What the Hell is a Blender?
Inconsistency
"Oh, she said she'd be here by now!" Pinkie moaned, her hooves tapping a nervous rhythm on the library floor. Twilight looked up from her book and checked the clock again.
"Half an hour late now. 'Fastest flyer in Equestria' indeed," she huffed. Pinkie was still vibrating around the library, periodically stopping to glare at the door. When Rainbow inevitably didn't turn up, the party-pony would roll her eyes and the impatient disco-dance would resume.
Twilight began to pretend to read her book again. She had resigned herself to the fact that she was too excited to get any actual reading done as soon as Rainbow had gone from 'fashionably late' into 'hurry the fuck up' territory. The book was purely for show, something monstrously unpleasant about cystoscopies that the unicorn had grabbed from a shelf at random.
After a few more minutes of pretend reading and Pinkie's 'I look like I need to go to the toilet' dancing, the library door swung open to reveal a sweaty, breathless Rainbow Dash.
"Well nice to see you got here Dash. Only 35 minutes late!" Twilight began, only to be cut off by the pegasus.
"Hey It was packed down there! Ponies were lining up all along the street! I was lucky to even get a copy and then I raced over here as soon as I could. If you'd gone down you'd still be in the shop, wondering which edition to buy!" Rainbow snapped.
"Twilight don't be mean! Dash did her best!" Pinkie chastised the unicorn, who looked at the floor like a schoolfilly. Twilight offered a mumbled apology, but didn't look up until she felt two hooves wrap her in a hug.
"No hard feelings egghead. Now, enough sappy stuff, here it is!" She reached into her saddlebag and retrieved a brown paper package. "How about you get it out Twi'? I don't want to damage anything,"
The unicorn nodded and picked up the package in her magic. Light purple tendrils began to carefully peel off the paper revealing a shining record sleeve underneath. Her efforts increased, and soon all of the wrapping was piled up in small pieces on the floor. All three ponies stared up at the album for a moment before each breaking out into excited giggles.
"I still can't believe it's out! We've been waiting months for this!" Twilight said through a toothy grin.
"Sapphire Shores presents 'Dance-Night Part Six'!" Pinkie read aloud from the cover, "I've heard this is the best 'Dance-Night' album yet!"
"Better than four?" Rainbow gasped.
"We'll never know unless we play it!" Twilight trilled, with a flare of her horn she seized the record and slid the LP out from the jacket. Any thoughts of argument were forgotten as they each marvelled at the sight of the record's illustrious golden finish. Twilight took a few seconds to admire the gleaming disc, before placing it gently on her gramophone.
"Rainbow, you went down to get it, I think it's only fair if you get to do the honours," Twilight said cheerfully. Dash grinned widely and hastily trotted over to the contraption. She gripped the handle in both hooves and began to turn. Her cheeks soon went red with the exertion of moving the large piece of metal.
"Wow Twilight, this moves much easier than mine at home!" Rainbow spluttered breathlessly.
"Well I try to keep it well-oiled,"
"You can really tell," Dash replied, a ragged breath punctuating her every word. After a few more turns, the record began to crackle into life and each pony heard the first few notes of Sapphire Shores' long awaited new album.
They had been listening for around half an hour now. Each minute had been pure listening bliss, aside from the occasional stop to change handle-rotating shifts as well as a small fifteen minute break to oil said handle. Twilight had asked Spike to make them some milkshakes a while ago, and decided to go and check on him. She told her two friends, the ones who were currently occupied trying to get that handle to turn, to carry on without her.
"Hey! What's my number one assistant up to?" Twilight said cheerfully. Spike looked up from the mixture he was whisking and caught his breath.
"Still making the milkshakes... with no help." He deadpanned before seizing a nearby piece of kitchen roll to damp the sweat from his forehead.
"Spike, what did I tell you about sarcasm?" she replied with a frown.
"That it's only disliked by those who can't pull it off elegantly?" Twilight's frown intensified and Spike sighed, "it's just that whisking this is hard. I know you like adding ice-cream to make it thicker and... well have you ever tried whisking ice-cream without using magic?"
"Well, no," she admitted. Spike muttered something about how adults should make their own bloody milkshakes and carried on with his task. Twilight observed his arms as they worked overtime whisking the milk and ice-cream into a creamy, drinkable mixture. When the consistency of the mixture was slightly more manageable, Spike opened up a sachet and added the chocolate powder. The unicorn licked her lips in anticipation.
