Chapter 16
Lunch was a plate piled high with apple butter sandwiches made on fresh baked bread. Sumac couldn’t get enough of them, he loved apple butter, finding it to be one of the sweetest, most delicious substances that a pony could cram into their mouth.
The kitchen was dim, cool, and quiet. Hidden Rose and Ambrosia were off at their own first day of school, and they did not get a half day like Sumac and Pebble had. Applejack’s hat lay upon the table, down near the end, and she gobbled down her own sandwiches with gusto.
“Big Mac and I gotta get us some work done,” Applejack said after she swallowed her last bite of sandwich. “Cider season is coming up, there’s chores to be done, and a pump that needs fixin’—”
“I can fix the pump,” Sumac said to Applejack.
“Nope.” Applejack’s eyes narrowed. “Nope.” She shook her head. “Rose and Ambrose didn’t get a half a day of school and you ain’t either. Your book bag is full of schoolbooks and you have a full afternoon of quiet. Gabby ol’ Granny Smith is off visiting friends in town.”
Sumac slumped over, dejected, and Boomer began attacking his plate with her tongue so she could eat the sweet, tasty crumbs. He glanced over at Pebble and wondered how she felt about this. She was probably going to enjoy this, because she was so very weird.
“I gots me lots of work to do,” Applejack said as she stretched her neck, tilting her head to one side and then to the other. “It was fun helping Twilight, but now I’m behind. Pebble Pie, don’t let Sumac slack off. I already know about the arrangement that was made. You keep him on task, he’s a unicorn, so he’s bound to be squirrely.” Applejack smiled, reached out, and patted Pebble.
“Don’t worry, I take my duties very seriously,” Pebble said in a flat deadpan devoid of feeling. “I have a list of my responsibilities in my bag and a checklist of books I’m supposed to check out from the library. I’m positive that I can wing it without the books for a while.”
Hearing Pebble’s words, Sumac’s ears drooped. He was doomed. Doomed, doomed, doomed. There was a surplus of doom available to him. The colt heaved a sigh and resigned himself to his fate. He watched as Boomer lapped up some apple butter on his plate with her long purple tongue. When his plate was clean, Boomer began licking his face with her rough, sandpaper textured tongue, and her breath was hot and smokey. He didn’t giggle, not even once.
“Cheer up, Sumac… it won’t be so bad.” Applejack pulled on her hat, rose from her chair, and gave herself a shake. “Consarnit, I told Big Mac it was lunchtime and the durn fool still ain’t come in… I’m gonna go and give him a piece of my mind!”
And with that, Applejack was gone.
Hunched over his math textbook, Sumac tried to make sense of what he was looking at. It was gibberish, all of it was gibberish. The only consolation for his misery was Pebble. She was a fantastic teacher. While Trixie had been a good teacher, at least with what she had taught him, Pebble was a better teacher.
Pebble was patient, she was calm, she remained cool, she never showed any sign of frustration, she never raised her voice, and she didn’t seem bothered by having to explain things over and over again so that Sumac might puzzle them out so he could understand them. As for Pebble’s part, she seemed to be enjoying herself, but Sumac couldn’t tell. She knew when to help and more importantly, she knew when to leave him be so he could figure it out for himself.
Everything was going so well, and then, arithmetic happened. Sumac had no concept of any of this stuff. Fractions were a mystery to him. He had never learned about them before, and he couldn’t make sense of anything in his textbook, nor could he understand what Pebble was telling him.
“Sumac… it’s really very simple. Think of it as an apple—”
“Okay.” Sumac nodded as he looked up from his book. He heard a low, sleepy snort near his ear, but he ignored the distraction. “I understand apples.”
“Okay Sumac, to make this simple, imagine if you had two apples and you cut them into eight pieces. Each piece would be one eighth. Right?” Pebble’s ears leaned forwards as she spoke and she brushed up against Sumac as she tried to get him to understand.
“Okay… two apples, eight pieces, so that would be sixteen pieces.”
“Correct. Now imagine if you took five pieces from the first apple and seven pieces from the second apple, how much apple would you have?” Pebble blinked and waited.
“Um, twelve?” Sumac replied.
“No… it’s a fraction. You have five eighths from one apple and seven eighths from another.” Pebble’s brilliant blue eyes showed no signs of anger or frustration, only resolve. She had the patience of a stone.
“I don’t understand these fancy mathematics,” Sumac grumbled. “The answer should be twelve.”
“Sumac, if you cut an apple in half, you have a half an apple. But if you put the two halves together, you get one apple even though there were two pieces.” Pebble waited for her reasonable explanation to sink in.
