to believe,” Hal teased. Pleased that he had turned the conversation back on his nosy companion, he flitted over to the window and glanced down, as though he were looking for something outside. “Anyway, come on. It’s time to go.” “Go?” Quantum checked the clock and stifled a yawn. “It’s nearly midnight. I got hit in the face, barfed on myself, and had to pretend to be you all day. The only place I’m going is bed!” She stood before Hal’s bed on her hind legs and made as if to collapse upon it, but the true owner of her resting place suddenly rose through the mattress like a ghost, right into her path. Quantum yelped and threw herself to the side, her head impacting firmly with the bedpost. “Owwwww!” She complained. “Why is it so hard to remember that you’re not really there!?” “Cutie,” Hal was up in the air again without pause, “Maybe I’m not getting through to you, but you have to learn to be a dancer – a good one – in just a few days. And I bet I don’t even have to ask if you have four left hooves, do I.” Quantum rubbed her head. Simmering, she only nodded. “You took a nap an hour ago. You can take another one before school in the morning. You’re not even going to need your brain in class because let’s face it – its general high school education and you’re a brilliant C.A.S. student. So get up,” Hal was already phased partway through the door to the hall, “we’re going out to the backyard. Quietly.” Quantum reluctantly obeyed. The back yard of the Calavanner residence bore little difference from the front yard, or as far as Quantum could tell, any other yard that existed in the Borough of Stability. A picketed privacy fence marked off an immaculately mowed, rectangular lawn – the grass still crisp with the damp remains of a light shower that had passed through over dinner. One large tree near the back of the property sported a tire swing and a small tree fort, while a swing set off to one side was scattered with myriad discarded toys. Hedge bushes that seemed to serve little purpose were crammed up against the inside of the obscuring fence. The bright glow of the full moon bathed everything in Luna’s grace such that even Quantum, with her challenged sight, could make out every detail. She stopped in the middle of the yard and looked down at her damp hooves. “Where?” “Where?” Hal repeated. “Here!” “…right here?” Quantum clarified, pointing down at the wetness. ”Right here.” Hal confirmed. He then lowered himself to the ground and went through a flourish of stretches using an invisible wall Quantum assumed was a portion of the holographic projection chamber. She found herself staring dumbfounded at the grace her pudgy friend showed in his practiced movements. Hal grunted and puffed, limbering himself until he noticed his new student merely standing around looking as though she were lost in the light of an oncoming train. “Hey,” he frowned, “You’re gonna find out what four simultaneous charley horses feel like if you don’t stretch first. Just do what I’m doing.” With that, he went back through his drills again, this time slower and with an eye for the scrawny unicorn beside him. Quantum survived the warm-up routine with all four hooves still on the ground and a new appreciation for the plight of the dancer. She could feel her heart thumping and her lungs already beginning to pump as Hal reared up, snapping his fetlocks into a sharp first ballet position. “Alright, so.” “So.” The two ponies out-of-time stared blankly at one another until Hal huffed out a breath and spread his forelegs. “Like this.” The pudgy pegasus swept every tweed fiber of his sky blue and mottled white turtleneck up in an allegro of plies, arabesques, pirouettes, and long, spirited leaps that carried him across the yard as though he were inside the low-gravity simulator Quantum once experienced at a C.A.S. public science expo. Quantum tried made a meager attempt to follow the lively movements, but drew the line at the sailing jumps. “That’s not fair,” She complained. “You’re gliding on your wings. I can’t use your wings, remember?” “Oh,” Hal landed with perfect poise. “Right.” He glanced back at Quantum as though she’d only just arrived, “So…how’s it going? Are you getting it?” Quantum rested her forehead in one hoof and sighed. “In senior year of high school, they made us all do a leadership exercise where we had to lead a group of students from a lower grade in an exercise as if we were the professor. Did you have something like that in your school?” Hal nodded obliviously. “Did you pass?” Hal cleared his throat, catching on now, “…Ds are still passing grades.” Quantum rolled her eyes to the heavens. “We’re dead. That’s it, we’re just dead. This is never going to work. Civilization-ending tsunamis, switchblade-wielding thug-lords, and psychotic ponymerges? No problem. Dancing? We’re just dead.” Hal, caught up in his art now, pranced around the mare in his body and cocked his eyebrow as though he intended to sweep her into a tango with a rose in his mouth. “Oh stop complaining. You’ll get it. We just need to find your groove, that’s all.” As late night bled into the wee hours of the morning, Quantum did indeed find her groove. She wore one into the dirt, and it was shaped uncannily like her face. When she finally lost count of the bruises, she bucked the yard’s only tree in a fit of frustration and received a walnut right between the ears for her trouble. “Ugh! Enough!” Quantum slammed the tree a second time just to get even with it, “I can’t dance, Hal! We’re gonna have to try something else!” Hal sighed. By now, he knew that soft encouragement only went so far with his easily-frustrated friend. Sometimes you just had to be blunt. “Fine. We’ll go up on the roof. You jump off and break my legs. This time I’ll have an excuse not to go to the dance, and you can enjoy the agony. Would that be better?” Cowed, Quantum let out a breath and rested her minty hoof against the tree. “I’m sorry. But this isn’t working. Dancing just isn’t my thing.” She glanced at Hal’s house. His neighborhood. His life. Her ears flattened. “…I really am sorry, Hal. I’m failing you…and I don’t know what I can do about it.” Hal, who by now had liberated himself from the heat of his turtleneck, sat in the grass, lost in thought. He remained that way for two whole minutes until a fire that rivaled Celestia’s morning rise into the heavens lit up his features. He was back on his hooves again in a flash. “Then we’ll do something that is your thing.” Before she could question the change in her friend’s mood, Quantum found