"There we go," he said with after a few more minutes, his tone less breathless than before, "You still want them warm?"
"Ooh, yes please Spike," she grinned. He wrinkled his nose in clear distaste, but still nodded and took the spindly metal whisk out of the mixture. He then took the bowl, carried it to the other side of the room, and placed it in the microwave. Small purple claws tapped a few buttons on the gleaming metal device to switch it on, then the waiting resumed. Twilight looked at her hooves for a few seconds, before a thought occurred to her.
"Hey Spike," she began with a small giggle, "Don't you think it's funny that we still have to use those fiddly hoof-whisks, yet we have microwaves to heat stuff up?" Spike gave her a strange look, and Twilight's laughter became more and more uncomfortable.
"Haha ha... ha. You know, because microwaves are so hi-tech, and yet we still use those things for... whisking," Spike was still staring at her. The atmosphere had become stifling, "... Isn't that, erm... ahem, weird?"
"Why would that be weird?" Spike replied. His tone was confused, not unlike the one you might use to ask a stranger on the bus why they decided to start massaging your shoulders.
"Well, all I'm saying is that we have this machine to heat stuff up, isn't it a bit funny that we don't have a machine to mix food?"
"What?" Spike chuckled, "A machine to mix food up? What we call it? The mixatron? The whisk-errific 3000?" Twilight felt her good humour disappear.
"How about blender?" Spike's laughter increased at this.
"Oh come on, that's even more ridiculous than what I was saying! A machine hi-tech enough to mix things up without anyone using their hooves, and you want to call it a blender? Why don't we just call the microwave the 'Heat-things-up-box',"
Twilight's face reddened and she went to respond, but the sound of the a knock at the door cut her off. Deciding to abandon the discussion, the unicorn trotted back into the living room to investigate. Pinkie and Rainbow were still turning that handle, allowing the sounds of 'Dance-Night Part Six' to float through the library.
Twilight walked over to the door and opened it with her magic revealing a smiling Rarity.
"Hello darling!" the unicorn trilled, "Why, I see you've picked up a copy of the newest Sapphire Shores album, I was just listening to my copy!" Rarity's horn flared and she took out her MP3 player and headphones from her saddlebag for emphasis. Twilight stared at the device for a few seconds, the same feeling from the kitchen was gnawing at the back of her mind once more.
Rarity trotted over to chat to Pinkie and Rainbow, but all the while Twilight's eyes fixed on the MP3 player. She flicked her focus between the small elegant box and the gramophone, which was seeming more and more like a horrifying bourgeois ploy to distance the common man from the beauty of music by forcing them to subconsciously associate it with back-breaking physical work. Twilight made a mental note to vote labour at the next general election.
Still, the MP3 player was a marvel of entertainment technology, while the gramophone was a wheezing steam-powered monster unfit for use by those with heart-conditions. The same niggling feeling that she got when she looked at Spike's primitive hand whisk bathed in the warm glow of the microwave was prickling at the base of Twilight's skull. The sounds filling the library, half Sapphire Shores and half 'Gramophone-Induced Background Exertion NoiseTM' did nothing to dull it.
"Rarity," Twilight called out, "Do you think it's a bit weird that we can put music on something like your MP3 player, but if we want a physical copy we have to use a gramophone," Rarity turned and gave her that same look that Spike did.
"What's wrong with gramophones dearie? Mine works fine,"
"Well, nothing's wrong with them I suppose, but they are a tad inconvenient. I mean, just look at what you have to do just to get the record to play." she replied, gesturing to the exhausted forms of Rainbow and Pinkie.
"Oh, don't remind me you already have a copy," Rarity chided playfully, "Mine's still not coming in the post for a few days," with that she returned to conversational pleasantries with Rainbow and Pinkie, who for their part were still soldiering on
"No, Rarity, I'm not done," Twilight called after her, "There must be a more convenient way of listening to a physical copy of music than this,"
"Is she still on about this?" Spike said as he brought in the milkshakes.
"On about what?" Pinkie queried, she and Rainbow now dropping the gramophone handle.
"Twi's gotten all freaky about machines," the dragon replied.
"Oh, I have a cousin who's into that sort of thing." Rarity thought aloud, drawing strange looks from everyone present.