“So… one and one isn’t always two?” Sumac asked, confused.
“No.” Pebble reached out and patted Sumac’s foreleg. “You’re making progress.”
“I feel stupid.” Sumac scowled and shoved his math textbook away as he pulled his other foreleg away from Pebble. She was getting touchy touchy again. She always got so touchy. And sometimes grabby. She was a touchy feely pony.
“You’re not stupid, you’re just uneducated,” Pebble said to Sumac.
Sumac dared his brain to begin working and tried to internalise the concept that one plus one didn’t always equal two. Sometimes it equaled one, it seemed. His brain balked at the very notion. But one piece of apple and another piece of apple did make for a whole apple, so he supposed it came down to how those pieces were shaped. Perhaps.
“If you have seven out of eight pieces from one apple and five out of eight pieces from the second apple, and you assembled them together for form a whole apple, how much apple would you have?”
“What?” Sumac blinked and then his eyes crossed as he derped.
Pebble sighed and tried again. “Imagine you have one red apple and one green apple. You cut them both into eight pieces. Now, you take five pieces from the green apple and seven pieces from the red apple, and you put them together. How much apple do you have?”
“I eat the pieces to avoid the question—”
“Sumac.” Pebble blinked. “Please try.”
“Okay, fine.” Sumac rolled his eyes and tried to think about red and green apple pieces. He became distracted and thought about apple pie. Apple brown betties. Apple cobbler. Apple strudel. Apple turnovers. Delicious apple-peño jelly, an Appleloosan favourite.
Just thinking about the sweet, spicy taste of apple-peño jelly made his mouth water.
“Great, I have a drooling idiot as a student,” Pebble said. “Colts are so gross.”
“Hey!” Sumac licked his lips and did his best to look wounded as he pulled away from Pebble. “I got distracted… okay? I’m sorry. Just gimme a minute and I’ll try again.”
This time, Sumac focused and tried to imagine two apples in his head, cut into pieces. It was a difficult thing to try and visualise. He was a little distracted because Pebble had called him an ‘idiot,’ but he sort of deserved it. Pebble was doing a good job as a teacher, but he was doing a lousy job as a student. This presented an even worse problem—if he became somepony’s apprentice, what if he was a lousy apprentice? What if he couldn’t pay attention to his magic lessons?
The thought was quite worrisome indeed. It was something to think about. It was important for a pony to pay attention to the task at hoof. This was quite a conundrum. Reaching up, Sumac scratched his chin with his hoof as his brow furrowed.
“I smell smoke,” Pebble said, and she wasn’t talking about Boomer. She slumped over in her chair and sighed while she waited for Sumac to process his fancy apple mathematics. She looked up at Boomer, who was curled around Sumac’s horn and had her head buried in his mane. Pebble, also distracted, had a funny mental image of a full grown Boomer trying to catch a ride on Sumac’s horn and smooshing him.
It was quite amusing.
The back door opened, and Applejack entered into the kitchen.
Sumac had nothing to say while Pebble explained his inability to grasp fancy mathematics. He had sat in silence as she had explained the apple problem to Applejack. He had nothing to say for himself, no defense he could offer, and he knew better than to say how stupid he was around Applejack. She would lecture him, and he didn’t want to be lectured by Applejack.
Or Big Mac for that matter.
He sat in his chair, feeling Applejack’s green eyes, which mirrored his own, burning into him. She looked thoughtful. Not angry, or disappointed, or upset, or bothered, or anything else, just thoughtful. He was curious about what she was thinking.
“I think he’s having trouble paying attention,” Pebble said to Applejack.
“Shucks, maybe what he needs is a quick pick me up,” Applejack replied. She got up and crossed the kitchen in a few light, quick steps, her mane and tail bouncing. She pulled open the cupboard, stuck her head inside, and began to rummage around.
“I have just the thing,” Applejack said as she emerged with a jar balanced on her muzzle. The jar glowed with a strange rainbow light. “We dip into this stuff when the workload gets heavy. Nothing picks up an Apple quite like zap apple jam. It works a trick on any pony, but for some reason, it’s always had a special effect upon us Apples.”
Applejack returned to the table, sat down, and then twisted the jar open with her fetlock. The kitchen filled with the scent of ozone, causing Boomer to wake up and sneeze. Applejack picked up a spoon from off of the table, stabbed it into the jar, and spooned out an enormous spoonful of the strange, rainbow coloured apple jam.
Then, without warning, she jammed the spoon that was full of jam into Sumac’s mouth. For a moment, nothing happened, but then Sumac’s eyes became pinpricks. His horn glowed. Boomer let out a frightened honk, lept down to the table, then scurried away with a whimper.
