Memoirs of a Magic Earth Pony

by The Lunar Samurai

XXXII: Constance

Evenstar quickly wrote back to his former coworker with the exciting news of his discovery. However, there was something different about him after that day. I wasn’t able to put my hoof on it, and I was prepared to dismiss my thoughts had Amethyst not confronted me later that week.

I had finished my daily mail run, and Evenstar was nowhere to be found, as we had come to expect. We went about our morning duties in an attempt to keep the laboratory in working order, but the work felt monotonous. Evenstar was the life of the lab, and without him there at the crack of dawn as usual, the mornings felt unbearably long.

“Starswirl,” she asked, breaking the silence of the morning. “Have you noticed anything different about Evenstar lately?”

“I have…” I started as I idly arranged the stacks of mail on the table before me. “But I’m not sure what to make of it. He seemed fine before that letter from Zeno came.”

“What do you think he’s up to?”

“Up to?” I hadn’t considered the thought that he was researching. I thought something had called him away from his work.

“Yeah, I think he’s working on something again. I’m not sure why, but he seems distant whenever he’s working down here, like he’s always thinking of something else.”

“Well he’s probably got his mind on a lot of different things,” I offered despite believing otherwise.

“Besides, we’ve got enough down here to keep us busy,” I said as I glanced over the cluttered tables in the room.

“That’s just it though,” Amethyst started as she set an apparatus onto one of the shelves and turned toward me. “I don’t think he needs us at all.” Her tone was surprisingly remorseful, yet understandably so.

“What do you mean? Of course he needs us.” Even as I spoke those words, a little seed of doubt was planted in my mind. What if he doesn’t need us?

“Well, he’s a genius. He goes off on these whims and we’re basically at his mercy whenever he decides to do anything. I mean, look at what happened with the letter from Zeno, he completely changed our work and now he’s hardly talking to us at all. Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”
I wanted to protest, to defend my mentor’s slander, but I was becoming increasingly doubtful myself as she continued to speak.

“All I do for him is lift things and write on the board.” The frustration in her voice was gaining momentum with each word. “I mean, have you ever seen him lift a hoof to help either of us?”

“That’s not what he’s supposed to do though, we’re here to help him,” I said, my head tilted ever so slightly at her change in tone. “We’re not in charge, Amethyst.”

Amethyst paused for a moment as she took a deep breath. The spark of anger flickered out before she spoke once more. “Sorry, I just feel like we’re not doing anything. I want to do things, Starswirl, I don’t want to be ‘just an assistant’ anymore.”

There was a part of me that agreed with her, but something else told me that she was wrong. I wanted to feel like a part of something bigger that I ever imagined, and that was happening by simply being in the laboratory with them. However, her fears were my reality. It was obvious that she was helping Evenstar, if only because she could lift multiple objects with her magic, but I was coming to the realization that I could do nothing.

She didn’t say much more during that time, but I began to reflect on my own position as we turned back toward our tasks. I was opening letters and sorting them, a pretty common chore that I had started to excel at, but I still had nowhere near the ability of Amethyst. And that was just opening letters, she could do so many more things than I simply because she had been chosen to have a horn on her skull and I did not.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized how handicapped I was in comparison. There were parts of the library that had been effectively sectioned off from me because I couldn’t reach them. In a way, I felt like a toddler in a kitchen, with certain things barred from me because I simply couldn’t understand their function. I wish I hadn’t dwelled on those thoughts for so long, because they were a poison that took years to purge and only moments to take.

“Amethyst, Starswirl.” Evenstar had entered, but this time he carried himself rather sluggishly. His words were slurred and he stumbled a bit as he walked toward us. Amethyst and I exchanged worried glances as we watched him lean against the nearest table; the wood groaning against his weight.

“Evenstar?” Amethyst asked as she walked to his side. “Is everything alright?

“Yes,” he muttered as blinked away his sleepiness eyes and weakly smiled at Amethyst “Everything will be fine.”

“What happened to you?” I asked as I stepped over to Evenstar and leaned against the other side of the table. “You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

“No,” he said with a chuckle, “Only one. I got a little carried away last night. You see, I can’t help but think about Zeno’s question, or rather, how we first started it. Remember when we made that curve that never reached the final intersection?” He paused himself to stifle a yawn. “Well, I think, if we were to go to infinity, it would get there.”

“Evenstar,” Amethyst said with a laugh, “I think you’re a little too tired for math right now.”