"I have not gotten 'Freaky' about machines, not in any way," Twilight hastily said, directing most of her attention to Rarity, who looked offended. "Look, all I said was that I think it's a little bit strange that we have MP3 copies of music and microwaves, yet we still use hoof-whisks and gramophones!"
"Well, what do you suggest, we actually invent a machine to whisk food?" Rainbow snickered.
"That's what I said," added Spike with an eye-roll.
"Look Twilight, a machine that uses electromagnetic radiation with frequencies ranging from 0.3 GHz to 300 GHz to cook and or heat food is one thing. But a machine that mixes food together? That's just ridiculous." Pinkie agreed.
Twilight looked around frantically. The unicorn was absolutely dumbfounded and more than a little annoyed that no-one but her could see the maddening inconsistencies.
"Okay, how about what I said about MP3 music. We have that, but if you want to buy a physical copy you have to use a gramophone. You two almost dislocated your shoulders turning that lever, don't you think it's a little odd that we don't have a more convenient physical medium?" Everyone present just stared at her with those weird looks. Twilight could almost see the gears churning in their heads. Rarity opened her mouth as if to speak, however nothing was said and she simply went back to rubbing her chin in an annoyingly overacted display of thought.
"Hmm... is it that she hates technology?" The fashionista finally said.
"There's no need to hate technology Twilight," Spike said in a tone that was almost certainly not meant to sound as patronising as it did. Before Twilight could say anything, Pinkie draped a hoof around her neck and began chattering loudly in her ear.
"Twilight, I know new-fangled, hi-tech contraptions like gramophones, lightbulbs and perpetual motion devices can be scary, but we all have to move on." Twilight wrestled her way out of Pinkie's grip.
"What the hell are you talking about?! I do not hate technology! And how are perpetual motion devices and lightbulbs equally impressive?!"
"She does have a point there," said Spike, "I mean, perpetual motion devices are fine, but lightbulbs light whole rooms,"
"That isn't what I meant!" Twilight shrieked for what felt like the fortieth time that minute, "I'm trying to say that everything's out of order. You mean to tell me you don't think it's strange that we are able to put music in a digital format on an MP3 player, but can't come up with a better way of listening physically than having a device that requires sustained lever turning! That's absurd!"
"I'm going to message Applejack on BBM and tell her to come down here, maybe she could help," Rainbow said before retrieving her Blackberry from her saddlebag.
"I wish I had a blackberry phone so I could message people without using a letter," Rarity replied wistfully, as Twilight spewed forth a litany of enraged profanity.
"Are you sure we shouldn't check on her? And thank you for remaking these dearie." Rarity said while taking a sip from her chocolate milkshake.
"Don't mention it, I mean who the hell like warm milkshakes?" Spike replied, drawing laughter from everyone present, "And no don't worry about Twilight, she does this all the time."
"I know darling... but still..." Rarity shuffled nervously while glancing over to the cellar door. A partially ripped piece of ruled paper had been sellotaped onto it, upon which was scrawled 'Top Secret! No Entry!', complete with a purple crayon rendition of a frowning Twilight.
"Yeah... I can't get her to take that down," he replied uneasily. The four of them were sat on some assorted cushions in the library's main room, with an empty glass bottle on the floor pointed squarely at Rarity. It had been a couple of hours since Twilight had furiously stormed down into the cellar's lab, ranting on about how automated whisking isn't a difficult concept to grasp and that it was everyone else that was crazy. Applejack had unfortunately not been able to come, informing everyone via BBM that she needed to provide essential maintenance to all of Sweet Apple Acres swanky new telegram devices, which were being heralded as 'Blackberrys but about 400 times as convenient' by Canterlot's intelligentsia.
"I'm sure she'll be fine, you come up with one gathering in which Twilight hasn't gone at least a little bit batty and stormed off for a while, and I'll let you off this dare," Rainbow snorted at Rarity, who furrowed her brow in thought.
"Oh damn it, you win I can't think of one, why we ever agreed to play this game I'll never know,"
Two Hours Ago
"Ooooh spin the bottle is a splendid idea to pass the time while we wait for Twilight, darling! It'll be just like when we were fillies! I've got first go!"
"I guess it'll be forever a mystery, now out with this dare of yours," Rarity continued. Her attempt to look grumpy was betrayed by a smirk and an unmistakable spark of mischief in her voice.