The colt shuddered, his whole body spasming, and then he sat up in his chair, ramrod straight. Sumac smacked his lips and said, “One and a half apples!”
In a moment of perfect understanding, everything now made sense. Sumac flipped open his textbook and looked at the math problems in the fractions chapter. He read the text, taking it all in with ease, and he understood. But it wasn’t enough to just read it. No. He picked up his pencil, but that wasn’t enough. A shiver went through him as he pulled a few more of the pencils out of his bag.
Armed with four pencils, he went to work arranging papers so he could work with maximum efficiency. His brain burned with strange understanding and his eyes watered. He was unaware of Applejack or Pebble. On one paper, he began scribbling out addition for fractions, adding everything up. On another page, he scrawled out subtraction for fractions. On the third page, he began working on multiplication with fractions, now understanding in perfect clarity how to do what needed to be done after reading the instructions in the book. On the fourth page, he worked on division with fractions.
His work was flawless… he could remember every problem for every quiz after looking at the pages just once. His pencils all moved at once with spooky unity. Mathematical problems began to appear on the four pieces of paper as if by magic.
Sumac never stopped to consider how taxing it was on his telekinesis to be using four pencils at once, writing on four pieces of paper. Four pencils weren’t even straining his magical abilities. His body shook and trembled as he tore through his school assignments.
“Pebble, darling…”
“Yes?”
“I’m gonna go and get Twilight Sparkle… I’ll be right back as soon as I can, okay?”
Pebble nodded and continued to watch as Sumac kept working. She dared not move. Her chair was suspended high in the air, along with the table and pretty much everything else in the kitchen. She watched as Applejack jumped down and landed with ease upon her hooves. Pebble didn’t like heights, she liked keeping her hooves on the ground. Being this high up unnerved her. She could jump down too, but the thought was terrifying. She liked having her hooves planted on something solid, either the ground or something connected to the ground. She jumped down from high places all the time, but those high places were well anchored to the earth. On those rare occasions were her daddy picked her up with his magic, she almost widdled herself. Thankfully, her daddy was very loving and very understanding of her fear.
“Applejack…”
“Yeah, Pebble?”
“Help me down, please… I’m scared,” Pebble said as an uncharacteristic whine crept into her voice. “I’m so scared that I can’t move. Please get me down. Please get me down.”
Rearing up on her hind legs, Applejack placed her front hooves against Pebble’s sides, lifted her, and then eased her down to the floor. She had known Pebble for a long, long time. Since birth. And while Pebble was a lot like her mother Maud, she had moments where emotion showed through, like now, when Pebble went shooting off for the bathroom.
Sumac was still hyper-focused upon his schoolwork. Applejack ducked as a chair floated by her head. She scooted beneath the floating table, which was solid wood and had to weigh at least two hundred pounds. Sumac was floating it like a feather. The ease with which he was holding everything up while he did his schoolwork made Applejack’s nethers clench tight. Sumac was floating himself as he sat in his chair.
She slipped out the back door and took off at a run to fetch Twilight Sparkle.
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Oh, his 9V battery is running low. I know! Let's mainline him with all of the generators from a nuclear reactor. That should be enough, right?
Apple logic.
This is great. I guess we need to ban Zap Apple jam before tests.
Ia, ia, Apple fhtagn
Now Applejack knows how much Zap Apple jam is too much. Maybe a quarter of a spoon would be better. Still, Applejack nailed it when she said, "Nothing picks up an Apple quite like zap apple jam. It works a trick on any pony, but for some reason, it’s always had a special effect upon us Apples." And how.
... On a stimulant Sumac can suddenly focus perfectly, and when focused he's capable of feats that are unheard of if he's not?
... Is Sumac Pony ADD?
Or is Zap Apple Jam just a crazy magic stimulant?
Did...did Sumac just discover the pony equivalent of mentats? Only, it's super effective on him?
Regardless, a very nice and entertaining chapter with a twist I really didn't see coming.
Next up, the dangers of magical apple drug abuse! ( I hope)
Oh dear. Im reminded of one story where Sweetie bell drank a potion that is supposed to increase intelligence for a while and than worked out the entire future (and suffered Amnesia and proceeded to completely destroy her life). So yeah... Get Twi on the case.
Oh and
Fix that, it's broken.
7177853
What's broken exactly? Boomer is licking Sumac's face.
7177869 wait, *re-reads paragraph* oh, oops. I thought you meant her licking her own face via Pinkie Pie Style, my bad.