“And I think you’re not tired enough. I was up all night developing a new proof, and I’ve almost got it. I’m too tired to write, could you erase a board and let me talk it out to you?”

Amethyst paused for a moment before her lips stretched into a small smirk. “Alright, but only if we get to keep it there whether or not you’re actually right.”

“So, we know that, according to Zeno’s proof, the turtle and the pony do cross paths, but only when we use infinity against itself. However,” he said through another hearty yawn, “That is not what we observe when the horizontal axis uses regular intervals. Now, we know that the function will get closer and closer to that final crossing distance, but it never makes it. However, infinity is the ‘never’ of math. It infinity makes it.”

I know he was trying to sound profound, and I know that his sleep addled mind thought that it did. I also happen know that he didn’t appreciate us rolling on the floor in laughter after he said it. It came at just the opportune time, and the way he whispered infinity as though it were a deity’s name made my lungs hurt after a few minutes of laughter.

Initially, he was upset. I knew that much from the way he groaned as I slid from the table and onto the floor, but a few seconds after we started, he joined in as well. I’m not sure if he thought it was genuinely funny, or if his sleep deprivation had taken its toll, but regardless, we were all lost in laughter.

A few minutes later, and he spoke up again. “I guess that’s what happens when I try to be profound. However, I still think I’m right. The function will never reach the distance of intersection, but if we evaluate it at infinity, we find that it is indeed the intersecting distance.”

Amethyst wiped a stray tear from her eye as she wrote the final words onto the chalkboard. “Alright, Evenstar, you’ve given us your hypothesis, now you need to rest.”

“Rest,” he muttered as one of his eyelids drooped. “Yes, I think rest would be a good idea.” Sleepily, Evenstar hobbled to the bunk in the far corner of the room. Once he was settled into the bed, he was asleep in an instant.

“He must’ve worked himself pretty hard,” I whispered.

“I’m still confused as to why he thinks this is a good idea,” Amethyst muttered as she continued to scan over the board. “You can’t just use infinity like that. That’s not how math works.”

“It sure seems to have his attention,” I offered as I walked over to the board. “But I’ve never seen him like this before.”

“Neither have I…” Amethyst’s voice trailed off as she scrutinized the words. “But I can see why it’s so alluring to him. The concept of the infinitely small is one that could solve his Analog equation. I think he’s getting desperate.”

“Desperate?”

Amethyst turned to me with a cocked eyebrow. “You wouldn’t be? He just got a letter from somepony saying that they too were starting to think about the math behind infinity. The rest of the world is starting to catch up.”

“You mean…” I paused as my thoughts ran faster than my mouth could follow. “Evenstar’s competing with other mathematicians? Like some sort of race?”

Amethyst paused for a second as her lips pursed in thought. “Yeah,” she said as she began to nod, “I guess you could call it that. Challenger’s small tasks are nothing compared to what he might be doing.” I let my eyes drift across the room as Amethyst continued to talk. “Remember how he made the MBU? That’s what brought him enough money for him to have this laboratory. He used to talk about the cramped apartment he started in all the time during lectures.” The mention of Evenstar’s lectures cracked the flow of her words. I had a lot of things happen to me while I was attending his classes, and from the way her neck tensed at their mention, I figured she did as well.

“Amethyst?” I gently asked as she continued to look at the board.

“Hm? Oh, right.” Her body relaxed ever so slightly as she let out a deep breath. “Anyway, Evenstar had a lot of struggles in his apartment. You should ask him about it some time.” She turned to the bookshelves, and removed the device she had been inspecting before Evenstar had stumbled into the room.

“I think I will,” I said, trying to bring the conversation to a close. There was something off about her, and I didn’t want to start something, so I kept to myself. I’m not sure why I feared her, maybe it was the need for silence coupled with her nature in general. Amethyst was a controlling pony of sorts, although I’ve wondered if I had more to do with that control than she did. I looked up to her, seeking validation in a way as she was so magically superior to me. I wanted her to respect me, and I had no reason to think she didn’t, but I still ensured that I walked softly when the ice was thin.

Maybe she took that as a gesture of kindness, but it was simply fear masked behind itself. We stood in silence for hours as she and I both performed the same tasks over and over again. She would clean various instruments, presumably calibrating them for their eventual use, and I would find myself mulling through letters, barely understanding the words written on them. Once I had sorted the stacks of mail by sender, which had been completed hours ago, I would typically find myself looking through them, trying to make out their details.

