It was a completely normal and beautiful day in Ponyville, with birds chirping and many multicolored ponies going about their businesses. The sun was shining bright, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Something was just bound to go wrong.
Twilight Sparkle trotted down the well-worn path to Sugarcube Corner, one of Ponyville’s most well-known establishments. Her stomach was rumbling and could only be satisfied with the uniquely sweet taste of Pinkie Pie’s glazed donuts. Expecting nothing out of the ordinary, she opened the front door and entered.
“Pinkie!’’ she called out, after surveying the room and finding no sign of her bubblegum pink friend. The over-excitable pony would’ve normally bolted to Twilight’s assistance, so it was a bit unnerving when she took more than a few seconds to come into view. When she did, she was carrying a scroll, a quill, and a very expensive looking calculator that was almost as big as her head.
“Erm, Pinkie? Can I have a dozen glazed donuts, right out of the oven like I like them?” Twilight asked, unsure what to make of the spectacle before her.
“What was that, Twilight?” Pinkie asked, not breaking eye contact with her calculator.
“Glazed donuts? A dozen of them?” Pinkie didn’t respond, so there was an awkward silence filled only with the sound of her pushing the buttons and inputting long strings of numbers. After a minute of Pinkie not moving to get started on her order, the alicorn princess got a tad restless.
“...Pinkie?”
“Huh? Oh, yup, I hear ya, Twi…” She was still glued to the device. “Lemme just…”
After a couple more seconds of intense button mashing, the pink confectioner's face brightened considerably, and she wrote down a few numbers and symbols on her paper. “So you wanted donuts, right?”
Twilight completely forgot about her order as she suddenly found herself fascinated with what her friend was doing. “Hey, what does that scroll say?”
“Nothing, why?”
“It sure looks like something, considering you’re so wrapped up in it.”
“It’s nothing, okay?”
“Can I see it?” Twilight raised a hoof to the table. Pinkie quickly smacked it away.
“No, you may not!” Pinkie seethed and gave Twilight the death glare, clutching her paper to her chest and blowing steam out of her nostrils. It was obvious that she wasn’t going to get to see what kind of mathematical formulas were on it without coming up with some sort of devious plan.
So that’s exactly what she did.
“Erm, in that case, I guess I’ll be going then…” She turned and walked away in mock dejection, then left the building. The moment she was out of Pinkie’s sight, she made a sharp turn into a bush next to a window that gave her a perfect view of the inside. She had already stashed binoculars in the leaves in case of data-gathering emergencies. How fitting.
She peered into the binoculars and positioned them to look inside. Pinkie was still at the front desk, pushing some buttons and furrowing her brow more and more. Eventually her whole face softened, she exclaimed something, set down the paper and hopped away, her calculator still in hand.
Twilight took the opportunity and bolted out of the bush and back into Sugarcube Corner. She managed to catch a glimpse of Pinkie’s tail moving towards the bathroom, so she knew that she wouldn’t have much time to work. Taking out a notepad and pencil, she scribbled down as fast as she could what was written down on the paper Pinkie left behind. When she was satisfied that the two papers were nearly identical, she turned and sprinted out of the door just in time for Pinkie to not see what she was up to.
She raced back to Golden Oaks Library to decipher the paper’s meaning, and was already mulling over in her head what each combination could mean, but she hadn’t seen any of them before in all of her years of study. Maybe Pinkie was actually a famous mathematician, and was renowned for coming up with new formulas? Maybe she practices in secret so others don’t think she’s smarter than everyone else? It would make sense, considering her nature of being friends with all of the ponies, so she wouldn’t want to feel like she was acting better than others.
One thing was for sure: a long night of trying to decode the logic behind the numbers was in store for Twilight Sparkle.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Soon it was sunrise, and besides the fact that she hadn’t gotten any sleep, Twilight also still had no idea what anything on the paper meant. Pinkie must really be the smartest mathematician in Equestria if that was the case!
She decided to go meet up with her friend again today and see if talking with her could shed some light on anything. It wasn’t very hard to guess that she would still be at Sugarcube Corner, so the mare started her search there.
She opened the door to once again be met with Pinkie poking her hoof at her calculator, and the paper she was writing on was a bit fuller than it was yesterday.
“Hey, Pinkie,” Twilight said, “You’ve been so absorbed by that calculator lately. Are you trying to type in all of the digits of Graham’s number or something?” Pinkie actually lifted her head from the screen to express her look of confusion.
“...What are you talking about, Twilight?” she inquired, genuinely puzzled. Twilight shared the same confusion, since Graham’s number wasn’t the most obscure concept, so shouldn’t someone with Pinkie’s knowledge know what it is?
Or maybe she’s so smart she’s long since called it by a different, more technical name, that only ponies held in high regard use? It was very possible, considering she had already been stumped trying to figure out what Pinkie was doing, which was quite a feat in the field of math.
“I...I am humbled to be in the presence of a pony whose intellect is far superior to my own,” she exclaimed, the alicorn princess of Equestria kneeling down and bowing her head.
“Whatcha doing, Twi?” Pinkie asked, kneeling down with her. “Did you lose your contacts? Should I help look for them?” Twilight blinked.
“...Haven’t you been writing down new algorithms and testing them out using your calculator for the past couple of days?”
“Alga-rhythm? Silly Twilight, calculators don’t play music!” Pinkie giggled and pat her friend’s head. “Naw, I’ve been inventing new ways to make emoticons and write words into this thing! Also, did you know that there are puzzle games on some calculators? I had to keep writing down the level passwords though, because I kept forgetting.”
Twilight blinked again and shook her head. “Emoticons...? Passwords…?” She got out the paper she had copied Pinkie’s numbers onto and it all started to make more sense.
“Uh huh! Looky!” Pinkie punched a few numbers in and showed the screen to the purple mare. On it was the number ‘0.1134’.
“I don’t get it…” Twilight mumbled.
“Well of course you don’t! You have to turn it upside down!” Pinkie flipped the calculator over and the numbers transformed into the word ‘hello’. She grinned innocently. Twilight cupped her face in her hooves.
“Also, did you know that if you take two 2’s, mirror one, stick them together, then rotate it a little, it looks like a fish? They weren’t lying! Two plus two really does equal fish!”
Author's Note
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