Zap Apple Jam is drugs.
pre12.deviantart.net/5c2b/th/pre/i/2015/325/8/5/bed_time_story_by_hillbe-d9hkh8m.jpg
Trixie: "Applejack! What did you do to my son?! Eeek!"
This is has so much potential for fun.
So Apple earth pony get some energy and clarity of thought from Zap Apple Jam. Apple unicorn.... wooo boy you dun over charged his batteries... which means he's probably going to burn out hard and fast....
I love how many questions this story brings up each chapter as it makes us want more and more info.
7177811
... yes.
7177947
Auntie Em! Auntie Em! (Or should that be Granny Smith! Granny Smith!)
I know this is probably not very relevant to the chapter itself, I saw this quote;
I was thinking; It's obvious Sumac's special talent is fixing things, but what would his cute mark look like? A steampunk apple? A spanner behind an apple? An apple with a gear in the side?
Artists. If you're reading this, I challenge you. Make your own Sumac Apple cutie mark.
The Great Apple Addiction begins!
"It is by my jam alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the juice of zap apple that thoughts acquire speed, the spoons acquire stains, the stains become a surge.
It is by my jam alone I set my mind in motion."
... And two hours later, Applejack noticed that the pump was not only fixed, but polished, cleaned, and performed three times better than it did before...
7178389 The only problem being it somehow pumps apple juice, straight out of the apples while they're still on the trees...
7178013
Don't you see? This is what we though of Apple bloom, and then she got a cutie mark in helping ponies understand their cutie marks when the only way to get one is to u see stand it.
Actually makes sense if you think about it. Zap Apples are concentrated magic, thus so is Zap Apple Jam. Unicorns focus magic though their horns so for them a spoon of Zap Apple Jam is a shot of endorphins and energy right to the brain. AJ said Zap Apple Jam has a magnify-ed effect on the Apple clan so little Sumac feels like he's just had a shot of meth straight into his frontal lobe!
7177790 probably since it only seems to give one pony an advantage. Then again its not cheating just letting him remember better
7177843 i doubt it the Apples have sold Zap Apple Jam for a long time without simular effects I assume. Too many odd effects especially if there is a nasty letdown would force Celestia or Twilight to either ban it or restrict sales which would seriously affect Applejack. From most of the stories Apple Cider and Zap Apple Jam are two of Sweet apple Acres most profitable products
7178389 Cleaned and fixed sure. Pumps hand or otherwise are rather simple devices without major modifications mjaor improvements in function not so much
7177929 This is your brain on zap apples. Any questions?
You're all thinking it...
7177790 Zap Adderol Jam.
Mhmn, apple butter. Haven't had any of that for probably two decades.
C'mon, AJ, let him have fun.
Ahh, fractions. Actually a pretty important concept.
Huh. So. Apparently the lesson here is to not dose Apple unicorns with zap apples?
One of these 'he's should be a 'she'.
But... The answer is twelve...
just because it's one and a half doesn't mean there still aren't twelve eighths... It's just not twelve ones... Truth in mathematics is an oddly malleable thing. He's still right when not thinking in mixed numbers. 12*(1/8) = 1 + (1/2)
7178585 How do you think the Riches got so rich? They're like Jay Gatsby and his "drug stores", which were liquor distribution shops hiding from the Volstead Act behind a shield of doctors' prescriptions of medicinal alcohol for "nerves". Barnyard Bargains is totally a front for the dealing of hard unicorn drugs.
7492753
Unit error, because of ambiguity in English.
If Pebble asked how many pieces of apple there were, the answer would be 12.
7529293 I wouldn't necessairily think of it quite like that.
I mean for one they are the ONLY dealer for Zap Apple Jam which is wholly unique in all of Equestria. After all, that IS how Filthy Rich's family originally made their riches primarily: They were the only ones to sell Zap Apple Jam which a unique Luxury Good ONLY found in Ponyville.
Second of all, they seem like they are set up to sell a variety of things, and so you pay for conveinance. Not only that, but they can afford to have fancy displays to draw people in. There's a lot of Science behind HOW & WHERE items are displayed in stores.
Plus I imagine that you can get items there in bigger bulk than most other stores.
Sure Ponyville has their Bazaar where ponies go to sell things in their stalls to barter, but I feel like Filthy Rich has it set up where you can probably get other more unique goods, plus certain refined or processed goods that are more difficult to find elsewhere like Flour.
But didnt he have an statistical study from unicorn magic in the last story? How could he not know aritmethics?
8720275
He read the results without understanding the mechanics.
8720295
also he was just plotting numbers that is a lot of leg work but not any complex math.