Evenstar’s mail was an interesting pile of correspondence to say the least. He would regularly receive letters from peers, asking if they could have some assistance on their own projects. Challenger’s messages would trickle in on a weekly basis, each carrying fragments of the happenings in the mathematical world. Once in a blue moon he would receive an important document from a friend or peer such as Zeno. However, most of the letters were from nowhere in particular. They were commonly tossed in a pile, to be reviewed if time chose to allow it, and currently, time was more than willing to permit some snooping.

The first letter I opened was from a pony by the name of Constance. Inside, was a rather sloppily written note that I could barely read. However, within a few moments, I could make out the words scratched onto the page.

Evenstar.

You do not know me, nor do you care of my existence. However, I know a lot more about you than you may wish. I do not send this to bring harm, but I do wish to bestow a warning. You are not as hidden as you would like to believe. I know the secrets that lie beneath your prestige, I have seen the progress of your apprentice, and I know where your magical path leads. There is another who walks the same road. Make haste, Evenstar.

Truly, Constance.

I read the document again, trying to lift the veil from Constance’s foreboding language, but I only became more worried as I scanned the page. “What on earth?” I whispered to myself as I turned my attention to the remaining envelopes. None bore the same sender’s name.

“Amethyst?” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

“Is something wrong?”

“I’m… not sure,” I said as I gestured for her to come to my table. “Read this letter and tell me if you can figure out what it means.”

“Is this some sort of riddle?” she asked as she trotted to my side and lifted the paper from the table.

“Again, I don’t know. It’s from somepony named Constance. He seems to know about Evenstar’s work or something.”

“Mmm…” Amethyst hummed as she read the page. “This is interesting. Are there any other letters from this Constance?”

“Not that I could find,” I said, turning toward the pile of unread letters, “But I could have missed one.”

A moment later, and the pile was engulfed by Amethyst’s magic. It rose into the air as Amethyst began to sort them into an organized grid of paper. I was never able to completely remove my jealousy of her magic. She could do phenomenal things without lifting a hoof, things I would have done anything to try just once. I was happy to work with her and with Evenstar, but there was always a twinge of pain in my heart when her purple aura dimly lit the room as she worked.

“Well, there aren’t any in here,” she muttered as she placed the letters into several neat stacks on the table. She glanced to the bunk that was tucked away in the darkness.

“I don’t think we need to wake him up,” I whispered. “He’s not the youngest pony around.”

“What do you think it means?” Amethyst asked as she lifted the page from the table again.

“The letter? I have no idea.”

“Well of course,” she said as her eyes rolled, “but what do you think?”

“It sounds like this Constance pony knows about the analog equations, but I don’t see how anypony could.”

“The only way they could was if they had come down here in the early morning.” The tone of her voice echoed my confusion. Neither of us knew what to do. With Evenstar fast asleep, the day still young, and our imaginations trying to piece together the mystery, we had no idea what to do with ourselves.

I looked to the blackboard on the wall and winced. The research Evenstar had spent decades studying was proudly displayed for all to see. A chill ran down my spine as I realized the implications of the letter “What if they’ve already seen his work?”

Comments

[Kevin Lee]

Intriguing
Is Constance really Amethyst?

[The Lunar Samurai]

7090326
┬┴┬┴┤(･_├┬┴┬┴
^ constance. Also, I'm not saying.

[PiMan]

I really want Starswirl to be key in solving this, because I'm getting tired of him being useless.

[The Apprentice]

7090800 Agreed. First he's this amazing guy b/c he can do magical theory without actually doing magic, and now... he's the least useful assistant in a group of less than effective assistants.
that's just my thoughts on the matter, I might be reading to much into it though. Or not enough.

[Booster Spice]

Was having fun last week, chatting with the clock shop guy, and when I mentioned about Xeno, he mentioned about how one of the students of Eristatothenes? Prooved simply how the square root of 2 was irrational. By prooving it wasnt possible for it to be rational, by construction of a paradoxical statement.

this is the same method Weyl used to prove Fermats Last Theorem by Eliptic curves, when I beleive Fermat used the principle, you cant cube a cube, by demonstration, and hence no higher dimentional figure.

I think square root 2 is used in the trig functions to calculate Pi, but I cant remember the relationship if you dont use trig, which came from sequence expansions and other maths.?

Newton Vs Hooke? Or aall the Greek philosophers arguing for the solution to the paradox etc?

[MudakTheMultiplier]

Chapter XXXII
Constance
Or:
In which Evenstare shows up and then falls asleep