• Published 1st Apr 2016
  • 1,588 Views, 148 Comments

Hoopy's Notebook - Hoopy McGee



A collection of short fiction

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8
 148
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Pinkie Pie and the Cake of Density

The cake on the counter was a wonder in chocolate, a paragon of fudge, and a jewel of delectability. It was to be Pinkie Pie's pièce de résistance, the masterwork that would convince Mr. and Mrs. Cake that she was finally ready to bake on her own. Not that she hadn't baked before today, of course, but those were all just practice. They wouldn't be sold to customers, so nopony but Pinkie, the Cakes and her friends ever got to taste them.

Pinkie didn't mind that so much. After all, that meant she got to eat all the tasty, tasty practice pastries! But this cake, the one she was finally finished decorating, was going to change all of that. This cake was going to change her destiny!

The cake, resting on its stand, looked deceptively simple. Rich, buttery chocolate frosting, applied heavily, with chocolate fudge drizzled over the top and strawberries placed every 1/8th of the way around the edge. Inside, there was even more fudge, applied thickly between the upper and lower layers. It almost gave her cavities just looking at it. But now, it was time. Time to present the cake to the Cakes and receive their judgement. Carefully—oh, so carefully—Pinkie began lifting the cake stand, trying to be careful not to upset the cake resting on top of it.

"Oof," she said as she lifted. "You're heavier than I remember!"

"Of course I am," the cake replied. "I am, after all, the Cake of Density."

Pinkie didn't drop the cake. Instead, she blinked at it in bewildered befuddlement. "Did you just talk?"

"I did, indeed," the cake replied.

"Huh." Pinkie put the cake back down on the counter and thought about it. Something about this seemed wrong. She finally put her hoof on what was bothering her. "Don't you mean 'Cake of Destiny'?" she asked.

"No," the cake replied. "For I am, after all, a very dense cake."

"Oh."

Pinkie chewed on her lower lip for a moment. She was almost completely sure that it was impolite to eat a cake that could talk. Which brought up another question, now that she thought of it.

"How is it that you can talk?" she asked.

"A good question," the cake said, and Pinkie beamed with pride. "Is my apparent ability to speak the product of Equestria's natural and wildly fluctuating magical field, or is there some other cause? Was there some mystical arrangement of ingredients that caused my verbosity, or is it mere happenstance? Or, perhaps, I'm not actually talking at all, and this is all some daydream of yours? Is this situation a mere hallucination brought on by overexposure to vanilla extract, or is it something more? Is it, in fact, possible for a cake to be sapient to any degree? For that matter, what is sapience? Can such a thing even be proven? What is a mind, and what is reality? Indeed, is it not impossible to prove that the world exists? We experience things through our senses, but can our senses not be deceived? If so, does that not mean that reality is subjective, to be interpreted by each individual... assuming these individuals actually exist?"

Pinkie Pie blinked. "That was a lot of words all at once," she complained.

"Yes, well," the cake replied, "I am, after all, a very dense cake."

"Maybe it's the strawberries," Pinkie mused, rubbing her chin with a hoof. "Chocolate and strawberries taste great together, but I don't usually see them both on the same cake."

"Strawberries are unlikely to cause spontaneous elocution, as they cannot function as a cerebral cortex, and chocolate very rarely grants the benefits of a large vocabulary."

"Huh. You're really smart."

"No, though it may appear that way. For example, even the most basic of mathematics elude me. I am not even capable of simple division on my own!" The cake sighed. "Alas! I am, indeed, a very dense cake."

"I'm sorry," Pinkie said. She frowned. "Well, this is disappointing."

"How so?" the cake asked from atop its display pedestal.

"Well, obviously I can't give you to the Cakes as proof that I'm a really good baker. After all, nopony would buy a talking cake! But I usually get to eat any cakes I goof up on, and I can't do that with you."

"Whyever not?" the cake asked, its rich, dark chocolate frosting glimmering under the kitchen's electric lights. "Is not a cake's purpose in life to be consumed? Is that not the role I'm meant to play? It is the destiny of every good cake to be eaten and enjoyed to the fullest!"

"Uh. That's kinda creepy."

"How so?" the cake asked, raising its voice. "Am I not worthy of my role in life? Am I not deserving of fulfillment? Do I not rate the gratification of knowing that I have done my duty to the best of my abilities?" The cake's voice dropped, then, into a near-whisper. "Am I not worthy of the love that all baked goods enjoy?"

"Oh, cake," Pinkie cried with tears in her eyes. "Of course you are!"

And, so, she ate it, savoring every bite, glorying in the thick chocolate and heavy layers of cake. Hours later, Pinkie Pie was laying on the floor, moaning her way through the worst tummyache of her life. After all, it had been a very dense cake.

Author's Note:

Yeah... I don't even know.