“...at least until the sun goes out.” Twilight stopped, satisfied with her thorough explanation of the carbon cycle.
“Okie dokie, Twilight!” Pinkie said, having paid absolutely no attention the entire time.
Twilight’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Pinkie, were you paying absolutely no attention the entire time?”
“Yupperdoodles!”
Twilight sighed.
“I was thinking about cupcakes and balloons and parties and more cupcakes and the little Cakes and then you were like ‘Womp, womp womp womp womp’ and I was like ‘Okay, Twile Sparklight!’ and then…”
Pinkie Pie gasped. “Wait. Wait wait wait. Did you say that the sun is going to go out?”
Twilight nodded.
Pinkie gasped another gasp, one that could probably have emptied a smaller room of air. For once, though, she was left at a loss for words. “Why?”
Twilight grinned at the opportunity to science Pinkie. “Well, Pinkie, since you ask, it has to do with the laws of thermodynamics, which state that-”
“The laws of what now?”
Yeah, expecting Pinkie to understand that was probably a bit much. Twilight decided to start over again. “Alright. Imagine a party. It starts out with a hundred ponies. Then-”
Pinkie bounced excitedly. “A party? I love parties! Where is this party?”
Twilight facehoofed. “It’s a metaphor.”
Pinkie looked like Gummy had just told her that he didn’t love her, he never loved her, and never would. “Aw.”
“Anyways, you have this party. As ponies get tired, they leave. So you have 99 ponies, then 98, then 97, and eventually-”
“You have a funeriffic afterparty with everypony!”
“No,” Twilight said with the finality of Judgment Day and Ragnarok combined and tripled. “Eventually there’s nopony left at the party. It’s over. There is no more party.”
“Oh.”
“Basically, the party is everything in the universe. And just like ponies get tired- okay, fine, like most ponies get tired, Pinkie. Like that, everything in the universe is going to run out of energy. One day, we’re all going to stop.”
Pinkie’s jaw dropped. This wasn’t exactly a novel concept to her- after all, her friend May the Mayfly stopped moving last week, and Pinkie had reluctantly come to the conclusion that she probably wouldn’t start to again anytime soon. Still, applying that as a general principle was a step too far. “Okay, so maybe we’re going to, but, but, the sun doesn’t-”
Twilight shook her head. “The sun’s not any different. And neither are the stars or anything else. They just last a lot longer than we do. That’s all.”
“But… but.” Pinkie was crushed between two of her heretofore infallible assumptions- that Twilight Sparkle knew pretty much everything, and that there never really had to be an end to a party. “So you’re telling me that, uh, uh, you know… right?”
“Everything in the universe is going to die. At some point, anyways,” Twilight intoned.
Pinkie’s hair straightened in a way that defied logical analysis- and trust me, Twilight had tried. “Oh. How long do we have?”
“Oh, Pinkie Pie!” Twilight said, surprised. “We have billions of billions of years left. Enough time for more parties than you could even count. Don’t worry about it. Go have fun.”
Pinkie didn’t particularly want to have fun, but she bounced out of the library anyways. She looked distrustfully at the sun. Hmm. Well, if the sun was like ponies, as Pinkie was fairly certain Twilight had just said, and ponies were sort of like dragons, and Fluttershy could make dragons do things by looking at them funny and scolding them, then maybe…
She glared at the sun and shook a hoof at it. “Who do you think you are, mister?” she yelled. “Just ‘cause you’re…” Pinkie paused briefly, trying to remember anything about what Fluttershy had said. “Really big, it doesn’t give you the right to go and die on us! So you better not! Just stay right where you are and don’t die. You got that?”
The sun hadn’t changed at all, but Pinkie imagined that it was now balefully glaring down on her. “I do what I want,” it said, and chuckled fatalistically.
“You, you!” Pinkie shouted vaguely. “You better not do it! I’m warning you!”
A few ponies looked confused at the sight of a mare shouting at the sky, until realizing it was Pinkie Pie. At that point, they immediately went about their daily business. You didn’t last long in Ponyville if you thought too hard about Pinkie.
Pinkie Pie sensed defeat, at least for the moment, and walked back to Sugarcube Corner, her head hung.
She couldn't quite build up the enthusiasm to slam the door to her loft, but she felt like it anyways. But what was the point? She could slam every door in existence without making a difference in the long run. She would die, and everypony who had heard her slam a door would die, and then the sun and the stars and everything else would die and it would have made no difference whatsoever.
She kicked a deflated balloon desultorily. "Meh," she said, in a tone that suggested that word was barely worth the oxygen. There was a knock at the door.
"Dearie," Mrs. Cake called out, "Mr. Cake and I are going out for a bit. Could you watch the little ones?"
"Absolutely!" Pinkie said reflexively, then remembered. Eventually, there is no more party. "Why, though?" she asked. "You're going to die. They're going to die. I'm going to die. We're all going to die! What's the point?"
There was a long and deeply uncomfortable silence. "Pinkie, are you okay?"
"Does it matter?" Pinkie asked.
"It matters to me, dearie. Can I come in?" Mrs. Cake asked carefully.
"Might as well," came the morose response from inside. "Door's unlocked."
Pinkie was sitting on her bed, staring intently at the floor.
Mrs. Cake sat down next to her and gingerly put a hoof on her shoulder. "Pinkie, what's wrong?"
"Everything," Pinkie said, not bothering to look up.
"And why's that?"
"Well," Pinkie said, and took a deep breath. "I was with Twilight at the library and she said something about the sun going out and I asked her what she was talking about and she said that everything in the world is going to end just like all my parties end and then I went outside and started yelling at the-"
Interrupting Pinkie's trains of thought had become something of a specialty of Mrs. Cake's by then. "Well, the imminence of the apocalypse notwithstanding, we do still need you to take care of the kids," she said, laying a hoof on Pinkie's.
"It's not like it matters," Pinkie said, and sniffled a bit. "It's not going to change things."
"Of course it will, dearie. Here, look at me."
Pinkie acquiesced.
"Pinkie Pie, it doesn't matter if it changes what happens in the end or not. It's like..." she paused, searching for an adequate analogy. "It's like a party. Just because everpony leaves by the end doeesn't mean it's not worth having. And it makes a difference whether it's a good party or a bad one."
Pinkie Pie smiled weakly. "You really think so?"
"It sounds believable enough to me," Mrs. Cake replied cryptically.
Pinkie, having virtually no capacity for subtlety, leaped up from the bed and hugged Mrs. Cake with terrifying tightness.
"Uh, Pinkie?" Mrs. Cake said, "I'm glad you feel better about the..." She wriggled around a bit, trying to find a position where she could actually refill her lungs. "Apparently inevitable death of all things, but you're crushing my ribcage and I really have to go."
"Okie dokie!" Pinkie said with a grin, relinquishing her hold and bouncing to the door. "Don't worry about it, Mrs Cake! I'll take care of them!"
If the party was going to end, it would be the best party ever. Pinkie Pie would see to that.