"Okay then, I dare you... To go one week without using your Acme inc. Carbon Neutral Any-Meal-Generator device!" Rainbow cackled while Spike and Pinkie squealed in delight.
"Oh you evil little minx," Rarity giggled scandalously, "I guess I'll just have to dust off the furnace to cook this week. Here's hoping I still have some coal in the cellar!"
Down in her subterranean lab, Twilight scowled at the prototype before her. It was crude, incredibly energy inefficient and would probably spray a shit-tonne of battery acid all over the place, but she had had less time than she would have like to construct it. No sooner had Twilight slammed the cellar door had she seen the lab's own in-house NMR spectrometer right next the lab's own in-house sundial. The previous anger, on which Twilight was seriously considering writing a paper entitled 'The MP3-Gramophone Effect', had reared it's head, and half an hour had been wasted ranting about 'being able to probe matter on a fundamental level yet still needing sunlight to tell the goddman time' to no-one in particular.
She finished up writing some lab notes with an eagle-feather quill on a browned, coarse piece of parchment before running another simulation on Gaussian 2009 using her Macbook Air. Given some time to tune up the device, get rid of the kinks and make it less of a threat to sentient life and it'd be ready for the grand demonstration Twilight thought to herself, and not a bloody moment too soon.
"Hahaha okay okay fine! I admit it, it's hairspray! It's always been hairspray!" Pinkie laughed uproariously.
"I knew it!" Rarity shrieked, "You just don't get a mane like that naturally!"
What had started as a 'let's wait for Twilight' session had turned into a full blown sleepover, complete with pyjamas, junk food and the ceremonial sharing of secrets. Dash had admitted to everyone's faux-surprise that she was indeed the enigmatic Daring Do fanfiction author 'R4inb0wF45tP0nXTR3M3', Rarity had come clean about still having Tom in the boutique cellar, and with Pinkie's admission Spike's turn had come.
"I don't know what to tell you guys," he said through convulsions of sugar-fuelled laughter, "I really don't have many secrets. My life's pretty dull here,"
"Oh I don't know Spike, I'm sure there's something you could tell us," Pinkie trilled, gesturing to Rarity behind her back. Spike, for his part, regarded the display with all the warmth and joy of Theresa May attempting to converse with members of the general public.
Luckily, or unluckily depending on your stance on deranged individuals wielding self-assembled machinery, Twilight chose that moment to furiously buck the cellar doors open and gallivant into the room. She was clutching a box to her chest and eyeing everyone in a way not unlike a panicked wolverine.
"Oh thank god for that, are you ready to come out and join us?" Spike said, expertly steering the conversation from where it was previous, "We're having a great time, come and sit down."
"Yeah Twilight we were just about to bust out the proper games! We've got mah-jong and full-3D virtual reality tennis simulator version 8!"
"Oh shut your trap Rainbow, you're just trying to mock me at this point," Twilight spat before frantically blowing her frayed and sweaty mane out of her face. However, upon regarding the confused and slightly hurt looks of her friends she felt her anger lose some of its edge.
"Look," she sighed, "I just spend hours creating the parts of this device with a 3D printer but having to stick them together with wood glue which is apparently the most sophisticated sticking agent Equestrian science has to offer. I have to believe that you, my friends, on some level see what I see!"
"...See what?" Pinkie mercifully broke the uncomfortable silence that had fallen.
"See how... how... Inconsistent this all is!" Twilight blurted out, the itch at the base of her skull lessening slightly now she at least had a word for what she was seeing everywhere, "None of you tried to answer my question! Why do we have a microwave to heat food up, while blending, objectively just as trivial a task, has no such device? I mean, why does one have radiation yet the other has to be done by hoof?!"
"Twilight, dearie," Rarity began cautiously, "I think you're looking at this a little wrong. I mean, Pinkie, Spike, Rainbow and I all agree that blending food is pretty demonstrably more complex than just heating it up. Honestly, it'd only really be weird if devices to do these jobs were simple to make. But a machine! That blends! Twilight that'd take months, if not years of complex scientific research!" Twilight smirked, and took that as her cue.
"Rarity my friend, that's where you're wrong." She placed her box on the floor, and with a nudge it's walls fell to reveal a strange, alien looking machine. It was a sort of... plinth, with a translucent plastic jug placed on top. Within the jug were a set of wicked looking blades, and its body was covered in a number of confusing switches and dials, made all the more alluring for their mystery.