herself descending into the Calavanner’s finished basement, under orders to retrieve a plastic container marked ‘flooring’. She returned to the yard, levitating the surprisingly light tote in the glow of her magic. “Since when does ‘flooring’ weigh as much as a pile of pillows?” She finally asked, setting the box down in the dew. Hal’s grin was broad. “Open it.” In the plastic tote, Quantum discovered a neatly packed pile of foam rubber panels, each only a few hooves square and all bearing a single digit from zero to nine. There were several dozen of them, textured for grip, and designed such that they could be fit together like puzzle pieces. “Why am I staring at play flooring for nurseries?” Quantum asked, the furrow in her brow taking all sarcasm out of the question. “Basic arithmetic for my little sister,” Hal noted. “And salvation for you. Set ‘em up exactly the way I tell you to.” Bewildered, Quantum went through the tedious task of laying the tiles out in no pattern she could discern, until much of the yard was peppered with flat squares of foam rubber. She stood among them, totally lost, as if she had been asked to search the entire yard for a contact lens in the dark. “What are we doing?” She finally asked. “Shouldn’t we be coming up with some excuse why I can’t dance?” “Do you trust me?” Hal fired off the strange question with an intensity in his eyes that took Quantum aback. “…sure I do.” “Then do exactly what I say.” He reared up into position, clicking his fetlocks into place. “First position. Stand on the three.” Quantum took up the dancer’s stance and did as she was told. “Solve pi to six digits!” Hal cried. “What?” “Do it! NOW!” Hal barked. “And you’re not allowed to touch the grass!” As though she had been lashed, Quantum scanned the ground for the number one, leapt desperately to it, spun around to the number four, and proceeded to gyrate through the air in a series of twists and turns until she came back to the one and moved on to the five, the nine, and the two. She landed with her forelegs outstretched to maintain her balance, huffing out breaths more from shock than exertion. Her ears, and eventually the rest of her head, swiveled in the direction of a single pair of clapping hooves. “Niiiice arabesque!” Hal observed. Before Quantum could react, he bellowed, “Terminal velocity in meters per second!” Quantum’s mind tore through the elementary formula so quickly that her body hopped to the nine and then leapt to the eight with barely a hint conscious control. “A leap worthy of MikHay Baleyshnikov!” Hal critiqued. “Prime numbers!” Quantum felt a soft smile grace her cheeks. She moved without fail, hopping in upon the two, the three, the five, the seven, and on. As a filly suffering through the abysmal results of her mother’s first magic lessons, she found comfort in the one thing that could never intimidate her – calculations, equations, and the numbers that made them. The lightness and energy that flowed through her limbs was borne of that early love she had long held for mathematics. Rent from chains of self-doubt, her unfettered heart launched into movements she had no name for until she felt she could soar twice as high as Cloudsdale itself. By the time Hal had moved from calculus to temporal physics, Quantum barely felt her hooves anymore. Eyes closed, she felt the whipping of her seagreen mane around her cheeks as she devoured the familiar comfort of science and wrote down the answers; her body the quill and the yard her parchment. When she finally had to stop for breath, she looked up to find Hal’s applauding again. This time, it was thunderous. “Do you know what you just did!?” He cackled. Quantum looked back at the number panels, damp with dew. Some had been kicked out of their original positions. “…no?” She answered honestly. “Sleeping Filly”, Hal replied smartly. Quantum gaped at the mention of a ballet so famous even she knew its name. “Horse hockey,” She said skeptically. “I’m not kidding!” Hal insisted, joy alone enough to send him hovering six hooves above the ground again. “Granted that was a pretty simple bit of background dance, but you nailed it!” Quantum caught her breath and rose to her full unimpressive height, still staring at the silent panels in disbelief. “It was just because you were prompting me the whole time,” She reasoned aloud. Hal only laughed. “I stopped talking ten minutes ago! Once I got you going on a set of ascending black hole geometry equations, you kept solving the series by yourself!” He flitted over and ‘rested’ his hoof on Quantum’s diminutive shoulder. “And I gotta say. Once you get over yourself and really break out of your shell? You’re a sight to see.” Quantum felt herself blushing again. She looked away, clearing her throat several times before speaking, “But this isn’t ballet. It’s like painting by numbers. With math. Dance math.” Hal shrugged. “Does that matter? If we work it from this angle, we can make this happen! You just have to do it your own way, that’s all.” Quantum finally found her smile. She cocked an eyebrow and pushed her glasses up on her muzzle again with her magic. “The last time I did things my own way I nearly caused an apple famine. You didn’t seem so happy about it back then.” Hal closed his eyes and shook his head, his soft smile never wavering. “Part of the magic of friendship is respecting the right of others to change their opinion.” Quantum found herself with nothing to say. Both of their ears swiveled at the single chirp of an early bird that was casing the grass for a meal. Luna still graced the sky, but she had passed her apex and her descent was now in full force. “Go get some rest,” Hal ordered. “Chemistry should be first period tomorrow. I was good at that even back in high school, so just go straight to room 301, ace it like it wasn’t a thing, and I’ll see you in between classes. My locker is just outside that room.” His smile was a bastion in the ebbing tide of night. “If I have to completely rewrite the greatest ballets in Equestrian history in binary code, we’re gonna get through this.” Quantum let out a yawn faster than she could stifle it. To say it had been a long day was an understatement, and her rapidly draining adrenaline was sapping the strength from her legs. “Hal…thanks.” Hal shook his head. “Thank you.” He entered a sequence on his device, and the door to 2039 blasted the air with an icy knife of white light as it opened. “Just…do this for me. That’s all I ask.” Quantum watched the light fade. Of course she would. …why would he even say that?