"I call it... a blender!" Twilight announced grandly, glaring pointedly at Spike as if daring him to take issue with the device's name.
"Twilight... it can't be" Rarity stammered, the raw exhilaration of the scientific frontier the five friends now found themselves upon threatening to overwhelm her entirely.
"If this is truly what you're saying, it could change the world," Spike whispered.
"...but is the world ready to be changed? And who are we mere mortals to change it?" Pinkie intoned, passing a shudder to all those around her like a shockwave.
"Oh for the love of God can we all stop being so dramatic, this is my entire point, I knocked this together in an evening, it's actually quite a bit less impressive than a microwave." She ignored the horrified gasps of those around her and asked Spike to fetch the ingredients of a milkshake. He agreed on the conditions that she recognise the scientific gravity of their situation and also promised to not attempt to warm the milkshake up.
When he returned, all were silent. Trembling claws filled the blender's plastic receptacle under Twilight's careful instructions of 'Oh just fill the bloody thing it's not going to bite you'. Once full, Twilight pressed some buttons and turned a few dials, and waited.
Pinkie, Rainbow, Spike and Rarity leapt back in shock when the device began to whirr into life. The mix of ingredients were slowly but surely mixed into an appealing looking cream. Twilight turned to them and grinned.
"See! I told you, I told you all! There is something weird going on! I made this in a few hours and look! See how easily it blends? See how it... wait hold on." But something was terribly wrong. The blender's blades began to accelerate wildly, and the plastic pot sagged and jutted from side to side. There was a terrible groaning, akin to cow's final keening death wail as the ferocity of the mighty machine's sheer blending prowess overcame its physical form. The intensity simply became too much, and Twilight's blender gave in to the strain.
The lid flew off first, spurting cool milkshake mix everywhere. With the sudden reduced weight at the top of the machine the force overcame its balance and, much like the fall of the mighty Roman empire, the blender fell to the ground whereupon a multiple springs and screws cartoonishly burst from its body with a corny sproing sound. The groaning came to a head as the blades rallied for a final whizz around their axis, however soon the noise became hushed as the blender that had once struck dumb all who beheld it came to an early, disappointing death. Then it set on fire.
Twilight watched as her blender, and by extension dreams, came crashing down in front of several of her close friends. It was a tragedy of academic humiliation, the perfect personification of science as an untameable beast that must be constantly respected in the form of a fucked blender. Twilight felt her friends gather around her, and in spite of their warm, comforting bodies aligned with hers the unicorn had never felt so utterly cold.
"Twilight... dearie, try to not be so upset. I mean none of us really expected it to work anyway." Rarity's attempt at comforting was like a knife in the dark, and Twilight's pupils shrank to pinpricks surrounded by a mesh of bloodshot veins as the rest of her friends agreed.
"What the hell do you mean by that?!" she wrenched herself from their grasp and wheeled round the face them.
"Come one Twilight, I mean we know you're really good at science but going down into your cellar and making an automated food mixing system in just one evening?!" Spike began to laugh, as did the others.
"Haha yeah Twilight, why don't you just go into your cellar tomorrow evening and nail cold fusion!" Rarity laughed daintily into a hoof, and Twilight felt the last vestiges of her sanity leave her entirely. Pinkie couldn't even finish her meaningless platitude of 'We kid because we love' before Twilight's shocked body collapsed to the floor.
"Someone get a doctor!" Spike screamed, as he, Rainbow and Pinkie helped Rarity into the hospital. The unicorn was noticeably struggling with the effort of levitating Twilight's catatonic form aloft. Luckily a town as placid as theirs had a pretty calm hospital, and Twilight was laid carefully onto a stretcher and had medical staff tending to her in minutes.
"Don't worry, she'll be fine now," a unicorn doctor assured the four friends, before turning to her assistant. "Okay, she may have an imbalance of her humours so we're definitely going to need some leeches. Oh and give her and MRI scan too that can't hurt." Twilight screamed in rage as the stretcher was taken into A&E.
The ponies and their dragon breathed a sigh of relief, finally safe in the knowledge their friend was in safe hands. They carried their tired bodies to the waiting room seats, determined to be there for their friend once she was made well again.
"Oh hey Rainbow do you still have your Blackberry?" Spike enquired once they were all seated, "We should probably let everyone know what's happened on Facebook."